#44: I am seen, so I am*, with Paul van Heeswijk

A child breaks a window and the adults don’t rush to punishment. They sit with him, gather as a team, and ask a harder question: what have we been missing in his communication? That single moment opens up a deeper way to understand trauma, behaviour, and what “care” actually looks like when it’s done well. 

We’re joined by Paul Van Heeswijk, a highly experienced child psychotherapist and former consultant to the Cotswold Community. Paul shares the stories that shaped his practice, from early encounters with the deschooling movement to a formative visit to Cotswold and the influence of Donald Winnicott and Barbara Dockar-Drysdale. Along the way we unpack big ideas in plain language: behaviour as a request for something needed, mirroring and integration, and why teams often see different “parts” of the same child. 

We also get practical about the adults. Trauma-informed practice in residential care, foster care, schools, and CAMHS demands more than goodwill. Paul explains how children can pull carers into powerful roles, why reflective spaces help staff de-roll and reset, and how co-regulation sits beneath everything from Winnicott’s thinking to modern polyvagal theory. The closing message is a strong one: if we want better outcomes for children, we must invest in the adults who hold the work. 

If this conversation helps you rethink behaviour, care, and presence, please subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find Secure Start.

Paul's Bio:

Paul qualified as a Child Psychotherapist in 1981and is a Member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists. He was a Member of the Bowlby Centre until he retired in 2024. Paul worked in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and Child Psychiatry in London since 1981, including a Tier 4 Eating Disorders Unit between 2009 and 2014.

Between 1991 and 2000 Paul was Consultant Psychotherapist to the Cotswold Community. He has also consulted to several other Social Care Organisations in Ireland and the UK, and to Foster Care Agencies in England.

Links:

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Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes, or have client consent to talk about in an educative context.

*Attributed to Donald Winnicott

Transcript

Behaviour As Communication

Colby 0:00

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast brought to you by the Secure Start Aura apps, supporting trauma-informed care and practice at home and in school.

Paul 0:17

The children's behaviour was a way of asking for something that they really needed. And I mean, one example of it was that there was one time a state of stealing in the school community at Summerhill, and the children got together and decided the best response to this was to give um presents to the young person that was doing the stealing. One of the team is sitting with the young person now, and we are going to have a meeting altogether as a team because it's clear to us we've been missing something in his communication. A very important Winnicottian and Drysdale idea was how the parents function as mirrors to the child's experience. And the child gets to know himself through his mother's and his father's eyes and through the through their care. The essential task, really, when it comes down to it, is presence and being there for the children because what they are doing is searching for missing relational experiences of being seen. So what they're after is a certain kind of uh compassionate witnessing that is the essence, I think, of working with trauma with traumatized uh people. Something about when I was in the grip uh of these very strong emotions, in my case, fear and anxiety and uh and uh feeling out of control, how um impossible it was for me to think of it of their situation at all. But the legacy, I think, really you know, is about um how do we uh support the adults best to do this really, really important work. Meeting all the needs of the children that I said, but then meeting the adult needs as well.

Colby 2:41

Welcome to the Secure Star podcast. I'm Colby Pierce, and joining me for this episode is another inspirational guest with a connection to the Cotswold community. Before I introduce my guest, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that I come to you from, the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Ghana people feel to land, waters, culture, and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. My guest this episode is Paul Van Heswig. Paul qualified as a child psychotherapist in 1981 and is a member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists. He was a member of the Balby Centre until he retired in 2024. Paul worked in child and adolescent mental health services and child psychiatry in London since 1981, including a Tier 4 eating disorders unit between 2009 and 2014. Between 1991 and 2000, Paul was consultant psychotherapist to the Cotswold community. He has also consulted to several other social care organizations in Ireland and in the UK, and to foster care services in England. Welcome, Paul, to uh to the Secure Start Podcast. It's a real pleasure to have you here.

Paul 4:29

Thank you, uh Colby. I'm very pleased to be here.

Colby 4:32

And I was I did um I did chase you up probably nearly 12 months ago. I was I approached you to come onto the podcast, and uh it wasn't a good time for you, but you you gave me an absolute gem of a name and uh and representation to that person on my behalf to come on, and that was Peter Wilson. And uh I yeah, it was it's one of my favorite podcasts, the one I did with Peter. Yeah, and uh and he he's he is still the only guest that I have forgotten to give the questions to beforehand, which I think given our 30-year age gap, uh and me in in the um you know in the wanted uh direction, I guess. Um I uh I've always had a bit of a chuckle, and other people have had a bit of a chuckle, but yeah, that it was actually me was that had forgotten to do something. But he was, yeah, he was a good a good sport about it all and went ahead and recorded, notwithstanding my blunder. And now I have you here. And now I have you here. Another another alumni, if you like, of the Cotswold community, um probably alongside the mulberry bush, one of the most recognised uh names in in therapeutic communities, I guess, uh worldwide, and and something uh about which there is some sadness that uh the Cotswold community uh is no longer but um enough of me uh going on and on. Um I wonder whether uh we can start with perhaps you because you had a a a certain role at the at the Cotswold as um a therapeutic consultant, but I wonder if if um prior to us getting into that, if you might just um give us a bit of a uh a story or a tale about how you came to be a child psychotherapist in the first place.

