I haven't specifically done play therapy though I do body/somatic focused therapy and my therapist has a shelf full of interesting toys and stuffed animals. It took some guts but I told her one day I sort of wanted to go look at a puppy on the shelf. That was completely cool and she offered to get it. I told her I wanted to get it. And oddly, that took an hour. I was scooting on the floor, stopping, crying, I couldn't even look at the puppy. When I got up to it I couldn't look at it or do anything but cry. My therapist offered to get it for me and I let her. I still don't totally know what that was about, but in a deep and general way...everything. My worst traumas were early childhood, like mostly before age 7 as far as I know (not that I remember much around those years). I don't do well with talk therapy, though sometimes I do need to talk and verbally process, and that's good. Either because of memory or age, the body and movement approach seems more helpful. And for me this involves some childish things. Now I often need to hang onto a stuffed animal when getting stressed in therapy and it's a step up for me. I used to have like zero access to self-soothing. I just had to self-destruct. So I'm sort of going backwards and hopefully developing those skills I never really had. We've also done some mirroring in a playful way, which felt like a safe way to communicate and connect early on...I had to watch her, copy what she was doing with her hands or whatever, and she had to watch me and follow. I liked that and even suggested trying that again one day when I felt really disconnected.
