Okay so I don't know that I've ever mentioned it on this blog but I am currently working on getting a master's of social work while I also work full time. My full-time gig is at a high school, and one of the things I do at work is run a TTRPG group once each week as a type of social skills group. After doing some homework, I started thinking about how I've known some of the members of this group for the entire time they've been in high school, and how I have a much closer relationship with the students in this group than any other students. This wasn't a sudden realization or anything, but as I continue to progress through my classes, I am more and more seeing the traditional boundaries of professionalism that I am kind of forced to ignore in order to maintain one of my personal rules of GMing, which is to run a game that I enjoy prepping for and would want to participate in as a player. While I currently have no licenses that would truly let me take on the role of a therapist running a game for clients, the game I run at work is fairly close to that, so this post is going to be my ruminations on all of that and what it might mean for the emerging practice of using TTRPGs for more explicit therapy goals. This isn't meant to be any kind of formal paper or anything, I just find that putting things into essay format really helps me to organize my own thoughts on something.
Before I get into it, some context might be useful in case anyone who isn't me ever reads this. The TTRPG group that I will be referring to throughout this essay, and using as an experiential stand-in for a true therapy group using TTRPGs as a tool, is formally considered a social skills group. Lacking any significant backing from the literature, the assumption I and the school social worker operate this group under is that the students participating in the game would struggle to make friends and learn social skills without a structure like TTRPGs, along with the fact that the very nature of TTRPGs involves social interaction with a small group. Other benefits that participants have noted include an ability to practice coping with stress related to social interactions without any real-world consequences, and gaining an inherently social hobby that they can participate in beyond high school. At the time of writing, the group consists of 4 students, an adult player who also helps the students out with game mechanics, and myself as the GM. One of the students also co-GMs with me right now so they can get more practice running the game. While this isn't really the point of this post, I'd have to say that this group has been fairly successful and shows that TTRPGs can be used for many goals beyond having fun with your friends, although I'd be lying if I said this group wasn't focused on having fun over any explicit therapeutic goals. Regardless, that's the situation which has inspired the main point of this post, which is that the role I have with this group has many parallels to being a social worker running a small therapy group while subverting other expectations normally associated with such a role.
Without giving myself too much credit, I think a lot of my experience with this gaming group can be used to inform on what it would be like to run a more formal TTRPG therapy group, the main difference being that I currently lack the experience, qualifications, and authority to have therapeutic goals as much more than a passive benefit of group participation. Situations arise where things I'm learning in my classes are useful, however, and as a school employee there are professional boundaries I am expected to maintain. These factors combine to help me feel like a practitioner running a therapy group regardless of what the actual labels are. With this in mind, the fact that I am doing things on the edge of traditional professionalism isn't that big of a deal. I am beholden to no code of ethics beyond what my bosses find acceptable and I have no licensure to lose if anyone takes exception to what I'm doing. Even so, I'd like to think that some of the subversion I'm experiencing would be good if it became a bit more normalized. I think the biggest professional no-no that I'm in the grey on is the way that I communicate with some of the players.
Before I worked at the school where I run this group, I was running the group as a volunteer, so I wasn't available to answer questions about the game and discuss character decisions without taking up valuable game time. The solution was to give the players my phone number so they could text me their questions and ideas. This was deemed acceptable so long as everyone involved was comfortable and texts were limited to things about the game. Now, a therapist making themself available to a client outside of formal therapy sessions isn't weird, but what is weird is using that connection for discussing anything other than mental health business. Now obviously getting texts from teenagers at midnight about secret plans for their character isn't the same as providing support to clients over the phone, but if I were running a TTRPG therapy group as the therapist, I would have to be prepared for both. Providing mental health support and game discussion is an expansion of the normally accepted topics for clients and practitioners to text about, which may raise concerns of increased risks for dual relationships. While I am sympathetic to such concerns, I would say that having something other than mental health crises to discuss over text would also help to build rapport which helps gaming sessions get the best results for clients.
Another aspect of GMing that goes against conventional guidelines of professionalism is the fact that the GM must necessarily share a lot of their thoughts and imaginations with the players, even when running prewritten adventures and campaigns. In a therapy setting, this would require the practitioner (who I assume is the GM) to spend a lot more time talking and sharing their thoughts than is normal for a group therapy session. When I run, I feel as if I am talking one third to one half of the session, which is more than I would want to be talking and sharing as the practitioner in a traditional therapy setting. In TTRPG therapy, it could be said that the GM being a player who share's much of themselves with the rest of the group forces the therapist GM to be more of a peer who is open to the clients than is traditionally accepted. Perhaps this is just because I run a homebrew setting, but I can't imagine running a game where I don't make myself vulnerable to the players by sharing my thought processes and the products of my creativity. To do so while maintaining the role of therapist could be powerful for building rapport, showing clients that their therapist is a deeply nuanced, creative person in a way that I do not think is possible in a traditional therapy setting. It forces the therapist into a partial peer role as they become a person playing a game along with their clients, but maintains a power dynamic as the therapist GM has final say on many aspects of the game, including what actually happens when players attempt to do things. I find it interesting how the role of GM both reduces and entrenches the authority of the therapy practitioner. As a GM I try to give the players a lot of information and to be generous with how I interpret their actions in the game world, reducing the power gap between GM and player, but as a therapist GM this would also be reducing the power gap between the practitioner and client in a unique way. On the other hand, it would be possible to take measures to increase the power gap between GM and player, thus also increasing the power gap between client and practitioner. I can't say that either approach would be better for a TTRPG therapy group, however my gut reaction is always to reduce hierarchy and power gaps, so perhaps this ability of TTRPG therapy to reduce power gaps is useful for my goals. Particularly in working with students who aren't yet adults, I think it is important to humanize oneself for others and help them see you for the nuanced, complicated being that you are. It helps others to empathize with you when they can see your humanity, and sharing the fantastical things that reside in one's imagination is very humanizing.
I don't think I really have anything else to say on this matter, so there you go. While there are a lot of benefits to TTRPG therapy, there are also a lot of strange implications for what it means to maintain professional boundaries, build rapport with clients, and be vulnerable. Even if the clients and their therapist GM never even see each other by accident outside of sessions, the process of playing TTRPGs with each other breaks down some of the norms of group therapy. Maybe not everyone would agree with me, but I think it is good that TTRPG therapy could have the potential to subvert the norm in this way. Current norms in western social work can often make it seem like practitioners should be judicious with how much of themselves they share with their clients, and a form of therapy where the therapist can share an entire fantasy world of their own creation with clients bucks that trend. I feel like western society currently struggles to make space for creativity and the vulnerability that is tied to it, but TTRPGs provide that space. Maybe none of this makes sense, maybe this was all just the late-night ramblings of a person who thinks way too highly of their favorite hobby. I just hope that all of this has been coherent enough to accurately communicate my feelings on this matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment