Incidentally, I am not actually a Play Therapist. I am a Play Therapist in training. Actually I am a Therapeutic Play Practitioner in training. Next year I will be a Play Therapist in training. It is all very complicated.

Play therapy is, as you may have guessed, therapy through play. Generally it is aimed at children usually under 11, although there are play therapists who work with teenagers and even adults. It works largely within metaphors through the play resources and thus with the subconscious. The primary aim is to give the child the space to sort things out for themselves. It is hard sometimes to explain how it works, but the evidence is that it does. I have currently done about 20 sessions myself and my feeling is that the power in what I am doing is largely behind the fact that the child gets 40 minutes a week with someone where they are able to do whatever they want, where there are no judgements (good or bad), where no one is telling them what to do or how to do it…. where they can just be. A child can sit in silence for 40 minutes if that is what they need (though I will admit that I am thankful that none of my 3 children have done so yet, as it would be a challenge to sit with someone in silence for 40 minutes and remain with them mentally rather than think about my own problems). This is an incredibly powerful thing as when you think about it, most children (and probably most adults) spend a large proportion of their life doing what they have been told to do and being judged for it in some way or another.

It really is an incredible thing and I am so very proud to be a part of it, to be a part of making a difference in these children’s lives.

However, it is not without its difficulties. I am having to learn to try to put these children aside in my mind after their sessions and this is difficult for me. I am an obsessive sort of person, I always have been, but it is finally beginning to exhaust me. This is not helped by the fact that I am a Play Therapist on Mondays and then between Tuesday and Friday I squeeze in 40 hours of work as a Deputy Manager of a Day Nursery. I work very closely with children who have equal difficulties to those that I work with as a therapist and that is a lot for my mind to cope with. It saddens me that there are so many young children out there with such deep emotional difficulties. I would like to take all those worries and struggles away from them but instead I must help them find ways to manage them, to cope with them themselves because I cannot fix their lives.

I am finding ways to clear my mind, to relax (I am not a relaxed sort of person) and to use my free time in a way that regenerates me.

Unfortunately this week I have a cold, and having just worked around 48 hours this week I am extraordinarily exhausted and I feel that I will never feel awake again.

My husband has made me an origami butterfly and I am hopeful that will make everything well.

There are many reasons behind my love of Winnie the Pooh. I am of course referring to the books by A.A.Milne and not the travesty that is the Disney version. I am not convinced that Winnie the Pooh can ever be fully portrayed on the screen because it is the words that make it so magical – the vision is to be imagined.

Pooh is a wonderfully loveable character intended to amuse readers with his simple thoughts and antics. However, on closer look the reader will realise that he is not at all ‘simple’, he is in fact incredibly wise (as are most of the characters).

We could learn a lot from his eternal optimism and love for those that are close to him and in his faith that every day will be a good day. It is very easy to get caught up in worries and concerns about the future – both short and long term, to forget to assure those that we love that they are loved and to start a day convinced that it will not go well.

Good things happen every day, no matter how small they might be, but they often go unnoticed, overshadowed by the things that we perceive as ‘bad’. We all have people in our lives that we love in some way or another but it is up to us to make sure that they know how important they are to us.

“What day is it?”
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favourite day,” said Pooh.”  

Pooh is right, we should embrace each day as our favourite day but in doing so we must embrace what we consider to be negative. We must embrace what we are worried and concerned about because that is as much a part of our lives and who we are as what we might think of as good. This article from The Guardian shows us how by constantly chasing security and safety we are actually increasing the risk in our lives. We can choose to stay inside but the increased risk of heart disease as a result is far higher than the risk of something happening to us when we are outside.

I am an insecure person in many ways, I worry constantly about seemingly tiny elements of my life. I worry that I am not good enough, that I am not thoughtful enough, that I am not helpful enough…. but perhaps I need to embrace those elements of myself rather than constantly feeling as though I am in battle with them.