PLAYING WITH PURPOSE: HOW GAMES BECOME A COUNSELING TOOL (AND WHY I USE THEM…A LOT)
By a LPC who believes therapy can be fun, honest, and surprisingly revealing.
When people walk into my office and see stacks of board games, fidgets, card decks, and strategy puzzles, they often smile politely, unsure if I’m a therapist… or someone preparing for a very specific niche party. But the truth is: play is one of the most powerful clinical tools we have. Plato said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation,” and millennia later… the research still backs him up. Kids drop their defenses. Teens enter flow state. Adults stop intellectualizing and start revealing their natural patterns. Families show their dynamics in real time — sometimes more clearly than in any structured interview.
Below is a transparent look at:
Why I use games in counseling
What different games actually teach (and reveal)
What I watch for clinically: regulation, impulsivity, competitiveness, sabotage, flexibility, empathy, and more
Play-therapy principles adapted for middle schoolers, teens, families, and adults
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAY: “WHAT I’M ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR”
Regulation & Stress Response: Games expose how a person handles pressure — whether it’s Five-Second Rule card game, Perfection, a surprise get out of jail free, or being one point away from victory. I look for, “Stress brain” (executive functioning under stress) Rage quitting/shutting down emotionally, Over-control vs. under-control, Recovering from setbacks (Grit/Resolve), Riding emotional waves across a whole game (Regulation Skills).
Impulsivity & Inhibition: Especially for ADHD clients, games are a safe way to practice: Stopping before reacting (“I want to make this move… should I?”), Thinking several moves ahead (Cause and Effect Thinking), Delaying gratification, Recognizing internal cues, but wait… (The Sacred Pause)
Flexibility & Cognitive Shifting: Some clients cling to one strategy — even when the game shifts. Others adapt instantly. Both reveal important patterns of Rigidity, Stubbornness, Adaptability, Problem-solving styles, and Mental Flexibility.
Social Awareness & Empathy: Non-verbal communication explodes in game settings. I can observe: Matching energy, Reading the room, Taking others’ perspectives, Collaborating, Communication, Seeing outside of yourself, and Subtle social cues that often get missed in real-world interactions
Family Dynamics in Motion: When I play with families, I learn:
Who leads
Who controls
Who bends rules
Who rescues
Who lets the child dictate everything
Who avoids conflict
Who gets scapegoated
Patterns that normally take months to uncover often show up within ten minutes of Catan.
A GAME-BY-GAME BREAKDOWN: WHAT EACH ONE TEACHES
Below is exactly what you asked for — the games I use most often and the clinical intentions behind them.
Five Second Rule
Skill: Stress tolerance, speaking under pressure, regulation, and cognitive flexibility.
When that timer flips, the nervous system kicks into fight-or-flight. We practice regulating the “brain scramble”, Learning how decision-making changes under stress, Sacred Pausing, breathing, resetting, Normalizing that our “panicked brain” performs differently than our calm one
Jenga, Dice Roll Balance
Skill: Anticipatory anxiety, body awareness, bracing vs. relaxing.
I use them to teach: Tolerating uncertainty, Watching the body tighten and loosen, Practicing slow breathing during build-up, Riding the “jump scare” wave, Distinguishing emotional vs. physical reactions
Strategy Games for ADHD & Focus:
Chess, Hive, Boop
Skill: Planning ahead, inhibition, working memory, and patience.
What they reveal: Can the client pause before acting? Can they think 2–3 moves ahead? Do they get flustered or overstimulated by choices? Do they rush moves “just to finish”? It trains the exact neural networks that ADHD tends to challenge.
Catan, Ticket to Ride, Star Wars Deck Building — The “Ride the Wave” Games
Skill: Emotion regulation, long-term strategy, frustration tolerance.
These games perfectly mimic real life: You can be in first place… then get hammered, You can be losing for an hour… then five eights roll in a row, Plans get blocked, You adapt or you fall behind and I narrate these moments to teach:
“How do we respond to setbacks?”
“What happens when life doesn’t match the plan?”
“Can we stay steady emotionally even when the outcome changes?”
Collaborative Games
Sky Team, Bomb Busters
Skill: Teamwork, communication, emotional regulation, perspective-taking.
