The Forgotten Key to Trauma Healing: Why Play Matters
Healing from trauma is often associated with heavy work, where we have to revisit painful memories, process difficult emotions, and learn to face what once felt unbearable. While this is true, it is not the whole picture. Healing is also about reclaiming what trauma has taken away from us, like our lightness, laughter, curiosity, imagination, and joy. Therefore, play is not a distraction from the “real work”, but is an essential part of it.
Although play is often dismissed in adult life and even overlooked on the healing journey, research across neuroscience, psychology, and trauma therapy increasingly highlights its profound role in building resilience, fostering regulation, and restoring connection.
Defining play
When we talk about play, most people think of children inventing games, playing with toys or building imaginary worlds. But play is much more than just that. It is a biological, relational, and experiential process that shapes our nervous system throughout life.
From a somatic and polyvagal perspective, Stephen Porges (2015) describes play as an exercise of the social engagement system. During play, the nervous system learns to transition between mobilization (sympathetic activation) and safety (ventral vagal regulation). Porges (2015) describes this mechanism through a simple game like peek-a-boo, where the parent hides their face causing the infant’s body to feel a quick spark of surprise (activation), followed by laughter and connection when the parent’s warmly expressive face reappears (safety). This back-and-forth builds resilience, as the body learns that it can leave safety for a moment of arousal and reliably return to regulation again.
From a psychological perspective, researchers like Peter Gray (2013) and Stuart Brown (2009) emphasize another essential quality. Here, play is described as intrinsically motivated, freely chosen, and non-goal oriented. It is not about achievement, performance, or productivity, but about engaging in the moment-to-moment experience for its own sake.
Together, these perspectives give us a fuller picture:
Play as regulation: the body practicing to transition between states of activation and down regulation, and thereby increasing neural flexibility (Porges, 2015)
Play as freedom: a state of curiosity, imagination, and joy that is not focused on any outcomes. (Gray, 2013; Brown, 2009).
From Childhood to Adulthood: What Changes?
In an ideal environment, children naturally embody both aspects of play, the regulatory and non-goal oriented parts. Yet, this is not the reality for every child. For those growing up in environments marked by fear, neglect, or terror, play may never have felt safe. In such cases, the nervous system may not have had the chance to practice regulation through play or to experience play as a not outcome-focused and joyful state. As Bessel van der Kolk (2014) argues, trauma takes away spontaneity and play, whereas healing invites us back to it.
Whether play was once accessible or never felt fully possible at all, adulthood often brings a new layer of challenge where something significantly shifts. Our activities become increasingly focused on outcomes and results. We learn that we need to be working toward a certain goal or achieve something by being productive. As a result, the space for play as pure experience often entirely disappears.
Play as a Healing Practice
When we talk about play as an essential resource on our healing journey, it is important to clarify that not all play is equal in its impact on the nervous system. Many trauma survivors develop a form of playfulness as a coping mechanism, for example using humor, silliness, or self-mocking to avoid difficult emotions or to overcome tension or conflict in social situations. This kind of playfulness often serves a protective function and is rooted in the intelligence of our psyche. Yet, instead of bringing us into deeper contact with our inner parts, it often moves us further away from ourselves.
By contrast, intentional play in healing is different. It is not about deflecting from pain but about creating safe conditions where curiosity, movement, and imagination can bring us closer to our body and its signals. Here, play becomes a somatic pathway:
to move between arousal and regulation,
to co-regulate with others through shared laughter, movement, or rhythm
and to open space for emotions to surface gently and to be integrated
Play as a pathway to connection and safety
As Porges (2022) discusses in his work on the science of safety, feelings of safety and resilience depend on the nervous system’s ability to flexibly move between states. Play can be understood as one way we naturally practice this flexibility. From a nervous system perspective, play creates micro-moments of sympathetic activation (movement, excitement, laughter) followed by a return to ventral vagal safety. Each playful interaction strengthens the body’s capacity to move between states without getting stuck in fight, flight, or freeze.
While much of the formal research on play has focused on child development, clinicians and polyvagal-informed therapists increasingly recognize its importance for adults in trauma recovery (Porges & Dana, 2018). From a co-regulation perspective, play allows us to practice trust and connection in a way that feels safe and without pressure. Engaging in a game or moving playfully with others helps the body re-learn cues of safety in relationship. In this way, play activates the social engagement system and helps clients experience safety in connection, something trauma often disrupts (Porges & Dana, 2018).
From a self-regulation perspective, playful practices create access to joy and aliveness. Trauma often narrows our emotional range, keeping us hypervigilant or shut down and dissociated. Play helps us to gently expand this range, giving us a bridge to emotions like curiosity, excitement, tenderness, and joy.
Moreover, play can be a doorway into emotional contact. When we allow ourselves to play, parts of us that we had to suppress during childhood can finally find expression. This may bring up sadness, grief, or longing as much as joy. This opens the opportunity for gentle integration through feeling, expressing and being in contact with inner feelings and parts of ourselves.
When we understand play in this way, it becomes an embodied practice that supports regulation, nurtures connection, and re-establishes trust in the body’s sensations and feelings. Therefore, reintroducing intentional play into daily life can be a vital resource on the path toward healing and toward wellbeing.
When play feels unsafe
For many adults, play is not an easy or natural state to go to. It often feels silly, pointless, or even dangerous. This can happen for different reasons:
Shame and judgment. Many of us grew up with the feeling of being too much, too loud, too childish or not enough. These experiences create shame responses and we learn that we have to suppress our curiosity and spontaneity. Consequently, our nervous system may associate play with the risk of humiliation or judgement.
