What Is Play Therapy? A Clinician Explains Experiential Therapy for Kids and Teens
A Clinician Explains the Science Behind Hands-On Healing
In this interview, Candice Marden, LPC, walks through the science behind play therapy and other experiential approaches to treatment—why they work neurologically, how clinicians use art therapy for teens and kids, animal-assisted therapy, and other hands-on modalities, and what parents should understand when their child’s session looks less like traditional therapy and more like a game.
Play is the language of children. It’s a deceptively simple idea, one Candice Marden, LPC, first encountered in a TED Talk, but it challenges everything we assume therapy is supposed to look like.
Marden is an Associate Family Therapist at Compass Health Center’s Oak Brook location, where she works with children and adolescents in the Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) programs. The work she describes doesn’t always resemble therapy as most parents picture it: a clinician across a desk, a child struggling to articulate something they don’t yet have words for. Sometimes it looks like a card game. Sometimes it’s a collage made from magazine clippings. Sometimes it’s a round of Sharks and Minnows on the floor of a family therapy room.
What families are often watching, without realizing it, is play therapy—and there is, Marden will tell you, a purpose to every bit of it.
Experiential therapy is the umbrella term for hands-on, activity-based approaches to mental health treatment. Grounded in what neuroscience tells us about how the brain actually learns and rewires experience, it offers children and adolescents something traditional talk therapy can struggle to provide: a way to practice new emotional patterns, not just discuss them.
I sat down with Marden to understand what the science says, what the work really looks like, and what parents should know before assuming their child is “just playing.”
Q&A
From Personal Journey to Clinical Practice
Britt Teasdale: Tell me a little about your background and what drew you to family therapy.
Candice Marden, LPC: I’ve been drawn to the therapy world for a long time, first through my own personal journey, and then through school and really wanting to help adolescents and kids with their relationships. A lot of the time, those relationships are going to be with their parents. So the question that kept driving me was: how do we improve communication and the support kids are getting at home?
That led me down this rabbit hole, starting at a community mental health facility and eventually working my way up to a partial hospitalization and IOP program here at Compass. It’s been a really wonderful journey, and the leadership and support I’ve had at both places have been instrumental in helping me fine-tune a lot of my clinical skills.
The Appeal of Intensive Treatment: PHP and IOP
Britt Teasdale: What specifically drew you to the PHP and IOP level of care?
Candice Marden, LPC: I think I was ready for more of a challenge, something a little more intense. I was ready to dip my toes into something new, and I was lucky enough to come across Compass and fell in love with everything throughout the interview process. And then having Vanita as my supervisor has been really wonderful in terms of guidance and support.
How Clinical Experience Shapes Experiential Therapy Practice
Britt Teasdale: How has your clinical experience shaped the way you approach experiential work within Compass’s treatment model?
Candice Marden, LPC: I remember hearing in a TED Talk that play is the language of children. Being that I work with children and adolescents, that really resonated with me. That is their language. Even as we get to the adolescent side, where things do shift, they’re still learning through doing. It’s about experiences.
For adolescents especially, it’s about exposing them to new experiences that can rewire some of the negative ones they’ve had, whether that’s been bullying or other difficulties with peers. We have to form new experiences to challenge those negative thinking patterns, or the maladaptive coping mechanisms they’ve developed.
Explaining Experiential Therapy to Parents
Britt Teasdale: How do you explain experiential therapy to parents who’ve only ever encountered traditional talk therapy?
Candice Marden, LPC: It’s learning through practice. All of the children and teens in our programs, and even adults in our over-18 programs, are going to be doing a lot of skills work. And the question becomes: how do we put those skills into practice? How do we challenge the things that brought us here to begin with?
I always tell parents there’s a method to the madness. Their child might come home and say, “We just played Uno,” but there’s so much more happening:
- What communication skills are they working on right now?
- How are they challenging social anxiety?
- How are they forming positive relationships with peers?
- How will they use those skills in school settings, especially if they’ve been struggling with peer relationships?
- How do they identify healthy relationships?
- What are their values within those relationships?
- What do we do to put into practice everything we’re learning while we’re here?
