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What is Bias in Play Therapy? · Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• 0:02
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy, a weekly podcast dedicated to supporting the next generation of child and adolescent therapists to provide exceptional play therapy services.
• 0:14
  Cathi Spooner: We'll explore all things play therapy to elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play.
• 0:23
  Cathi Spooner: I'll discuss practical tips and ideas so you can provide a transformative experience for your young clients and make a real difference in their lives.
• 0:34
  Cathi Spooner: So get ready to take your play therapy skills to the next level and make a lasting impact in the lives of children, adolescents, and families.
• 0:49
  Cathi Spooner: Hey there.
• 0:50
  Cathi Spooner: Good morning.
• 0:52
  Cathi Spooner: Today I want to talk about bias.
• 0:55
  Cathi Spooner: Bias in play therapy.
• 0:58
  Cathi Spooner: What exactly is bias and how does that show up in play therapy?
• 1:04
  Cathi Spooner: So one of the things we've learned to do in graduate school, and I think it's inherent in the mental health field, is to do self reflection.
• 1:13
  Cathi Spooner: Self reflection to identify counter transference and transference.
• 1:19
  Cathi Spooner: And I think nowadays there's probably more of an emphasis on recognizing bias than in a really long time.
• 1:31
  Cathi Spooner: I remember in graduate school 30 years ago, we spent a lot of time looking at transfers, but we didn't really take any time looking at bias.
• 1:40
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and we, we, we did that in in our cultural competency classes.
• 1:47
  Cathi Spooner: So we we did that.
• 1:48
  Cathi Spooner: But outside of the outside of graduate school and typically in the field, there wasn't a whole lot of looking at bias.
• 1:58
  Cathi Spooner: Not like I think we do today, which I think is awesome.
• 2:02
  Cathi Spooner: So what is bias?
• 2:05
  Cathi Spooner: And how does it show up in the playroom?
• 2:09
  Cathi Spooner: That's what I want to talk about today.
• 2:11
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're joining me, I'd love to know who's here.
• 2:14
  Cathi Spooner: Go ahead and post your name in the comments.
• 2:18
  Cathi Spooner: Post where you're from, what population you work with.
• 2:22
  Cathi Spooner: Um, what play therapy modality you're working with and feel free to join in the conversation.
• 2:29
  Cathi Spooner: What are your questions?
• 2:30
  Cathi Spooner: I'd love to know who's here and have a conversation today.
• 2:36
  Cathi Spooner: So go ahead and post that in there.
• 2:38
  Cathi Spooner: So I'm Cathi Spooner.
• 2:40
  Cathi Spooner: I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a registered play therapist supervisor here in the United States, and I've been in the mental health field working with children, adolescents and families since 1990.
• 2:53
  Cathi Spooner: So, uh, that's when I started graduate school.
• 2:56
  Cathi Spooner: I worked in the field as a residential staff in an adolescent, residential program a really long time ago.
• 3:06
  Cathi Spooner: And then in special ed, working with children with emotional problems as a special education teacher of emotionally disturbed students back in the 1980s, which is where I was first introduced to play therapy by our school psychologist and school social worker.
• 3:25
  Cathi Spooner: So I go live every week on Wednesdays at 7 a.
• 3:31
  Cathi Spooner: m.
• 3:31
  Cathi Spooner: Pacific time.
• 3:33
  Cathi Spooner: I live stream into my private Facebook group, Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.
• 3:40
  Cathi Spooner: Oh my goodness, my dog is scratching at the door.
• 3:44
  Cathi Spooner: I don't know if you guys can hear her on the video.
• 3:47
  Cathi Spooner: I have the door closed and my husband's here, so I don't know why she's scratching at the door, um, other than she's aware he's probably going to work soon.
• 3:59
  Cathi Spooner: So anyways, if you hear some weird scratching in the background, that is my dog Lily and the likelihood our other dog Luna is standing right behind her encouraging her to scratch at the door until mom opens the door is pretty darn high.
• 4:17
  Cathi Spooner: Anyways.
• 4:18
  Cathi Spooner: Um, I'm not going to let her in because if I let her in, she's immediately going to want to right back out.
• 4:25
  Cathi Spooner: So those of you who have dogs absolutely know what I'm talking about.
• 4:30
  Cathi Spooner: So, uh, I, so I do live stream into my Facebook group.
• 4:35
  Cathi Spooner: If you're a mental health professional working with children and adolescents using play therapy and express barts, and you're on Facebook, feel free to hop over there and join the group.
• 4:46
  Cathi Spooner: You do have to answer all the questions.