A First Teaching Class Meltdown

Summerhill And The Antisocial Tendency

Cotswold Visit And Broken Window

Stepping Into Drysdale’s Legacy

Paul 6:42

Yes, thank you, Colby. Um well in uh 1971, uh I was 22 and I just finished university. And I suppose more than that, I just finished completed what is that, 16, 70 years of uh formal education. Um and I as I reflected on it, I I realized that there was some kind of sadness as I looked back, because school for me, the good parts of school, which I did enjoy very much, and also university, were really about friendships, the relationships I made, and I never felt especially excited or managed any passion for any of the uh subjects that I was being taught. Um and I I sort of worked out kind of how to play the system in a way, really, and there are some things that I felt I could do more easily than others, and those were the grounds on which I selected the uh the specialties that I that I uh took up with. But I did have some sadness about it. In 1971, actually, uh, this uh may be a refresher for hopefully for lots of people, but uh for those that don't, uh just an introduction to a name, was the time of uh Ivanjich, who wrote a very important book called Deschooling Society, which was a radical critique of compulsory education, um, and especially the way it was compartmentalized and institutionalized uh education, um, and was taken away almost from community life. Um so uh in fact, uh another contemporary at the time wrote a book called Contemporary Miss Education, because he thought it served to alienate people from the learning experience. I was very excited and inspired by this, and it got me interested in education. I was looking for something to do after university, and the education seemed to me to offer um a career that intrigued me, especially when I was looking at it in the way that uh Ivan Illich was. Illich believed that the important uh focus for learning was what he called self-directed learning, that he thought the best way for children to learn was to begin with what really interested in them. Um, and that way they would engage more with the learning process and they'd be motivated to explore and to discover more and more about the particular areas and expand from that. This model of learning uh had had sort of consequences for the role of teachers, and it Illich was highlighting always there was something very passive about the learning experience that followed from the hierarchy of teaching, you know, in that what teachers were uh paid to do was to kind of deliver um a curriculum to and to decide, you know, not obviously individually, but that the the uh school system decided what the curriculum would be and how learning would would take place in what sort of settings. Um the model of teaching, and this is where I think I'm getting closer to my search for for what I wanted to do, was more like that in on Illich's model, more like uh teacher as facilitator, as guide, as mentor, alongside the learning experience of the child who was following his or her own interests and her own self-direct direction. So feeling like that, I I was pleased to accept the offer of some part-time teaching in a college, uh college of further education, um, which was for uh young men, uh, they're all men actually young men, who were um uh at college to study engineering. They were full-time engineers, and O-level English was a requirement for them to take uh to complete their qualification. So I thought this would be just what I was looking for, really, um, an opportunity uh to me, English uh uh uh lessons sounded like an opportunity for open exploration and discussion and so on. Um, so I went in that spirit of excitement on my first day to the college to begin this part-time work. I went in on my first morning to the staff room, uh, where I was largely ignored by everybody, the teachers, but one teacher came over to speak to me and said how very, very pleased he was to see me there. So I felt grateful for that, that he'd come to say that to me. And he and he followed up by saying, Yes, you see, the thing is, none of us here would ever take on this class. Um, they're impossible. They don't want to do it, they resent being there, and they absolutely refuse to participate. So I had a rapid uh change of mood from excitement and the inspiration of what uh the way I was thinking about how I was uh in you know in touch with the work of Ivan Illich and the spirit of it. And my walk across to the classroom was a very different one from the walk that I had uh if I'd been filmed very different from the way I'd come into the building, you know, an hour or so before. Um so standing in this classroom before the young people uh had arrived, uh you know, I started to feel a real dread and panic. Um, and they weren't there, and a part of me was thinking, oh, you know, I'm hoping this has this has been cancelled and there's something happened and I don't have to go through with this. But some minutes later I heard a huge noise outside the classroom. And these young men, there must have been maybe 20 of them, but it seemed like you know 250 at the time, came in, paid absolutely no attention to me at all, and were sort of uh play fighting with each other, pulling at each other's uh clothing, you know, uh mock punches and a whole um uh hub of banter that was amongst themselves. Now looking at them, I suddenly had this uh realization that I was only probably you know a year or two older than uh something that never occurred to me before. But as a teacher, I in my super ego was screaming at me. I needed to take charge of this situation to show