World Building is physical, creative, mysterious, it feels rich and meaningful. It involves quiet, is healing, involves attending to nuance, delicacy, and precision.   It is absent of words and full of play.  

As I describe World building with all these adjectives I find it fits with great experiences in my life.  As a young kid both inspired and held by the soccer ball, I leaned into all these things, found meaning, expressed myself, and moved through confusing feelings and predicaments to find rejuvenation, hope and joy.  

Expressive art therapies (of which World Building is one) brought me more in touch with what just seems like Truth.  The feelings and intuitions of my body just are.  Sure they are brought about by causes and conditions, which are important to reflect upon, but they are here with me now.  I have learned to make space for them, think about them, and have them work for me.  In talk therapy I learned to label, describe, relate and express, great practical stuff, and also at times inaccurate or worse self-deceptive.  The conscious "I" misjudges and has a hard time being aware of itself. 

My personal work in talk therapy and expressive art therapies have helped me feel more connected to myself and others, feel more confident and self-directed.  Simultaneously, of course, also less of the bad stuff such as worry, self-doubt, pessimism, isolation or frustration.  

Enter the helper role

During and after my first career as a professional soccer player, I became more and more interested in people, the ways we operate, the ways we suffer, and how we change.  I paid particular attention to the interaction between the setting with all its variables (family, friends, team, work-culture, values, culture at large) and the person with all their variables (personality, history, biology, needs and desires, etc...).  

I was drawn to Sports-Based Youth Development and found myself focusing on the coach-participant relationship as well as the relationships between teammates, recognizing the potential of these bonds as protective buffers against mental illness and opportunities for positive experience that enhance well-being.  

I became more focused on one-on-one relationships and started mentoring athletes with their mental skills.  Again, focusing on how relationships when imbued with skill, care, and compassion can be supportive to mental health.  

I was thrilled with my work and wanted to understand more so I enrolled in the best place I could imagine for understanding people, relationships, health and change, a clinical psychology doctoral program. I continued focusing on relational psychology, gaining training and experience in a wide range of settings.  The books that have influenced my relational style the most include: 

• Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
• The interpersonal Process of Psychotherapy by Teyber

Dreams, creative energy, and relationship with one's Self 

During my graduate program I also became interested in dreams and what traditionally is called the unconscious.  I was inspired by the creativity in dreams, the potency of images and symbols in dreams, and their strong connection with our feelings, our memories, our uninhibited personal experiences.  

During this time I came in contact with a Sandplay room and was blown away! Sandplay or World Building seemed like a form of awake dreaming.  One that helped link the two worlds (conscious and unconscious) or in Jungian terms strengthen the Ego-Self axis.  I just wanted to play and knew the play I was doing was meaningful.  I noticed myself changing, feeling more confident, inspired, creative, alive, less worried, doubtful and anxious.  I felt more connected in myself, and this while I always thought of myself as a competent confident person.  

Both of these methods, Relational Psychotherapy and World Building have been significant for me in my well-being and together they provide the basis of my work as a psychologist.