Fear and hypervigilance. If childhood environments were unsafe or unpredictable, being relaxed and playful might have not been accessible to us. Play requires letting down our guard and being present in the moment. This can feel deeply threatening to someone who grew up in an unsafe or unpredictable family, where the nervous system was constantly scanning for danger and on alert.
Productivity pressure. In family systems where self-worth was tied to achievement, play can trigger feelings of guilt: “I should be doing something useful or productive.” The nervous system, conditioned for constant striving, may resist slowing down into non-productive or non-goal oriented states.
Disconnection or numbness. For others, the challenge is complete dissociation or feeling depressed. Years of suppressed trauma, stress, overworking, or screen-based living can leave us feeling numb with little access to curiosity or imagination. In this state, the idea of play might feel distant or irrelevant.
Role reversal and unmet parental needs. For some children, play was never truly theirs. Instead, they were drawn into fulfilling a parent’s unmet needs, for example, when a parent who was deprived of play in their own childhood projects this longing onto their child. On the surface, this may look like healthy engagement, but for the child it can feel intrusive, forced or like they need to take care of their parent. Instead of play being spontaneous and child-led, it becomes about meeting the parent’s need. As adults, this can leave us with mixed or painful associations with play, because it never carried freedom or joy, only obligation.
If you recognize yourself in any of these patterns, know that it makes deep sense. Your nervous system is not broken, it adapted to the circumstances you grew up in. Reclaiming play as an adult means beginning to explore what play feels like when it is truly yours.
Cultural barriers to play
Beyond personal experiences, society itself offers little space for adults to engage in play for its own sake. In many cultural contexts, play is seen as something children do and adults are expected to grow out of. Laughter, silliness, or imagination can be judged as immature or irresponsible. Instead, our environments reward seriousness, productivity, and functionality.
Even where play appears in adult life, it is often commodified or outcome-driven: video games designed for endless consumption, workplace games meant to increase output and team building, or organized leisure activities focused on competition and achievement. Rarely is play recognized as a practice of presence, joy, and nervous system regulation. Therefore, reclaiming play becomes an important act, when we are choosing to step outside of the productivity-driven norms and into a more authentic relationship with aliveness and ourselves.
Integrating play in everyday life
Re-learning play is not about forcing ourselves into joy. It is more like a slow and mindful inner exploration, where we are trying small things, noticing what arises, and learn to meet ourselves with curiosity and patience. Sometimes a playful moment will spark aliveness and joy. Other times, it might activate discomfort, sadness, or frustration. This does not mean something is wrong, it simply means we are touching places where old patterns and pain are stored.
Just like healing, play is a process. The key is curiosity: “What happens in me when I try this?” Starting in private, gentle ways can create safety before sharing play with others. Over time, this way of self-exploration can open doors to more presence, aliveness, and connection, first with ourselves, and gradually also in community.
Below you will find some simple ways to invite play:
Doodling or coloring: giving yourself space for low-pressure creativity can help to quiet the mind and gently reconnect you to free expression.
Building with Lego or blocks: allowing your imagination to reawaken and rediscover a childlike sense of possibility and exploration.
Collecting nature items: such as stones, leaves, or feathers, and arranging them into small patterns, mandalas or crafting something can ground you in your senses and the present moment.
Pretend play or role play: one of the earliest and most natural forms of play in childhood, where imagination creates a safe stage for different parts of us to find expression. As adults, exploring pretend play can reawaken creativity, allow suppressed parts to emerge, and bring gentle contact with our inner child.
Dancing freely to music: moving with rhythm, flow, and expression can support regulation, release tension, and invite joy into the body.
Crafting or making something by hand: whether through drawing, knitting, or simple DIY, creating with your hands can nurture presence and bring satisfaction when the focus is on the process rather than the outcome.
Reclaiming childhood wishes: allowing yourself to buy or hold a toy or stuffed animal you once longed for can open a tender connection with the inner child and offer comfort.
Why play matters
As this article illustrates, play is an essential part of healing and living. Trauma narrows our world and perception, while play reopens it and helps us to expand our emotional range, restore imagination, and soften our nervous system into more safety and connection. In a culture that often defines worth through productivity, choosing to play is both radical and deeply human.
By inviting even small moments of play into daily life, we reawaken our ability to be curious, to imagine, to connect, and to feel alive in the present. In this way, play becomes not only a resource, but a pathway back to ourselves.
✏️ Questions for Reflection:
Were there times when play felt unsafe, discouraged, or unavailable to you as a child? How did that shape your relationship with play today?
Which parts of you might be longing to express themselves through play?
When was the last time you gave yourself permission to do something just for fun without a goal or outcome attached?
What inner beliefs stand in the way of you engaging in playful experiences as an adult?
If this article resonated with you, I would love to hear your reflections! Feel free to share a comment below. And if you feel called to explore your own journey more deeply, I warmly welcome you to reach out. I offer therapeutic, trauma-sensitive sessions both online and in Oslo, and I am here to support you with whatever feels most present for you right now. ❤️
Thank you for being here.
With warmth
Julia
References
Brown, S. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. Avery.
Gray, P. (2013). Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life. Basic Books.
Porges, S. W. (2015). Play as a neural exercise: Insights from the Polyvagal Theory [Unpublished manuscript]. Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Porges, S. W., & Dana, D. (Eds.). (2018). Clinical applications of the polyvagal theory: The emergence of polyvagal-informed therapies. W. W. Norton & Company.
Porges, S. W. (2022). Polyvagal theory: A science of safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 16, 871227.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.