Lightbulb moment.

This post relates to the previous post with the therapeutic story. I guess you know by now that my thoughts bounce around haphazardly. That happened again yesterday. I have been watching a crime drama that entailed young lads being stabbed. So this was my thought progression - probably only took a few seconds to reach the end of it and for the tears to start:

Terrible how so many young men are being stabbed in this country at present - such an horrific loss of young lives - a past gang member came to a school where I worked to talk to the children about his life before prison and how he has turned his life around to be an outreach worker trying to prevent children from harming others and themselves - wonder if any of those children listening to him still thought his younger life was thrilling and exciting - a few of the children with whom I have worked would have thought so - wonder how they are all doing - especially B* - hope he was not involved in a knife murder of a young lad in his area - wonder how T is doing who was at B's school - I wrote that therapeutic story for her - she changed it completely so it was nothing like I had written.

And then the tears started streaming down my face.

The lightbulb moment. A realisation. The tears would not stop.

As a play therapy student, one of the assignments we were given, was to create a therapeutic story for one of our clients. I did not know where to start even though we were given the theory and given a plan of how such a story works. I popped into a local charity shop to have a look at the toys, hoping for some inspiration. There 'she' was a bright pink little puppy cuddly toy. I bought it and when I got home, rooted out some other toys in my play therapy toolkit and the story then evolved quite easily. I was very proud I had managed to finish it.

It was a bit more difficult trying to get T to listen to the story as I work in a non-directive way. That meant she always had autonomy over her sessions so she chose what she wanted to do. Even though it was for an assignment and I needed it to happen, all I could do was to offer it to her as another possible activity in her session. She took a few weeks to take the bait. I was so pleased, at last I could read her this story that related to her issues. I hoped it would help her.

All the cuddly toy characters were available for her to hold or do the actions. She picked up the pink puppy as soon as I started reading the story. My mind was racing, I was so relieved, she was holding the main character, that depicted herself in the story. This would be helpful for my assignment. [Not what a play therapist should be thinking but I was a student play therapist who had assignments to complete.]

She patiently listened to two or three paragraphs before she took off around the room with the pink puppy, throwing it in the air carelessly. Nooooo. That was not meant to happen. She had reverted back to a past role playing activity we had done for months whereby the baddies were after us and we had to kill them with machine guns but they would still capture us and throw us in the bin. But when they were sleeping at night, we would escape. Pink puppy was now ensconced in this activity. I had to go along with it as this was her session so it was her choice, not mine.

Our roles interchanged and T as a baddie hit the pink puppy so hard, I had a visceral reaction. I felt sick. A thought flashed through my head that if that had been a real puppy, she would have killed it with the force of one of those blows. [I am a real dog lover and have often had a go at people hurting dogs but this was a play therapy session, so I could not make my stuff her stuff.]

She threw pink puppy to me so I could also whack it. I timidly bopped it. She screamed at me to hit it harder. I tried but I just could not do it. She was frustrated with me so she grabbed it and hit it even harder. I really wanted to vomit. I had to look away. My mind was thinking this is only a cuddly toy but my whole body was telling me otherwise.

We were then all thrown in the bin area by the baddies but managed to escape when they were asleep as usual. For the next month, pink puppy was involved in this role play story with us each week. I dreaded it when the time came for pink puppy to be hammered with such force. I took this issue to my clinical supervision. I explained what happened and my reaction. My supervisor asked 'who was really the pink puppy in the story?' I told her that it was my client T. She looked at me quizzically but did not say anything. I wondered why tears were flowing out of my eyes and I could not stop them. My supervisor then told me to think it over.

Yesterday, almost twelve years later, the realisation dawned. Who was really pink puppy in that moment getting such a thrashing?

It was me.

That is why my whole body shuddered and reacted in such a way. And the tears fell silently from my eyes. The same reaction I had had so often as a child. I suffered in silence as I knew if I made any noise the beatings would just come down with greater force.

I had written a very different story for my client to deal with issues she was experiencing but maybe she was not ready to deal with those issues yet and so she reverted back to a role play she had come to grips with during her intervention. Fascinating.

*Both of the client's initials have been changed for safeguarding.