that, show my authority. And my my first um remark I made to them was, you know, can we can we settle down, please? Because we've got a lot to get through in this year, as you know. This was the most unhelpful thing I could I could possibly say because the the impact was to raise um noise levels in the room. Um after a few moments of this, I did have a stroke of luck because I really I realized there was no chair behind the desk where I was standing to give myself some kind of authoritative presence at the front of the class. So I had to walk down into where their chip their chairs, which they had all moved around all over the place in their in their play fighting and so on. And I um and I sat on one that brought me much closer to them. And it was a stroke of luck because I had no uh intention uh to you know to sort to gain anything from this. I just was doing my very best to uh you know to get through this time. But what happened at that moment was that one of the young men, uh the one sitting nearest to me, turned to me and and they'd all been teasing each other about their clothes at this time, you know. You know, um, and one of them turned towards me and said to me, Sir, uh you still got the receipt for that jacket you're wearing. So I looked down, I said, Well, I think probably, and that and he said, Well, you're gonna need that when you take it back, aren't you? You know, now I couldn't help it. I mean, a voice inside me was saying, Don't laugh, you know, you need to you know remain in authority here. They're trying to pull you down to their level. But I did laugh. I mean, it was very it was very funny. I still still I still chuckle about it now. And it really marked a turning point in the whole, in the whole class joined in, a very playful uh banter, you know, of you know of you know, who does your hair, you know, those kind of those kind of jokes. But it settled very quickly. Now, I do have to emphasize this was not a group of you know of highly troubled young people who uh, as far as I knew, none of them had had uh traumatic histories before, but it was something I did notice, you know, uh in two important ways, which I drew on a lot when I did join the um Cotswold community um 20 years after that. Something about when I was in the grip uh of these very strong emotions, in my case, fear and anxiety and uh and uh feeling out of control, how um impossible it was for me to think of it of their situation at all. It was what you know, what we'd call nowadays, you know, uh a failure to mentalize, really. I didn't, I wasn't putting myself in their position. Um later, of course, I began to be able to do that. But at that stage, I was so full of my own worries, I couldn't really see them at all. And I think what I did see uh from their side though was that they uh far from feeling that they'd kind of pulled, seduced me into sort of joining their their peer their level, you know, they actually felt that I had appreciated the connection they were trying to make to me. And in a sense, you know, I think later in Winnicottian language, you know, I I would think of this as a as a as a real as a um uh a kind of appreciation that they realized they had contributed in in some way, you know, that I was enjoying something about them and they'd made a difference to me uh because of that. Um certainly it settled them. Anyway, from that experience, and I reflected on this quite a lot at the time, but I did become more and more interested in the de-schooling movement. And one book in particular really appealed to me, which was a book by George Dennison, who was a great admirer of Illich, under V. S. Neal in the uh the UK. I don't know if you'd know that name, Colby, but he uh he was uh the the uh principal of a free school called Summerhill, and he was applying a lot of the uh psychoanalytic insult insights, um not insults, insights in his um in his work with the children. And I mean, one example of it was that there was one time a spate of um stealing in the um school community at Summerhill, and the children got together and decided the best response to this was to give um presents to the young person that was um doing the stealing. And this, you know, I think we're anticipating here Winnicott and and the and the antisocial tendency. Um but uh what I liked about the the book uh Lives of Children was the way that the uh person who wrote it um saw behavior not as something the behavior of the children, not as something that needed to be managed or eliminated or controlled, but as a communication. And this was something new to me. That and I think the way he put it was that the children's behavior was a way of asking for something that they really needed. Now, it I'd never thought of that sort of thing before at all in that kind of a way, and it was very important kind of insight for me. I then I discovered as I looked at his own bio uh perhaps he said it during the book, but he was himself a therapist, and this got me interested in in being in the kind of possibility of being able to see behind behavior, behind symptoms, to what was what was being expressed and what was driving these kind of uh things that were impacting on the adults in this case uh in the school. Um so from there I decided that psychotherapy was the route I wanted to take. I wanted to be able to do this, and it seemed to me this would be something I'd like to try to apply outside of consulting rooms. I mean, I did appreciate the importance of the analytic model, and I it's part of my training. I had to be on a couch for five years myself three times a week. That was part of how we were trained, and I got