Latest / The Play Therapy Circle / Episode 40- More Than Mess Limit-Setting as Clinical Intervention in CCPT

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Episode 40- More Than Mess Limit-Setting as Clinical Intervention in CCPT · The Play Therapy Circle

0:00
Hi there and welcome to the Play Therapy Circle.
0:04
Before we begin, Please note this podcast is for
0:07
informational and educational purposes only.
0:10
It does not provide therapeutic advice and listening does not
0:14
create a client therapist relationship.
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All views expressed are my own and any case example shared have
0:21
been de identified to protect privacy.
0:24
If you're seeking personal support, please reach out to a
0:27
qualified mental health professional in your area.
0:33
Hi and welcome to an episode of The Play Therapy Circle.
0:38
I'm Kylie Ellison, a therapist, clinical supervisor and play
0:42
therapy trainer and I'm so grateful you're here.
0:45
This podcast is a space for thoughtful, soulful
0:49
conversations about child centred therapy, play based work
0:53
and what it means to show up with presence and compassion
0:57
both for our clients and for ourselves.
1:00
Whether you're a seasoned play therapist, a student just
1:03
starting out, or someone deeply passionate about working with
1:07
children, you belong here. Hey everyone, and welcome back
1:14
to the Play Therapy Circle podcast.
1:16
I'm your host, Kylie Ellison, and I am so glad you are here,
1:22
guys. We have reached a milestone.
1:25
Episode 40 like this is amazing. I feel like we should do like a
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giveaway or something at episode 50 because how amazing is that,
1:35
that we've made it this far. My apologies.
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My phone is going off as I'm trying to record.
1:41
It is all the things. It is all the things.
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Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday, everyone.
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I had to remember what day of the week it is because we are
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almost into May and as I mentioned in my previous
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episode, I will be travelling from Friday, so I am taking you
1:58
on the road with me. So get excited, it's going to be
2:02
a lot of fun. I have a really interesting
2:05
episode that I want to share with you.
2:08
So I want to preface this by saying that at my core, I am
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absolutely, as you guys know who has been, who have been
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listening to the podcast for as long as you have, will know that
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I am deeply, deeply passionate about child centred play
2:26
therapy. It is the chosen path for me in
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my career, in my trajectory for a long time now.
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I am 11 years in as specifically a child centred play therapy
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practitioner with my quarrels in mental health and Master's in
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counselling psychotherapy as well as my advanced clinical
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training and playtherapy and now the training and supervision and
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this broadcast that Ioffer our playtherapy community.
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So I am very excited about the opportunity to share another
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lens, I guess on one of those situations or scenarios that we
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will encounter as child centre play therapist.
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Whether you're at the beginning of your journey or you are a
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more seasoned professional in this space, we will all face
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this at some point. And I had the opportunity the
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other day to be offered and I guess position on this when
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we're talking about mess in the playroom.
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And I was really curious and really interested in what was
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presented around from a child centre play therapy lens, what
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mess in the playroom looks like. And I wanted to offer from an
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Australian Child Centre play therapy perspective, additional
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reflections for practise. So I definitely, as you always
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know, with every episode, I always share that I want to
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start the conversation. I think conversations and
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leaning into our community and learning from each other and
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growing together is at the heart of what we do and is at the
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heart of the play therapy circle.
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So I think that we all have incredible skills and
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experiences and qualifications that offer us this space to have
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these conversations. So I want to have a conversation
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today around Mess in the Playroom and what that looks
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like in terms of our limit setting.
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It's definitely something that I have supervisees that I connect
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with who asked this question as well.
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So I know many of you experienced this in your career.
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And so I'm, I'm keen to certainly reinforce our CCPT
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lens of what we know and what we are trained to do when it comes
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to the ACT model. But I have some other
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considerations for practise that I think just will offer another,
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another reflection, another space to maybe consider in your
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practise. So I have a few different things
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that I want to dive into. But I think first and foremost,
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when we're talking about limit setting in child centre play
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therapy, we learn in our foundational studies that it
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really is about 3 variables here when we are talking about
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implementing the ACT model. So acknowledging the feelings,
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communicating the limit and targeting the alternative.
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So we know that that comes into play in the playroom when it is
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potentially going to an action by a child or something that's
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happening in the playroom may hurt themselves, hurt us or hurt
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the toys there. I guess kind of those three.
