UNO Therapy Tools
As child anxiety therapists in St. Louis, we know how important it is to make therapy fun.
Kids and teens with anxiety, or anxiety-driven anger, need to feel comfortable in the therapy setting. We want them to feel heard, understood, and respected - and, even more importantly, we want them to enjoy what we’re doing in our therapy sessions, because that makes it so much more likely that they’ll actually use the tools and interventions we teach them at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
Anxiety therapy for angry kids
Whether your kindergartener has big outbursts, your pre-teen keeps getting into trouble, or your teen is overly stressed out, our team is ready to help.
Using play, and play therapy interventions, is a great way to make anxiety work feel less scary and more fun.
Rather than making a five year old sit and talk about their fears, we can use games, puppets, play-doh, or the sand box to explore what’s going on, generally in a less directive way.
Another way we can use games in our anxiety therapy sessions is by practicing skills-building through the game itself. Games teach you how to take turns, be respectful, demonstrate good sportsmanship, and build frustration tolerance.
One of our favorite games for practicing anxiety and frustration tolerance is UNO.
UNO is a go to card game in our therapy offices. It’s not only a fun game, it allows anxious and angry kids to practice turns, good sportsmanship, frustration tolerance, and patience.
Beyond the tools that are naturally built within a competitive game, UNO is unique in that it allows tons of ways to customize it to a therapeutic space.
(Looking for more fun therapy interventions for anxious kids? Check out Child Therapy for Anxious Kids: Bluey and Emotional Acceptance)
Feelings UNO
When we use Feelings UNO, we ask our kids and teens to assign a feeling to each of the UNO colors (red, yellow, green, blue).
Whatever they select, we always want to ask them why they chose to pair those particular feelings with the colors they chose, just to hear about their reasoning and deepen our understanding of their affective expression. For example:
Child: I want the yellow cards to represent silly.
Therapist: I think that sounds great! Tell me why you chose silly for yellow.
Child: Yellow just looks really happy, and when I feel happy it also makes me feel silly and giggly in my belly.
Read more on how to build tools on affective expression: Body Clues Activity for Kids
Once we have has assigned a feeling to each color, we can begin to play. Whenever we play a yellow card, we share about a time we felt silly or something that usually makes as silly.
Remember, there can be different shades of every emotion, so you may hear about a generally positive experience, or a more negative time.
Client: I felt silly when I dressed up like a polar bear for Halloween last year.
Therapist: Oh interesting, tell me what felt silly about that? Was it funny silly or uncomfortable silly?
Getting to Know You UNO
The best predictor of a good outcome in therapy is the relationship you have with your therapist. UNO can be a great tool for breaking the ice and helping our clients feel comfortable opening up to us, which is why we love to use UNO as a Getting to Know You Activity (note: if you’re really funny, you can call this “getting to know you-no,” and wait for the eye rolls from your clients.)
We typically give two rules and then let the client create two rules. Create your own rules, and tailor them to your client. Typically, my two rules for different card colors are:
Tell me one of your interests
Tell me something about your family.
Therapist: My rule for blue is that every time we choose a blue card we have to tell each other about one of our interests.
Then I let the client create two rules and they can be fun and silly.
Client: My rule for yellow is that you have to name one of your favorite foods, and my rule for the wild cards is that you have to say one of your favorite animals!
When working as a therapist, you want to participate in the UNO activity as well and also answer questions. This is also a super fun activity for families to play together!
Zones of Regulation Uno
UNO is perfect for incorporating the Zones of Regulation because the game includes all four of the colors that the Zones of Regulation utilizes. When a child pulls a green card they either share about a time that has put them in the green zone, or they name something that typically puts them in the green zone.
Client: I was in the green zone when I got to go to six flags over the summer.
Therapist: The weekends always put me in the green zone.
Follow the same rules for red card/red zone, blue card/blue zone, and yellow card/yellow zone.
Keeping kids engaged throughout the therapy session.
When you’re working with kids, you need to include fun interventions that keep them engaged, build your therapeutic relationship, and encourage skills such as turn taking, good sportsmanship, and frustration tolerance. UNO, and these specific versions of UNO, can be a great way to help you make progress on your anxiety and anger management goals.
Curious to learn more about Compassionate Counseling St. Louis?
Our therapists specialize in work with anxious and angry kids, teens, and college students. Schedule a free consultation to learn more about book services. If we’re not the best fit, we’ll connect you with other awesome St. Louis therapists.
This blog was originally posted Jan 9, 2022 and updated 4/3/24.
Interested in working with our anxiety specialists at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anger management and anxiety therapy in St. Louis for kids, teens, and college students. We love helping with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website.
