April Narrative Medicine Rounds with Dr. Monica Blum
For our April Rounds, we are pleased to welcome Dr. Monica Blum, a clinical psychologist, supervisor, consultant, and presenter who has specialized in treating complex trauma in children, teenagers, adults, couples, and families for over 30 years. Dr. Blum’s groundbreaking book, Inviting the Spirit of Play to Transform Trauma: Healing for All Ages, integrates state-of-the-art trauma treatment approaches with the power of playfully spirited practice.
In Inviting the Spirit of Play to Transform Trauma: Healing for All Ages, Dr. Blum gives therapists and those in allied professions an inspiring, practical, and scientifically-based resource to promote positive change and healing with traumatized clients of all ages. The book shows how playfulness (not play therapy) is compatible with and complementary to all theoretical orientations.
Filled with clinical examples, each chapter illustrates how therapists can tap into their attuned playful spirit and create a playful setting in person or online. Theory meets practice in chapters which show therapists how to playfully and respectfully frame and approach difficult trauma symptoms, the process of grief and change itself, autonomic regulation and affect tolerance, relational security, challenging dialectics, telling the trauma story, and ending treatment.
Dr. Monica Blum is a clinical psychologist in private practice with more than 30 years of experience treating trauma across the lifespan. She approaches trauma treatment with a creative, playful, and integrative clinical mindset. Dr. Blum emphasizes deep attunement, the body’s wisdom, and connection through shared humanity, joy, and laughter. She blends relational-experiential, somatic, developmentally sensitive, and systems-oriented therapies and is informed by AEDP, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, psychodrama, Polyvagal Theory, Internal Family Systems, Coherence Therapy, affective neuroscience, FLASH, and EMDR.
Dr Blum began her career in community mental health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey where she specialized in the treatment of complex trauma with underserved, sexually abused children (ages 18 months and older), their families, and the systems supporting them, including schools, courts, Child Protective Services, and hospitals. During this time, she trained students and colleagues to assess sexual abuse and dissociation, as well as thoughtfully differentiate trauma-related conditions from other clinical presentations.
In 1998, Dr. Blum transitioned to private practice, expanding her work to include traumatized adolescents, adults, and older adults. She has guest-lectured and supervised graduate students at Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. In 2015, she developed the embodied mirroring technique, a relational and somatically informed method that facilitates movement through stuck points in treatment, published in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration.
Dr. Blum’s grounding belief —that one’s playful spirit empowers safety, belonging, joy, and thriving to naturally emerge—infuses all her work. She provides training, supervision, and consultation to therapists, healthcare providers, parents, faith communities, organizations, and businesses. She presents nationally on nonverbal and playful approaches to trauma treatment, and on how engaging the spirit of play fosters hope, healing, creativity, productivity, cooperation, and meaningful human connection across settings.
Katie Simon is a sexuality and trauma journalist and author of Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault. They earned a BA in Contemporary Storytelling at New York University and an MA in Biography and Creative Nonfiction Writing at University of East Anglia. They studied Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and completed the Memoir Incubator at Grub Street in Boston, MA and the Human Sexuality Intensive at the Kinsey Institute. Their writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Oprah Daily, The Cut, Tin House, and elsewhere.
Katie’s nonfiction debut, Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault about the sex lives of sexual assault survivors, came out in 2025 to positive reception from Oprah Daily, The Cut, Playboy, Vogue, Dan Savage, NPR, Amanda Knox, the Queer Love Project, and more. They live in Texas with their dog, Babka.
Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds held on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year, hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Rounds are supported by live captioning. If you have any other accessibility needs or concerns, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. We do our best to arrange accommodations received after this deadline but cannot guarantee them.