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If we really drill it down, pull it back to basics, we understand
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certainly from Landreth's teachings around those key
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criteria being the reason why we would apply limits in the
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playroom because we really want to offer the child an
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opportunity to express themselves, to be able to unpack
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their experience, to make sense of their experience and
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hopefully heal. I mean, that's, that's the goal,
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right? We want children in their time,
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in their way through using play, to be able to move through the
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stages of child centre play therapy.
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That's absolutely the key. So we learned in the beginning
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that limits are only needed when they're needed.
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That's, that's Gary Landreth's terminology there.
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I remember that from one of his videos years ago.
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So we understand that criteria and it is incredibly important
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as child centre play therapist that we show our fidelity to the
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practise. So I think that one of the
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things that I want to start to reflect on when we're talking
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about limit setting from a Landreth model is that limits
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are not about restricting the child.
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They're about creating that structure so that that freedom
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can be meaningful. It's so important.
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So without limits, there's no relationship.
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We know that there is only permission.
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So we come into a scenario here where we start to talk about, I
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guess in recent years, some of that interpretation of moving, I
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guess, towards that level of permissiveness in the playroom.
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And I have a beautiful quote that I share in training that I
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run from Car Rogers where he's reflecting on play therapy and
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that topic or the essence of permissiveness in the playroom,
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right? And I love it because he talks
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about how with permissiveness in the playroom that children
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almost to shorthand it and to kind of summarise it, the
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children almost assume, they do assume that we know what they're
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playing out so that they don't need to tell us.
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They don't need to talk it through.
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They don't need to give a disclaimer.
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That permissiveness level gives this almost kind of unconscious
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acknowledgement that we know what they're trying to tell us
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and so they can continue with their work.
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And so it offers this permissive space for healing.
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So we know that very deeply within certainly our approach in
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our profession. But Landreth very much was clear
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in this space that non directiveness is not the absence
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of structure, it's non directional within structure,
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which is essentially our ACT model, right?
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So the therapist who allows mess in the playroom that doesn't
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meet Landret's third criteria around protection of property is
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not practising CCPT, they're practising less.
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So we want to start to unpack and understand and certainly on
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it's a case by case basis, where is that line?
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Where is that line where we decide, okay, I really want to
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offer this space of permissiveness.
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I, as the play therapist, need to get comfortable with that
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mess. I need to understand that mess
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is a part of the child's work, but where is that moment where
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it ticks over into maybe we actually need to set a limit
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here. And that's what I want to unpack
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today because I think that it can sometimes be in that true
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sort of sense of wanting to comply with those very clear
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criteria and directives by Landreth that other parts of
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what is happening in the room at the time are not helping to
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inform necessarily when we need to put those limits in place.
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So I want to talk about that now.
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So what am I talking about? I want to give a little bit of
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context here. We have, and I stumbled across
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years ago, an incredible researcher by the name of Doctor
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Bruce Lipton. I again, talk about him in
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clinical training that I run as well because his research when I
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came across it was pretty groundbreaking for me in terms
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of understanding what that first five years of life look like for
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children. And so if you haven't checked
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him out, highly recommend it. But what was, you know, the
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setting of of this particular research?
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So Doctor Lipton is a developmental biologist whose
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work, including The Biology of Belief, explores how the first
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five years of life are a period of intense relational template
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downloading. How we explain it is that
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children are taking in every interaction, every experience
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with another and downloading that experience and loading it
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into their programme in the first five years of life without
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a philtre, without discrimination.
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It is being downloaded regardless.
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And the research says to us that from about age 5 to 7, they
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start to enact and engage in their conscious mind.
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And so that unconscious space, it kind of goes to the
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background as the conscious mind comes to the front.
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So during this period, in that first five years of life,
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children's brains are predominantly in Theta and delta
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wave states, highly absorbent, pre discriminating, taking in
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everything about how the world works.
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Children are not assessing or evaluating their environment in
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this period. They're being imprinted.
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So what does this mean in the playroom?
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Every interaction that you're having with a child five years
11:23
old or less, we are essentially helping and supporting to add to
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that programme with their interactions with us, without
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discrimination, without a philtre.
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It becomes their template and their understanding of
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relationships with others so that when we talk about how to
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support them therapeutically past the age of 5, Doctor Lipton
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talks to these creative therapies, including play
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therapy, as that opportunity for us to be able to support them.
