The first thing you need to do to start working with anxiety in the playroom is to get an accurate diagnosis. And while both you, and the kid in front of you, would muuuuch rather dive deep into the playroom, without an accurate diagnosis you run the risk of not being as effective as you can be as a play therapist.
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As a play therapist you usually go into your first session with a liiiittle bit of information about the kiddo and family in your waiting room. And as you scroll through the intake paperwork you might see some familiar clusters of checkboxes ticked off when you get to symptoms.
One of the boxes I see most often? Anxiety! But that little tiny checkbox doesn’t tell me the real things I need to know about this kid.  Parents Come In With Ideas… And Sometimes They’re Right (Or Not)
Parents sometimes come into the playroom with specific ideas of what could be going on with their child. Sometimes these ideas are spot on, and sometimes…. not so much. Others come in completely lost, and just know that what is happening with their child is difficult, painful, and disruptive to their child’s life. They want their child to be back to their old self - a happy, creative, vibrant, athletic, (sometimes grumpy), typical kid. 
Fear and worry are biologically protective. Uncomfortable feelings like anxiety give us the clues and cues that we don’t like what is happening in our current environment, or something that we think might happen in the future, and we want it to be different.
Real talk moment?
I save EVERYTHING. Handouts. Interventions. Copies of scribbled notes from trainings. And as I get later and later in my play therapy career I know that letting go is important too…. It’s a journey okay! 
Your play therapy theory is the foundation for everything you do in the playroom.
Heck, it’s the foundation for not only what you do, but how your playroom is created. And even if your playroom has any toys at all. 
When I ask play therapists about their theory sometimes I get an answer like this:
“I’m a non-directive play therapist”. And as a Registered Play Therapist- Supervisor it’s my job to help clinicians go deeper. More importantly, what I want clinicians to know? 
You’re likely somewhere between dipping your toes in the lake of play therapy and cannonballing off the dock.
You go to training, read some articles, and take in a podcast and then get back to your office to try it all out! And…. it all sounds SO amazing. Different from how you have practiced, but in all the best ways. 
Learning play therapy can be like arriving on a totally new planet. And if your grad program was anything like mine the traditional talk therapy approaches and theories for grownups definitely aren’t working with kids.
If I flash back to some of my first kid sessions doing school based work, I can just see myself sitting across from a kindergartener asking “how was your week?” They assured me they had the BEST day…. And after they returned to class I promptly learned that they had a pretty big dysregulated episode during morning meeting. Think papers ripped chairs tossed kind of vibes. 
What if you could have 125+ absolutely FREE clickable resources at your fingertips?
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Hi, there!I'm Ann Meehan, an LPCC, 
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[email protected] | Copyright Meehan Mental Health Services 2025