I’ve chosen to share the story of Sadie’s Sandtray process to illustrate the power of jointly experiencing the Creator’s play alive and in the moment. What emerged for her could not have occurred if we were only looking from the outside and/or analyzing her play cognitively. Sadie’s work shows the value of what I call the “Aspects of the Sandtray Session,” particularly “Exploring from Inside” what has been formed. For those who are unfamiliar with these concepts, there is an article under “About” on this website. These techniques may easily be applied to other expressive arts approaches. As always in my work, “Sadie” is a pseudonym, and I am grateful for her willingness to allow me to use her art to teach.
Sadie came to therapy after suffering a broken heart. A bright, attractive woman in her 30’s, she reported that the breakup of her “first real in love” experience occurred when her boyfriend went back to his wife. Sadie was active in the polyamory community, but something about the end of this relationship thrust her towards suicidal ideation. She recognized that she needed help.
While working through and resolving many of her presenting problems, other concerns emerged. Sadie had suffered a TBI that required multiple neurosurgeries and left her with a seizure disorder. She described impulsiveness and what she called “addictions” around food, gaming, and social media. Rather than focusing on the “addiction” label, we worked to illuminate her automatic reactivity, toward creating a space for Sadie to reflect and challenge her habitual responses. As her long-term memory was poor, she kept journals as an aid. Family members also assisted her in filling out historical details as questions arose in treatment.
Our work moved deeper. Sexual abuse and significant childhood neglect were revealed. The extent of her self-devaluing patterns and her emotional disconnection became clearer. We explored her defense systems and attachment patterns in greater detail. Forming more meaningful relationships with herself and others became a central focus of our work, and she requested the use of the Sandtray process to aid her at times. At other times Sadie used the miniatures to express herself on a table [“table tray”] or the floor.
Well into treatment Sadie shared that she frequently “hooked-up” with men, using the internet when personal contacts were not fruitful. This behavior was so ego syntonic for her that she didn’t think to mention it earlier, but now was becoming more uncomfortable. We began to explore this pattern that she named the “seductress.” Later she defined this “seductress” as “all contact with men is sexually focused and the goal is to be in control.” Sadie did not have many active and clear childhood memories due to her medical condition. She did report vague images and a firm visceral sense of her physical boundaries being overridden by a big man, when she was a little girl.
In this early sand tray, Sadie initially described it showing “two separate and distinct parts” of herself, the “white dress Betty Boop” and the “red dress Betty Boop.” These “parts” appeared blocked from each other’s view by the items she placed in the center of the world (Figures 1, 2, and 3). Once we moved to exploring the sand tray experiences from the inside, a new perspective was revealed—that of each woman’s ability to peek at the other through the blue ball. We observed that although they were able to see each other it was only in a distorted fashion, yet each woman knew for the first time that they were connected (Figures 4 and 5).
Sadie did many sand trays uncovering varying aspects of her own process and her deeply held beliefs. One survival-based distortion that she identified was, “I can dance with the devil while it is in my face, and still be in control of the situation.” Which meant that she could appear to cooperate, but really be in control. One may begin to see how this seemingly effective protective mechanism could help a six-year-old girl survive the experience of a man routinely forcing her down. Sadie’s defensive relational habit functioned to inhibit her authentic intimacy with herself and with men.
We identified Sadie’s deep hunger for genuine connection, and her intense fear of it. We explored her need to be seen, and to be valued for her true self. Sadie learned how she withheld from herself any chance of a healthy self-connection, continuing to repeat the results of her childhood neglect and abuse. Her self-withholding interfered with her capacity to self-soothe effectively. Eventually, Sadie wanted to consider what blocked her from advancing in her exploration of a serious and monogamous partnership. She had begun a spiritual journey that supported this work.
The following visual work came much later in treatment. Sadie spontaneously leapt up and begin to create as we were speaking. While forming this “table tray” she also used much space, moving around the playroom in a highly animated manner. Note that although “white dress Betty” is talked about, the miniature of the white dress Betty does not appear. Sadie only used the red dress Betty Boop to indicate her healthier sexual self on that day. This session illuminates a piece of Sadie’s trauma narrative and the connections she was making to support an emotional change.
“Red dress Betty comes first and quickly becomes Fire Betty, a highly sexualized thrill seeker. She is attracted by the pretty lights and a sense of excitement and danger that the devils display. Fire Betty knows that the sexy devils will not approach her, but she gets pulled into them and loses herself more each time (Figure 6). As she grows up, she thinks, ‘I can do this,’ meaning she can dance with these devils and be in control.” These images depict “her illusion that continues to support her engagement with these energies and further disconnects her from her true self.”
“Fire Betty is the girl who learns from her mom how to approach all men. She gets caught between the female and male devil figures. The female devil never looks at the girl, only at men. This girl is caught between the male and female devil energies and feels stirred up and confused. She is cast aside and neglected by both devils. When she is intensely engulfed by the devil’s power, Fire Betty can transform into the female devil (Figure 7). “Red dress Betty was born a pure and healthy being, then trained. She only knew the way she was taught to relate to herself, others, and particularly with men. She had no other options or models of how to be in the world, except to become Fire Betty. She became sexual, particularly with men, objectifying both herself and them.”
“Then she found a new teaching, Jesus, and learned a different way to be in the world, practicing self-care and not objectifying herself and others. This is the heart with properties of support and protection, it is a shield between her and the devils. This heart gives space to red dress Betty and to Fire Betty to observe from the outside the male and female devils and the Fire Betty dynamic with them (Figures 8 and 9). The clear part of the heart has the properties of magnification, but it also distorts, so clarity is intermittent.”
“With the heart present [Jesus awareness], red dress Betty can move away from the intoxication of the flashy lights and seductive power of the devils. She can see her past trauma experiences as being in the past, and now has space to begin to think of making a different choice, not falling into habitual old reactions.” As she spoke, Sadie moved both red dress Betty and Fire Betty into various positions around the devils. In this way she explored closeness, distance, and the shifts in power associated with proximity. Sadie discovered that when she got too close to the devil energies, she would slip into becoming Fire Betty, losing her grounded self-connection. She realized that the more distant she is from the devil’s powers, the more readily she feels a “rebirth of conscious self and strengthens her connection to the original red dress Betty.” In positions more distant from the devils, red dress Betty and Fire Betty both experience greater awareness of their own agency, a sense of choice, and are less pulled into automatic reactivity. For Sadie these changes were perceived viscerally as well as cognitively. From a more distant position red dress Betty “can be curious about the male devil and look at him through the ‘Jesus Heart.’” Sadie also described how this change created space available for other types of male energies to come in. She explored how she might increase her awareness of the pull of the seductive fire and have more active conscious control in her life choices.
