Tammy Stoner, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, provides presentations, coaching and counseling services. As the developer of the Teddy Bear Technique® Toolkit she demonstrates fast and fun ways to engage in storytelling for adults and children, and quickly reach the hard to reach. As author, presenter and coach, services are guaranteed to create breakthrough results!
Teddy Bear Therapy As A Play Therapy Tool
Teddy Bears are natural tools for healing all types of mental health problems. As a licensed clinical social worker I have spent quite a few years teaching professionals how to organize these cute, appealing toys into a model that can be highly effective in gathering information extraordinarily fast in a treatment session.
I have heard stories of the benefits of sleeping with a teddy bear, giving teddy bears to trauma victims and of holocaust survivors holding on to teddy bears as a lifeline of support. The teddy bear in spite of over a hundred years since its origination continues to be viewed as a single object and little research has occurred to demonstrate its effectiveness organized into a model to heal pain and loss beyond simply clutching onto the bear.
The teddy bear originated about the same time as psychology, but the teddy bear developed as a child’s toy for boys, while psychology originated as a method of healing the mind of middle age, affluent women. Psychology has expanded over the years and is now viewed as a method of working with every age, group, class and income group of people. The teddy bear has continued to be viewed as a single object to be held and clutched by children.
Teddy Bear Therapy as a model has remained stagnant. Outside of describing benefits of holding a teddy bear, naming the teddy bear and speaking to the teddy bear for comfort, it has been overlooked as a model for assessments and interventions, or as a model for play therapy for adults. In fact it hasn’t even been viewed as a model, it’s been viewed as an individual object.
An evidenced based model of applying teddy bears has been developed in a community mental health center in Georgia. This model demonstrates tips and tools from social work, marriage and family counseling and psychology to work with people of every age, race and socioeconomic group. The model is interactive and expands clinical training from viewing the teddy bear as a single object, to viewing the teddy bears as a model that moves beyond simply naming the bear and projecting onto the bear, to a tool that can give clinicians objective methods of measuring subjective thoughts and feelings.
Over seven years of applying this model with substance abusing adults, adults released from prison, adults and children who have been sexually abused, and with women who have lost their children to social services only to repeat generational patterns, has demonstrated the powerful and fast method that teddy bears organized as a model can have to create change fast.
The benefits for applying teddy bears as a model to identify problems, heal pain and loss and demonstrate measurable results are huge. The greatest benefit is the speed in which this model can create change with adults and children of both genders.
I invite you to learn more about this model and its effectiveness with people of every age, race and socioeconomic group. I have organized the teachings into a total toolkit to provide you with rapid assessments and interventions. I invite you to visit other pages of my website and purchase this toolkit for your group or practice.
Reprint permission granted in part or whole when the following credit appears: Reprinted with permission from Tammy Stoner LCSW at
http://www.TeddyBearTherapy.com 1-770 639-7719
© Tammy Stoner @ The Teddy Bear Technique® All rights reserved.
Please contact us at uniqueidea@aol.com to discuss your situation and to schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
