Description
Battles, fights, and conflict are common themes in play therapy and can carry profound emotional and symbolic meaning for children. This reflective Continuing Professional Development (CPD) webinar explores how battle play may express experiences of fear, grief, injustice, anger, vulnerability, protection, resilience, and the struggle to make sense of difficult life events. Through discussion, reflection, and case examples, participants will deepen their understanding of how to work therapeutically with conflict themes while maintaining emotional attunement, curiosity, and safe boundaries.
Participants will explore the different forms that battle play can take, from dramatic role play and miniature worlds to recurring narratives of heroes, villains, and symbolic struggles. The training will consider whether battles represent external conflicts, relational dynamics, developmental challenges, or internal emotional struggles, and how therapists can remain present with the intensity such themes often evoke. Drawing on myths, stories, historical narratives, and therapeutic theory, the session will encourage practitioners to reflect on their own relationship with conflict and how this may influence their work in the playroom.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this webinar participants will be able to:
Understand the emotional and symbolic significance of battles, fights, and conflict themes within play therapy.
Recognise how battle play may reflect aspects of a child’s inner world, relationships, developmental experiences, or traumatic events.
Explore the role of conflict in emotional processing, resilience, mastery, and healing.
Reflect on personal associations with conflict, historical battles, myths, and stories, and consider how these may influence therapeutic understanding and responses.
Develop confidence in supporting battle-based play within sand trays, role play, storytelling, and symbolic play.
Identify different types of battle narratives, including collaborative struggles, opposing forces, and internal conflicts.
Maintain therapeutic attunement and emotional presence when working with intense themes of aggression, power, fear, and vulnerability.
Apply safe and effective boundaries while allowing meaningful exploration of conflict within the playroom.
Deepen understanding of how battle themes can support emotional integration, self-expression, and psychological growth.
Why Attend?
Conflict-themed play can sometimes feel intense, repetitive, or difficult to interpret. Yet battles and fights often provide children with a powerful symbolic language through which they can express emotions, explore relationships, and work through experiences that may be difficult to articulate in words. This webinar offers practitioners the opportunity to deepen their confidence in understanding and responding to these themes, supporting children to explore conflict safely while fostering emotional growth, resilience, and healing.
