Welcome to Lessons from the Playroom Podcast. Now, you may be scratching your head thinking, this doesn’t sound like Lisa. Well, it’s not.
Hi, I’m Jackie Flynn. I’m host of the Play Therapy Community Podcast and co host of the Playful EMDR Summit the Neuroscience of Play Therapy summit. And I’m a huge fan of Lisa Dion.
I love her. And today on her podcast, I’m here to interview Lisa about play therapy as a spiritual practice. So I’m super excited.
So. Hi, Lisa. Thanks for welcoming me to your podcast and allowing me to interview you.
Oh, my gosh, this is so fun. Thanks for just taking the reins. And listeners probably like, what? And we wanted to do something different and have a different kind of a conversation.
And Jackie, the feeling is so mutual. Thank you for all you do for the play therapy field. And thank you for having this conversation with me.
Oh, you’re welcome. Now know, spiritual practice means something different to everyone. So I’m super curious about what does spiritual practice even mean for you? How do you define it and what is even the point of a spiritual practice? Yeah, well, I’ll tell you where this started to come shape within me.
I found myself and I’ve said this over years in the middle of trainings. I’ve said, this is my spiritual practice. And people are like, wait.
What I mean by that is the practice. Well, yeah, we’ll define spiritual practice like any practice that helps you come to know yourself at a really profound and a deep level. So a practice that allows you to observe yourself, become curious about yourself, understand yourself in the context of other in the context of the world.
And then I’m going to add another piece since we’re talking about the spiritual part of it, which is something that allows you to I’m going to use the language. Come home. I fundamentally believe that we all came from something and we’re all trying to return to something or find something.
We’re trying to find there’s something in all of us that seeks that seeks something. And some people define that as God. Some people define that as energy in the universe.
Some people define that in so many different ways. In so many different spiritual languages. I’m just going to call it come home.
So that’s how I like to think of it, is come home and come home within myself. Also come home with my place in the world. Does that make sense? Come home.
My purpose in the world. And so why this is so meaningful for me is that very early on, Jackie, when I started as a play therapist, I became aware that there was a part of me that was actually scared to be a play therapist. And the more I sat with that, what I actually realized was that I was scared to face myself in the room because I knew that children there was something about a child where I would let them there was something about that, right? I would let them show me the parts of me that I hadn’t yet loved, that needed some work, that I had a hard time being in relationship with for me, that became this spiritual journey for me.
So I like to think of it as the playroom is my we can even call it like my giant meditation cushion. Real present. Real present.
And every time I go into a session, I am asked to sit with and observe different parts of myself and I’m asked to be with different parts of myself that get activated, that come up. The stories I have about myself, the stories I have about the child, the stories I have about their play, and the lens of play therapy as a spiritual practice for me has fundamentally shifted the meaning I have given to being a play therapist. Does that make sense? Yes.
It sounds like such greater depths too. I think about you are like your work and your book. Aggression for play therapy specifically is my first experience of even knowing what you’re saying there, that being with and being present.
But it seems to me like truly being present, you can kind of see parts of yourself like, I really don’t like that part, or I love that part, wherever it may be, being able to be the observer trapped in that experience. And so growing through our work and letting that happen, while it’s beautiful, it sounds more, maybe easier than what it is in practice. Oh, of course.
I have another story that just came up. And this is actually the story of my very first play therapy session. I know I said that early on, I started to catch glimpses of this, but it was really my very first play therapy session.
I started to catch glimpses of this. So my very first play therapy session occurred when I was in my internship, when I was in graduate school. This was back in 2002, and I was working at this agency as part of their family counseling team.
And I really thought that they had invited me to be part of their team because of how much I loved working with teenagers. So at the time, a lot of my work had been already with teens, and I really liked the out of control teens, right. But the idea of working with, like, a four year old or a five year old, it hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Jackie and not only has it not crossed my mind, but it actually registered for me, as I don’t want to actually do that, which is so interesting for me to say with where I am now on my journey. But there was this day when my supervisor handed me an intake form, and on this intake form, it was a nine year old little boy. And I remember being profoundly confused, wait a second, why am I being asked to work with this kid? Don’t you know? I work with teenagers.