• 4:49
  Cathi Spooner: There are several questions that are required to be answered first in order to get into the group.
• 4:56
  Cathi Spooner: I also live stream into Instagram.
• 5:00
  Cathi Spooner: I live stream into Uh, LinkedIn and also on YouTube.
• 5:05
  Cathi Spooner: If you're interested in any of the replays, it's probably easiest to find them on my YouTube channel.
• 5:13
  Cathi Spooner: Uh, if you're in my Facebook group, they're in the featured section.
• 5:17
  Cathi Spooner: I pin them all in there.
• 5:19
  Cathi Spooner: And lately in the last few weeks, I've been talking about play therapy foundations.
• 5:24
  Cathi Spooner: What, what are the foundations of play therapy that set play therapy apart from other treatment modalities?
• 5:32
  Cathi Spooner: And I've been talking a lot about clinical decision making and case conceptualization.
• 5:39
  Cathi Spooner: These are all really foundational to mental health and they're foundational in play therapy.
• 5:47
  Cathi Spooner: What I found though is we don't really talk a lot about these in play therapy and what happens that I've noticed over the last like 15 years providing play therapy supervision to the next generation of play therapists is that these are core foundational components of providing really quality play therapy services that I've I decided well, we don't really talk about them much So it's probably I at least think it would be beneficial to oh, I think my husband let my dog Lily she comes And just as I said, she's walked right back out the door.
• 6:32
  Cathi Spooner: Um, anyways, where was I?
• 6:34
  Cathi Spooner: Talking about play therapy foundations.
• 6:36
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so, so I thought, well, this would be a good topic to talk about.
• 6:43
  Cathi Spooner: Plus, I also have, uh, created a course series called Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Excellence.
• 6:52
  Cathi Spooner: It's a series of courses that, nope, Lily's back, that I have developed.
• 6:59
  Cathi Spooner: to provide that foundational grounding for the next generation of play therapists.
• 7:05
  Cathi Spooner: But also if you've been doing play therapy for a while, I think these would be of interest as well.
• 7:10
  Cathi Spooner: I've been doing play therapy for over 20 years now, and I've been in the mental health field 30.
• 7:17
  Cathi Spooner: I dug into a lot of the research, which is part of what I'm going to go in today.
• 7:22
  Cathi Spooner: I found it really interesting.
• 7:23
  Cathi Spooner: I learned a lot of things.
• 7:24
  Cathi Spooner: I, I didn't really know before.
• 7:26
  Cathi Spooner: So you might find it interesting as well.
• 7:29
  Cathi Spooner: So, um, Facebook user from Ann Arbor, Michigan is here.
• 7:35
  Cathi Spooner: So welcome.
• 7:36
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome.
• 7:37
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and.
• 7:39
  Cathi Spooner: I'm curious, uh, Facebook user from, I'm gonna have to go in my Facebook group and, and see who you are.
• 7:46
  Cathi Spooner: I use StreamYard to live stream into Facebook, LinkedIn, and um, YouTube.
• 7:52
  Cathi Spooner: So face, uh, StreamYard requires that you give permission.
• 7:57
  Cathi Spooner: Otherwise, I can't see your name, which is fine, but that's why it shows up as Facebook user or LinkedIn user.
• 8:05
  Cathi Spooner: So I created these courses.
• 8:09
  Cathi Spooner: I've already got one out, which is getting grounded in play therapy foundations, like what sets play therapy apart from other expressive arts modalities?
• 8:19
  Cathi Spooner: What are the core competencies?
• 8:21
  Cathi Spooner: This is really the grounding in play therapy history, the roots of play therapy.
• 8:28
  Cathi Spooner: And I think this is this one is kind of important because it not only helps us understand what sets play therapy apart, it also helps us understand and develop that professional identity in play therapy.
• 8:44
  Cathi Spooner: And so the next course that I have coming out is Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Case Conceptualization and clinical, uh, which includes clinical decision making.
• 8:55
  Cathi Spooner: That's the one I've been doing a lot of research on, which is where a lot of the information for today's live stream comes from.
• 9:02
  Cathi Spooner: And that's what I want to talk about today.
• 9:05
  Cathi Spooner: After that, the next course that's coming up is Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Treatment Plans.
• 9:11
  Cathi Spooner: That question comes up a lot after that is Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Progress Notes, and then Getting Grounded in Integrating Parents in the Play Therapy Process.
• 9:23
  Cathi Spooner: So that's the whole series that I'm in the process of creating and using those in my supervision program, Play Therapy Academy.
