Synergetic Play Therapy®
A nervous-system-informed way of being with children, teens, parents, and adults.
Synergetic Play Therapy® isn’t just about toys.
It is a way of understanding people.
At its heart, SPT is about what happens when one nervous system meets another with authenticity, attunement, curiosity, and enough steadiness to stay present when big feelings, survival patterns, play, grief, anger, shutdown, or overwhelm enter the room.
For children, this may happen through play.
For teens, it may happen through humor, metaphor, movement, art, silence, storytelling, or the careful side-door conversations that feel safer than direct eye contact.
For adults, it may show up in the way we notice what is happening in the body, the relationship, the nervous system, and the old patterns that come alive in real time.
The toys are not the point.
The relationship is.
Why this matters
Many people come to therapy after being told they need to control their behavior, manage their emotions, use the strategy, follow the chart, or “just calm down.”
That may work for some people.
It often does not work for sensitive, intense, neurodivergent, grieving, traumatized, or big-feeling nervous systems.
Synergetic Play Therapy® starts from a different place. Instead of asking, “How do we make this behavior stop?” it asks, “What is this nervous system trying to communicate?”
That shift matters.
Because when behavior is understood as communication, therapy becomes less about control and more about safety, connection, regulation, and repair.
I am a Certified Synergetic Play Therapist™, and SPT deeply shapes how I work — even when we are not using toys, and even when the client is not a young child.
In sessions, I pay attention to the relational field: what is happening between us, what is happening in your body, what feels safe, what feels too much, what wants to move, hide, laugh, cry, resist, shut down, or be known.
This work blends naturally with my training in NARM™, attachment, prenatal and perinatal psychology, grief work, and relational neuroscience. Together, these approaches help us understand how early experiences, survival patterns, nervous system states, and relationships shape the way we protect ourselves, connect, disconnect, and come back to ourselves.
How I use Synergetic Play Therapy®
What this can look like
With children, SPT may include play, art, imagination, movement, storytelling, or symbolic expression.
With teens, it may look like conversation mixed with humor, metaphor, drawing, fidgets, movement, silence, or simply not forcing them to talk about feelings in a way that makes their nervous system revolt.
With parents, it may help us understand what happens inside you when your child’s emotions get big — and how your own nervous system can become part of the repair.
With adults, it may support deeper awareness of old patterns, protective strategies, shame, grief, authenticity, and the places where you learned to leave yourself behind.
However it looks, the goal is not performance.
The goal is integration: more awareness, more regulation, more choice, and more connection with self and others.
This approach may be especially helpful if:
You or your child have big feelings that seem to take over the body
Traditional talk therapy has felt too intellectual, too rigid, or too focused on strategies
You want therapy that honors neurodivergence, sensitivity, intensity, and the
wisdom of the nervous systemYour teen struggles to talk directly about what they feel
Your child communicates more through play, movement, behavior, or metaphor than words
You are a parent trying to understand what is happening underneath your child’s behavior
You are tired of approaches that focus on compliance instead of connection
You want therapy that makes room for humor, grief, playfulness, embodiment, and truth
The therapist matters
One of the central ideas in Synergetic Play Therapy® is that the therapist’s own nervous system matters.
That is not just theory to me.
I have spent years doing the work of building regulation, authenticity, and congruence in myself so I can bring steadiness into the therapeutic relationship. I do not need you or your child to be calm before you arrive. I do not need feelings to be tidy. I do not need the story to come out in a straight line.
My job is to meet what is here with enough presence that something new can begin to happen.
A way of being, not a script
Synergetic Play Therapy® is not a worksheet, behavior plan, or one-size-fits-all technique.
It is a way of being with the nervous system.
It helps me listen underneath the words, the behavior, the silence, the play, the resistance, and the overwhelm — so therapy can become a place where old patterns soften and new possibilities emerge.
This is part of how I help children, teens, parents, and adults move toward more safety, self-trust, connection, and repair.
Learn more here.
Ready to begin?
Start with a $25 virtual consultation. If we decide to move forward, the consultation fee will be deducted from the cost of your first session.
We’ll talk about what is happening, what kind of support you are looking for, and whether this approach feels like the right fit.