I don’t work with the kids. I work with the teenagers. And she literally said to me, jackie children are parts of families, too.
Lisa oh. Oh, my goodness. Wow.
And you’re on the family. Oh. And I was like, oh, got it.
Right. Oh. But I was so profoundly scared to have this session with this nine year old boy.
So I had this session. At the end of the session, I walked out of the session going, oh, my gosh, what was I scared about? That was fabulous. I love this kid.
The connection was amazing, this whole thing. And then I went and I sat down to do my case notes, and I was writing out my case notes, and I recalled a moment when he shared with me that his parents were divorcing. And I remember in the moment, having a really weird feeling in my body when he said it.
And I remember in that moment, quickly dismissing it. And as I sat there with my case notes, I literally burst into tears. You felt it.
I felt it. But here’s the piece for me that revealed what play therapy was really going to be about for me as the clinician. My parents divorced when I was nine.
Yes, I hadn’t done my work. So showing up your humanity, your past experiences, and the reason why I was scared to work with kids is because I knew that they were going to reveal me to me. And when I allowed myself to embrace that, and I allowed that to be just a reality of the experience, not to make that right or wrong, that’s when, for me, it was.
This is going to be a spiritual practice for me. This practice is not just going to be about how do I help another child heal. I am going to use this experience as also a place of curiosity for what needs to be developed and worked within me so that I can continue to develop, so that I can be of service to kids that’s been profoundly meaningful for me.
Jackie profoundly sounds like such like a shared experience. And coming into the play therapy space as a human, not just as some highly educated, like, I know what to do. I can help you.
Let me share this experience with you and be human together. Wow. That gave me just the chills.
Even thinking about, like, when there’s resistance, it’s not necessarily even known. Like, that awareness helped you to kind of go underneath that resistance and think, what is this about? And what is it about in me? What’s showing up as I’m sitting here on my cushion, so to speak? Yeah, totally. Really profound.
Now, I know some of the stories that you share in your training, the intro to the synergetic play therapy and in the book, some of the stories are pretty distressing that children are especially one that comes to mind is one where you talk about you were shut down on the floor, you were killed in session through the play. For anyone listening, you are literally killed. But you got uncomfortable and you moved around.
And when you moved around, it looked like the child wasn’t even paying attention to you. But when you moved around, she came over and kicked you. So to be present in those kind of sessions, I’m wondering, how does spiritual practice show up when things get really intense in sessions? I mean, sometimes the work that we do can be really hard.
Yeah. Again, this is how I think of it. This is how I make meaning of it.
If something for me, if I’m going to call it a spiritual practice, it means that there’s something fundamentally wise about what’s happening, and it means that there’s something that maybe I don’t understand, but that there is something how do I want to say that there’s something greater going on? There’s a greater good, if that makes sense, that’s happening, even if I don’t understand exactly why in the moment. And the reason why I’m bringing this in is that sometimes when I’m in session and my human animal brain kicks in and the feeling of fear or the feeling of overwhelm or even just the feeling of I cannot believe that this happened to this kid, and my anger about what the child has been through has kicked in. When I hold the lens of, there’s something happening here, there’s something that’s trying to transform.
Right. There is meaning in this, even if I don’t understand it. I may not fully ever understand it, but there’s meaning right? There’s meaning in this experience for the child.
There’s meaning in this experience for me. There’s a reason why we’re together, and there’s a reason why we have found each other. There’s a reason there’s a perfection to what’s trying to unfold in the moment, even if I can’t see it.
And that, for me, is a trust, right? It’s a trust. And it is something that, for me, as a clinician, has served me well. Because what it does is it brings in the felt sense of safety into what can feel like a chaotic moment or can feel like a chaotic or distressing situation.
So it’s almost like the spiritual practice in and of itself. Accesses ventral. Oh, I love that.
