First Ponderings

This is the very first episode of Pondering Play and Therapy. Julie and Philippa share their journey to creating this first episode, their hopes for the podcast and their (hopefully) listeners. 
Julie and Philippa have approached this adventure playfully but very differently, one with caution, the other highly excited but with a shared love of all things play and playfulness. 

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Transcript

24.09 PP&T Ep 1

[00:00:00] 

Welcome to Pondering Play and Therapy. I'm Philippa, and I'm Julie, and this is our very first episode, and we've simply called it First Ponderings.

And Philippa, tell me about your morning so far. Well, I've been very excited about doing this first one. I've been up since half past five. I've been taking notes on what we're doing. I've been for a walk to try and calm myself down from all the energy and I just can't wait to get started Julie. But I think that you might feel slightly differently about this than I do.

Yes, I'm thinking, you and I, know each other fairly well in a professional role, and we end up having these very long, detailed, wonderful conversations about working with families and play, and we've decided that we'd like to get those conversations out there. I feel very nervous about doing [00:01:00] that, whereas you feel very excited about that.

So, I was not up at half past five, I was up at half past seven, I went for a swim in order to not think about it. So, I'm going to ask you to start with. Philippa, what is it that got you so excited this morning and wanting to say something about pondering play and therapy beyond just you and I. What got you so excited?

Well, I think there's, there are several things. One is it's something new that we, I have never done. I have no idea what we're doing or how we're going to do it or any of those sorts of things. But I guess, What allows me to be excited about the not knowing is that I trust the relationship with you and I know that we'll be okay and that we'll figure it out.

And I guess that's from [00:02:00] years of not knowing and failing and being able to kind of succeed. And I just think kind of play is such an important part of everybody's. life, whether you're a newborn baby or whether you're 91. We all should play and often with families, with people, with friends, play can be tricky and can be hard and We have some really great and interesting conversations where we recognize that and I think it would be really useful and hopefully helpful for other people sometimes to hear some of those conversations.

And so it's the new, it's the doing something new and kind of being excited about that, but also hopefully sharing our experience. [00:03:00] with other people. Why are you doing it, Julie? Yeah, so I'm, I'm, for you, this, this experience of doing a podcast, which neither of us have ever done before, is making you feel very excited and very playful and very positive.

And it's giving you a huge amount of energy. But I'm noticing, interestingly, what it's doing to me, when I meet something new, it causes me a lot of nervousness and fear and a sense of, I might fail and so I want to step back. So even in the process of doing this podcast, you and I are not coming at it with the same energy or the same playfulness.

This is a playful adventure. But this playfulness for me feels a bit scary. It's making me want to withdraw. It was making me this morning wishing that you were ill and couldn't, [00:04:00] couldn't have this meeting this morning. Oh no, dearly, we would have been on here at eight o'clock if we'd got about. But, we wanted to start by saying to listeners, and we have no idea who our listeners will be.

It might just be one of our neighbours, or one of our colleagues, or one of your children, or my cat, or your dog, who knows, but we hope there might be some other listeners beyond that. And Julie, just before we do that, I just wondered why you are doing it? So you've said how you're feeling, but why are you doing it?

Why am I doing it? Because I think underneath that nervousness and that trepidation and that fear of getting it wrong, which is, you know, themes for me in life, I have a sense with you that play is deeply important in human life. [00:05:00] And in my experience with. friends and family and as a professional, as somebody who works with children through play and through therapy.

It's something that other people often are afraid of or dismiss or kind of poo poo and say, Oh, well, I'm done with play. But my deep interest is in and conviction is that play is needed and is, is life giving right through the human lifespan. But I don't meet that often. in other people. So like you, I, so you and I have the same base thought, but actually our expression of it is quite different at the moment.

Yeah. That will change. Does that answer your question? Absolutely. Okay. Carry on, carry on. So we wanted to say, Inevitably, you and I, because we work, you know, we know each other in a professional situation where [00:06:00] we both, we meet each other for consultation about our families that we work with as therapists, counsellors, social worker, working with families.

who have experienced some trauma or some disruption in their relationship. And we use play as one of the tools to help those families connect. So inevitably, we will hark back to or remember cases that we have worked with. And we will do our very best to anonymize, well we will always anonymize and we will always keep any details out of our description of those families.