• 9:34
  Cathi Spooner: If you're not in Play Therapy Academy, and these are also available outside of that, but today talking about bias.
• 9:45
  Cathi Spooner: which is come from the research that I've done as I created Getting Grounded in Case, Play Therapy, Case Conceptualization.
• 9:55
  Cathi Spooner: I thought it was an important topic that we talk about because, because like I said, it's not one that's talked about often.
• 10:01
  Cathi Spooner: So what is bias.
• 10:04
  Cathi Spooner: So the definition of bias is these are the unconscious and conscious ways of perceiving and understanding that can undermine our accuracy.
• 10:18
  Cathi Spooner: So, so we all have biases, just like we're all kind of trained to look at and identify transference and counter transference.
• 10:28
  Cathi Spooner: These a lot of times are counter transference is what gets activated in us.
• 10:34
  Cathi Spooner: And bias is very similar.
• 10:35
  Cathi Spooner: Bias are all of those things, those belief systems, way, way, way back in the cobwebs of our minds based on, and I like to look at neuroscience and attachment for this.
• 10:50
  Cathi Spooner: It's like all those, um, belief systems and our beliefs about others, our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs about relationships.
• 11:02
  Cathi Spooner: And I would include like bias about other people.
• 11:05
  Cathi Spooner: What exactly?
• 11:08
  Cathi Spooner: Um, like culturally this comes up a lot.
• 11:11
  Cathi Spooner: What are my biases that I don't even necessarily recognize that they're there until I take a step back and think, Oh, wait, that's kind of weird.
• 11:21
  Cathi Spooner: Where did that come from?
• 11:23
  Cathi Spooner: And then I realized, Oh, this is one of my biases that I hadn't really even thought about before.
• 11:30
  Cathi Spooner: And it will influence our decision making, it'll influence our case conceptualization, which is a really fancy term for how, what, what I think is going on with my clients and why do I think it's going on?
• 11:49
  Cathi Spooner: That's kind of a fancy way of thinking about that, because then that's going to play into what our diagnosis is, as well as our treatment planning.
• 12:00
  Cathi Spooner: They all kind of go together.
• 12:02
  Cathi Spooner: And there are different types of bias.
• 12:05
  Cathi Spooner: So for example, one that comes up a lot in the research is overconfidence bias.
• 12:11
  Cathi Spooner: So over confidence bias is typically a bias that's found in, uh, like play therapists that been, have been doing in play therapy for a while, have been in the mental health field for a while.
• 12:27
  Cathi Spooner: I regularly have to check myself on this one.
• 12:30
  Cathi Spooner: It's basically, Oh, I know what this is.
• 12:33
  Cathi Spooner: So I take shortcuts to, Oh, I know what it is.
• 12:37
  Cathi Spooner: I'm not really gonna think about it much more.
• 12:39
  Cathi Spooner: I'm just going to, you know, this is what it is because I've seen it over the last 30 years.
• 12:44
  Cathi Spooner: I know what it is.
• 12:45
  Cathi Spooner: Well, that may or may not, may not be true.
• 12:48
  Cathi Spooner: And there is a lot of confidence that comes with being in the mental health field for 30 years and being able to, like, I can get to issues so quickly because I've been in the field for 30 years.
• 13:04
  Cathi Spooner: The bias comes when I don't really take a step back and think, Oh, wait, is that, is that what it is?
• 13:12
  Cathi Spooner: I need to make sure I'm not taking shortcuts that might undermine the effectiveness of the play therapy services that I'm providing, which is one of the reasons I love supervising people.
• 13:26
  Cathi Spooner: Other, the next generation of mental health professionals and play therapist coming up because I learn so much from the people that I supervise.
• 13:37
  Cathi Spooner: Um, as much as they learn from me, I learn from them and I really enjoy that learning process.
• 13:43
  Cathi Spooner: So it also kind of helps me check myself against, uh, maybe thinking I've, I know everything, which is a possible, uh, outcome when you've been doing it as long as I have.
• 14:00
  Cathi Spooner: Another bias is, and I'm just going to go through a few to be honest, one of the, there's a article and I could probably post this.
• 14:09
  Cathi Spooner: I, I list this in my, training that I, I came up, uh, the one that I've just developed case conceptualization in play therapy.
• 14:18
  Cathi Spooner: This is one of the articles that I, I've used from the professional journals.
• 14:24
  Cathi Spooner: I I'll post it.
• 14:26
  Cathi Spooner: I'll post the article in the comments if you're interested, if you have access, but this one is called cognitive by biases, heuristics and logical fallacies in clinical practice.