We work on: Checking in before making a move, Reading your partner’s emotional state, Asking for help, Apologizing and repairing after miscommunication, Staying calm when a teammate makes a mistake, Great for teens who prefer co-op over confrontation.
Wavelength, Likewise, Code names
Skill: Social inference, empathy, mind-reading (the healthy kind), group awareness.
Each game teaches something different:
Wavelength - Understanding how another person thinks. “How do they view the world? What experiences shape their category choices?”
Likewise - Reading the group’s social cues and noticing: What’s trendy, What’s funny, What the group values, How to match (or intentionally mismatch) the group energy
Codenames - Understanding someone’s semantic associations. Perfect for perspective-taking and insight into how another mind organizes information.
7 Wonders Duel, Splendor Duel
Skill: Flexibility and shifting strategy.
Many clients choose one win condition and refuse to abandon it — even when it’s no longer realistic. We use that to explore:
Rigidity - “I want it this way, so I’m sticking to it”
Adapting - when life forces us in a new direction
Being able to pivot without losing confidence
Dice, Yahtzee, Pina Colodice
Skill: Acceptance, Emotional Regulation, and Handling Change and Transitions
My go to for clients is always dice. It’s quick, almost immediate flow state, and in the end you don’t have a lot of control. Skill is not necessary and “winning” is not something you can truly brag about. I love that people enjoy its basic rules, random outcomes, and the humanness and humility that we are all the same and you are no better or worse than anyone except for random dice rolls.
Rage-Quitting, Sabotage, and Rule-Bending
Skill: Emotional insight and patterns of behavior.
When someone: Quits early, “Doesn’t care anymore”, Bends rules, Sabotages someone else’s progress, Makes the “I’d rather lose than let you win” move— these are gold mines for therapeutic exploration. It often reveals: Fear of failure, Shame avoidance, Oppositional patterns, Need for control, Difficulty tolerating uncertainty, Poor frustration tolerance, Internal narratives (“If I can’t win, I’m worthless”)We process these in real time using curiosity, not shame.
Playing with Families
This is where dynamics shine.
→ Letting the child always win
→ Avoidance of conflict
→ Over-accommodation
→ Parent guilt
→ Kids learning fragile self-esteemLetting the child dictate all games
→ Boundary challenges
→ Parental over-functioning
→ Kids learning that compromise = losingParents bending rules “just for fun”
→ Often reveals resentment, passive-aggression, anxiety, or competitiveness
→ The child may internalize “I can’t trust the system to be predictable”Sibling alliances or scapegoats
→ Shows how communication, protection, and conflict actually operate at homeAll of this becomes rich material to gently bring into the therapeutic space.
BIG THEMES ACROSS ALL GAMES
1. Flow State: Many kids and teens with anxiety, ADHD, or trauma slip into effortless focus when playing. That state becomes a gateway to: Social connection, Experimenting without fear, Practicing presence, Reducing internal chatter
2. Non-Verbal Skills: Eye contact, body language, energy matching, reading the table — games are social laboratories.
3. Discomfort Stamina:
Learning to stay in the game:
When losing
When bored
When overwhelmed
When overstimulated
When frustrated
When confused
When waiting
This is emotional endurance training.
4. Pattern Re-ProgrammingDefault reactions (“If I lose, I shut down”) can be gently rewritten through repeated, playful practice.
5. Fidgets & Somatic Awareness: I often test different fidgets during gameplay to help clients learn: “What helps my body regulate?” “What tools help me think more clearly?” “What sensations signal overwhelm?”
WHY IT WORKS: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF PLAY
Play lowers psychological defenses. It activates curiosity rather than threat. It engages the prefrontal cortex more than a traditional “tell me what happened this week” conversation. It rewires emotional patterns through repetition. It reveals authentic behavior instead of socially scripted behavior.
FINAL THOUGHTS: PLAY ISN’T JUST FOR KIDS — IT’S A WINDOW INTO THE SELF
Whether I’m working with:
Middle schoolers learning frustration tolerance
Teens practicing empathy
Adults exploring relationship patterns
Families navigating boundaries
ADHD clients learning to pause and think three moves ahead
Games give us a shared language for behavior, emotion, and growth. Play is honest. Play is revealing. Play is connective. Play is therapeutic.
And most importantly — play allows us to rewrite our patterns in a space that feels fun rather than threatening.