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Play therapy has a space because we are helping to tap into that
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unconscious mind that cognitive talk based therapies cannot.
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And I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say this.
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So I know a lot of you already know this.
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So if we have a child hypothetically that we allow
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them to show us the mess of their world.
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We allow them to fully kind of up in the room, kind of get into
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that almost sometimes dysregulated state where they're
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not necessarily hurting me, hurting them or hurting the
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toys. But there becomes this huge mess
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in the playroom with the the therapist kind of there to
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support the process, but giving that space of permissiveness, it
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then leaves a space in chaos with no relational response.
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So that is what they're downloading about how they
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understand relationships work. So this becomes a developmental
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issue where we then need to start to hone in on Landreth's
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third tenant around offering a socially acceptable relationship
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as the experience between the therapist and the child in the
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playroom. That limit setting is so much
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around facilitating and modelling that socially
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acceptable relationship. He understood that the
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therapeutic relationship was reparative.
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It is showing the child what relationships can be.
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So here comes an ethical dilemma for us, right when we are
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sitting in this space of wanting the child to express themselves
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and to understand their world and to experience their world
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and make sense of their world. I am absolutely the first person
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to say let that child tell their story in their way in their
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time. We come into this dilemma when
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we're talking about children's unconscious understanding of
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relationships with others. Here comes in Doctor Bruce
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Lipton's research as a part of this consideration.
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If we are then allowing children to have that space, to almost
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kind of have that free for all of going into the playroom and
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making that mess and creating that chaos.
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Healthy relationships are reciprocal.
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They involve that mutual care, mutual regard, and mutual
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responsibility. A playroom is where the child
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has unlimited freedom and the therapist has unlimited
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permissiveness. That isn't necessarily always
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going to teach that reciprocity, right?
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It's teaching in my relationships.
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I may not be required to consider others because I can do
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this work. I can express myself.
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I can leave the mess behind and so many of us, and I have a
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client at the moment where this is the case, right where they
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will say to you, I know that I make this mess and you have to
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clean it up afterwards. I am sure that there are people
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who are listening right now who have had that scenario.
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And so we have this opportunity and in that particular scenario,
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I am certainly not going to respond in ways that adults
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outside of play therapy may have responded to that.
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Because that tells me almost immediately that there is
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something unconscious that the child is trying to show me in
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terms of their understanding of relationships with others.
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It is that I put you down, or I dominate over you, or I have
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greater control over you or I want you to feel less than.
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There is so much in that statement than just those words.
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So I'm very mindful in my response to reflect not only
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what they are trying to tell me, but what is underneath that in
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terms of their understanding of relationships.
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And there's so much there. And I'm going to get into
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transference and counter transference in a minute because
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I think that is the very crucial element in that scenario I just
15:52
gave you. So it absolutely is important
15:56
that when we are establishing relational templates for
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children in the first five years of life, we want that to be a
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template that children use and are able to take out into the
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real world. I was only talking to a parent
16:10
today where I was explaining to them around the fact that not
16:13
only is play therapy about processing trauma, it then is
16:17
offering those skills and ways of coping that can transfer
16:22
outside and generalise outside of the playroom.
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That's the goal, that's the dream when we connect with
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children in the playroom. So it really is that when we're
16:30
looking at the ACT model of Gary Landreth, if we've done it well,
16:35
if we've done it well, a limit is a moment of profound,
16:39
empathetic attunement. The therapist sees the child's
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wishes and validates it and holds the structure.
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Here is my, I guess, kind of alternative lens here.
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It's not about putting in limits and restricting children's
16:55
expression. It's actually about helping to
16:58
model, in my opinion, a regulated attuned caregiver or a
17:04
regulated attuned adult because that's the goal.
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That's what we want them to understand.
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So what am I talking about here in terms of what is influencing
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my reflections? Because I'm deeply CCPT at my
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core. So one of the things that I
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often remind supervisees and trainees in this space is the
17:23
idea that CCPT was founded on such a deep, person centred but
17:32
also psychoanalytic understanding of children and
17:35
children's play. I really do think we are doing a
17:38
disservice to CPT if we do not look at the lens
17:42
psychoanalytically. And it's something that I'm not
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sure is necessarily widely used, I guess, in terms of
17:49
interpretation. So let me unpack that a little
17:51
bit more. What we understand when we had
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the establishment of child centre play therapy, Axeline was
17:58
being trained along alongside Carl Rogers, we know this, and
18:02
was influenced by the psychoanalytic tradition of her
18:05
time. So they were groundbreaker
18:09
professionals in the space, including Anna Freud and Melanie
18:12
Klein, who came before Virginia Axeline in this space and after
18:16
as well. And so she understood Axeline
18:18
that play was largely unconscious work.