• 14:39
  Cathi Spooner: A field guide for practicing clinicians and supervisors.
• 14:42
  Cathi Spooner: So I think it's good as supervisors for us to know these as well so that we can look at them and explore them with our supervises.
• 14:52
  Cathi Spooner: But that being said, it also had a ton of different kinds of biases that who even knew these existed.
• 15:00
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so one of the ones that I, I wanted to read to you.
• 15:05
  Cathi Spooner: So there's this term called heuristics.
• 15:08
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so the heuristics is a really fancy term that means insight.
• 15:14
  Cathi Spooner: This is from Wikipedia definition.
• 15:17
  Cathi Spooner: In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules either learned or incalculated by evolutionary processes.
• 15:27
  Cathi Spooner: These psychological heuristics have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems.
• 15:37
  Cathi Spooner: These rules typically Common to play when people face complex problems or incomplete information.
• 15:46
  Cathi Spooner: So basically, it's our kind of our shortcut to making decisions, which all of us do.
• 15:52
  Cathi Spooner: And when you've been in the field for 30 years, like I can get there.
• 15:57
  Cathi Spooner: pretty quickly.
• 15:58
  Cathi Spooner: But the problem is, if I'm not aware of overconfidence bias, then I may make mistakes that will influence the outcomes I can get for my clients.
• 16:08
  Cathi Spooner: So another, uh, another definition would be representative heuristics.
• 16:15
  Cathi Spooner: And I'm going to read a quote from the article.
• 16:19
  Cathi Spooner: So it's like all heuristics represented representativeness is often accurate.
• 16:25
  Cathi Spooner: Imagine a psychologist conducting an initial assessment on a 22 year old man at an outpatient facility.
• 16:33
  Cathi Spooner: The patient exhibits flat affect and endorses a loss of interest in feelings of worthlessness.
• 16:41
  Cathi Spooner: If the psychologist were to posit that the patient was similar to almost all depressed patients she's seen and is likely to meet criteria for major depressive disorder, she would probably be correct.
• 16:55
  Cathi Spooner: Nevertheless, using the same example, and this to me is the key part.
• 17:01
  Cathi Spooner: If the psychologist did not assess mania or hypomania symptoms because the patient's presentation was similar to the psychologist's prototype of depressed individual, she may have missed important diagnostic information owing in part to the representative heuristics.
• 17:25
  Cathi Spooner: So and that's to me one of the key things and I see this a lot.
• 17:29
  Cathi Spooner: I see it with, um, experienced as well as inexperienced.
• 17:37
  Cathi Spooner: I think this is a bias that we're all prone to.
• 17:40
  Cathi Spooner: That we we don't we take shortcuts and we don't necessarily do our due diligence all the way through the through the process.
• 17:50
  Cathi Spooner: So let's take ADHD and play therapy.
• 17:54
  Cathi Spooner: If you're working in play therapy, the likelihood you have encountered children who are impulsive, who get emotionally dysregulated, Who, um, can be argumentative, can have meltdowns on a regular basis.
• 18:14
  Cathi Spooner: The likelihood these children are on your caseload is pretty darn high.
• 18:20
  Cathi Spooner: So we could immediately go to oppositional defiant behavior, uh, disorder because they're defiant and they're don't like, they don't like the word no.
• 18:32
  Cathi Spooner: But, and maybe we, it's, we have a male client with this, we, maybe we go automatically to ADHD or we go automatically to oppositional defiant disorder.
• 18:46
  Cathi Spooner: Would we do that if it was a girl?
• 18:49
  Cathi Spooner: So here's where we have to look at that unconscious bias.
• 18:53
  Cathi Spooner: If it was our, uh, girl, would we automatically go there?
• 18:59
  Cathi Spooner: Or if it was, um, let's say someone, uh, let's say a seven year old who has immigrated with parents and they've come to the U.
• 19:12
  Cathi Spooner: S.
• 19:13
  Cathi Spooner: from a country in South America that is known for a lot of violence and poverty.
• 19:22
  Cathi Spooner: Would we automatically go to trauma because of that?
• 19:28
  Cathi Spooner: Now that may be the case and it's good to assess for that.
• 19:31
  Cathi Spooner: But maybe we've missed, well maybe this is a child who also has ADHD and it's not, no one in the family has ever been diagnosed.
• 19:42
  Cathi Spooner: So part of, part of looking at bias is understanding that we're all, we're all, we all have bias and that we're all have the capability of getting it wrong.
• 19:59
  Cathi Spooner: Another type of bias is affect bias.