Okay, so just make sure I’m hearing you right is that there can be huge stage of distress. That’s why our clients come to us is because they’re working through and healing. They want to heal from this, whatever it is that their circumstances are, whatever they’ve experienced.
But just us being present, being real, that creates that safety and connection, that hybrid state, and that in itself is like the spiritual part of it. Like, I just trust that being with this client as me, as authentic me, then that’s going to help this client get what they need and to help me as a clinician. Amazing.
And even trusting that there’s something greater than both of us, that’s holding us in the moment, right? It’s not just me in my ventral, but I’m accessing something larger. I mean, synergetic is about systems and transformation, right? It’s about two systems coming together and creating something larger than either could ever create on its own. And so whatever is created together, there’s something really profound about that, and I can access that, and the child is accessing that as well.
And so it’s a moment where I’m holding meaning for both of us. So that place of curiosity of because we can imagine this. We can be in the middle of play, and we can see the play unfolding, and we really can have moments of, I just can’t believe that this is what this child has been through.
I can’t believe this is what we’re having to process right now. Some of the stories are so sad and they’re so distressing and they’re so overwhelming. But to be able to say, yes, this happened, yes, we can’t take it away, right? Like, the experience, whatever it is, has happened, and maybe there’s something that we can take, right? Maybe there’s a new meaning that can be made of this.
Ed Tronic talks a lot about the importance of meaning making in our lives. Dan Siegel talks about putting the narrative together and finding meaning to put our narrative together. And for me, that’s part of the spiritual part, if I can trust that whatever has happened or whatever is happening, that there’s meaning in it, that there’s wisdom in it, that simple place of curiosity helps me access my ventral state.
And that simple place of curiosity brings a little bit more of a sense of safety into the moment so that the whole moment isn’t, oh, my gosh, this is all bad. This is all distressful. It’s hard and it’s distressful.
And what am I learning from this? And what is the child learning? And how are we both growing and how are we both evolving from this shared experience that we’re having together? Which again comes back to, I know I used the word come home at the beginning. And when I was describing a spiritual practice, I think in order to access that place, it is an ongoing practice of how do? I come home within myself while I’m holding the parts of my client that have emerged in the room and while I’m holding the parts of me. Like that nine year old little girl that was sitting there.
I mean, I could pretend she wasn’t in the room, but she was in the room with me as the adult. So how do I hold the parts of me and how do I hold the parts of my client in a way that allows me to be a bit more present and a bit more reflective in the process? Oh, I love that. It makes me think about that phrase feel and felt.
And to circle back to the little boy, the nine year old little boy that was telling you about his family divorce and you dismissed it. But when you were able to really experience it, you felt those emotions and you were able to identify it in yourself. That’s kind of like an AHA moment for me about the word synergy.
I first was introduced to that word like through Covey training years ago, stephen Covey, which is like a business training, and they described it as like when the sum of the parts are greater, the end product is greater than the sum of the parts. And I think about my experience as I’ve learned from you have so much more to learn. There is that extra, that extra that you can’t explain that doesn’t add up.
It adds up to way more this we feel something and when you truly lean into being present, being authentic, amazing things can happen. And it is greater than what you could I mean, by staying curious and being present and what you could do by yourself. It makes me think too of like, Michael Singer’s untethered soul he talks about, become the observer of like, step back and just kind of notice what’s happening in your experience.
So good as you’re talking, there’s another piece that just came up for me. Jackie so when we’re in this place as a therapist, because we’re really talking about allowing ourselves to move out of left brain and come back into a bit more of a right brain, felt felt experience. And it doesn’t mean to dismiss the left brain altogether because the left brain is super important in the process.
We have to be able to hold context, right? Don’t want to go too far, right? Or else you’re going to get super flooded. So we do need left brain in there engaged in the process. Is that what you describe when you say 1ft in and 1ft out? Like we don’t want to be okay, exactly what it is.
I’ve got one part of me that’s in the felt sense, and then I’ve got another part of me that’s able to track okay, right. That’s able to track. We could even talk about it as upstairs, downstairs, in the brain, too, right? So I’ve got a part of me that’s very much activated in my lower centers of my brain, and then I’ve got another part of me that’s active in my higher centers of my brain.
