Changing Lives Blog

The Sand Tray

Working in sand is not just for kids. True, children of all ages like arranging small figures in the sand. But so do adults.

For children, playing is what they do. Expressing feelings is not easy for them. They do not have the verbal expertise and developmental sophistication to participate in the more traditional "talk" therapy. Sometimes they do not even know the words. But by working in the sand tray, children are using figures to tell their stories. "Playing out" their experiences and feelings is natural. It is also a self-healing process for them. Sand tray allows the therapist to enter the child's world, instead of asking the child to "come up" to where the adult stands.

Adults can also use the sand tray to make their own miniature worlds. In life and therapy, adults can get stuck on a painful issue. Using sand tray figures can free them from their self-consciousness or anxieties. It is an emotionally safe place to uncover conflicts or resolve serious issues without the restrain of self-censorship.

One client was struggling to find her inner voice and stand up to the abusive men in her life. Without thinking about what she was doing, she chose a small child as the focal point of her world. Other figures represented playmates and her mother. She had a shadowy figure in the corner. She spent time rearranging the figures and burying the shadowy one, in her case her abusive father. At the end of the process, she came to a deeper understanding of her inner feelings which she had often found hard to express to anyone, including herself.

Children use sand tray work to play out their interpersonal conflicts, either to move the figures themselves or to direct the therapist to move the characters. They can feel safe because the figures can act out, express the pain for them. This is especially useful for children who have been traumatized.

A seven-year-old girl, adopted at birth, was having trouble separating from home to go to school. This was upsetting the whole household because she felt sick often and thus "forced" either one parent or the other to stay home from work. In the sand tray, she created villages engulfed by tidal waves. She recreated these over and over. The child had never been near a tidal wave nor been swimming in an ocean. It was a way of working out her unspoken anxiety of being left or perhaps not finding her parents again. After several sessions of continued disasters, the little girl and her miniature friends built a huge wall which successfully kept out the tidal waves. Along with therapy, the parents were urged to read stories about adoptive families. They told "What if" stories about a mythical, mischievous girl who wondered if being naughty would cause her parents to send her back to her birth country. After more sand trays, the little girl made peaceful villages and the going-to-school tears and stomach aches ended. Sand tray work helped the girl resolve her fears about being left. They were too scary to express openly or tell her parents.

Self-expression and self-exploration are crucial to successful therapeutic outcomes. Sand tray enhances this process. For children, the figures speak for them.

Labels: child therapy, childhood trauma, play therapy, sand tray

posted by Nancy Henningsen @ 10:07 PM