18:23
Children expressing inner material symbolically, they're
18:26
not doing it consciously. So what does this mean when we
18:30
have a child who is trying to throw sand at us in the
18:34
playroom? It's not about obviously that
18:37
they're trying to be naughty. You guys know that already.
18:39
We know that there is more unconscious material there in
18:42
terms of what the child may be trying to elicit from us in
18:46
terms of a response. And that is that psychoanalytic
18:49
lens where there is this unconscious processing of in
18:53
relationships with others. This is how I understand they
18:56
work. You provoke, you get a negative
18:59
reaction, you get negative reinforcement, all of those
19:02
things that came in those experiences in their formative
19:05
years. So what does this mean when
19:07
we're interpreting play in the playroom?
19:10
It's important that we are noticing that when children are
19:15
presenting in this way, that it's communication.
19:18
Ultimately, at the end of the day, they are communicating to
19:21
us something about what they understand the world is all
19:24
about. South.
19:25
Permitting or accommodating without a response misses the
19:29
communication. I truly believe that, and I've
19:33
said this about meeting adults as well, that I meet children of
19:37
all ages. It is very difficult for me now
19:40
sitting in a deeply CCPT space for as long as I have, that I
19:46
can't just connect with an adult without seeing that inner child
19:50
in each person that I interact with.
19:53
Because you see very quickly how they understand relationships
19:57
work from their formative years, experiences.
19:59
So adults or even teenagers who use the silent treatment, who
20:05
try and make people feel bad for hurting them, that the the the
20:10
ways that as an infant or as a young child that they have
20:15
learnt how to be able to navigate relationships with
20:19
others permeate throughout. Adults lives, it's just whether
20:22
we are willing and able to do the therapeutic work to process
20:27
that. The great thing about children
20:29
in childhood and play therapy is they get to process that and
20:32
heal from that in real time, which is amazing.
20:34
It is such a privilege to do this work and so I'm so deeply
20:38
passionate about it. But I think that one of the
20:41
things that helps me to understand whether a limit needs
20:46
to be set, really looking deeply at our psychoanalytic roots,
20:52
Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and then moving into Rogers and
20:56
Axeline, is the definition or the idea of the concepts of
21:00
transference and countertransference.
21:03
It is, in my opinion, pivotal in the way that we understand
21:07
children's play, how we understand the message that
21:11
they're conveying to us, and then how we respond.
21:14
So I'm always saying I'm listening for so much when I'm
21:17
talking to supervisors about what they're encountering in the
21:19
playroom and the challenges they're experiencing, because
21:22
often they're coming saying I just need to understand a bit
21:25
more about this or I just want to understand how to work in
21:29
this space with this child. Like what am I doing wrong?
21:31
All of those things, right? We get those questions in
21:34
supervision. What I think I often say is the
21:38
the tipping point for me is how how the therapist experienced it
21:43
in terms of that transference and countertransference.
21:46
That is the key piece of information that I'm asking for,
21:50
to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.
21:53
So transference, what am I talking about here?
21:55
Transference. We're talking about the
21:57
unconscious mind, the psychoanalytic lens of child
21:59
centre play therapy, right? So transference is when the
22:02
child is bringing into the playroom their experience of
22:05
past or current relationships. So they are relating to the
22:09
therapist as if the therapist was someone else.
22:12
So we often are in real time in interactions with children.
22:16
They are unconsciously projecting onto US as say, their
22:19
parent. So if outside of the playroom,
22:22
just as a hypothetical example, if outside of the playroom, the
22:26
child has a parent that does everything for them.
22:29
And we are deeply in the trenches of that with some of
22:32
the parents and families that have come out of kind of post
22:37
COVID world. And there's all sorts of
22:39
conversations around that that I won't get off track with for
22:44
today. But the idea of having parents
22:46
who are jumping in to fix things for their child because they are
22:50
wanting, wanting their child to have a happy life.
22:52
And we don't need to go into that any further.