So we can talk about it as left, right? We can talk about it as up, down. But yes, there’s a part of me, we talk about it as a part of me that’s in it and another part of me that’s observing at the same time. There’s many different ways to talk about it and a lot of spiritual practices.
This is what you’re actually attempting to develop is the ability to be with and have the observer and track at the same time, which is super cool. That’s integration, right? Or is that considered integration? It is, which is the perfect word to segue into this piece around. So what happens when we allow ourselves to be in this experience that we’re talking about, right? When we allow ourselves to be in a deeply self reflective place as well as holding other right, holding our client and aware of ourselves at the same time? And you talked about there’s this energy, there’s something that happens that’s almost indescribable, almost like there’s an opening.
I like to talk about it. We’ll call it like an access point, right? There’s an opening. I’ve had people ask me yeah, I’ve had people ask me, lisa, how did you know to do that in that moment? And my answer is, I just knew.
I just knew. And that place of I just knew comes from this place of presence that we’re talking about. When I can hold myself and others simultaneously, there’s a greater knowing that emerges in the moment that allows us to know.
Hey, ask that question. Hey, don’t ask that question. Hey, be quiet.
Hey, turn it up. Reflect a little more. Hold your tongue, move your body, squeeze your hands.
That piece of all of a sudden now being in rhythm, in rhythm or in alignment or in attunement with yourself and with the client, that for me is a real spiritual place because it’s sort of like, yeah, you’re able to access a greater knowledge or a greater understanding of what’s needed in the moment. I tell my students a lot, look, you’re not going to know what to do until you get there. Can’t really pre plan.
No. And the second part of that is the moment itself has everything you need within it to navigate it. Wow, nothing is missing.
Everything you need is right there in that moment. The question is, are you in the moment to actually hear what’s being asked of you? That’s the spiritual piece right there. That’s the spiritual piece.
Or are you so caught up in your thoughts and agendas and this and that and worried about this and that you’re not able to be and you’re not able to listen to what the moment is trying to tell you. There’s got to be that stillness, that quiet, or else you can’t hear it. You can’t wow.
So as play therapists, we have this really cool practice of and how do I access the stillness in movement? How do I access the stillness while I’m in the middle of a sword fight? How do I access the stillness? Right? Because traditional spiritual practices invite you to sit still, invite you to sit still and meditate or be still and pray or be still and observe. And there are many spiritual practices that also say, great, but the real work is when you come out of the stillness. And can you then continue to continue to be connected to yourself while you’re walking down the street, while you’re engaging with someone at the grocery store, while you’re in the fight, while you’re in the and I think play therapists are offered this amazing opportunity to explore that it’s like contemplative practice in motion in the playroom.
So good. It makes me think about when I told you about the kid throwing the sand in my face and you turn it into therapeutic moment, just kind of being able to access it even though there’s this chaos and this fear and this overwhelm. It makes me think, is this like I don’t know if this word would fit the term equanimity.
I heard it on the calm app, like, accessing that inner equanimity, that inner peace. Even when things are, like, all chaotic and all over the place, being able to go to that place inside of you, that is almost like a calm inner knowing. It sounds like that’s what you’re describing.
I think that there’s so many words that are used to describe the state of because what you just described could also be described as deep presence. It could also be described as deep listening. It could be described as accessing the open plane of possibility.
That’s how Dan Siegel would talk about know. It could be described as accessing all potentiality. It could be described as sitting in the fertile void.
Oh, yes, I just heard that phrase. The other, like, two weeks. These are some of the languages from many spiritual practices, but it is a metaphor that I love, is the metaphor of the eye in the storm or the eye and the tornado.
Oh, yeah, the hurricane or the hurricane. And I think that’s a real beautiful thing to think about. And we’ll go with the tornado or a hurricane.
It’s not only chaotic. Yeah, you can’t actually have a hurricane or a tornado without also the inner stillness. Oh, my goodness.
