Agitation

Many types of therapy aim to help people after traumatic experiences try to stabilize, emotionally regulate, ground, and find “safety”. The premise of these methods is that the person has been harmed, and they and everyone around them should try at all costs to avoid making them feel upset or harmed again in the future. The therapist often tip-toes around the client, provides soft lighting, sits still without looking too many times at the clock, and tries to align themselves with the role of the good-enough parent, running the risk of neglecting by trying to smooth over the rough, raw, seeping edges of the client’s experiences and the harsh reality of the world outside the therapy room. The message is often that the client should only discuss what has happened to them when they are really ready and have the words, or if possible through a vague metaphor, or not at all.

But DvT plays at tip-toeing, plays at being good enough, plays at the harshness, and acknowledges the fact that safety in the real world is never a guarantee. As my colleague once said, the role of the DvT practitioner is to be an agitator. Like in any good recipe, in order for raw ingredients to be transformed, they have to be shook up, stirred, rotated, mixed, and mashed for something else to emerge. The purpose of DvT is to question everything that appears to be stabilized by the player, including the stories they tell about themselves, not with the intent to completely destroy all patterns or defenses, but to raise to the level of the player’s awareness that they are in fact defenses against the instability of being, and to question the source and the need for them. Yes, those traumas led to some stabilizing beliefs about the world – perhaps the feeling that all men are bad, or that leaving the house is dangerous, or that nobody can be trusted, or that everyone who loves you leaves. But what fun is it to never leave the house, never fall in love again, never have any relationships at all? The goal of DvT is to help the player experience less fear and shame about being alive, which the DvT playor invokes playfully with their presence. Just the mere act of getting out of the “therapy chair” and standing with another person in the room without clearly defined roles is enough to bring rise to all the ways the player has survived. The playor presents a challenge, places a demand, asks the player in the playspace to respond. The agreement is that everything is pretend, that both parties will restrain from harm, and that any role can be reversed. The beauty of this method is that old stories can be deconstructed, and new ways of being, new roles, and new responses can be tried without real world consequence. This method embraces risk over safety, and acknowledges that being alive is inherently dangerous, but despite this, encourages finding ways to live with more freedom and connection to ourselves and others.