What an Experiential Therapy Session Actually Looks Like
Britt Teasdale: Paint me a picture. What does a session actually look like?
Candice Marden, LPC: It can look so different from person to person and even day to day. Sometimes we’re doing art therapy. So many of the kids we work with are incredibly creative, and it gives them a different avenue for self-expression. That could mean modeling clay, making stress slime, creating vision boards, things they can continue to use after they leave.
Sometimes, yes, we are on the floor, exploring values together and fully in it with them. Because if you’re just sitting on the sidelines, it’s not going to be as engaging, and the kids won’t be as invested either. You have to be just as involved as they are.
A big part of it is also building safety. That’s a really crucial component. It’s hard for kids to open up about what they’re struggling with if they don’t feel safe. So the experiential work is also about building that relationship and that rapport with each child or teen.
How Play Therapy Works: The Clinical Difference
Britt Teasdale: What separates experiential therapy from simply playing or taking an art class? What makes it clinical or therapeutic?
Candice Marden, LPC: The clearest way I can explain it is through the lens of anxiety. Experiential therapy is about intentionally building new experiences that challenge the negative internal thinking patterns a child has developed. When children go through difficult situations and internalize them, it can create a loop. I think of it as the “negative inner critic.”
For example, a child might tell themselves: “Nobody wants to talk to me, so nobody likes me, so I must be unlovable.” That becomes a cognitive distortion, a belief they carry about themselves that feels completely true.
So while we’re here, we’re intentionally building new experiences that challenge that narrative. Maybe they’re playing a game and they connect with a peer, and the thought becomes: “I am likable. People are kind to me. I can form connections. I can build friendships outside of this place.”
So while it can look like just playing or just making art, there is always a very specific and intentional therapeutic component to it when we introduce it in this space.
Art Therapy for Teens, Animal-Assisted Therapy, and Other Experiential Modalities
Britt Teasdale: Can you walk me through the range of experiential modalities you use, and how you decide what fits a particular child or family?
Candice Marden, LPC: I always try to tie it to what the child or teen actually enjoys, because we want to build positive experiences that challenge those negative internal structures they’ve developed. There’s always an hour dedicated each day to experiential work, and it can take a lot of different forms.
That might be physical movement, or animal therapy. We partner with an organization that brings dogs in to work with the kids. I’m always lobbying for equine therapy too, because there’s something really powerful about animal therapy that can open doors for people in a way other approaches sometimes can’t. But because it’s so person-specific, we also offer art therapy, different types of games, and other activities.
We always tie a therapeutic element into whatever we’re doing. One day we were playing Sharks and Minnows, but we built it around recalling skills learned during treatment, setting personal challenges, and building camaraderie with their peers. Because the group dynamic is a big part of the work. We also rotate kids between different groups intentionally, to help them practice forming connections with different people, just like they’ll need to do in school.
One of my favorite individual session activities is a collage exercise. I’ll have a patient draw a circle on a piece of paper and cut out images from a magazine. Inside the circle: their values and how they see themselves. Outside the circle: how they think other people see them, and the masks they put on because they don’t want to show their true self. It always drives a really meaningful conversation. Why do we wear those masks? What made showing our emotions feel unsafe?
The Neuroscience Behind Play Therapy: What Happens in the Brain
Britt Teasdale: From a neuroscience standpoint, what is actually happening in the brain during experiential therapy that differs from a traditional talk session?
Candice Marden, LPC: With experiential therapy, we’re trying to engage and challenge that deeper, unconscious part of the brain, the subcortical area, where we store a lot of implicit memory. We want to challenge the things we’ve learned and the negative experiences that have become ingrained and have created a kind of fear response.
For example, a child might actually be feeling sad, but they’re so scared to feel sad that anxiety kicks in instead. So as we start to build awareness, especially with kids through mindfulness and somatic work, which I love, we’re asking: what do we feel in our body when we start to notice that emotion? That tightness, that shortness of breath, that nausea. That’s the fear response showing up.
So we use mindfulness activities both to help regulate those emotions and to help kids be more present with their feelings and understand their root cause. The experiential work and the skills work really go hand in hand.
