December 2021
Sometimes the therapeutic conversation gets heavy and stuck and it’s clear that talking about it won’t loosen it up. Something else is required.
I have a little red and white striped string covered ball that I keep in my room. Sometimes I’ll pick it up and throw it to my client. Usually it meets them with delight and they’ll throw it back and a little game begins. The whole atmosphere lifts and we laugh in our play. Sometimes the game releases tears amidst the laughter. Sometimes this is all that was needed to shift the sense of stuckness and to open the therapeutic conversation to move it to another level.
I have been interested in how this happens between people for a very long time. In fact I called my PhD thesis Catching the Ball: constructing the reciprocity of embodiment (available for reading through the thesis repository of Murdoch University, Western Australia) for the easy interactions that arises in non-serious and unconscious engagement between ourselves and ourselves and our environment. The subtleties of this connection is not only intriguing but also very beautiful. There is flow, inhibition of flow, non-awareness and awareness: receiving and letting go, and interestingly all happening at the same time. Think, if you will, of a person throwing a ball, and the other person preparing to catch it, some of the ligaments and muscles in the bodies of both players are extended and some are retracted in preparation for the next throw/catch. This physical engagement mirrors the conversation between people: we speak, we listen, we prepare to speak again. There is give and take and give….
What arises in these little burst of playfulness in therapy should not be confused with the speciality of play therapy. That is quite different and is usually done with children. The Australian Psychological Society defines play therapy as ‘a powerful means of joining with the innate, creative, non-verbal capacities of children in order to engage and work therapeutically with them. It is a developmentally appropriate, evidence-based method of counselling younger clients.’ What I am writing right now is just plain old playfulness that happens to arise between people within and outside the therapeutic situation. I also note that I do not do play therapy as I mostly work with adults, leaving child psychotherapy to those who specialize in it.
Playfulness, of course, isn’t just throwing a ball back and forth, it can arise in verbal humour, facial expression, mimicry, or anything else that is light, funny and spontaneous. Planning on playfulness will likely fall flat.
Playfulness can release a client’s resistance to change. Playful silliness can create a sense of safety in the encounter with the therapist, and allows the client to relax and lose their tight anxiety, which is not a bad thing. Laughter is part of playfulness and that encourages the expression of a sense of togetherness. Another beautiful thing about playfulness is that, in that looseness, it allows us to reframe therapy – and beyond therapy to experience life as entertaining, intellectually stimulating and interesting, such that we are better able to happily encounter complexity, without panicking.
Another side effect of playfulness is that it opens us to creative engagement in our world, including an increased desire for physical activity and the endorphins that are generated therein (excellent for healing depression). After we’ve engaged in little bouts of silliness a client often goes away to once again make music, paint and write, after sometimes years of creative drought.
I’m reminded of the use of laughter medicine in hospital settings, a delightful therapy begun by Patch Adams, an American medical doctor who is interested in healing the whole self and self in community. His Gesundheit (health) Institute has people going into hospitals dressed as clowns to share fun and laughter with their patients. Perhaps that might be entertaining, but actually I don’t much like the structured play of clowns and anyway, playfulness doesn’t need to be an all stops out fanfare. A little bit of silly playfulness goes a long way, from the here and now of the therapeutic encounter to softening the edges of ordinary life.