22:54
But what I will say is you will then have a child that will come
22:57
into the playroom and expect me as a therapist to do everything
23:00
for them. So when we're looking at it from
23:03
that psychoanalytic lens, in the first five years of life, in
23:06
their downloading of their understanding without
23:09
discrimination of relationships with others, they have had
23:12
repeated experiences where they understand that adults do
23:16
everything for them. So when we come into the
23:19
playroom and we start to see that transference of them
23:22
interacting with us in a way that is very similar to how they
23:27
treat others outside of play therapy, the counter
23:29
transference is what it gets us feeling.
23:33
It's such huge information to understand so much about the
23:39
world of the child when we take notice of what comes up for us,
23:43
when we notice our experience and our response in the moment.
23:47
So it's often the unconscious material the child cannot speak
23:51
about. I think counter transference is
23:55
absolutely critical here in really deeply understanding and
23:59
hearing children's stories. So why am I bringing this
24:04
together to talk about it when we're talking about messes in
24:07
the playroom? Okay, so here is my perspective.
24:11
Here is my suggestion, I guess around why this is influential
24:16
and why this is important. If I have a child who is in the
24:20
playroom, who is choosing to, and you can see my shells behind
24:24
me, if they're choosing to pull all of that off the shelves,
24:28
they're choosing to pull my teddies off from the top.
24:30
They're then starting to pull and create that chaos in the
24:34
dolls house. And then maybe here next to me
24:36
where my kitchen is, they start to upend my basket of food.
24:41
The immediate counter transference for me is
24:45
overwhelm. Why?
24:47
Because what I'm trying to do in that moment is stay fully
24:51
present with the child. To me, in that moment, it can
24:55
often feel like chaos and overwhelm.
24:58
Children are absolutely wanting us to understand what it feels
25:02
like to be them in their world. We understand that fully.
25:07
The step for me, though, is that if their world is typified by
25:13
chaos and confusion and destruction and maybe even
25:19
violence, and they are showing me through the mess that all of
25:23
this is happening at once. There is for me a calling within
25:27
myself when we talk about that counter transference to offer
25:32
that limit setting to help support that regulation and
25:36
containment in the room. Because I want that child to
25:39
tell their story. But I also know that they are
25:43
unconsciously playing out their experience right now.
25:45
So they don't have the cognitive space to understand that yes,
25:49
I'm telling my story, but I'm doing it safely.
25:52
That's where we come in as the play therapist because the
25:56
moment if we are talking about our key tenets of CCPT because
26:01
I'm passionate about being truly adhering to our approach of
26:08
CCPT, right? Gary Landers talks about
26:12
empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard.
26:15
They are the three parts of us as play therapists that needs to
26:20
show up each and every day in the room for our children.
26:23
And that is absolutely nothing to do with kind of the mess
26:26
created or what that transition out to the waiting room looks
26:30
like or the next client that's waiting out in the waiting room.
26:33
I'm not talking about any of that.
26:34
What I'm talking about very specifically is what is required
26:38
of us as child centre play therapist to truly be be aligned
26:41
with our framework and it's that empathy, congruence and
26:44
unconditional positive regard. So I know the moment my
26:50
congruence is impacted, I no longer am effective in holding
26:55
limits in the playroom. Because the moment that I start
26:59
seeing a child who is pulling things down, who is making and
27:04
creating a mess in the playroom where it becomes possibly a
27:08
safety issue. If they are going to potentially
27:09
trip over things because it's all over the floor or whatever
27:12
that looks like. I know my head.
27:15
And I am one of those practitioners who is present in
27:18
the playroom, I assure you. But that moment where I'm kind
27:21
of like, oh, that child might actually trip over and fall.
27:25
Oh, I'm worried about that. Oh, I'm worried that they may
27:27
actually fall on me. The moment any of that comes up
27:31
is the moment I put in a therapeutic limit.
27:33
And I know that might be controversial to say, but I
27:36
think that there is a level of children trying to communicate
27:39
to us unconsciously when they are making that mess in the
27:43
playroom. Help.
27:44
Help me. I am out of control right now.
27:48
I am dysregulated. I am expressing to you absolute
27:53
chaos and destruction and mess and uncertainty and
27:59
unpredictability, and none of those things are healthy
28:03
experiences for children. None of those.
28:06
So I want to make sure that children know when they come
28:10
into the playroom and they connect with me, that I'm going
28:13
to hold those boundaries. I want them to tell their story.
28:16
I'm deeply, deeply passionate about that.