• 20:02
  Cathi Spooner: So affect bias is using our moods to dictate our decisions.
• 20:08
  Cathi Spooner: Our emotional response to clients can influence our decision making and diagnostic formulation in both positive and negative ways.
• 20:16
  Cathi Spooner: So think about it if we, okay if you're working with children, the likelihood this has happened to you, let's say you are, you are working with the child who comes in and one of the parents is, Um, let's say argumentative or kind of rigid and you, you know, activate your countertransference, right?
• 20:42
  Cathi Spooner: We're like, Oh, that just gets on my last nerve.
• 20:45
  Cathi Spooner: And then we begin our bias kicks in where we're making decisions based on either avoidance of that client and the parent.
• 20:58
  Cathi Spooner: Maybe we don't want to have parent sessions because now we're avoiding that parent.
• 21:03
  Cathi Spooner: Even though we know that integrating the parents into the play therapy process is really going to be needed for this client.
• 21:12
  Cathi Spooner: Or maybe we get argumentative and we're like, we kind of get a little more rigid.
• 21:17
  Cathi Spooner: We're making decisions based on our emotions.
• 21:21
  Cathi Spooner: So that would be affect bias and the likelihood we've all experienced this is very, very high.
• 21:30
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and if you haven't, the likelihood at some point in your professional career that you will experience this is pretty high, which is why in the mental health field, we are adamant about doing self reflection.
• 21:48
  Cathi Spooner: Self reflection is an important part of therapeutic use of self in the treatment process, which means because we're fallible human beings, we really need to make sure that we are doing that self reflection process.
• 22:04
  Cathi Spooner: So another type of anchoring, uh, another type of bias would be anchoring bias, which means I place too much weight on one aspect or trait of a client's, and sometimes you may see this in the words that we use to describe our clients.
• 22:23
  Cathi Spooner: Like, for instance, if we call somebody, oh, you know, she's borderline.
• 22:30
  Cathi Spooner: We do that all the time, and is that an indication of potential anchoring bias, meaning because I'm now viewing my client as borderline, I haven't necessarily gone through the process, and I would say even parent.
• 22:50
  Cathi Spooner: Um, because with children, we're not going to diagnose them with borderline, but maybe we would diagnose their parent that way.
• 22:57
  Cathi Spooner: And then that influences our decision making about what's needed in the play therapy process.
• 23:04
  Cathi Spooner: Or we say, Oh, the client refused that, that is one of my pet peeve words.
• 23:11
  Cathi Spooner: I'm not going to lie, but here's why, because I do think it is full of bias in it.
• 23:19
  Cathi Spooner: If they refused, if I dig deeper, why did they refuse?
• 23:24
  Cathi Spooner: Is it, I like to, I, and when I was doing a lot of supervision, I wouldn't, and I, uh, I probably do it now too.
• 23:33
  Cathi Spooner: I'm sure I do.
• 23:34
  Cathi Spooner: When I, when I have access to people's progress notes, the people that I'm supervising, if I have the authority to say, Oh, you got to take that word out.
• 23:45
  Cathi Spooner: I will.
• 23:45
  Cathi Spooner: I won't let them use that word.
• 23:47
  Cathi Spooner: They declined.
• 23:49
  Cathi Spooner: I'll say client declined.
• 23:51
  Cathi Spooner: Declined is not anywhere near as anchoring in emotion or bias that refused is refused makes somebody sound oppositional or argumentative, and they might be.
• 24:07
  Cathi Spooner: But if we look deeper, why are they that way?
• 24:10
  Cathi Spooner: What's going on that activated that oppositional behavior?
• 24:15
  Cathi Spooner: What's going on, that they're refusing the way that they're refusing.
• 24:20
  Cathi Spooner: This is why we want to look at bias in the way that we think about what's going on with our clients and how we use that information to inform our diagnoses and our case conceptualization, which is then going to influence our treatment planning.
• 24:40
  Cathi Spooner: So that brings me to why does bias matter?
• 24:45
  Cathi Spooner: For all the reason I just said, it negatively influences our decision making.
• 24:51
  Cathi Spooner: It negatively influences the way in which we think about what is going on with our clients and why is it happening?
• 25:01
  Cathi Spooner: So the thing that's important to keep in mind is biases are mostly unconscious beliefs that come from somewhere in our childhood, our experiences.
• 25:16
  Cathi Spooner: Um, they can be based on race, culture, gender, uh, and gender.
• 25:22
  Cathi Spooner: And we know that even research, this is something that's been discussed over and over.
• 25:29
  Cathi Spooner: Even research can be fraught with these types of biases.