Wow. They coexist. Can’t have one without the other.
And so how do we in the playroom become aware that both are actually existing simultaneously in the playroom? Because when we can become aware of both, that’s when we are sitting with our activation, but we’re also holding ventral at the same time. And that is what allows us to bring in that felt sense of safety, which allows us to be able to be a bit more present in the activation, which allows us then to see the whole. So we’re not just focused on the chaos.
We’re also not just focused on the stillness. We’re actually focused on the entirety of the tornado, what it is as it is, the perfection of the whole thing. And that then goes back to what I was saying, is that when we can hold and recognize there’s something greater than what I am aware of right now, there’s something else that’s happening, then that’s the piece that can help us tap into.
There’s a greater meaning. It’s not just a one sided experience. There’s possibility.
There’s potential. Peter Levine said this amazing thing once where he talked about the lowest point in dorsal. So the lowest point where you are right on the edge of destruction, maybe full collapse, full destruction.
Inherent in that moment is your greatest potential because you can’t have one without the other. So embedded in that is the energy. It’s kind of like if you think about, like a rubber band.
You can pull a rubber band, pull a rubber band, pull a rubber band. But the moment you let go of the tension, that rubber band is flying. Well, the same thing is, too.
The more dorsal, the more down you go. The moment the system wakes up, they could have, like, literally a spiritual awakening in their darkest hours. When you talk about that, you hear things like hitting rock bottom.
You talk about the greatest tragedy in my life became the thing that transformed my life. You hear things about the trauma that I experienced, became the thing that fueled my mission on the planet. You hear these pieces.
So for me, that’s part of spiritual practice is, can I hold that there might be another possibility for whatever it is that is emerging or seemingly awful happening in front of me. Oh, my goodness. Lisa.
This is, like, coming into clarity for me. I’m thinking about even, like, Dr. Landra’s words of we’re not expecting the child to be any different than they are in that moment, just accepting them.
It’s safe to show and feel my emotions. And that’s where the beauty, the therapy, the healing can occur when we don’t come in with not accepting the hard parts. Let it all be there.
Wow. You know, Ana Gomez, she’s one of for those listening that may I think everybody knows Anna Gomez, but she’s a big pioneer in our EMDR world. I asked her recently, I said, how did you know to come up with all these amazing interventions? How did you even know how to do this with kids? Because she did EMDR even before with kids, before anybody knew how to do it.
And she said it was in those moments of not knowing what to do I didn’t know what to do. And that’s where she came up with the shy blanket and her animal cocoa that she knows. Two decades she has a stuffed animal.
And she truly said it was, like, in those moments where she was, like, not knowing what to do, which sounds like what you’re describing, of just being present with all of it and letting your body speak to you, that spirituality of just, there’s something greater here. Let’s listen. I love so much that you just brought her into the conversation, listeners.
If you haven’t listened to my podcast that I’ve recorded with her, go and listen to that one. So Anna and I are dear friends, and this conversation is the conversation Anna and I have on a regular basis. Oh, I’m not surprised.
I mean, that’s the way that she says it so beautifully, too. That’s the way that she describes it, too. So you all are like, well, we talk about the spiritual quality of our work, and we talk about the ability to hold a larger perspective and the ability to be with ourselves and engage in a deeply self reflective practice and be on a deeply self reflective journey in order to be able to be present and hold these things that the child is bringing, which allows more of the possibility of sitting in the unknown.
Because let’s put it this way, when we don’t know what to do, or we’re in a place of feeling stuck, that is just as much a part of us as I’m feeling sad or I’m feeling overwhelmed. And so to be able to be with the part that doesn’t know what to do is also part of a spiritual practice. Because when we can just rest in, I don’t know what to do.
I don’t have the answer. I’m sitting here in the unknown. I don’t know what the solution is.
When we allow ourselves to sit in that and feel that instead of fix it, change it, jump in, create a solution, it brings us into the moment, and then we can tie it back together what we were saying, Jackie, and then the moment reveals to us what’s needed. So out pops that creative idea, not the one that you had to force, but the one that was sitting there in the moment waiting for you to pick up. It was sitting there, right? It was there all along.
