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Author Spotlight – Gali Salpeter

Care Professional Contributions,

Introducing The World of Trains by Gali Salpeter – This unique train-themed set contains 50 illustrated cards and 50 story cards, accompanied by a professional guidebook detailing suggestions for individual and group sessions.

Gali shares with us her reasoning behind developing this exciting NEW set of therapeutic cards for healthcare professionals.

How and why these are developed?

Gali Salpeter

Gali Salpeter

I am an expressive therapist (M.A.) with specialization in drama and narrative therapy. My background is in psychology, sociology and anthropology and I am always fascinated with the ways in which these fields interact. I have been fortunate enough to live in different countries and work with inspiring children, in settings of individual therapy and group therapy.

I like to travel… Each station along the path of my life has had valuable lessons to teach me. I enjoy discovering new environments, studying them and finding my own way of being and becoming along their fixed rails and wild landscapes.

I also respect the power of narratives, both those built word by word within and – the ones told by others. Narratives are carried by the wind around us and I try to open myself to listen to them.

These are the grounds from which “The world of trains” set has grown and developed. “The world of trains” set is a psychological tool designed for facilitating, enriching and supporting therapeutic work with children. The set includes a deck of projective cards and a deck of story cards, as well as a professional encompassing guidebook.

The visual and metaphorical channels of expression, combined with the verbal and imaginary channel provided by the two decks – enrich the modes of communication offered to the client and to the therapist.

The client-child can thus choose whether to express her/himself verbally, to work through a visual mode or (as often happening naturally-) to combine the two.

The projective therapeutic space provided by the theme of an imaginary world of trains, which is shared by carriages and engines of different types, enables the client to get to know issues from his own world better and to share and process them with the therapist in a safe, metaphorical arena.

It is the flow between working therapeutically in the layer of the imaginary and working in the layer of reality that adds value to the therapeutic process.

The theme of the set – a world of personified trains – was chosen as it holds images and metaphors that can easily apply to issues children cope with daily.

Why these are different from everyone else’s card resources? What is their unique selling point?

The set is a rich and useful resource which contains a deck of 50 illustrated cards, a deck of 50 story cards and a professional guidebook for therapists. Three professional tools for therapists in one kit ! As such it is unique.

The deck of projective cards contains 50 images of carriages and engines, where each card can be worked with as a single stimuli. In addition, when the child puts one card next to the other, it creates an image of a train. The train and the cards composing it can represent a situation, a place, a feeling, an event or a group of people from the client´s life.
The deck of story cards contains the beginnings of stories told by different carriages. The client can work with the story cards, either in combination with the illustrated cards or separately.

The professional guidebook describes methods for working with the cards in settings of individual therapy and group therapy. These suggestions are organized according to relevant themes, such as: relationships and groups in different areas of the child´s life, strengths, difficulties, separation, transitions, issues within a family, coping with illness or death, aggressive behavior and violence, control, fears and more.

The set is a wonderful resource that can be used by mental health professionals from different fields according to their areas of expertise.

World of TrainsTell me why you are so proud of them and how long they took to develop.

For the world of trains to develop and come to life – as with many meaningful journeys in our life – it needed time and space, involved building relationships and demanded many hours of working alone.

A couple of years of hard work went by before I managed to create the imaginary world I envisioned, a world where therapists and clients join and are enabled to embark together safely on meaningful journeys of their own…

Each illustration was carefully designed to address relevant issues that can be processed in therapy. The colors of the cards, the material, size and shape of each illustrated carriage, the relation between each carriage and its environment, as well as other objects and features in the cards, were all carefully and professionally controlled in order to address a wide area of themes and emotions. The result of these efforts will hopefully assist the clients working with the cards to deal with the issues they are dealing with.

The story cards were created one word at a time, with the goal of offering beginnings of stories that would both enable and encourage children to relate to, articulate and work with narratives from their own lives.

The numerous options of using the cards in therapy when working with children having different needs emerged in a flow of ideas stemming from my professional knowledge and experience. These suggestions for application were edited (and re-edited☺ ) to result in the broad and useful guidebook, which can stand as a valuable therapeutic resource on its own.

As in other adventures we embark on, there were obstacles along the way, stations that kept the train from moving forward or times when an engine or two had to halt or search for the right rails to follow.

Hence, when I hold the set now, with both hands… I feel and acknowledge its visual and thematic richness and the professional therapeutic value it contains. These were born and embedded in the stations and over the tracks, in the carriages and through the changing vistas of this world of trains.

I am proud of this set. I would like to believe that the future inhabitants of this world of trains, be it passengers or drivers, by-passers, clients or therapists – will benefit from exploring its landscape and find their own trails and stations along it.

Please use it with respect, responsibility and sensitivity, for with these it was created.
From the bottom of my heart and mind, I wish you a safe and fruitful journey.

Author Spotlight – Margot Sunderland

Care Professional Contributions

Margot May

Margot May

Would you share a little information about your professional background with us so we have some context about the origin of the resources?

