Playful Translations
Knowing Julia Socolovsky mostly from afar for years, I admired her for her proficiency in three languages (Spanish, Hebrew, and English) and her insistence—as a mother of three and a busy therapist—to center her birthdays around playful events that bring her friends together. One year they created terrariums; this year it was ax-throwing.
Her love language is doing—acts of service and anything action-oriented, which nudges us out of our comfort zones to try on new activities and mindsets without the often paralyzing “brain circus.” Some messiness and inexactitude is both unavoidable and essential to the process: “Do I love that my house became a slime factory for a while?” She laughs. “No, but I want to walk my talk!”
We spoke about the importance of community, how she inspires her clients to perceive limitations as gateways to explore with the materials at hand, and her plan-not-agenda rubric.
Julia has degrees and certifications in Children & Family Therapy and Social Work from programs in Israel and the States. As a student and as a professional, she has worked with several groups, but families with children were the population she could envision her multicultural approach having the most resonant impact.
Throughout her fifteen years in the States, she’s trained in several modalities. As someone who jibes with holistic, hands-on activities (see: ax-throwing), Gestalt psychology was a natural fit. Like bahala, there’s no exact English transition, but the German word is close in meaning to “placed” or “put together.”
Founded by Fritz and Laura Perls in the 1940s, the theory dials into the senses to increase self-awareness so people can more easily solve their own problems. Rather than being defined or deduced by isolated fragments of our psyches, Gestalt asserts that the “whole is always greater than its parts.” Akin to the connective tissue created by our social communities, internally, we also crave unity—or at least the jostle of the communal.
Play is a natural gateway to Fritz Perls’ dictum “lose your mind and come to your senses”; however, Violet Oaklander noted that Gestalt “never mentioned children.” In response, she developed the Oaklander model, infusing play therapy into the Perls’ framework. Brilliantly, Julia transliterates Oaklander’s play-infused Gestalt method for children into a Gestalt-oriented play therapy for adults. As we leave the single digits, we learn not to play—in Julia’s words, “we learn ‘unplay’”—and lose healthy modes of expression. Shame and guilt stick and our intellectual tools don’t easily dislodge them.
Julia coaches parents to remember their child-selves by sharing “When I was your age…” stories with their children to “give them proof” you were a child like them, and, even more importantly, to “remind yourself” in order to connect to that attenuated part of your being.
For her adult clients’ self-healing journeys, Julia invites us to sit or lie on cushions on the floor, or on chairs if that’s more comfortable. She begins with breathing exercises, mindfulness practices, and guided, sensory-based meditations. She often reads a short piece and poses a question, asking people to respond using the art materials available. While freeform activities such as drawing are always available, she invites us to plunge our hands into sand trays to diversify our sensory library. For people craving connection with their own emotions in a safe place, all materials are equally meaningful. Sock puppets can be used to unearth buried trauma by generating dialogue between parts of ourselves or imaginary conversations with others.
Humans invent games as low-expectation/high yield forms of exploration. Like fairy tales, children’s games are revealing in ways that seem obvious to me now: building forts means children want to feel safe. Hide and seek signals Will you take the trouble to seek me out and find me?
In an ideal world, Julia says, she would have lots of space in which to hold her sessions, but she’s found ways to use this limitation to her and everyone’s advantage. Sometimes, too much choice can make us feel more lost. In the sometimes overwhelming work of healing, a version of “Do you want oatmeal or eggs for breakfast?” can help orient us before we plunge into deep waters.
“Expect play,” Julia says. “See what the person is bringing that day, whatever age they are.”
Since insurance in the US is such a minefield, she works outside of it; however, as a therapist, it’s paramount for her that people who need her services have access. She offers five types of support, often in combination:
- Parenting sessions - a self exploratory journey for parents to help their children overcome challenges. “I always work with parents first,” she says.”
- Adult group - “therapeutic not therapy” group (six sessions)
- Individual sessions that work on healing trauma with EMDR
- Parenting groups - Reflective parenting program (RPP) curriculum for parents and their
- Therapy one-on-one with children (from babies to middle school ages
For more information, visit her website juliamft.com.