28:18
But I also want to make sure that it's achievable for me and
28:22
achievable for the child. And as soon as we get to that
28:25
point outside of their window of tolerance where they become
28:27
dysregulated and they're pulling things on the ground and it's
28:30
just an absolute free for all of mess for 45 minutes, 50 minute
28:34
session. I've lost the child and I've
28:36
lost myself in that process. And my argument is then I'm not
28:40
truly congruent. I'm not truly present.
28:43
So if you find you are encountering situations like
28:46
that, I really want to offer an alternative here to consider
28:50
what is the transference and counter transference coming up
28:53
for you? Because it really is about the
28:58
child creating destruction in the playroom and the therapist
29:01
feeling frustrated, anxious, exhausted, depleted.
29:05
That's counter transference, right?
29:07
That's the information that we're looking for.
29:09
It may be telling us about the child's own experience, their
29:12
own overwhelmed, their own inner chaos, their own unmet needs in
29:17
relationships with others, where that chaos and uncertainty and
29:22
destruction happened and there wasn't somebody there to hold
29:26
those emotional regulation boundaries as well as those
29:30
physical safety boundaries. So to respond to it in an
29:34
empathetic, well set limit is to help metabolise the unconscious
29:40
material to hold what the child cannot yet hold themselves.
29:46
And that would be my argument. So the permissive playroom is
29:50
not more therapeutic. I would argue maybe it's
29:54
potentially missing some of that crucial information I've just
29:57
talked about because it forgets when children's play is
30:01
unconscious communication, their behaviour carries that
30:04
transference and our counter transference is that data.
30:08
It's not an inference, it's what we are experiencing and
30:11
understanding in their message and then communication in real
30:15
time. So this is kind of why I am
30:18
sitting in that space. So how can we move with our
30:23
tenants of CCPT to make sure that we are absolutely
30:28
connecting with the child, letting them tell their story in
30:31
their way, in their time. The three conditions of CCPT,
30:37
empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard.
30:39
As I said, they are active ingredients in CCPT.
30:42
It is how change happens. So congruence is the condition
30:47
most at risk when limits are only set for those three
30:52
conditions only of hurting themselves, hurting us or
30:55
hurting the toys. We want to be congruent, to be
30:58
our most authentic, honest self and aware self as the therapist.
31:04
And I absolutely want to lean into the argument as well that
31:08
it's not about the therapist stuff when they come into the
31:10
playroom, right? I'm not, I'm certainly not going
31:13
down that Ave to say that when a therapist is activated that they
31:19
need to take care of themselves. But it really is more about when
31:22
you are activated, when you are noticing that counter transfer
31:26
material, stopping and noticing that to help inform your
31:30
reflections because it's really, really valuable information to
31:34
tell us about what the child may need in terms of that support.
31:38
So it's very much around all. My argument would be a therapist
31:43
who tolerates behaviour that genuinely activates them is no
31:47
longer congruent and therefore not necessarily practising CCPT
31:54
controversial. And are you guys?
31:56
But I want to kind of put, I guess across my argument in sort
32:00
of summarising this to pull it together.
32:02
Is this idea of unconditional positive regard, What does that
32:06
mean? What does that mean?
32:07
We we use that term all the time, but what are we actually
32:11
talking about here? It is unconditional regard for
32:14
the child, not unconditional regard for every behaviour the
32:20
child enacts in the playroom. So Rodgers and Landreth both
32:25
understood this. So to regard the child
32:28
unconditionally includes holding limits when their behaviour
32:33
requires it because we hold them as a whole person, not just the
32:38
behaviour we tolerate. Let's talk about the second one,
32:41
empathy. So why limits?
32:44
Actually, it's what limits, excuse me, actually express.
32:47
So a well set limit is one of the most empathetic things we
32:52
can offer. Certainly in the beginning limit
32:54
setting was one of those challenges for me as a beginning
32:58
play therapist because again, you see it in that space of
33:00
wanting to offer that permissiveness.
33:02
What I have learned over time, and certainly we've talked about
33:06
this in other episodes when we, I guess reflect on the nervous
33:10
system and the neuroscience of the brain and what is happening
33:14
in the CCPT playroom while we're doing limits right, it is
33:17
helping in that Co regulation space by proxy.
33:20
So we are actually helping them empathetically by putting some
33:24
of those limits in place. It says I see what you wish to
33:27
do, I understand why and I'm going to hold the structure
33:32
because you are too important for me to let this happen.