But inevitably there may well be a family at some point that notice that the family being described in some way reflects their situation or resonates [00:07:00] with them. And it may well be that family or may well be a composite of several families. But if you notice that we would invite listeners to receive that in the spirit in which it is intended to, to give a broad generalized example of something in order to help everybody's awareness.

of how play and therapy can work together. Um, so we just wanted to, to say that we are deeply grateful for all the families we've worked with and very respectful of the confidentiality that we contracted with for those families. And we will be telling, you know, composite and small scenes from some of our therapy situations.

And if somebody recognises themselves, or thinks they recognise themselves, please let us know if that wasn't okay. But receive it in the spirit in which it's [00:08:00] intended, to help everybody's awareness and understanding. So I will need to script that bit, yeah. And I think it's just such a privilege, isn't it?

We've had, I just think that we've had a privileged, career that we've been able to work with families, with children, with colleagues, with professionals, with really great experts that have kind of given us the knowledge and the experience that we are hoping to share with whoever is going to listen to this.

And I suppose that's, you know, it's, it's, it's with. That knowing and holding that privilege that we're doing this and it's a balance, I think, don't you, between kind of how to share the knowledge, the experience, the, you know, the pitfalls, the successes that you've had with people coming through or coming up.

You're a lecturer, so you're sharing your experience with people there. [00:09:00] We're both supervisors, so we're sharing our experience there. So we have to take the knowledge that we've gained from the work that we've done, and that in some ways helps the next set of families or the next contacts that come, through, or even our own relationships, whatever they are to benefit, I guess, from, what's been before, and whilst hopefully kind of, being very mindful of the privilege that we've had with each individual family.

It does script how we go forward with that. and adding to that, that while between us, we've probably had about 50 or 60 years of professional experience. Julie, we don't have to go that far, do we? We've had a long time. I've been doing it since my mid 20s. Yeah. So we've been doing, we've got many, many years of experience [00:10:00] and Does that make me an expert?

 I don't like to hold that hat. I'm forever learning. I'm forever meeting each family or each child or each parent as, as a new relationship. And the way I play with one child is different to the way I play with the next child, because that child is part of that relationship. Um, so while we have a lot of experience between us, And as you said, the pitfalls and the mistakes, and there have been many, and we've talked about lots of those moments, and we hope to share some of those as well.

Um, does that make us experts? I, I, yeah, I, I have a lot of tales to tell. And if those tales can be of use to other people in developing their own expertise and their own ways, I Then I'd be really happy to know [00:11:00] about that. What I try and do with my students is not make them mini me's in their development as playful therapists.

I want, it's the person who becomes the therapist or becomes the parent, or is that it's the person and not the strategies or techniques or anything they're doing. It's how can they find the playfulness within themselves? And that will be different to my playfulness. Yeah. And it's different in families, isn't it, as well?

 you know, people have, two, three, four, five, five children and you play with each child differently. It doesn't mean that you prefer playing with your first child to your third child, but your first child needs something different than your third child. You've got more experience by the time you get to the third child, but often people will say they feel like less.

less of an expert parenting kind of later children than they do [00:12:00] earlier children or and and that's the same isn't it it's about being in the moment in the play with whoever you're playing with whether it's your granny and you're playing cards Or it's your two year old and you're playing Peppa Pig, or it's, um, a little person who's come for, you know, for, for some therapy for trauma or something.

Each of those plays are going to be different and in that moment, you just bring kind of who you are and, but our experience and our past has influenced us. where we are, aren't we? And I guess that's what we're, we're hoping to share is that we're not saying this is how you've got to do it. What we're saying is these are our ponderings about it.

This is our thoughts about it. This is our experience about it. And hopefully it's helpful for you. Let us know, tell us about it. And something we were talking about before we [00:13:00] pressed the record button there was, you know, when each of us and any listeners, you know, hear something being spoken about, or if I read something, sometimes that really resonates with me.

I really connect with it. And I get quite excited if somebody writes something or I hear something or see something in a film that I've had that experience. And I, I connect with it, I resonate with it. It confirms that what my experience is, is a human experience that others have shared. And I remember that as a child, reading something in a book and thinking, gosh, that character has had my experience.

I almost got a bit annoyed with them to begin with, and then I realized they've printed thousands of these books. So other children are reading about that as well. So I'm not so alone. That sense of when I hear something that resonates with my experience, I can feel not alone. [00:14:00] And it can validate my experience.

So people listening, uh, may hear things that, that really boost them and validate, but equally you were saying about what happens. when you might connect with something and then it has a very different feeling. Can you say a bit more about that when it doesn't boost, when it doesn't validate? I suppose we were thinking a little bit about that can feel quite sad, can't it, that you Notice maybe what you didn't experience, or haven't had, or that you missed out on and now that you've found it.

