So, probably important to say first off, I am a therapist. It’s my job. And I am trained and specialized in working with survivors of trauma and utilizing trauma-informed care. I am probably better equipped than most to facilitate a “healing experience” at a gaming table.
But it’s still not my job.
When I’m running a game, I’m not a therapist. I’m certainly not my table’s therapist, and our sessions aren’t group therapy. There are all sorts of ethical reasons why me acting as a therapist or being expected by my table to act as one is inappropriate. Now, that’s not to say that I would just shut off my skills or not work to take care of someone at my table who is triggered or needs help. I do think it’s a table’s responsibility to take care of each other. Taking care of each other, however, is not the same as creating a “healing experience.”
I read Lee’s post, and I’m glad they made it. There’s a lot of really important stuff in there, particularly about the dangers of using one-size-fits-all tools which can create conflicting access needs. But I do wonder if there aren’t some unrealistic expectations about how tables should respond. I think it was especially interesting reading it back-to-back with bluestocking’s We Are Not Therapists which I thought explored some really important facets of consent at the table. The Luxton Technique as written seems like a powerful and useful framework, but I’m wary of any tool that might attempt to force a group to be a captive audience in a conversation they themselves might find triggering or simply didn’t consent to being part of.
At one of my jobs (because as a young mental health professional you’ve gotta hustle, and generally cobble together several part-time jobs to get by) I facilitate general mental health therapy groups. People struggling with all sorts of mental health concerns, with a great diversity of diagnoses, are all working together to learn coping skills and talk about what’s going on in their lives and how it’s affecting them. Unsurprisingly, many of those folks have experienced trauma–almost everyone has experienced some of what we sometimes call the “small-t” traumas (not an actual clinical term, but a useful distinction in certain ways), and a higher than average (compared to the general population) who’ve experienced the “big-T” ones. But in these groups, we shy away from direct discussion of the traumas themselves, because we’ve seen entire groups of six, seven, eight people get triggered and dysregulated by the discussion. We’re not trauma therapy, so we ask that folks not dive into the specifics of their trauma histories. Talk about how it’s affecting them, talk about being triggered, but try to avoid anything that might trigger others. We don’t specifically talk about consent (though maybe we should) but I think that’s part of it too–unloading your trauma on someone else is a lot to ask of them, and it’s not always a fair ask.
For the most part, it works pretty well. When it’s clear someone has a need for trauma-specific therapy, we will work with them one-on-one or make referrals as appropriate. Sometimes someone is just going to unload, though, and maybe they need that, and in the moment it’s hard for them to think about things like consent and triggering others. And it’s always messy and it always requires a ton of processing as a group, facilitated by professional therapists.
So what I think I keep coming to in this discussion is sort of–what is a fair ask? If unloading ends up being something that even professionals can have a hard time working through with the other members of the group, I think it’s a fair boundary–that one can specifically discuss being triggered by something, but it’s not cool to unload or attempt to unpack your trauma history, because even if you feel safe doing so it doesn’t mean it’s safe for the other people at the table.
That, to me, seems like a reasonable boundary, but I wonder if it would still trigger Lee’s feelings of being shut down, of being told they can’t talk about it. I see how that is damaging and the discussion of why the x-card might be a harmful tool for some folks made a lot of sense to me. But how do we figure that out? How would we say, it’s not fair to expect us to create a “healing environment” for you, because we are not trained in doing so, or we have our own stuff, and so on.
And part of the appeal with particularly something like the x-card or lines and veils, but also support flower, OK check in, etc. is that they’re pretty easy to explain and use, and that they’re versatile and easy to sort of “plug and play.” The Luxton technique, is, well, not. Or at least the “frank discussion” part, and any expectation that the table becomes a captive audience (though I’m not clear whether that’s actually a built-in component or not?) And it feels like a really big ask, especially for a casual group. Maybe if you’re going in with the expectation that you’re going to play a game that explores trauma, and everyone is comfortable with each other to a greater degree than probably any of my groups have ever been with each other, and there are folks in the group who are skilled at this kind of thing, then I think it’s appropriate. But I don’t know if it makes sense as a general tool for most tables. I don’t know. I’m definitely curious to hear others’ thoughts on that. Maybe I’m underestimating my tables. I do know that we would be having a very different kind of discussion before playing Monsterhearts or Bluebeard’s Bride than we do before Dungeon World or Monster of the Week.
I feel like I’ve written a ton here but not actually come to any actual conclusion. Which is sometimes part of the process too, but not always helpful. I think my main takeaways are that expecting the other people at our tables to create “healing experiences” is an unrealistic and unfair expectation, but it’s not unrealistic or unfair to expect we take care of each other. I think the discussion then is what that looks like, and how best to do that, and that’s going to vary with every table and every game.
What does “holding space for trauma” mean in that context, then? I think it means that we work carefully to not create invalidating experiences or environments but establish reasonable and realistic boundaries around what we are capable of in terms of taking care of each other. Because what I’m capable of as a therapist at my job is different than what I’m capable of at a game table with my friends. And it’s important to recognize that and figure out what that really means.