33:37
Let me read that again. What it says when we have
33:41
empathy in the playroom, when we have a child who is making mess,
33:46
who is showing us that chaos and destruction, We also have a lens
33:51
to say, I see what you wish to do.
33:55
I understand why and I'm going to hold the structure because
34:00
you are too important to me to let this happen.
34:06
So the most loving caregivers in any child's life set limits
34:11
empathetically and CCPT was built on this model of a
34:15
relational dynamic dynamic. So summarising I guess my
34:19
arguments here around if you have a child that is
34:22
consistently making male mess, showing chaos and destruction in
34:28
the playroom to consider these reflections.
34:31
So we've got the four pillars here around Landrett's criteria.
34:34
It's not optional. The criteria of limit setting is
34:38
absolute. It is if it's going to hurt the
34:41
childhood, also hurt the toys. I want to add a second layer
34:45
though of Doctor Bruce Lipton's research on how children are
34:48
downloading without discrimination their
34:50
understanding of relationships with others #3 I want to talk
34:54
about the psychoanalytic layer that deeply comes from Anna
34:58
Freud and Melanie Klein and axoline as we moved into the
35:03
person centred space, but deeply affected and deeply influenced
35:06
by our psychoanalytic roots as child centre play therapists
35:10
looking at unconscious communication and
35:13
countertransference is our clinical data.
35:17
It's what sets us apart when we can not only look at that
35:20
relationship but then understand from a transference and
35:22
countertransference at a deep level what the child is trying
35:27
to communicate to us and what help they need from us, which
35:30
sometimes is therapeutic limits. Congruence requires honest
35:35
internal awareness, not performed permissiveness in the
35:41
playroom. So when I argue for limit
35:43
setting as a clinical intervention, I'm not arguing
35:46
for less freedom for children. I want there to be that space
35:49
for children to tell their story in their way, in their time.
35:52
I'm arguing for more depth here, more attunement and more CCPT,
35:58
not less. So this is something that I
36:01
wanted to offer to our community as a reflection to get us
36:05
thinking about it. And thinking about what does
36:08
that mean for us the next time? And I want to offer this
36:12
invitation to you all. In closing, the next time you
36:15
set a limit in the playroom, notice what happens in you, in
36:20
the child, and in the room. That moment is one of the
36:25
richest clinical moments CCPT offers.
36:28
Truly, you guys, truly. I'm deeply passionate about us
36:33
pulling together not only our landrid teachings but also that
36:37
psychoanalytic lens where we really are diving into the
36:40
unconscious play of children, the unconscious mind, how they
36:43
process their unconscious experiences and what that
36:46
transference and countertransference looks like
36:48
in the playroom. It's so deeply, deeply essential
36:51
for our practise. Look, I hope you've enjoyed this
36:54
episode. It's been a little bit
36:56
different, but I really wanted to talk about that idea of mess
36:59
in the playroom and offer an alternative position.
37:02
So I hope that you've enjoyed this and it's added tools to
37:05
your toolkit and started the conversation around what that
37:08
looks like. So if you are interested, please
37:11
check us out on Instagram, on Facebook and on TikTok.
37:16
We also have our play therapy Circle subscription.
37:21
So we have a free community subscription for anyone who
37:23
wants to connect with us. All of us deeply passionate
37:26
about CCPT. Check us out for our podcast on
37:29
YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
37:31
But most importantly, it's important for you to take care
37:34
of yourselves and each other. Have a great rest of your week.
37:38
I will be coming from Victoria next week for our next episode,
37:44
so stay tuned. I'm going to take you on the
37:46
road. If you want to follow along on
37:48
my adventures, follow us along on Instagram and TikTok.
37:51
You'll be able to see us there, but have a lovely rest of your
37:54
week go well and I will see you again soon.
37:57
Bye. Thank you so much for being here
38:01
for another episode of The Play Therapy Circle.
38:04
If anything resonated with you today, I'd love it if you could
38:08
follow the podcast, share it with a colleague, or leave a
38:11
short review. It really helps others find our
38:14
circle. And if you have a topic or
38:16
question you'd love me to explore, I'd love to hear from
38:19
you. This space is for you, and I
38:22
want it to feel like a conversation.
38:25
Until next time, take care of yourself and remember you belong
38:29
here.