Paris Goodyear-Brown, LCSW, RPT-S, is the creator of the TraumaPlay™ model, the
founder and Clinical Director of Nurture House, and the Executive Director of the
TraumaPlay® Institute. She is an internationally renowned speaker, a prolific author and
a master clinician. While she has spent the past 25 years specializing in treating trauma
(sexual abuse, physical abuse, maltreatment and neglect) and attachment disturbances,
as well as anxiety disorders. She often provides help for angry, dysregulated and
depressed children and teens. She is an Adjunct Instructor of Psychiatric Mental Health
at Vanderbilt University, guest lecturer for several universities in middle Tennessee, and
travels around the world helping clinicians, parents, and teachers better serve children
from hard places. She particularly enjoys integrating trauma-informed approaches and
is an EMDRIA Certified EMDR therapist. She also finds great joy in helping other
clinicians create safe spaces for children and families. She is a child development
expert and frequently provides parent consultation, dyadic assessment and parent
coaching to help parents manage and resolve their children’s behavior problems. With
trainings in Morocco, Russia, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Sweden, Istanbul, South Africa,
Nepal, Turkey, Malaysia, China and South Korea, as well as frequent domestic
presentations, she is best known for developing clinically sound, played-based
interventions that integrate the neurobiology of trauma, the neurobiology of play, and the
power of one to heal the other. She has received the APT award for Play Therapy
Promotion and Education, serves on the Board of the Tennessee Association for Play
Therapy, and served as the Executive Director of the Lipscomb Play Therapy and
Expressive Arts Center. She provides play therapy and licensure supervision and
consults with various school districts, agencies, and mental health organizations to help
develop play therapy programs and create more developmentally sensitive
programming. Some of her most recent books includes Big Behaviors in Small
Containers, Parents as Partners in Child Therapy: A Clinician’s Guide, Trauma and Play
Therapy, Tackling Touchy Subjects, Play Therapy with Traumatized Children: A
Prescriptive Approach and The Worry Wars: An Anxiety Workbook for Kids and their
Helpful Adults. She delights in her husband, her three children, shifting paradigms, and
holding hard stories for families in need.