The Stories We Borrow: Narrative Influences in Play and Therapy

Identify and transform borrowed narratives through play therapy to foster identity, resilience, and emotional healing. Children do not create their stories in isolation. They inherit, absorb, and adapt narratives from families, culture, peers, media, and significant life experiences, shaping how they understand themselves and the world around them. These borrowed stories often emerge symbolically through play, sand tray, art, and storytelling, influencing identity, relationships, emotional regulation, and resilience. This training explores how play therapists can recognize the narratives children carry, differentiate between inherited and authentic stories, and ethically support the development of more flexible, empowering narratives through play. Drawing from narrative therapy, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, developmental psychology, and play therapy principles, participants will learn to identify borrowed narratives within symbolic play and utilize developmentally responsive interventions that foster emotional integration, identity development, resilience, and meaning-making. Learning Objectives: • Identify how inherited, cultural, familial, and personal narratives emerge symbolically through play therapy, sand tray, and expressive play. • Explain the impact of attachment, trauma, family systems, and cultural influences on children's narrative development and identity formation. • Demonstrate at least three play therapy interventions that help children externalize, examine, and reshape limiting or borrowed narratives. • Apply developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive play therapy techniques that support narrative flexibility, resilience, self-understanding, and authentic identity development.