a huge amount from that. But the role of actually being an analyst in that way had no real appeal for me. I was very interested in the people like George Denison who were applying these kinds of ideas into other settings. And if I'd had the language at the time, I would have said something about the relational model in a way that I could understand it, was what was intriguing me. I didn't feel that, you know, sitting behind someone who was on a couch was the kind of ordinary relationship that I would be looking to apply insights in. I thought, you know, schools and foster care homes and so on, that would be the kind of place I'd be looking to apply these kinds of insights. So I decided to do the psychotherapy, child psychotherapy training, and I found the ideas really exciting, really stimulating. And I've always, and I still do enjoy the reading of Freud, but it was really Winnicott who, in terms of what the kind of psychotherapist I wanted to be, who I became really interested in. Now, I began the um psychotherapy training, I think it was 1976 or seven, and in 1980, a group of us from the training went to the Cotswold community on a day visit. And this was a really very important transformative experience for me. Um I had heard of the Cotswold community, and but I didn't really know very much about it. Um and when we went, we were introduced, Richard Balburney was there actually, and we and we met him, and then we were shown around the uh the buildings by one of the adults who worked in one of the homes. And there was a very uh interesting thing happened. We happened to be standing near a window that had clearly been broken, and there were some adults who were sweeping up the glass uh from the broken window. Um, and one person in our group asked this uh man who was uh guiding us and showing us around the the Cotswold community, asked him, What do you do about uh these kinds of situations when a child has broken a window? And I was really um astounded by this young man's answer. Because what he said, and remember the question was, what do you do about this? He said, Well, one of the team is sitting with the young person now, um, and we are um going to have a meeting all together as a team because it's clear to us we've been missing something in his communication uh recently. Now, to me, at the level, I've said I was intrigued by Winnicott. I really haven't connected everything up yet, and it was clear to me at that moment that I hadn't, because in my own mind I was thinking, well, what's that going? What's that gonna do? That's not doing anything. You know, surely there needs to be some restitution here. You know, you know, perhaps uh the the the kind of things I was used to hearing about would be you know a flow deduction from pocket money or uh some some sort of compromise restitution where the child would help to but you know it helped to sweep up the class, that kind of thing. And he didn't go there at all, not at all. And it left me in some kind of turmoil, and I was thinking, but surely won't all the children start to uh you know break windows as well in that case, you know, when nothing happens. Fortunately, I asked uh one of my colleagues who'd really picked this up much more quickly than me, why they weren't um you know uh instituting some sort of uh restitution. Um and he said to me, perhaps because they don't want to reinforce breaking windows. Now I thought to myself, that sounds very good. I don't know what it means quite, but I think you're on to something there. And so I went home that day and I found um that I had bought the uh collected works of Dr. Drysdale, and I read her first paper called um, well, the short title is Damage and Restitution, and I found it absolutely amazing. I was very pleased to be at the um the uh conference there um a couple of few weeks ago now on bock on Dr. Drysdale's work, and I was recommending this people, this paper to the people to the people there, um because it really it really is excellent. And it was, I think it was uh uh that that um experience I had was an introduction to the the way the the uh theory was embodied in in the practice. Um so if I'd been a you know uh um a keen sort of uh uh follower of Winnicott's work before that, I was kind of doubly convinced when I heard about what Mrs. Drysdale was doing. I had sometimes thought myself, it'd be interesting if somebody um could find a way to apply Winnicott's uh work to uh a kind of childcare setting. And then I found out somebody was already had been doing this for quite a long time, and that was and that was Mrs. Drysdale. So that was what drew me, and from then onwards I had a very strong interest in the in the Cottsville community, and that's why 10 years later or so I applied to um to uh join as the as the consultant psychotherapist. Um and I was actually in Mrs. Drysdale had retired at that time, and I was interviewed with her by her. Uh and you know, very I was very, very impressed with her. I mean, she you know, I thought she was uh uh inspirational at that time, and combined that I think with a very genuine interest in me, the person that she was sitting with at the time. So it was a powerful experience, and I was lucky enough to have a formal interview with her and also to get to know her um socially over um the weeks after I started. She invited her husband and and and she invited me to their home for supper several times, and so I saw another side of her which I which I you know could could talk about as well. But so that was really how I got to the community, um which must be uh well 30 30 years ago now, and a bit more than that, perhaps.

