From the Therapist's Chair: Rebekah Hess on Trauma-Informed Therapy
At Ensemble Therapy, we care deeply about the “why” behind our practice of counseling. We believe there is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach to counseling; each therapist views the counseling process and their clients through a unique lens formed from years of education and experience.
This means that as a client, you can choose the counselor who is the best fit for you or your child. While this freedom to choose the best-fit may sound nice at first, it can be difficult to know how to choose when there seem to be so many ways to do therapy. Not only are there lots of theories on how to practice counseling, often the language behind counseling theories is difficult to understand and apply without any previous background knowledge.
As the client or the caregiver of a child client, you deserve to know and understand how your counselor practices therapy. Counseling exists for the growth and well-being of you, your family, and your community; therefore, counseling should be accessible and easy to understand for the greater public. In an effort to make our counseling practice more accessible and easy-to-understand for our clients, we want to introduce you to our counselors and their respective approaches to counseling.
Throughout the next several months, we’re going to take you through interviews with each of our therapists so you can learn the “why” behind their practice of counseling. This week, you’ll get to know a little more about Rebekah Hess, Associate Therapist at Ensemble Therapy. We hope you enjoy getting to sit a moment in the therapist’s chair and learn a little bit about counseling from our eyes.
About Rebekah
Rebekah has been an Associate Therapist at Ensemble Therapy since November 2020. She studied clinical mental health in her home state at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette before moving to Austin. For Rebekah, the best part of being a counselor is creating a friendly, safe, and accepting space where healing and growth can occur. Rebekah works from a trauma-informed, child-centered therapeutic perspective, meaning she lets the child guide her through their world and process their trauma using their first language of play. She believes in providing a welcoming space where children are able to create their own world in the playroom and work through big feelings, crises, and thoughts through the safety of play.
What is your theory/approach to therapy?
I incorporate a trauma-informed lens into my therapy approach with my clients. Childhood trauma can be defined as an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) which can include witnessing/experiencing violence, abuse, neglect, death, or something that undermines a child’s sense of safety and stability. However, trauma is viewed less as “what” the event is and more so “how” the event impacts the child. Two children may experience a car accident with the same level of damage. One child may feel comfortable enough to get inside of a car a day or two later while the other child may develop an intense fear that inhibits their sense of safety in a car at all.
Being trauma-informed is more than helping our client process a traumatic event. It also includes assessing life history, understanding when the trauma occurred and how it impacted healthy social and emotional development, exploring the child’s attachment style, processing how the event impacted the client’s ability to regulate their emotions and actions, and uncovering how it changed their view of themselves and the world.
My training and “base” of therapy is in the evidence-based practices of Child-Centered Non-Directive Play Therapy developed by Virgina Axline, Carl Rogers, Louise Guerney, and Gary Landreth. To more effectively understand and meet the needs of my clients who have experienced trauma, I incorporate the research and evidence conducted by Bessel Van Der Kolk, Paris Goodyear-Brown, Eliana Gil, Bruce Perry, Peter A. Levine, and Maggie Kline.
Play is a child’s first language and the toys are the words. My job as a therapist is to be a container for the child. I communicate that I am strong enough and safe enough to help children carry their trauma. I witness and validate their experience by containing and reflecting it.
Influenced by the work of Goodyear-Brown, my primary goals are:
Establish a safe environment for the client to feel comfortable enough to process their trauma
Assess their current adaptive and maladaptive coping mechanisms. It is important to learn and implement adaptive coping skills and/or reinforce the adaptive ones before delving into trauma work. The child must have the ability to co-regulate and self-regulate in order to safely process the event(s).
Explore the client’s support system
Recognize physiological symptoms and working towards regulation
Integrate their verbal story with their somatosensory experience, or experiences of touch, temperature (thermoception), pain (nociception), and perception of the position and movement of the body, limbs, and head (proprioception).
Process the traumatic event through play
Challenge any irrational beliefs
Make meaning of the event
How did you come to practice from this theory? What drew you to it?
Joining the counseling field was largely impacted through my own adverse childhood experiences where my perception of safety was jeopardized. Those big feelings and anxieties stayed with me into adulthood until I began my own journey processing it. When I began working with high-needs children at an inpatient hospital I recognized the need to explore more into specific trauma-informed care. I invested more in trainings, research, and educational opportunities to be the most effective therapist that I could be for those kids.
What is your favorite thing about this theory?
Play allows a child to externalize their trauma in a safe way while also increasing their tolerance to processing the event. By manipulating sand tray, art, props, and toys children are exerting control over a situation where they previously felt like they had none. When the child externalizes the trauma, they can explore different perspectives, process fantasies of safety, and even alter the perpetrator or event. The act of playing allows the child to stay grounded in the here-and-now and is an anchor if the child starts to disassociate. Children are kinesthetic learners and in play, they are physically manipulating, controlling, and overcoming adverse experiences. This kind of therapy is a developmentally appropriate avenue for growth to occur.
How does your theory view people and their capacity for change and growth?
Children are incredibly resilient and can be in charge of their capacity for growth through the comfortability of play. The beauty of this lens is being able to validate a child’s experience and work with clients to regain mastery over their body, their experience, and their healing. Children have the ability to process their story at their own rate. Trauma healing is not a linear process and with children, it can often come in intervals. A child knows their own limits best and they have the ability to step away by engaging in another activity when they become too overwhelmed. Allowing them the ability to do so is allowing them to self-regulate, feel safe, and increases the chances of them revisiting the trauma in therapy. In simply using play to process trauma they are practicing control.
“In the same way that sensations of helplessness and terror can be conditioned through traumatic experiences, sensations of empowerment and security can be conditioned through repetitions of energized, experiential play.”
– Paris Goodyear-Brown, Play Therapy with Traumatized Children: A Prescriptive Approach
What client is your theory best suited for?
This practice is best suited for children ages 3-12 who have experienced trauma. Through play and creative interventions, children can be given the voice needed to be heard and understood. The same goals and creative interventions can be incorporated with other theories suited for teens and adults 13 and up.
Resources:
Books I use:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Play Therapy with Traumatized Children: A Prescriptive Approach by Paris Goodyear-Brown
Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing by Maggie Kline and Peter A. Levine
Posttraumatic Play in Children: What Clinicians Need to Know by Eliana Gil
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook by Bruce D. Perry
Interested in booking a session with Rebekah?
WRITTEN BY REBEKAH HESS, LPC (SHE/HER/HERS)
Rebekah is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC). Rebekah received her Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from The University of Louisiana at Lafayette (CACREP Accredited Program) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Louisiana State University. Rebekah is currently working towards her Registered Play Therapist™ (RPT™) credential. She has experience working with children, teens, and young adults in an inpatient hospital setting as well as in a community clinic. Her work includes providing individual, family, and group therapy services to clients with diverse needs.
