New Jasper therapist brings practice to a playful level

“A child’s language is play and their words are toys,” said Shannon Egg the owner of Playful Healing & Counseling, a new children and family therapy practice in Jasper that opens Thursday.

That is why clients to her new practice located in Suite 2 at 508 Jackson Street in Jasper will likely find themselves sitting on the floor playing with toys during their sessions.

Egg, a licensed clinical social worker who has a masters in social work from University of Southern Indiana, specializes in play therapy as well as other more traditional therapy methods. “Traditionally, when you think about therapy, you envision someone sitting on a couch and there is a lot of talking,” she explained. “When you think about kids though, they can’t really express themselves that way.”

Play therapy provides children an avenue to express themselves in a familiar language. Emotions and problems are brought out through the types of toys chosen and how the child interacts with them.

“Kids usually love to come see me,” Egg said. “I have all kinds of fun games, a fun dollhouse, and a sand tray that they can play in.”

Each toy serves to help Egg learn the child’s story as the therapy goes on. Then, she is able to ascertain what issues the child and family may be dealing with and can help determine what therapeutic steps need to be taken.

Play therapy works for adults too. “Again, a lot of people who have stuff going on don’t like to talk about it,” Egg said. “It (playing) is a nice, fun and creative way to process through whatever they have going on.”

Through play therapy, Egg is able to work with children having problems with their coping and relational skills as well as a myriad of other issues like attention deficiency.

She is also able to help families work through family issues. “It’s really difficult to have a family sit in a circle and just say, ‘well you did this’ and ‘you did this,'” she explained. “That really doesn’t work. But we can address dynamics by having a family play together.”

Egg’s own history with a broken family put her on the path to play therapy. Her parents divorced and the divorce compelled her to seek out ways to help couples stay together.

The 30-year-old graduated from USI in 2010 and went to work for the Children Psychiatric State Hospital in Evansville where she saw and worked with patients facing severe mental and emotional disorders.

“I saw the worst of the worst and the sickest of the sick,” she explained.

Then, she moved to Southern Hills in Jasper where she worked as general therapist and realized marriage counseling was not something she wanted to provide. She enjoyed providing family counseling though and decided to pursue a play therapy certification.

A no-compete with Southern Hills precluded her from practicing in Dubois County and the surrounding counties when she left so she worked in Jeffersonville. Now, with the expiration of the no-compete, she will finally realize her aspiration of having her own practice in Jasper where she and her husband Matt live with their two daughters.

Egg specializes in play therapy but also offers other approaches to help her clients, although that doesn’t include the stereotypical therapy couch sessions many people think of when they imagine the process. “We don’t do that anymore,” she explained.

Egg is available by appointment. She can be contacted by phone at 812-449-7367 and on the practice’s Facebook Page here.

“It is so satisfying to see these children get better,” she explained why she loves what she does. “It is great to then see them in public and have them come up to me and tell me about what is going on in their lives now.”