Colby 28:50

So yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you um so if I if my maths are right, you were you got there I think in the late 80s or early 90s.

Paul 29:03

1991, not until 2000. I was there for nine years.

Colby 29:07

Yeah, yeah. And um I guess you were you were stepping into big shoes, going yes, like very, very big shoes. I mean, I wonder how that um how that felt and and what you saw, what you understood to be the role that you were were taking on at that time.

Paul 29:29

Well, those are really important questions. One the beginning of my answer is that Mrs. Drysdale herself really facilitated this for me, actually, because I you know I I I had I had questions myself about whether it was wise for me in taking up this role to to keep in the kind of social contact with her afterwards. Um, but I I decided to do it. Um, and I was very struck by how she continued to be very, very interested in me as a person and in my own experience, you know, as a father and as a practitioner in um child and adolescent mental health services and child psychiatry in London. And she never once asked me anything about um you know what I was doing uh at the community. You know, I mean she must have had questions in her own mind about you know what what I was up to and what I might be doing with some of the things that she built up so carefully, but she never conveyed that to me at all, was very facilitating and very permissive, you know, and sort of really on my side, I think, and being very pleased that I was there and that I was, you know, bringing all my experience and my experience of an independent practitioner to the work. So that helped me a great deal. The other thing, which I think is something that John Whitwell talks about rightly all the time, was that this role, my specific role was really as consultant to the therapeutic care and therapeutic education teams, but we had people like Eric Miller, Isabel Mengus Live, uh, Dr. Colin Morrison, Dr. Faith Spicer, Nick Oak, the um educational psychologist, and so on. We had a lot of consultants to the organization who were really keeping their eye on the primary task from a kind of uh systemic overview and looking at uh practices within the community and how much they uh may uh improve or facilitate the delivery of the primary task and where they might be getting it in the way in the way of that. I mean, the famous example, I think, perhaps from Isabel Menger's Lyethe's time, was when she uh heard that uh in those early days at the community there was a central kitchen. I think he may have heard of the story from other from other people. And I think she never explained this to me, but I think there was a sense in which if the primary task was about primary provision for young children, you know, analogous to uh young children in in families, then the idea of a central kitchen which took no account of individual relationships to carers and individual relationships to what the child were eating and how and where they were eating and what they were eating and so on, didn't really seem to fit with the primary task. And so she uh uh advised that the community would be better for all the food to be prepared by the adults who cared for the children within the homes. So Eric Miller and other consultants were always looking at and the the you know the place of everything that happened within the community from that perspective. And that would that included the work that I that I was doing, you know, in a sense that was that was quite protected. Um, and my role was to work with the teams of people, the um social care workers, that we didn't call them that, but and the uh education um the teachers um to work with them on uh their work with the children in the homes and the and the uh community polys, we call them uh schools.

Colby 33:58

So uh was there anything more to the question that no, I think no, I think that's that's a a lovely answer. And I think um uh as you mentioned John Whitwell and you've mentioned uh Barbara Dockar Drysdale, and I recently had him had John Whitwell back on the podcast subsequent to the conference that you were talking about, where he spoke about Barbara Dockar Drysdale. And um he talked yeah very clearly about the the consultant role as being one to um as as um Mrs. D, she goes by various names in various context contexts, um that she um she s really saw herself as a consultant to the the the teams to the the adults um and as a facilitator of them being able to do the the direct therapeutic work with the children. And I I wonder if you saw your role or or or followed that kind of that same path when you were there uh subsequent to her.

