ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how Simon Bacon, a five-year-old boy suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was able to make sense of a serious car accident with the use of Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) and play therapy. It explains how trauma can impact on a child. The chapter describes what EMDR is and how it helped Simon to process trauma-related dissociative thoughts and feelings, often in the form of nightmares and flashbacks of frightening images. It discusses how the child then benefitted from play therapy to explore his internal struggles following the accident. The chapter shows that EMDR and play therapy work well together, although each had a different focus and role in this intervention. EMDR is a therapeutic approach developed by Francine Shapiro from her work with Vietnam War veterans to treat trauma symptoms in an individual. Trauma is an overwhelming experience that leaves an individual feeling frightened, threatened, and unsafe.