How, how can you kind of have that experience? Maybe, you know, thinking about a child that doesn't experience being played with or doesn't have a bedtime story, but then you become a parent at 30 and you're reading your child that bedtime story and it [00:15:00] can kind of feel like, But where was my story when I was a child and where do you put that and how, how, do you sit with that and how do you be compassionate to yourself that you can be sad about reading a bedtime story and happy at the same time you can be pleased to be reading it to your child and sad you didn't experience that as a child or that you didn't have something to play with or you know, that you missed playing with, with, with a specific person or something like that.

And I guess that's one of the things that I know we talked about was that we're not going to talk about play as this amazing, wonderful thing that makes everything joyful, because actually play can be really hard. And I think we're going to cover that in the next episode, but I suppose when we're sharing our experiences, we want to share all of it.

Don't we? The sadness That can go with it, the grief and the loss. I [00:16:00] can come with just not having that or not having the person around to be able to see where you've got to or how you play or, you know, for me, my Nan, I played cards and frustration and things like that with my Nan and I really miss playing those games.

I don't think I've ever played frustration again since, since my Nan's passed because it, you know, it, it, It's sad, but then there's card games that I teach to, to the younger generation that my nan taught me and that gives me pleasure. So there's a, so there's a, there's a, there's a both to it, isn't there?

Yeah. And I'm just thinking, you're talking about your nan. It's got me thinking about my nana and how, you know, we can put play, in the formal sense of playing a card game, playing something that says on the box that you need to play it. So there's that type of play. [00:17:00] But I'm also thinking about the type of playfulness that comes in the kitchen, that comes, certainly in my family, has come in the playing around with food, like cooking, making things.

And I know in, in my family, There is the passing on of how to make a particular cake. It's called a dumpling, a clouty dumpling, a dumpling you make in a cloth. And I know my nana taught my mum, and my mum taught me, and I have now inherited the clute, I've inherited the cloth, it's not the actual still, it's, you know, the cloth wears out, but you get a new cloth, it's a pillowcase.

And then I had the absolute pleasure, a couple of weeks ago, of teaching my 14 year old niece. how to make that dumpling. And it wasn't as good as my mum's and it wasn't as good as my nana's and I need many, many years of [00:18:00] practice of it. But just the playfulness of being with that young woman and passing on what I remembered, including I needed to have a plate in the bottom of the pan.

And other people in the family were going, Oh, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, You know, why do you need a plate in the bottom? I don't know why I need a plate in the bottom of the pan. You wrap the, the, the, the, the dough in a piece of cloth and you wrap a string around it, tie it very tightly, and then you lower it very slowly into a pot of boiling water, With a plate at the bottom, and I don't know why that plate needs to be there because it all floats It's not touching the bottom, but once it got boiling I realized the plate needs to be in the bottom to make the sound it rattles So for me, I think the plate's there just to remind you that it's, that you've got this thing boiling for three hours and not [00:19:00] to forget it, and not leave it to boil dry.

This plate rattles. I have no idea why the plate is there, but that whole three, four hour experience with family members a couple of weeks ago was playfulness as well. Um, so play doesn't need to be sitting, playing something that says. I'm for playing with. Yeah, it could be and we're going to talk about that in other episodes.

What is place and how yeah and how we do it and I suppose it's just about thinking in this one about kind of that, you know, we are our intention for the podcast. is to be collaborative, it's to be, uh, connected, it's to be relational with one another and support one another and, and, you know, that, that we do regularly, but hopefully also with our audience.

If we get an audience I'm keeping my fingers crossed that [00:20:00] we will. I have every belief. I'm putting my intentions out there for the universe. I have a belief that this is what we're meant to do. So we will connect. Um, yeah. Connect and to hear back from an audience. To ask questions, to give your ponderings, to describe, play in your situations, and then every now and again we'll have a podcast where we're simply bringing forward those questions, and we will ponder those questions together.

And we are not the experts, we have no answers, and I, but we do love the word ponder, because it allows for curiosity, it allows for mistakes. Bye. If such a thing exists in play, it allows for, between one podcast and the other, changing our minds and having new thoughts. So nothing is static. It's forever evolving and shows [00:21:00] our age. We might not remember what we said a few weeks ago, I'm not quite at that stage yet. We can change our minds. So, shall we end episode one for now? That's fantastic. So, you've been listening to, um, Pondering Play and Therapy. Pondering Play and Therapy. Bye. Bye. Okay. That was good.

See you next week. Bye bye. Bye.