3: Listening
Note: Play Therapy Across the Lifespan is created to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio so that you are able to appreciate the emotion and emphasis that cannot be captured by text alone. Transcripts may contain errors and differ slightly from the audio. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Resources and Links
Berrol, C. F. (2006). Neuroscience meets dance/movement therapy: Mirror neurons, the therapeutic process and empathy. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 33(4), 302–315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2006.04.001
Stewart, A. L., Field, T. A., & Echterling, L. G. (2016). Neuroscience and the magic of play therapy. International Journal of Play Therapy, 25(1), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1037/pla0000016
Prologue
Welcome back to Play Therapy Across the Lifespan for Episode 3. This season is all about the basics of play therapy. In the first episode, we talked about training, toys, and setting up your play space. In Episode 2, we talked about creating emotional safety through the relationship. If you haven’t already listened to those, I encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes first. We’re going to build on that information today.
So today we want to focus on active listening. What I mean by active listening is “hearing” all that your client is communicating to you with words, metaphors, nonverbal communication, and symbolic play. That means all the client says and does is telling you something. Your job is to take it in and filter it back out through reflective responses. There will be more on reflection in our next episode.
Depending on your theoretical approach, you may or may not offer interpretations. I lean towards trusting the client to interpret his or her own work. But I notice a lot.
Active listening always begins with empathy. As I try to understand my clients’ world from the clients’ perspective, I increase my empathy for clients, and hopefully, they pick up on that. Then I say what I am hearing from the client. We call that a reflection. That reflection may be saying their words back to them or saying what I notice from their nonverbal actions, or it might be a hunch based on all that I am receiving in communication combined with my professional intuition. Sometimes, I am right with the client, and they know I get it. Sometimes, I misunderstand, but clients usually clarify in some way. They might say something like, “No, that’s not right.” Or, they might just give you a look. In those cases, I just try again. The goal isn’t to be right every time I reflect, rather the goal is to build a relationship with my client, which happens when they clarify, too.
Imagine that your client is tossing out all kinds of information. She says, “These are the bad guys,” as she lines up all the forest animals with a particularly menacing gorilla leading the group. She scowls at the gorilla. You take in all that information, verbal and nonverbal, and tell the client what she is communicating. So, you might say something like, “Those are the bad guys, and you really don’t like that one,” as you point at the gorilla.
Active listening is about being right there with your client.
Active Listening with Adolescents and Adults
Active listening is the same with adolescents and adults, it’s just that what they are showing you in their “play” might look different. While children might move around the playroom and physically engage in play to express themselves, adolescents and adults tend to stay in the same seated position. However, they show you a lot through expressive play. For example, even if the client is simply doodling while talking to you, the pressure on the pencil might change, or the images might become different, or she might become highly focused on adding a detail. That is what you reflect back in active listening. You take in all that information and say it back to the client. So, you might say something like, “When you started talking about that fight with your mom, you started pushing down harder on the pencil. That’s interesting.” You don’t want to scrutinize or scare the client with interpretations, but what you are doing is pulling all that clients say and do together to show them.
This becomes more powerful when you can identify emotions that clients are showing but maybe not even aware of. One way to help you “feel what they feel” is to mirror their body language. By shifting your physical posture to reflect theirs, your physical sensations will provide a clue about the underlying emotion.
Finally, you want to look for patterns between what clients tell you and show you. (Sometimes, the discrepancy is important, too.) So, if that client is telling you about the fight with her mom, her shoulders are hunched forward, and she sighs deeply, you might reflect back, “Fighting with your mom seems to be heavy and hard for you.” “Fighting with your mom” came from her words, “heavy” came from noticing her shoulders, and the big sigh was a suggestion that this feels “hard.”
Active listening is a skill. It can be learned, but it takes practice. Try it out in a conversation today. Listen to the words, notice the body language, and see if you can detect the emotion. Synthesize that information and say it back and see what happens.
Research Summary
Today we are going to explore the relationship between mirror neurons, empathy, and dance/movement therapy. My intention in this brief segment is to help you understand how mirror neurons allow us to show empathy to others, and how empathetic reflection can be used in dance/movement therapy.
First, let’s talk mirror neurons. These are brain cells that allow us to show empathy, to communicate with our bodies and minds that we are right there with our clients, not just cognitively, but emotionally.
A group of really smart Italian neuroscientists discovered this. Their subject was a monkey, who was performing actions like grasping objects with its hands. Neurons were not only activated in the brain of the monkey doing the actions, but also in a monkey or human watching those actions. This is where the name “mirror neurons” comes from—the same set of neurons activated in an observer basically mimics the emotion/behavior activated in the do-er.
Mirror neurons make empathy possible.
Mirroring begins in very early childhood when a new mother locks eyes with her newborn. Though this act may just seem sweet, which it is, there is some really cool stuff happening beneath the surface. What that mother is doing is fostering a normal attachment and attunement schema for that child—a zillion neurons are firing, and pathways are being formed that will ultimately allow that child to be able to attune to and demonstrate empathy to others later down the road.
My research for this segment led me to discover a woman and pioneer in the dance/movement therapy world named Marian Chace. She believed that dance wasn’t about technique, but about communication and connection. In the 40’s she began working with un-medicated WW2 veterans in psychiatric wards, and she used dance therapy. She used empathetic reflection, reflecting the patient’s moods, movements, and sounds— she mirrored them, she began to embody their feelings. This was how she built a relationship with them and entered into their world. This kind of exchange is the heart of therapy—this reciprocal connection is the therapeutic alliance.
I also read about a choreographer Bill Jones, who led workshops for people who were confronting life-threatening illnesses, like AIDS and cancer, and who wanted to express the shared human experience of mortality. After a basic warm-up with the group, Bill performed his dance, a piece composed of both movement and spoken captions. He used his whole body to tell his story, then instructed the participants to do the same.
The author of the article was able to attend a performance of this group, and I’d like to conclude with her personal words about what it was like for her to observe:
I observed the performers, listened to the accompanying music and verse, and viewed the video displaying the emotion-filled faces of the workshop participants. Dream-like now, what remains is memory traces of the kinesthetic and affective sensations evoked in me and the richness of the visual and auditory sensations that stirred me. As an outwardly silent, non-moving witness, I can only imagine the array of busily discharging mirror neurons circulating through the different regions of my brain.
*The content of this episode was taken from two specific journal articles, one from the Arts in Psychotherapy and another from the International Journal of Play Therapy.
Credits
Thanks for listening — maybe “actively” listening — to today’s show. Try this today: practice active listening with someone and see what happens. Don’t forget to subscribe so you automatically get each new episode. You can find links to research and references in the show notes. Play Therapy Across the Lifespan is made possible through the Lipscomb University Center for Play Therapy and Expressive Arts.
If you have comments or questions, I’d love to hear them. Send us an email at playtherapypodcast@gmail.com. Thanks to grad student Rachel Sellers. As always audio engineer Sheldon Clark makes us sound great. If you love this song as much I do, check out Sara Beth Geoghegan, who wrote it after her first play therapy class. I think she gets it. I’m your host, Dr. Denis’ Thomas. Go play, create, and heal.
