Potential Space
A held & playful space for creative therapists
Play Therapy
Colour the Clouds is the name of my private therapy practice. A second website may come as this practice builds. Currently I work with clients for four days a week through my local council (so not privately) where I am also a Specialist SEMH Teacher, Advisor and Trainer and therefore I only tend to have time for a couple of clients on my day off. I like also to allow time for my own creative practice and of course for Potential Space.
Life isn’t all sweetness. Imprints of life’s bitterness even pre-birth can pervade our lives and our very being, often playing havoc with our relationship to the world, ourselves and other. Play Therapy in all its glory aims to counterbalance things a little for the child. It brings some sugar sure, for play should be predominantly joyful, but it also brings with it potential mastery of fearful and vulnerable lived experiences, the chance to take the sting or charge away and thus the chance to heal.
Image: Lidya Nada on Unsplash
& Back to Potential Space...
Our role in ‘being’ a play therapist is, even within a non-directive form of therapy, an active one. ‘Being with’ a child as they do what is needed, be it consciously or unconsciously, is no easy feat. Holding space so that a child feels able to bring all of who they are or who they deem themselves to be, secretly, shamefully... is also something that can take its toll on us as therapists, emotionally, mentally and physically. It’s bitter/sweet for us too.
Self-care is of paramount importance here, as is the cultivation of our own creative practice. The two are of course inextricably linked. We come closer to ourselves and to meeting our own inner needs when we give intentional and creative space to, and find ways to cultivate, what’s alive in us. This is obviously something that needs to occur outside of but in conjunction with our practice as therapists. And doing so within a collective of other like-minded creative therapists can help us to embed this practice further.
This is Potential Space.
Image: by my daughter (mixed media)
If you are interested in finding out more about my Potential Space offer/s please do contact me.
Or if you are interesting in referring a child for Play Therapy then do feel free to contact me via the same email address.
Image: Janita Sumeiko on Unsplash