• 25:36
  Cathi Spooner: We've we've talked about over, honestly, I've been in the field 30 years.
• 25:41
  Cathi Spooner: This goes back to even when I was teaching in special education, talking about bias in the assessment instruments that are used in the psychotherapy mental health arena.
• 25:56
  Cathi Spooner: Looking at bias in the assessments that we use based on race, gender and culture.
• 26:04
  Cathi Spooner: So these are all important things to keep in mind and we need to be aware of them and constantly kind of assessing in ourselves if that's going on.
• 26:18
  Cathi Spooner: So the third thing that I wanted to talk about today is now, so we know what bias is.
• 26:25
  Cathi Spooner: We know why bias matters in play therapy.
• 26:29
  Cathi Spooner: So what do we do?
• 26:31
  Cathi Spooner: To, to really, uh, first and foremost, we're all human.
• 26:36
  Cathi Spooner: We're, we all have bias, positive, negative, whatever it is.
• 26:42
  Cathi Spooner: We have bias.
• 26:43
  Cathi Spooner: This, this, this is radical acceptance.
• 26:46
  Cathi Spooner: We all have bias.
• 26:48
  Cathi Spooner: What we don't want to do is to get into kind of blaming or shaming ourselves.
• 26:54
  Cathi Spooner: What we want to do is just non judgmentally reflect, hmm, where did that come from?
• 27:02
  Cathi Spooner: What, what, where did, and I think this is something that's important for all of us to do, to be honest.
• 27:09
  Cathi Spooner: And I mean, I, I was leaving work the other day and I walked out and I saw kids playing and they were, yeah.
• 27:16
  Cathi Spooner: And I thought, and there were some things going on.
• 27:18
  Cathi Spooner: And I immediately had a response and I'm thinking to myself, huh, That's interesting.
• 27:24
  Cathi Spooner: I wonder where that came from.
• 27:26
  Cathi Spooner: And then I was like, Oh, okay.
• 27:28
  Cathi Spooner: Wow.
• 27:29
  Cathi Spooner: Who there's it is so subtle the way that it shows up.
• 27:34
  Cathi Spooner: And in play therapy, it's important for us to be aware of these because it will influence our decision making.
• 27:45
  Cathi Spooner: It'll influence our diagnoses, it'll influence our treatment approach, our play therapy interventions that we're using.
• 27:53
  Cathi Spooner: And so we want to, we want to recognize that we're all fallible human beings and we're all prone to bias.
• 28:00
  Cathi Spooner: First and foremost, radical acceptance, that's the deal.
• 28:05
  Cathi Spooner: And, from an ethical standpoint, it is our responsibility as mental health professionals, because of the influence that we have in the lives of our clients, it is our responsibility to do this self reflection process to identify any potential bias that can negatively out, um, impact the outcome of our clients.
• 28:31
  Cathi Spooner: So here's the thing though, like I've been doing this 30 years.
• 28:34
  Cathi Spooner: There are days I think to myself, I don't want to self reflect anymore.
• 28:38
  Cathi Spooner: I'm tired.
• 28:39
  Cathi Spooner: I wish I could be in a profession where I could free, be free to be a butthead.
• 28:44
  Cathi Spooner: Not really, but sometimes I feel that way because I just get tired of self reflecting as often as I self reflect.
• 28:52
  Cathi Spooner: Um, Maybe some of you do not self reflect as much as I do, but I feel like I'm constantly self reflecting.
• 28:59
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and so, I mean, we have to show self compassion for ourselves and recognize, okay, we're not going to be perfect all of the time and look and see what happens.
• 29:14
  Cathi Spooner: I feel like as long as we build that strong therapeutic rapport with our clients, that, that will balance out any ways in which some of our imperfections show up.
• 29:28
  Cathi Spooner: And then we, we just do that repair work with our clients.
• 29:31
  Cathi Spooner: If we need to, if not, we recognize, Oh, okay, good.
• 29:34
  Cathi Spooner: I caught that before anything happened.
• 29:37
  Cathi Spooner: Awesome.
• 29:39
  Cathi Spooner: In order to do that, we have to non judgmentally allow ourselves to explore our belief systems.
• 29:46
  Cathi Spooner: I call this going into the shadow to use a little bit of Jungian analogy or metaphor there.
• 29:53
  Cathi Spooner: Um, going into the shadow takes courage.
• 29:57
  Cathi Spooner: And it takes, uh, self compassion.
• 30:00
  Cathi Spooner: So use some self compassion when you're doing this work.
