Shrinking It Down: Mental Health Made Simple · Gene Beresin, MD, MA and Khadijah Booth Watkins, MD, MPH

The Role of Roleplay in Therapy

·39 min·2 clips

A child can run a teacher game, give the therapist impossible tasks, and reveal how school can feel.

Gene Boreson opens by pointing to the value of role-play as a way of seeing the world differently. Khadijah Booth-Watkins joins him in framing the topic as one that matters for children, adolescents, and families. They bring in Terrence Dolan and John Corbett for a conversation about the role of role-play in therapy. The episode first widens the idea beyond formal treatment and notes that pretend play has always been part of childhood. It also reaches into adult forms of role-play, including video games, avatars, and dressing up for conventions. From there, the conversation turns toward what role-play can reveal inside family life. The guests describe it as a safe space for exploring how people interpret the same event differently. They return often to the problem of miscommunication. A parent, a child, and a therapist may all hear the same moment in different ways. Role-play gives those reactions room to be named. The therapists can pause the action and ask what was felt or understood. That pause matters because real family exchanges often move too quickly for reflection. The episode shows how role-play can slow down a conflict enough to make meaning visible. The discussion then shifts to play therapy with younger children. For many children, play is the main language they have for communicating with an adult. The guests describe games in which a child takes the teacher role and assigns tasks to the therapist. If the tasks feel impossible, the play may be signaling what school feels like from the child’s side. That example connects the therapy room to classroom stress and authority. The episode also returns to role-play as a way of exploring both inner identity and the image of other people. It frames pretend play as a tool for practicing perspective-taking. The closing stretch keeps that idea in view by linking therapeutic play to broader forms of imaginative choice. The show ends by circling back to the pleasure of playing roles and imagining different selves. Throughout, the tone stays careful, practical, and interested in what role-play can make easier to say.

As heard by us

A practical look at how pretend play can reveal what families and kids cannot say directly.

Role play is treated as a practical tool, not a gimmick. The conversation shows how pretending can surface family miscommunication, create a safer pause in therapy, and help children say things they cannot quite manage directly.

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Why you'd press play

See how role-play can help you practice a different way of seeing, inside a safe therapeutic space.

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