Or the one that was sitting there that all of a sudden emerges into your conscious awareness that says, you know, it’d be really helpful right now. Maybe some deep breaths or gosh, I just got a creative insight, and there’s a children’s book that I actually feel like would be really helpful. But it’s not a forced thought.
Yeah, it’s an emergence, if you will. Right. It’s an emerging knowing.
Bring that language back in. It’s an emerging knowing that comes out of the ability just to be with and let whatever’s trying to. Emerge.
Emerge. Wow. And you wouldn’t hear it if there was an agenda.
And I think about your shoulds activity that you do in the training, as you described, that I was feeling that same felt sense that I felt when you had us like name ten things that we should do where instantly tightens you up. Hey, before we finish up today, I want to be able to circle back to you, use the phrase sitting with yourself. What do you mean by that? Sitting with yourself? So I’ll expand a little bit what I was just saying around there’s a part, right? There’s a part that doesn’t know what to do.
Or there may be a part that’s sad. Sad feeling sad. So I am a full believer that we are a multiplicity of parts.
I’m very much in alignment with ifs thinking around this. It’s also part of my Gestalt training and my Gestalt background and my view and my lens. Also the work of Gurjeef, which some people familiar with Gurjeef some people are not, also talks about parts work and the development of presence.
And so when I say be with, it’s about being with the many different parts of ourself. And I think what’s so sometimes misunderstood is that sometimes we think that there’s just one part of ourself that’s in a moment. And that’s not true.
Even in this moment, I got many different parts that are up right now. So I have my teacher part right now that’s up. I have my part that is my friend part with you.
That’s here. I have my reflective part that’s right here. Neck.
I can feel the part, the nine year old, because I talked about her, I can feel her here with me. So there’s many parts. Many, many parts.
So the question is, am I able to be with the many parts of me in any given moment? What parts am I dismissing? What parts am I shaming? What parts am I judging? Is there space for everyone to sit at the dinner table, so to speak? Right. Good. I heard a metaphor once, and it was a bit like that.
Like who’s at your dinner table? And in any given moment, there’s one person that’s sitting at the head. One part that’s sitting at the head, and they’re the ones that are doing the talking. And it’s an ongoing rotation of who’s sitting at the head of the table.
But it doesn’t mean that the other parts aren’t there also. And so yeah. How do we learn to be with and part of the spiritual journey is? In order for me to be with the part of me that is a teacher, that means I have to spend time observing the part of me that’s a teacher observing the part of me that the part of me that can get caught up in wanting to teach a certain way.
The part of me that has things to say but doesn’t give herself permission to say even the parts within the teacher part. So how do I come to know the part of me as a teacher which requires me to do my work around all those pieces that are inherently part of that when I talk about the nine year old, right, well, in order for me to be with that nine year old, I got to do my work. I got to go back and rebuild relationship with my nine year old and tend to the nine year old that felt deeply sad right, when her parents got divorced.
I can’t hold her and sit with her and be with her unless I’m willing to feel the sadness. And so I think that for me, it goes back to that metaphor of the play. Therapy room is my cushion.
And as I’m sitting on my cushion, so to speak, the different parts of me are going to naturally emerge. And then my question is, do I run away from them? Can I notice them? Can I show care towards them? Do I appreciate them? Can I be with them? Because they are just as much in the room as my adult. Oh, that’s like being present, like all of you.
Okay, so super big question. Have you ever teared up or cried in session? I read Dr. Siegel’s mindful therapist years ago, and as I started to apply some of those things that I’d learned, I noticed that I would have tears in my eyes and I didn’t even know it.
And maybe even the client would comment on it. And sometimes it feels really powerful. But have you done that? And what is your opinion on tearing up and crying as a therapist in session? Yeah, so the answer is, of course, and I have teared up because the impact, maybe the impact of the sadness was so intense that emerged in my system.