Building Emotional Vocabulary in Children and Teens
Britt Teasdale: Children don’t always have the vocabulary for concepts like anxiety or emotion regulation. How does experiential therapy bridge that gap?
Candice Marden, LPC: Building that emotional vocabulary and intelligence crosses all areas of the program, not just the experiential component. We always start and end with check-ins and check-outs, and we’re consistently working on identifying emotions and naming feelings. I always have an emotions wheel handy for this. It helps kids move beyond saying they’re “tired” and “content” all the time and actually identify what’s really going on underneath.
What does depression feel like in your body? What does anxiety look like for you specifically? Because what one person experiences as depression can look very different from another person’s experience. The similarities exist, but the “why” behind it is almost always unique to that individual.
So everything, the skills groups, the process groups, the experiential work, is always working together to build that emotional intelligence and that language, so kids can use it while they’re here and carry it with them when they leave.
When Experiential Therapy Is Most Effective
Britt Teasdale: Are there particular diagnoses or clinical presentations where you find experiential therapy especially effective?
Candice Marden, LPC: You can really use it across so many different presentations. The most well-known applications are probably anxiety and trauma. Those tend to be the most cited, and approaches like EMDR really speak to how experiential methods can target trauma directly. But it’s also very effective for depression, OCD, and substance use.
That said, it is person-dependent. And that’s actually what I love about it. There are so many different types of experiential therapy that you can adapt it to the individual. It’s adjustable. What are you interested in? How can I incorporate that in a way that’s really going to resonate with you? It meets people where they are.
Addressing Parent Skepticism
Britt Teasdale: What do you say to parents who are skeptical? Who think their child needs to be “doing the work” in a more traditional sense?
Candice Marden, LPC: I start by framing it as an opportunity to see the skills in action. Not just to hear about what their child is working on, but to watch it unfold. Are they making progress? Is this effective? Where are we still doing work? It’s a really natural way to observe and assess.
And then I invite them to participate. A lot of what I’ve described, families can bring home. I want them building that bond and that relationship outside of Compass too. If a parent doesn’t feel like a particular approach is working for their child, that’s completely valid and I’ll adjust. Maybe we shift to more individual work, or we find a different avenue. I’m always open to that conversation. My goal is always to meet the patient and the family where they are.
What Candice Marden Wants Every Parent to Know
Britt Teasdale: Last question: if there’s one thing you want parents to walk away from this conversation understanding, what is it?
Candice Marden, LPC: Beyond “there’s a method to the madness,” which I come back to a lot, I think it’s this: it’s okay for therapy to be fun. It doesn’t always have to be these heavy, in-depth emotional conversations.
There are so many different aspects of the work we’re doing with kids, so many different goals that families bring into treatment. So it’s okay if things aren’t perfectly understood in every moment, and it’s okay if it’s not always, “This is exactly where my depression is coming from.”
Some days, what’s needed most is something light. Something fun. And that is just as therapeutic.
About the Contributors
Candice Marden, LPC, Associate Family Therapist, Compass Health Center – Oak Brook
Candice Marden, LPC, is an Associate Family Therapist at Compass Health Center’s Oak Brook location, where she works with children and adolescents in the Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) programs. Beginning her career in community mental health before joining Compass, Candice specializes in experiential and family-centered approaches to treatment, including play therapy, art therapy, animal-assisted therapy, mindfulness, and somatic work. Her clinical focus centers on strengthening parent-child communication and helping young clients build new, positive experiences that challenge the negative thinking patterns underlying anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD, and other presentations. Guided by the belief that “play is the language of children,” Candice is committed to meeting each patient and family where they are, blending evidence-based practice with creativity, warmth, and intention.
Britt Teasdale, Associate Director, Brand Management & Content, Compass Health Center
Britt Teasdale is Associate Director of Brand & Content at Compass Health Center and co-host of You Only Know What You Know, Compass’s mental health podcast for parents and caregivers. With a background in journalism and creative nonfiction, Britt specializes in translating complex clinical insights into accessible, human-centered storytelling for families, clinicians, and communities.