Consultancy Role And Attachment Language

Team Mirroring And Integration Work

De-Roleing Staff And Building Presence

Co-Regulation From Polyvagal To War

Paul 35:07

Yes, definitely, yes. So I mean I was very fortunate in that respect, and that I think um you know I was already convinced by the model, and I'd read all of her writings, and I and I I I felt very, very comfortable about working in in it in that in that way. Um and but the where where my role was made much easier was because of the kind of level of external support to the whole community from the consultants that I mentioned. Because I think uh what was valued, I think, was that I was an independent practitioner working in other settings. And so I could, whilst being extremely sympathetic to more than sympathetic, but convinced by the model, I could also bring in other kinds of uh ideas or reflections from my work outside. There was one very simple way in which that was immediately clear to me. Um, that in my uh uh child and adolescent mental health services work, I was speaking the language of attachment. And in the community, we were speaking about unintegration and integration. And I found it very interesting to transition between these two languages. I had no difficulty whatsoever myself, and you know, and I did, I think, sometimes use that kind of language in the community um in order to suppose widen the vocabulary a little bit and in order that that um because the uh the the carers and the teachers would be liaising with social workers who are, you know, and uh and others from outside who would very likely be talking the language of attachment and so on. Um, but it was an important principle uh of consultancy, and it was one I was trained in, I was very committed to, that the consultant is not a supervisor, not a manager, not part, not on the payroll, not a paid employee in the way that you know the other members of the COTSL community were. All the consultants were independent practitioners who would come for a specific period of time and leave at the at the end of the day, or in my case, two days. And you know, what I brought was an experience um as an outsider. So I wasn't the the model would say this made it a little easier perhaps to see where institutions were getting a little bit sort of uh inward looking. Um we always put the outsider's perspective, and I brought a you know a professional opinion, um, which you know, of course I expected this to be to be taken seriously, but I wasn't there to direct the treatment in any kind of a way or to advise or tell or tell them what to do. Um and uh I think it's to the credit of the Cotsville community. I don't think that ever was a was a problem. I don't think I ever heard a practice uh that it was so sort of serious that I you know had to say something like, Look, I think I need to talk to um some of the senior managers about that. But you know, that I was there um to be consulted about the issues that arose in the in the work. And I suppose that my particular application of um Mrs. Drysdale and Winnicott's ideas was that um I thought of this in two ways really. A central idea, um, a central um distinction in in Winnicott's theory was that between the mother as environment mother and the mother as object. Now these were clumsy terms, and I obviously wasn't comfortable about using them, and I tried not to, but thinking really about the importance of carers and what their function was in providing the uh the primary uh uh care that these young people needed. So when we came together, uh well let me start, let me start a bit further down the line. One of the special sort of challenges I felt for me was my realization early on that a lot of the people that were coming to work with us had very little, I think John should have spoke about this actually, John Whitwell, very little direct experience of working with children, with young children, and certainly not with children who uh had had experiences of trauma. And it was a very interesting situation because we weren't doing a kind of formal interview along the lines that human resources would very much be in charge of. We were meeting these young adults who were clearly always very motivated, I think, to do this work. But it it was as much as anything, really uh an opportunity for them to see whether what was involved in the work was something they were prepared to commit to commit to, really. So we had to, in a sense, uh you know be pleased with their enthusiasm and motivation and determination to join us, and also prepare them for the fact that the work actually was going to um not was going to be difficult. Um and of course, one of the ways uh in which it's difficult is the impact on the on the uh carers themselves of the way the children express their distress. Um you know, I often tell this, remind people of this story of uh Mary Main, and the great uh attachment researcher, and uh and uh and one of the original um contributors to the adult attachment interview, because Mary Main used to say that the adult attachment interview surprised the unconscious. Um, you know, the adult attachment interview is a structure structured interview in a clearly safe situation, but you know, people participating in it are asked to uh remember their childhood and remember aspects of their relationship with their mother and father. Um and this kind of conversation put them in touch with their own attachment wounds, but in a fair, obviously in a safe and uncontained environment. What was different, of course, about working directly with young people who have had a trauma history is that it doesn't come to you like that. Um and going back to this uh this idea about behavior and extending that to symptoms into a Winnicottian kind of framework, um, the whole idea of this behavior in a way was to impact on the carers. You know, um I think uh Richard Ronson on a previous um podcast of yours spoke about how when a child fears that they're not in your mind, they will there's something they will do to make sure they are on your mind. On your mind. Yeah. And I think this is a very helpful way of putting it. I mean, in ordinary experience, if I'm sitting with somebody who's a little hard of hearing, I will raise my voice. And if somebody's you know uh very hard of hearing, I'll talk even louder. Um, and what these young people were uh communicating, I think, in their in their very strong ways to connect with the adults who cared for them, was that they were in search of something and they needed the adults' full attention on this, you know. To be sure that they had enough, you know, that there was a chance that they were being heard. What they were looking for, of course, was a missing relational experience, basically, you know, and they were looking for something that they felt they hadn't had enough of, or perhaps felt they hadn't had at all, or something that was taken from them prematurely. And they were looking to rediscover this, and this was done through the you know, the this almost desperate way in which they would communicate their distress to the carers. The consequence for the carers, of course, is that you know they are they're subject to very uh strong feelings themselves, and kind of rather I would go beyond saying surprise, they're startled to have experiences of