the doll has something to say (this is not a ghost story)

I love what has been learnt today as it’s something new and useful for me that I can apply it for my next hospital session. When there’s patient that only focus on his or her playing without interacting with me, normally what I will do is sit next to him or her and observe how he or she is playing. What I thinking is, I will not forcing the client to interact with me if he or she is uncomfortable to play with me. I will let him or her play alone. But today what Alex has taught is like a ‘that is so!’ in my head.  When the client is unwilling interact with us, what we can do is modeling; we follow what he or she is doing. We get the same object with the client and imitate the way he or she is playing.  By doing so, we begin to build up the connection. We can even send our message to the client through the object. This also can get the client’s attention in what we are doing rather than being passive. What we can do is we talk to the object what we actually want the patient to know.      Alex even requires us to get attach with a doll. It’s kind of weird at the beginning as there are so many eyes are looking at me. But as I take some times to really feel the doll, to sense what kind of feelings that I have when I holding the doll, somehow I manage to involve myself into the role. The open armed doll makes me feel accepted and welcomed. As I let her lay down on my shoulder, I feel both of us are closely related. This also reminds me I used to talk to my doll in the past. I guess there’s why I manage to connect with the doll easily. Another issue that I need to overcome is doing it without care about how people might respond to my behavior. It’s true that the first thing come into my mind when seeing a lady talking alone to the doll is ‘I think she is mentally deranged. But if I really wish to get connected with the children patients, this is something that I need to overcome.