Not Playing is Not an Option Now More Than Ever
I grew up in a household in genuine medical crisis, surrounded by trauma, limiting play. Learning to play again as an adult saved my life.
Across the world, we are now facing is a kind of collective trauma environment that most of us haven’t experienced in our living memories.
My memories are of how hard it is for a four year old to play in a hospital corridor. It’s hard to play around people in constant fear for their life or for the lives of their loved ones. Children need to play, and, although we don’t always think so, adults also need to play.
I remember this clearly from childhood. One of my parents responded by limiting play. Being silly was not allowed. Quiet play only encouraged. Enough of that nonsense! Yet being loud, silly and nonsensical is an important part of play.
Wanting to climb a tree was not welcomed less I hurt myself and then add to the families already high trauma and stress levels. In my teens I was allowed more latitude in activities outside the home, but not without great anxiety.
I had to learn how to play and it really took me until my thirties to play for play’s sake. Until that time, my life until was dominated by fear and stress and poor mental health.
I tried organised sport, but with it’s competitive and often forced nature it sometimes created a kind of stress in me that only hurt my mental health further. I found that when I did gym or cycling I pushed myself to find “useful” benefits for sport in health terms but forgot to enjoy myself.
People laughed at me starting theatre sports as an adult in my 20’s. But it freed me.
Playing on stage and being goofy and silly saved my life from persistent suicidal thinking. Being silly on stage still saves my life (in public performance and in private).
I had to relearn silliness and nonsense as a way to recover from the trauma of being surrounded by trauma.
Right now I am watching the world playing out my childhood trauma but with the added trauma of lock downs and in novel conditions- and writ large. It worries me that in the next few years we may have a great deal of young people subjected to a less playful world.
The fear of medical crisis creates stress. The stress creates fear. We get locked into patterns of appeasing each others fears to please each other. We create systems of order than can become oppressive because we fear what we can’t possibly hope to control.
It breeds unhealthy codependency and fosters anger for the moment when someone…someone dares to be happy. Even momentarily.
Recently I’ve witnessed people attacked online for a moment of happiness, for celebrating when something goes right. Attacked for trying to bring joy or lightness.
If I see one more email about a preference for sombre email or communication etiquette because of COVID, I think I may just scream in frustration.
“People are dying and you are not being serious”, is the undertone.
Just switch that for a moment to “People are dying and we must take that seriously, but we shouldn’t destroy any joy in the process either — as that will help us heal”.
Let me remind you of the dangers of a tragedy cult taking over our thinking…
Adults find an unbearable burden in facing off death and try and bring order to circumstances that have no order. Children become parentified as they try to please adults to just get relief.
Play is often seen as a distraction from more important things when confronting difficult events. But play is an important thing too.
I could list studies of how children who don’t play combined with varying levels of trauma have a range of responses, from anxiety disorders through to serial killing. Play may not prevent these things, but it sure helps considerably.
Historical studies with some animal subjects have shown that when the young are not socialised to play, they can die from hiding in face of the threat rather than problem solve and adapt.
Our societal solution is often organised sport. But that’s not enough, particularly not in the world that COVID19 has created — where organised sport has been limited by lock downs and restrictions on group size.
I don’t mean competitive sport. I don’t mean game shows. I don’t mean play for reward.
I mean play when play is the focus. Play for plays sake.
Human beings are amongst a small group of species who play for our entire lifespan.
There’s a good reason for that. You can see discussions in play studies about play being beneficial for bonding, language, learning limits, fine motor and a range of reasons.
I want to offer what I think is the most important reason to play. When the world seems consumed by doom and gloom…
Play because it feels good.
On the flip-side of all this collective fear in response to COVID19 is that I’ve seen more board games and card games online than I’ve seen for a long time. Hooray!
Remember charades?
Remember one line stories (where you each add a line and make it take weird twists and turns)?
Remember pretending the wooden spoon was a microphone and miming and air guitar?
Come on…get silly. It WILL help.
There are some great theatre sports sites around. They also give more physical play without any or too much contact.
If you do one thing for yourself today…make it play, just for play’s sake.