• 30:06
  Cathi Spooner: I like to look at it as helping myself to achieve my inner Gandalf or my inner Yoda, where I, I become wise like Yoda, wise like Gandalf in order to benefit my clients and benefit the people that I supervise.
• 30:27
  Cathi Spooner: And help them to become their highest versions of themselves.
• 30:33
  Cathi Spooner: Honestly, that is what I, what I, I do believe.
• 30:36
  Cathi Spooner: I kind of make fun of it a little bit.
• 30:38
  Cathi Spooner: But it is my core belief, um, that does help me to stay into this work and do this work.
• 30:45
  Cathi Spooner: Because it is not for the faint of heart to be in the mental health field and to work with children, adolescents, and their families to help them achieve healing.
• 30:55
  Cathi Spooner: It's a calling.
• 30:56
  Cathi Spooner: I do believe this is a calling that we feel, um, because it does require a lot of deep reflection in the work that we do.
• 31:08
  Cathi Spooner: I think it also requires that we become lifelong learners.
• 31:12
  Cathi Spooner: And we use research to inform our understanding of the issues.
• 31:17
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and like I said, we also have to be aware that research can have bias as well.
• 31:24
  Cathi Spooner: Um, but it is important to look at the research to kind of help us understand and challenge our belief systems when, when they need to be challenged.
• 31:36
  Cathi Spooner: And in, and in, in our, in our efforts to do this, the benefit is that we can provide really high quality play therapy services to our clients, that we can help them engage in the change process in a way that is meaningful to them.
• 31:58
  Cathi Spooner: And that's the key distinction.
• 32:00
  Cathi Spooner: It's meaningful to them.
• 32:02
  Cathi Spooner: Because sometimes we, our belief systems and our client's belief systems will not always match up.
• 32:10
  Cathi Spooner: And that's where that right to self determination comes in.
• 32:14
  Cathi Spooner: And we have to recognize that and understand that in order to help them find meaning.
• 32:23
  Cathi Spooner: and healing in their lives.
• 32:26
  Cathi Spooner: So just a recap, uh, bias, it, the definition of bias is bias is a part of everyone.
• 32:35
  Cathi Spooner: We're often unaware of our biases.
• 32:38
  Cathi Spooner: Bias is belief systems and ways of thinking that are unconscious, and they probably got there through somewhere along in our experiences in our childhood and growing up in different relationships that we've had.
• 32:55
  Cathi Spooner: They've come from somewhere.
• 32:58
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and our job is to look at them and be willing to explore them.
• 33:06
  Cathi Spooner: Why does bias matter?
• 33:08
  Cathi Spooner: Because it can now negatively influence, um, my tongue, my mouth's not working.
• 33:14
  Cathi Spooner: It can negatively impact our clinical decision making and our case conceptualization.
• 33:21
  Cathi Spooner: including our diagnostic formation.
• 33:24
  Cathi Spooner: So meaning bias can influence our diagnoses and the reason that is important.
• 33:33
  Cathi Spooner: I know there's a lot of, um, differing opinions on diagnosing.
• 33:40
  Cathi Spooner: I personally believe that accurate diagnosis, the DSM can be useful if we use it effectively.
• 33:48
  Cathi Spooner: It is not the end all be all.
• 33:50
  Cathi Spooner: And diagnosis does help us figure out what the roots of the problem are so that when we do our treatment planning and figure out what we want to focus on in treatment, that it'll be more accurate.
• 34:06
  Cathi Spooner: Bias can influence accurate diagnosis, which will then influence effective treatment planning.
• 34:14
  Cathi Spooner: So that's why we want to be aware.
• 34:17
  Cathi Spooner: That's, that's why bias matters.
• 34:20
  Cathi Spooner: And then thirdly, how do we address bias?
• 34:23
  Cathi Spooner: First and foremost, come to terms with the fact that we are all fallible human beings.
• 34:30
  Cathi Spooner: We all make mistakes.
• 34:32
  Cathi Spooner: We all get it wrong.
• 34:33
  Cathi Spooner: Nobody ever does it perfectly.
• 34:35
  Cathi Spooner: And that come to terms, come to self acceptance with that.
• 34:41
  Cathi Spooner: Then that will help us non judgmentally explore where some of our belief systems come from and, and how can we use how can we use our decision making to effectively help our clients with treatment planning, the decisions that we make from session to session to session.
• 35:07
  Cathi Spooner: So being aware of and exploring our bias in a nonjudgmental way will allow us to recognize what our bias is and not go into shame and blame spirals.
