2023 Thesis - Erin Rolland: Dollhouse Play as Self-care: A Heuristic Study to Combat Burnout

Self-care is beneficial as a proactive measure to prevent and treat burnout in the helping profession. Through a heuristic study, this article provides a practical approach to using play as a modality of self-care to increase self-awareness and insight. Reflective journaling and artmaking within the scheduled play are used to address transference, countertransference, secondary trauma, and burnout experienced by an art therapy intern. A thematic analysis assessed the findings while highlighting the importance of scheduled self-care practices.