People sometimes look at me sideways when I use the word play. I understand why. It sounds light, a bit silly, possibly something you grew out of. And therapy, especially when you've finally worked up the courage to be there, does not feel like the place for lightness.
So I want to tell you what I actually mean. Because when I talk about play, I'm not talking about games, jokes, or laughing together (although sometimes that happens too). I'm talking about a specific quality of presence that I watch for in sessions. A state. And when it arrives, it's the moment I know something real is about to happen.
What most of us bring into the room
Most people come to therapy and work hard at it. They think carefully before they speak. They arrive with a sense of what they want to cover. They explain themselves thoroughly, make sure I'm following along, check that what they're saying makes sense.
This is completely understandable. Being in a room with someone, talking about the parts of yourself you haven't fully sorted out, takes courage. Of course you manage how you come across. Most of us do, at least at the start.
What I notice, sitting with people, is the editing happening in real time. The slight pause before speaking, where something gets decided. The way a story gets tidied as it's told, the sharp edges smoothed before they reach the air.
There's nothing wrong with any of that. But there's a version of the session where everything is very coherent, very considered, and something essential keeps staying just out of reach. Not because the person isn't trying. Because trying, in a certain careful way, is exactly what's keeping the door closed.
What it looks like when it arrives
There's usually a moment, somewhere in a session, where something shifts. It's quiet. It doesn't announce itself.
Someone says something they clearly didn't plan to say. They pause afterwards, slightly surprised by themselves. The quality of the room changes. Something that was at a slight remove is suddenly right here.
Or someone follows a thread that has nothing obvious to do with what we were talking about. A memory from nowhere. An image that floated up. They follow it anyway, just to see, without needing it to arrive anywhere useful. And it does. It always does.
Or someone notices a part of themselves they've been quietly managing, the part that's furious, or frightened, or wanting something they've decided they're not allowed to want. And instead of explaining it away, they get curious about it. Just for a moment. Just enough.
That's play. That's exactly what I mean. The moment when you stop performing the session and start being in it. When something gets said before it gets edited. When you're following something real rather than presenting something prepared.
Why it's where everything changes
Here's what I notice, sitting with people in this work. Understanding yourself doesn't change you. Not on its own.
You can understand your patterns perfectly, trace them back to exactly where they started, articulate them to anyone who will listen, and still find yourself doing the same thing on a Tuesday afternoon when you're tired and the situation has just the right shape to it. Understanding is not nothing. But it lives in the head, and the head is not where patterns actually run.
What changes things is when something is felt rather than understood. When something slips through before you've managed it. When you're surprised by yourself, by what came out of your mouth, by what's suddenly present in the room. That's the moment of real contact with your own experience. And that's the moment things start to move.
The play state is where that becomes possible. Not because it's relaxed or easy, it often isn't. But because when you're genuinely present, when you've set down the clipboard for a moment, something true has room to surface. Something that your careful, responsible, highly capable self has been keeping very sensibly out of the room.
What gets in the way
The thing that makes this hard is that the habit of careful self-presentation usually developed for a good reason. In environments where being unguarded had consequences, where showing the wrong thing meant something, where getting it right mattered, you learned to manage. That was intelligent. It kept something protected.
What it costs, over time, is access to the felt experience underneath. You cannot be genuinely surprised by yourself while you are carefully managing how you come across. The two states don't coexist.
In therapy, we don't try to wrestle that habit away from you. We build, slowly and together, enough of a sense of ease that it becomes possible to set it down for a moment. That's when play becomes available. And when play becomes available, the things that felt just out of reach start to move.
What my role is in this
I want to be honest about something, because I think it matters.
Getting to the play state is not something you do alone, or something I instruct you toward. It's not a technique you practise and then arrive at. It's something that happens between two people when enough ease has built up that the editing becomes optional.
My job is to help create that ease. Not by being relentlessly warm or by asking the right questions at the right time, though both of those things matter. But by being genuinely curious about you, unhurried, not needing you to perform or progress or arrive anywhere in particular. When I'm not evaluating you, something in you starts to stop evaluating itself.
That's the shift. It's slow, sometimes. It takes however long it takes. But I'm watching for it in every session, and when it arrives, even briefly, I follow it. Because that's where you actually are. And that's where the work becomes real.
Sometimes we go beyond words entirely, if that opens up for you. A drawing that captures something language can't. An image. A feeling given a shape before it has a name. Not because it's required, but because sometimes it's the most direct route to something true.
A small invitation, before you go.
Stuart Brown, who has spent decades studying play in adults, suggests starting here: think back to what made you completely lose track of time as a child. Not to go back to that exact thing, but to find the feeling underneath it. What was the quality of that absorption? That's what you're looking for now, in whatever form it takes in your current life.
Some things that tend to open the door:
- Doing something with your hands that has no outcome attached. Cooking something unfamiliar. Drawing something that doesn't have to look like anything.
- Going somewhere without a plan. A walk with no destination. Wandering rather than arriving.
- Making something just to make it. Writing a few lines no one will read. Arranging flowers. Building something small.
- Playing with a child or an animal. Not supervising. Actually playing.
- Laughing at something genuinely silly. Watching something light. Letting yourself be entertained without it being productive.
None of these are prescriptions. The point is simply to notice which one makes something in you go yes. Follow that. That's enough to start.
You don't have to have yourself figured out before you reach out. That's not a prerequisite. That's what the sessions are for.
-- Mae
If something in this felt familiar, that's worth exploring. I offer a free 15-minute consultation to see whether working together feels right. No commitment. Just a conversation.
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