I trained to be a secondary school teacher and taught for a few years. It was the hardest years of the my life. I then went on to train as a creative arts therapist and psychotherapist and become a Senior Lecturer on a Performing Arts Degree. 

I worked for 10 years in residential care homes with troubled teenagers. I saw time and time again that without call on images and imagery, the change process is slow or doesn’t work at all. with images people engage and the change process often flows in remarkable ways.

I now run a Higher Education College entitled Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education ( academic partner of University of East London) MA in Arts Psychotherapy and MA in Integrative Child Psychotherapy and lots of Child counselling courses using the arts.

Can you give us a brief overview of the Draw On Series from your perspective?
They are to support children teenagers and adults to stand back and think about their lives and make sense of and process major life events.
It is a process designed to help them to then make good choices about what they want to do with their life now and in the future, how they want to live it who they want to be, who they want to be with and what gives their life meaning. As Socrates says, “ The unexplored life is not worth living “. Without standing back you can so easily get stuck in a rut and keep making the same mistakes d

What was the inspiration, thinking or reason that prompted their development?
Because in my work with very troubled children and teenagers, straight forward conversation about feelings just often didn’t work
Using the worksheets “ what I call the third thing in the room “ was far less shaming for them and they got really interested in the psychology of relationships with self and others which is embedded in the drawings. In this sense the drawings offer psycho-education vital facts about what it means to be human
One teenager for example had never realised he was a young carer before doing the relationship page. Another found the word “ shock” on the shock page vital to understanding his painful life as he realised he had had many shocks. He then started to make sense of them, grieve and work through so the shocks stopped derailing his life . So the work sheets can be starting points, spring boards to a really meaningful conversation that otherwise would not take place

What was your main goal when you created them?
To help ease the vital process of reviewing your life and how you want to live it, and processing painful life experiences that if left unprocessed can lead to mental and physical health problems

Were they evidence-based and tested and if so, who with and when (age group, setting etc.)
Yes with various adults ( the emotion cards especially – These adults often could not stop looking at particular cards , holding them once they had identified with them )
The worksheets lots were used with teenagers in residential care and with adults, children and teenagers in private practice over years.

Do you need to be a trained, qualified and registered clinical professional to facilitate sessions using these resources?
No. You need to be able to listen really well and to empathise and feed back that you have understand what the person is saying. .Endless questions without empathy can be dangerous and people often just shut down. And it has be totally non – judgemental listening with no lectures !! But I explain the vital dos and don’ts in the books and with the emotion cards. I would always recommend say at least a short counselling course ( e.g 30 hours) but that said, some people have natural empathy.
I really liked it that the researchers for the Government Green Paper Dec 2017 Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision found that with children/ teenagers age 2-18, to quote.

“There is evidence that appropriately-trained and supported staff such as teachers, school nurses, counsellors, and teaching assistants can achieve results comparable to those achieved by trained therapists in delivering a number of interventions addressing mild to moderate mental health problems (such as anxiety, conduct disorder, substance use disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder)”

 Who can access and make the most use of these resources? (e.g. age of end user/their clinical needs/groups/individual 1-1 sessions etc.)
Yes anyone could use the book to do a self review of issues in their life. But they are best I think for practitioners who are helping people to look at their life, work through painful experiences, making life decisions
They can be used in groups, say in PSHE lesson on relationships that hurt and relationships that heal, leading to really good group discussion

There is a new edition of “Draw On Your Emotions” already available and a new version of the “Draw On Your Relationships” coming out soon. Can you explain what new content readers can look forward to in these updated volumes please?
I wrote the first editions a long time ago now. The new editions I think are far more moving, in depth, wider range of life experiences explored. The pictures also have been all re- drawn to be far clearer and often far more emotionally engaging

We are excited about the new add-on cards. Can you share with us how and why these were developed alongside the core resource?
The cards are very powerful. Of course being full colour they can engage you a really strong way. Participants find utter relief in seeing key life experiences relationship experiences and self – states ( which so often don’t get talked about ) there in front of them. The idea is that you lay out all the cards and then simply pick up the ones that really accurately represent you, your feelings, your life, your relationships. There are cards on the market but we haven’t found any that really provide the emotional depth of the cards we have made. Hence our motivation to do so. Humans don’t have little feelings, they epxeirence powerful, intense emotional states and they need these acknowledged. The cards do this.

What is really different about these books and cards compared to other resources available?
I think so many resources on emotions are a bit patronsing – particularly those for children. We don’t just feel sad, cross, frightened and happy. Even young children have complex feelings and self states that, if they are not worked through, not made sense of, can so easily lead to mental health problems.

Will you tell us more about the images used on the cards and the artist?
Nicky is a stunning artist. She trained at The Slade ( top art school ) and can capture the very essence of particular self – states in ways that when you see them on the cards, grabs your attention as they really do speak about some of the most profound feelings we humans are capable of.

Do you have any other projects up your sleeve that we can look out for in the future?
Yes DVDs on attachment play and ways of being in relationship with children and teenagers that bring about emotional change. Its the opposite of spending hours on screen time where no emotional development takes place.

Click Here to buy The Emotion Cards