Play Therapy with Adolescents Using Expressive Arts
Engage teens in play therapy—without it feeling childish, forced, or ineffective
An experiential play therapy training for clinicians who want adolescents to participate meaningfully in the healing process.
📅 March 7, 2026
📍 Hybrid: In-Person or Virtual (via Zoom)
🎓 6 CE Hours Available
When Teens Shut Down
"Not happening."
The message is clear before the session even begins.
Your adolescent client is guarded, disengaged, and not interested in talking.
Talk therapy alone isn’t opening the door, but play therapy feels tricky when you’re trying to respect their developmental needs without sounding childish or missing what’s really underneath.
Adolescents still benefit from play therapy. It just has to land differently.
This is where a thoughtful, developmentally attuned approach to expressive and experiential work becomes essential—one that meets teens where they are and helps them engage in the healing process at their own pace.
Do any of these ring true?
👉🏼 You’re sitting with adolescents who feel flooded—big emotions, intense distress, and beliefs that fuel anxiety, depression, trauma responses, self-harm, or suicidal ideation—and you’re not sure how to help them stay regulated while doing the deeper work.
👉🏼 You want to use play therapy with teens in a way that actually meets them where they are developmentally—without it feeling awkward, juvenile, or like you’re treating them like little kids.
👉🏼 You want to use expressive arts in play therapy… but when it’s time to do it, self-doubt kicks in and you wonder, “Do I even know what I’m doing?”
👉🏼The idea of using art, music, or poetry in play therapy makes your nervous system spike—because you’re not a “creative type,” a trained artist, or a musician (and honestly, that feels intimidating as heck).
👉🏼 You’re craving clear, structured, clinically grounded ways to use expressive arts in play therapy so sessions feel intentional—and your adolescent clients actually make meaningful progress.
Why expressive arts work with teens (when used intentionally)
Adolescents often struggle to verbalize what they’re experiencing — especially when emotions are overwhelming or tied to implicit memory, shame, or trauma.
Using expressive arts can help your adolescent clients access right brain processes for healing in a way that reduces resistance and feeling overwhelmed. They can bypass those cognitive parts of their left brain and get deep into those implicit experiences where the real healing needs to happen.
This play therapy training will increase your skills to help your adolescent clients improve their self-esteem, develop coping skills, and engage in healthy relationships so they can thrive.
Are you ready to integrate Expressive Arts in Play Therapy with your adolescent clients?
Check out what's inside the training
Understand what’s driving adolescent behavior beneath the surface. You’ll explore how attachment experiences shape adolescents’ beliefs about self, others, and relationships, and how memory, mentalization, and felt safety influence engagement in play therapy. Using an interpersonal neurobiology lens, you’ll learn to interpret adolescent responses more clearly and integrate parts-informed concepts into your clinical decision-making.
Learn how to support regulation before insight. You’ll examine how emotions are experienced and regulated through the body, using a polyvagal-informed understanding of adolescent nervous system responses. Through expressive arts interventions, you’ll learn developmentally appropriate ways to support mindfulness, grounding, and co-regulation in the therapeutic process.
Use expressive arts in ways teens experience as respectful—not childish. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of the developmental tasks of adolescence and how they inform assessment, intervention, and expectations for change in play therapy. You’ll learn how to use art, poetry, clay, and music with intentionality.
Anchor your play therapy interventions in a framework you can trust. You’ll be introduced to the neuroscience- and attachment-informed Be 5 Framework, learning how structure supports therapeutic rapport and emotional safety with adolescents. This framework helps you ground expressive arts within the stages of play therapy while strengthening clinical reasoning and ethical decision-making.
Meet Your Trainer
Cathi Spooner, LCSW, RPT-S
I’m Cathi Spooner, a licensed clinical social worker and Registered Play Therapist–Supervisor, and I’ve spent years working with children, adolescents, and families using play therapy grounded in attachment and neuroscience. Over time, I saw how often teens were misunderstood in therapy—too old for traditional play therapy, yet not always able or willing to rely on talk alone. Integrating expressive arts became a meaningful way to meet adolescents where they are, offering them developmentally respectful ways to express, regulate, and explore what’s hard to put into words. In my teaching and clinical work, I focus on helping therapists use expressive arts intentionally and ethically, so sessions with teens feel engaging, grounded, and deeply therapeutic rather than forced or “babyish.”
"It was a wonderful training. I especially enjoyed looking at the art interventions and the discussion."
Donna C.
LMFT-S, RPT
Training Information
Here's What You Need To Know
Who is appropriate for this training?
Play therapists, clinical social workers, mental health counselors, family therapists, child and adolescent psychologists.
If you’ve ever thought, “I know play therapy works… I just don’t know how to make it work with adolescents,” you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
This training is FOR you if…
- You love working with adolescents… but sometimes play therapy sessions feel like pushing a boulder uphill
- You’ve wondered, “How do I use play therapy without it feeling childish?” You want age-appropriate, credibility-safe ways to use expressive arts that teens actually respect.
- You’re seeing complex stuff—trauma, anxiety, depression, identity questions, family conflict—and want a clear neuroscience + attachment framework to guide your decisions using play therapy with teens.
- You like learning experientially and want ready-to-use play therapy interventions to use with your adolescent clients right away, not theory that lives on a slide deck.
- You want to leave feeling confident, grounded, and excited to work with teens again.
This training is NOT for you if…
Let’s keep it honest (and save you time):
- You’re not a child/adolescent mental health professional
- You believe play therapy is only appropriate for young children—and don’t want to rethink that because you don't think it can work with teens.
- You’re looking for quick fixes, scripts, or surface-level activities without understanding the neurobiology underneath.
- You’re not open to experiential learning or engaging in expressive arts yourself.You don’t think play therapy is effective
- You prefer staying exactly where you are clinically and aren’t interested in expanding or refining your approach.
- You don’t work with adolescents and don’t plan to.
When is it？
Date: Saturday, March 7, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM Mountain Time (Make sure to adjust to your time zone if attending virtually)
Where is it？
This is a hybrid training. Participants can attend in-person or online via Zoom.
In-Person Venue: 225 S 700 E St., St. George, UT 84770 Snow Math & Science Center, Rm 128, Utah Tech University
Virtual: (You’ll receive the meeting link and access to your account with handouts in an email after you register). Space is limited to 50 people for the virtual training Participants will attend virtually using Zoom. Participants will be limited to 50 people and must keep their cameras on at all times to ensure active participation in the training. Participants must be visible for the entirety of the training time (excluding breaks) and will complete an evaluation form and a post-test quiz containing a combination of 36 multiple choice. You must achieve 85% proficiency on the quiz to receive CE credit.
Course Description
Adolescents still need play therapy—but it has to land. This play therapy training is designed for play therapists and child/adolescent mental health professionals who want to work with teens in ways that feel developmentally respectful, engaging, and clinically effective—without teens feeling like they’re being treated like small children.
Expressive arts create a powerful bridge between play and talk therapy, giving adolescents meaningful ways to express what’s hard to put into words by accessing the therapeutic powers of play for healing. Using a neuroscience and attachment framework, this play therapy training helps play therapists understand why expressive arts work and how to use them intentionally within the play therapy process.
You’ll learn how brain development, attachment patterns, and nervous system regulation shape adolescent behavior, emotions, identity formation, and relationships — and how expressive arts can support regulation, insight, and resilience. The play therapy training introduces practical, ready-to-use expressive arts interventions using mindfulness, visual art, poetry, and music to help adolescents explore identity, shame, cognitive distortions, painful experiences, and self-concept.
This play therapy training goes beyond activities. You’ll gain a clear framework for grounding expressive arts strategies in theory, clinical decision-making, and the stages of play therapy. The result? Play therapy sessions with adolescents that feel relevant, engaging, and deeply therapeutic.
Walk away with increased confidence, a stronger clinical lens, and expressive arts tools you can immediately integrate into your play therapy work with teens—so they can engage more fully in the healing process.
Objectives for this training
- Play therapists and mental health professionals will define the concept of mentalization and its relationship with attachment and emotional distress in play therapy
- Play therapists and mental health professionals will learn the relationship between attachment, mentalization, and our conceptualization of self, others, and relationships in play therapy for adolescents
- Play therapists and mental health professionals will explain the mind-body connection for emotion regulation in play therapy
- Play therapists and mental health professionals will identify at least three therapeutic powers of play to use with expressive modalities
- Play therapists and mental health professionals will describe the elements of the Be 5 Framework to establish a strong therapeutic relationship with adolescents in play therapy
- Play therapists and mental health professionals will demonstrate at least four expressive arts activities to use with adolescents in the play therapy process to explore self-concept, relationships, regulate emotions, develop coping skills, and increase resiliency
Virtual Training Information
‼️IMPORTANT‼️ In order to receive continuing education hours credit, participants must be present for the entirety of the training and keep cameras on at all times.
If you register for the Virtual training options, you can earn 6 Non-Contact CE hours.
Access to the online/virtual training will be locked by 9:15 am Mountain time zone to ensure participant attendance in its entirety.
Please ensure you adjust virtual participation training times for your time zone.
- Virtual participants will attend virtually using Zoom.
- Virtual participants will be limited to 50 people and participants must keep their cameras on at all times to ensure active participation in the training.
- Virtual participants must be visible for the entirety of the training time (excluding breaks) and will complete an evaluation form and a post-test quiz containing a combination of 36 multiple choice.
- You must achieve 85% proficiency on the quiz to receive CE credit.