their own attachment wounds stimulated in this kind of a way. So what I felt we were doing in the in the in the team meetings and the individual meetings was really two things. One is that we spoke about unintegration and the role of the carer in regard to this, that the that initially the parents gather together the initially unconnected uh aspects of a baby's experience, and you know, that and somehow gather this together and to facilitate the self-integrating task really of the child. So the mother, the child's organization of his own experience um relies on, depends on, and takes on many of the qualities of the mother's previous uh or the father's and the father's uh organization of their perceptions of him. I'm not sure if I put that very well, but but you know, that we don't um there's a sense in which the child doesn't feel himself or herself to be any unified, stable personality originally, but the but the parents by gathering together these disconnected bits of experience will help the child to feel uh you know have access to the full range of his experiences, if I can, if I can put it that way. Um, so in in one sense, and and Winnicott uses a very important phrase there when he talks about the child who has no, now he says one other to um to help him uh uh uh gather his parts together, uh starts with a handicap in his own self-integrating task. And I think this is a really interesting phrase because I think it captures the sort of the kind of co-regulation aspect of this. This isn't something only done by the parent, but by the parent, in doing this, facilitates something within the child that enables him to have full range to all of his experience, many of which have been forced uh into you know disconnection from each other because of the because of uh uh difficulty in their previous uh uh um relationships to their to their carers. A very important Winnicottian and Drysdale idea was how the parents you know function as mirrors to the to the child's experience. Uh, you know, Winnicott's beautiful phrase, you know, when I look, I'm seen, and so I exist. You know, and this is something about in empathic intunement, the the mother reflects the child's own experience back back to him. And the child gets to know himself through his mother's and his father's eyes and through the through their care. So we didn't have one person doing this uh with his with our children there. We had a team of people, and in in many ways there was an advantage to this really, because it was clear in team meetings how the child the well, the way it was put was the child would show different parts of himself that remember we we were only talking about boys at the community to different members of the team. So occasionally it would happen that you know uh uh team members would say, Your child, he does he does that with you. I've I've never seen that at all. Um, and so one you know uh likely explanation of that was that certain uh uh adults might have particular blind spots or difficulties in being open to certain kind of uh communications from the children because of their own attachment wounds and so on. So that as a team, we could kind of assemble together um a picture that was kind of getting to know the whole child by all of the different interactions. We'd go around the room uh talking about how each child felt alongside this uh the child that they were working with. So that was in a sense a kind of, you know, one kind of advantage really, that you know, it's a truism, isn't it, that we can't look at someone else's pain if if we can't look at that area in ourselves. And there might be certain communications that children wanted their carers to know about that some adults really weren't quite ready to go there themselves and didn't want that opened up. I mean, that's a very human thing. And I think the team approach, I think, we we could, you know, in a sense, uh bring bring that to light, but uh in a in an indirect way and get to know the whole child better by assembling the view that in that the individual team members were bringing. And bringing integration, and bringing yes, and facilitating integration. Um so uh that that was so one of the things we would do would be to meet as teams, and and one of the things we would do there was to you know try to bring all the aspects that everything we knew about the child together to assemble our organized perception of him in order that could then be, in a sense, given back to the child who gets to know himself you know through that process. Um uh the other thing um that was is very important to mention here. This came out in particular, I think, in the one-to-one sessions I had with the uh the people that worked there. The model was that I I came two days a week and I met with uh all of the all of the teams um uh together uh on one of the days, and also individuals from teams as well. And working with the individuals, and also to an extent with the teams, too, along the lines I've said, but working with individuals, there was one very specific uh kind of analogy or metaphor that I was often very aware of, that a lot of what we were doing was a kind of uh when the when the adult came over to see me, a kind of de-rolling. Um, you know, when you do role play um in in in family therapy or in teaching or something, um, and you take on roles consensually, obviously, you agree to do it for the for the purpose of the role play. At the end of the role play, there's a very important moment which you shouldn't rush through when you de-roll, you know, when your attention comes back and you go back into yourself, I suppose, in a way. Being one of the features I think in working with um children who have a trauma history is how you can get pulled, it can feel like you get pulled into playing certain sorts of parts, which you haven't kind of consciously agreed to, of course, in a in a way. This is something that children need to do. You know, we say that the chat the children bring um their environment that that lives within them wherever they go. And this is their environment, their internal environment, their internal world, the and the relationships in it are peopled with you know, uh unpredictable, unreliable, uh uh and ambivalent, all sorts of different attachment figures. And they and they, you know, in the in the in the in the movement towards towards cure and towards integration, they will obviously see uh those looking after them in a variety of ways, sometimes with with very rapid transition from one moment to the next. So you could you know begin an afternoon with a child who's who's uh you know treating you almost as if you are their rescuer, and that can very quickly turn into the you being seen as their persecutor, you know. Uh, and then all sorts of projections of that order can happen, and very, very fast and very powerfully for reasons we've said before, these are urgent needs being expressed, you know, and and they are being expressed in the child's journey towards trying to, in a sense, test out an environment to see whether it's strong enough to withstand you know the the the what the um their worst uh feelings about themselves, in a way, you know. So from the worker's point of view, this is very, very difficult. And this is happening kind of all day long, rapid change of uh of roles