Yuh-Jen Guo, Department of Counselor, Leadership, and Special Education, Auburn University at Montgomery
Shu-Ching Wang, AUM Counseling & Health Promotion Services, Auburn University at Montgomery
Nicole Bloch, Department of Counselor, Leadership, and Special Education, Auburn University at Montgomery
Trauma-induced distress leads to client dysregulation and hypervigilance. Impaired cognitive processing and self-regulation undermines the collaboration and empowerment in counseling sessions. Counselors may adopt the bottom-up approach and principles of trauma-focused therapies to engage distressed adults. Counselors can help these clients restore a sense of safety and self-regulation with activities that are rich in sensorimotor experience. Therefore, we developed adult play activities to help clients self-regulate and be empowered to enhance therapeutic process.