Training Schedule
9:00 - 11:00 am (2 hours): Attachment, Neuroscience, & Identity Formation as the Foundation for Case Conceptualization
- Interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, and mentalization concepts
- The role of memory in our formation of beliefs and felt sense of safety
- Exploring the mind-body connection for emotion regulation and co-regulation
- The role of Integration for optimal social emotional wellbeing
11:00 - 11:15 am: 15 minutes Break
11:15 - 11:45 am (30 minutes): Mindfulness of Emotions Activities
11:45 - 12:30 pm (45 minutes): Exploration of Adolescent Development
- Adolescent development
- Activity and small group discussion
12:30 - 1:30 pm: Lunch
1:30 - 2:15 pm (45 minutes): Using an Integrative Play Therapy Model and Building Therapeutic Rapport with Teens
- Ecosystem/Prescriptive Play Therapy as Integrative Models with Neuroscience & Attachment
- Therapeutic Powers of Play
- Role of Play Therapist
- Be 5 Framework
2:15 - 2:45 pm 30 minutes: Exploration of Parts-informed work integration activities
2:45 – 3:00 pm: Break
3:00 – 4:15 pm (75 minutes): Activities Using Poetry, Clay, Art, and Music
4:15 - 4:30 pm (15 minutes): Wrap Up & Setting Intention
Continuing Education Credit is available for the following organizations:
- 6 Contact CE hours, APT Approved Provider #20-621
- CEs only available for mental health professionals
- If you register for the Virtual training options, you can earn 6 Non-Contact CE hours.
- NASW UT Chapter Approve 6 CEU - Synchronous and Asynchronous. currently pending
‼️Important‼️ Participants must be present for the entirety of the training to receive continuing education hours.
What category will this training meet for the RPT credential?
For play therapists pursuing their RPT credential, here is the guidance from the Association for Play Therapy on how to allocate the primary area for this training as ultimately you are responsible for determining how this training will fit into a play therapy specific category to meet the requirements for the RPT credential: “Please review the training materials for each workshop and use your best clinical judgment to allocate hours across the various primary areas. Often, a single training will address multiple primary areas.”
Here are suggestions for categories if you would like guidance:
Here’s the rationale for Category 3: the seminal and historically significant theories underlying this training is Child Centered Play Therapy/Humanistic because the use of the therapeutic relationship is critical for the change process using an attachment and neurobiological “lens”. Ecosystemic/Prescriptive play therapy models provide a framework for integration of theories to individualize the interventions used to meet the needs of individual clients and view the child within the context of their whole environment. This play therapy training uses these seminal and historically significant theories as the foundation for the inclusion of neuroscience to inform the treatment process and use interventions based on the needs of each client/family within a safe, strong therapeutic.
Here’s the rationale for Category 4: Adolescents require play therapists to develop skills to meet the unique developmental needs of this population. This play therapy training uses an integrative attachment and neuroscience theoretical foundation to show play therapists how to use a variety of experiential activities in play therapy sessions with adolescents to access the therapeutic powers of play for healing. Play therapists will learn skills to build a strong therapeutic relationship with this population and how to use play therapy effectively with adolescents.
Cancellation Policy
Written communication to Cathi Spooner at info@rhplaytherapytraining.com is required at least one week before the training date no later than 11:59 pm Pacific time on February 27, 2026 for a refund (minus payment processing fees). No refunds will be given after that date.
Release
By registering for this training, you are giving permission for Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training (RHPTT) to use any photographs (screenshots) that are taken at the event containing your likeness for as long as RHPTT deems appropriate and desirable. This training will also be recorded, so you are giving permission for Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to record you during the virtual training. Photographs may be used on the RHPTT website, social media pages, and/or newsletter for any purpose. By completing the registration, you are also consenting to waive any rights to the photographs and the live webinar recording indefinitely. You also agree to allow your feedback and comments in the chat and evaluation form may also be used for future promotions as deemed appropriate and desirable by RHPTT. If you do not wish to have your photo used, it is your responsibility to notify RHPTT of your request to be omitted
Disclaimer
Be advised that the clinical suggestions and recommendations provided during this training are intended as general guidance. Each mental health professional and play therapist is responsible for ensuring that they practice within the scope of their professional competence and adhere to the laws and regulations of their own jurisdiction. Ultimately, any clinical decisions and actions are the responsibility of the individual therapist. The advice offered here is for educational purposes and does not replace personalized professional judgment. By participating in this training you agree and acknowledge the above disclaimer.
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Join us to not just meet but exceed your professional goals, bringing deeper healing and more effective therapy to those who need it most.
Play Therapy with Adolescents Using Expressive Arts
Date: March 7, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM Mountain Time
Location: Hybrid: In-Person or Virtual (via Zoom)
Choose Your Registration Option
IN-PERSON TRAINING
Early Bird price
Valid through February 14, 2026
$187
$157
- Must attend in-person at Utah Tech University – Russell C. Taylor Health Science Building1526 E Medical Center Dr, St. George, UT 84790
- Must be present for the entirety of the training
VIRTUAL TRAINING
Early Bird price
Valid through February 14, 2026
$187
$157
- Must attend virtually using Zoom
- Must be present for the entirety of the training
- Must keep cameras on at all times.