• 35:22
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so and that's, that's why, um, it will be important to make sure that we all are constantly and frequently kind of doing that self reflection.
• 35:36
  Cathi Spooner: And understanding our, which ones we're kind of prone to so that we can be mindful of those.
• 35:44
  Cathi Spooner: So that is it for today.
• 35:46
  Cathi Spooner: Um, if you're interested, I mentioned some of these courses that I am developing, I already have one course out called Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Foundations.
• 35:59
  Cathi Spooner: That one is available if you're interested in this training.
• 36:04
  Cathi Spooner: And if you're interested in the one that I kind of have coming out, probably in the next couple of weeks, which is called Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Foundations, you can hop over to my website at rrhcounseling.
• 36:19
  Cathi Spooner: com forward slash courses.
• 36:22
  Cathi Spooner: That, um, that I'm going to put that up on my screen.
• 36:27
  Cathi Spooner: If you're watching me on LinkedIn, my Facebook group or YouTube, the, the, um, my website is rrhcounseling.
• 36:36
  Cathi Spooner: com forward slash courses.
• 36:38
  Cathi Spooner: You can already find the Getting Grounded and Play Therapy Foundations.
• 36:43
  Cathi Spooner: That one's available now.
• 36:45
  Cathi Spooner: It's a self paced course that you can take in your time zone when.
• 36:50
  Cathi Spooner: It's convenient for you.
• 36:52
  Cathi Spooner: This is one of the, um, foundational requirements for becoming a registered play therapist.
• 37:00
  Cathi Spooner: Not necessarily my course, but Play Therapy Foundations is a required course to becoming a registered play therapist.
• 37:09
  Cathi Spooner: So that one's available now.
• 37:11
  Cathi Spooner: If you're interested in becoming part of my Play Therapy Academy, Play Therapy Academy is my online supervision program in which we meet twice a month for group meetings.
• 37:25
  Cathi Spooner: So you get not only my my 30 years of experience in child and adolescent mental health, you get the collective wisdom of all the amazing and brilliant play therapists in the group.
• 37:39
  Cathi Spooner: So we share ideas, we staff cases, we recognize I call it being super nerdy, which I love to be super nerdy.
• 37:50
  Cathi Spooner: Will do case presentations in the group.
• 37:54
  Cathi Spooner: And then also these getting grounded in play therapy excellence courses.
• 37:59
  Cathi Spooner: They're all going to be inside of Play Therapy Academy.
• 38:04
  Cathi Spooner: So these are all in the Play Therapy Academy program.
• 38:08
  Cathi Spooner: If you're, if you're not in Play Therapy Academy and it's not what you need, they're also, the courses are also going to be available outside, kind of like a la carte, you can get whichever ones you need.
• 38:20
  Cathi Spooner: If you're interested in Play Therapy Academy, then, uh, you can pop over to my website, again, rrhcounseling.
• 38:29
  Cathi Spooner: com.
• 38:32
  Cathi Spooner: Go on to the supervision page.
• 38:34
  Cathi Spooner: You can book a free 30 minute video call with me to talk about Play Therapy Academy Make sure it's a good fit for you.
• 38:43
  Cathi Spooner: I will post in the links on LinkedIn and in my Facebook group, I'll post the link in there for the Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Foundations.
• 38:58
  Cathi Spooner: I'll also post a link in there to schedule a 30 minute video call with me for Play Therapy Academy.
• 39:06
  Cathi Spooner: If you're watching on Instagram, just pop over there to my bio.
• 39:10
  Cathi Spooner: You can click on the link in my bio.
• 39:13
  Cathi Spooner: It'll take you over to my website and you can see the, the, uh, course, the link for the course, and you can also schedule a, a free video call with me.
• 39:25
  Cathi Spooner: All righty.
• 39:25
  Cathi Spooner: I will see you next week.
• 39:27
  Cathi Spooner: Bye for now.
• 39:34
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 39:38
  Cathi Spooner: I hope you found the discussion valuable and gain new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal.
• 39:48
  Cathi Spooner: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
• 39:53
  Cathi Spooner: Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information.
• 39:59
  Cathi Spooner: Remember, Play Therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth.
• 40:04
  Cathi Spooner: Whether you're a new Play Therapist or experienced, I encourage you to continue your learning journey to unlock the potential of play and your own work and relationships.
• 40:15
  Cathi Spooner: If you have any questions or topics, suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you.
• 40:22
  Cathi Spooner: Connect with me on social media and visit my website at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to stay updated on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources.
• 40:35
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 40:38
  Cathi Spooner: Until next time, keep playing, learning, and growing.