I’ve also teared up enjoy. And I’ve teared up in watching the child’s transformation. And so I’ve also teared up the part of me that is so moved by the courage of the child or so moved by the transformation or the journey that the child has been on.
So I think that there’s a think we also have to write, like there’s different kinds of crying, right. So in either case, there’s a difference between blubbering in the session yeah. Uncontrollably.
Yeah. The ugly cry where there’s no ventral online and you’ve completely emotionally flooded versus tearing up because your heart is open and you’re having a moment of deep empathy with the client, but you’re also not getting lost in it, and you’re also not losing yourself in it. It’s the 1ft in, 1ft out.
You can feel it, but you’re not getting swept downstream by it. And in those moments, if a child were to say, like, are you okay? I think there’s something really humanly beautiful of being able to respond, yes, I’m okay. Right.
And I feel what you’re saying so deeply, and my heart is in this with you, and I’m okay. There’s something really profoundly healing, I think. There.
Even if a child said maybe they’re there in the empowerment play and they look over and you’re tearing up and that’s confusing to them and they’re looking at you in a strange way, I think. Again, there’s something so beautifully human. To be able to recognize that child has a strange look on their face and recognizing, oh, there might be a little bit of dissonance or incongruence in the environment happening right now.
And so how do we create congruency to be able to say, I’m just watching you, and I’m feeling so grateful that I’ve been able to be on this journey with you. You’re so amazing. Oh, gosh, all of that.
I’ve experienced all of that. And it’s beautiful to think about the spirituality of that and how it just comes right back to being with it does make me think about, like, I used to work for hospice years ago, and one of the very first things that we learned was we don’t want people to have to die alone. To be alone is one of the most scariest things ever, especially when you’re in distress.
And it seems like when you’re authentic, whether it’s crying, joy, sad, whether it’s happiness or, like, that hurt or just being human, they’re not alone. And that’s safe. Beautiful.
Yeah. Maybe we can even finish the conversation with this, is that in those moments, it’s not just the child that’s not alone, but in those moments, you also haven’t abandoned your parts, and so you are also not alone within yourself. So now you’re able to tap into the knowing that you are connected, that you are being held, that you are connected to the possibility of something so much greater.
So the alone isn’t just for the child. The alone is my own inner not abandoning myself as well, which is the coming home. Which is coming home.
And I do think they look to us to see, is she taking care of herself or is he taking care of himself? And gives them permission to kind of do that for themselves. Beautiful. And the synergy of it all, how it’s so much greater, there’s this spiritual element to it.
That’s some good therapy. That’s some good therapy. Yes, some good therapy.
Lisa, thanks for being on your podcast. An honor to chat with you and to really explore this with you. And I feel like I’m walking away with a greater understanding of what synergy is and what it isn’t.
But that spirituality, the work we do, is so important, and how being authentically with ourselves, even the parts that are hurting or are triggered and being there, can help us to not only be better versions of ourselves, but to be able to truly help our clients in the most efficient and humanistic way possible. Yeah, totally. I love it.
You’re the best. I love you. Thank you, Jackie.
I’ll say one more thing, which is that I think it’s important that we find places to cultivate what we’re talking about. So, yes, this all emerges in the playroom. It’s also helpful to have other practices to help us too, whether it is spending time in nature or for me, yoga is a big part of my life, whether it is just spending time in the quiet.
So I encourage listeners to find places, safe places, safe connections that allow you to look inward. And then I invite you to get curious about what parts of you are showing up in the playroom that are asking you to be in relationship with them and to a deeper invitation to be with the different parts of yourself that are emerging. Because, Jackie, as we know, the therapist is the most important toy in the playroom.
That’s what Lisa Dion says, and it’s true. It keeps us from burning out, too. I think about like, if we don’t take care of ourselves, eventually we can’t do this work anymore.
So it sounds like a beautiful journey of just healing and health, like, everything. So, listeners, thank you so much for being a part of this different type of conversation, and I look forward to the next time that we get to be together. So, yes, you are the most important toy in that playroom. Everyone be well.