that you feel you're being pulled into you know into playing with all the attendant feelings that come with that. And so at some point in that day, they may have a scheduled meeting with me. Um, and they're in walking from the from the house to my um uh to my room. Uh you know, I imagined that they were thinking that they were going into another uh uh role situation of meeting with the psych man, you know, which was going to bring up all sorts of other feelings for them. So I felt a very important part of my work there was really to help them deroll in a sense, and I and I did that in a kind, you know, not by talking about that, but by connecting with them in the way that I would when we deroll after a role-play exercise uh in a demonstration or in a therapy moment. You know, in a sense, they I I was genuine, this wasn't a technique, and I was genuinely interested in them as people, and you know, uh and but and really in a sense, I was very interested in how they were managing their days, what how they grounded themselves, how they you know, how they diff how they coped with the kind of pressures that were on them and so on. So I would try to, you know, I remember things about them, uh, ask questions about what I knew them to be interested in, and remember them from previous conversations and so on. And in my mind, this was part of this process really of getting back into themselves in order to do what I think is the essence of this work, and I think this is, you know, I'm talking here the contemplative traditions going back thousands of years, and and Winnicott right up to polyvagal theory now. That the the essential task, really, when it comes down to it, is presence and being there for the children, because what they are doing is searching for missing relational experiences of being seen, uh, listened to, of being felt. Um, of uh Dan Siegel has a good phrase, that they're looking to feel felt. So what they're after is a certain kind of um compassionate witnessing that is the essence, I think, of working with trauma traumatized uh people. Um and how do we do that at our best when we are grounded and and centered and that kind of language? Um I mentioned the contemplative traditions. I had in my office, uh in one of my offices, um a translation from the Great Tao, which I found to be absolutely uh beautiful, beautiful. And in one particular translation, there's a moment when the um pupil says, Master, what do I do in the face of the suffering of another? What do I do in the face of suffering of another? And the master says, stand out of the way. And I think this is really important. I stopped having it in my office because a colleague saw it one uh one time and said, this is a very neglectful kind of attitude, isn't it? Sort of like, you know, what is you know, and and heard it in completely, I think an unintended way, definitely, but a way I'd never even thought of that possibility. Because I I I thought of it much more that it's really about this relational experience is about really feeling felt, and that and that some uh communication that this community that this experience that's being conveyed is very, very important and not something for you to rush into fixing or into expert mode or any kind of behavior that takes you away from just listening, really listening to what somebody is trying to tell you about what their experience was. You know, now if you listen to Stephen Porter's uh um, you know, the the founder of Polyvagal Theory, this is something he talks about, I think, beautifully when he steps back from that uh theory and talks generally about about well, it's not stepping back from it really, but the specifics of it when he talks about what what um trauma, uh what is really important when being with people who have had traumatic experiences. And it's very much that. And I felt that really in one-to-one situations, that's what we were trying to do, in order that they could go back to the situation, uh having derolled, gone back to being uh present themselves and in themselves, and be alongside the children, you know, and able to be there for them. So that's what I thought we were doing, and I think that was also part of uh of the team meeting experience as well. I think that's what we were all doing there as well. In fact, um I mentioned this as well at the um uh the Drysdale conference. I heard Stephen Borges talking about some work that he had done with some Ukrainian um therapists. Uh and you know he um the moment came for him to go online, and uh when they came online, they said to him they'd just come out of a bomb shelter. So they were standing outside this bomb shelter, uh, and they said that they'd come out because they couldn't get the signal inside the inside the shelter, and in order to communicate with him, they had to be outside. And he's you know, he spoke spoke a little bit about how responsible he felt because they put themselves in a very dangerous um situation. But one question he asked them was that um he said, What what we what do you actually do? What were you doing in this bomb shelter when you were all together? And they told him that they were singing Ukrainian national songs. Um and he said I think what they were doing was co-regulating. Um and they were therapists, and in order for them to go out and help with the self-regulation of their clients, self-regulation is preceded by depends on co-regulation. First of all, this is the you know, this is the essence of the Winnicott Dreisdale kind of approach. Um, and and that I think that example, and is of course it's rich with uh possible uh other uh symbols and metaphors to explain you know war zones and and bomb shelters and so on. But that part about the co-regulation I think is important because I think that's what we were doing in the team meetings too, uh, together. I mean, I certainly was, I'm the first to admit this. My work consisted of the meeting with the teams who worked with the children, but I also had a direct connection with the children that came to the community because um I would uh it wasn't only me who did this, but I would meet them uh at the at their earliest um uh arrival time at the community on their own. I'd read their papers uh and uh I knew a lot about them from their recorded histories, and they had a time with me uh and with uh other people um from the from the management on the management side and other consultants too, I think. And this was a moment when I really kind of powerfully connected up the the histories as written about them and the child in front of me, you know, and I really was tracking my own kind of counter-transcendence at these times. And you know, my first thought was, and I was very worried about the first time I did this, because I I had a kind of ethical objection to you know Ainsworth's stranger, strange situation experiment, which I don't you know I could see what the research benefits were, but it seemed to me very cruel to set this up with you know a mother being you know instructed to leave a child, you know, in the presence of people he didn't know or she didn't know.

Colby 1:04:17

Not the similar to the still, not the similar to the still face experiment.

Welcoming New Children With Safety

Paul 1:04:21

Yes, exactly, but very similar to that. And I had great ethical difficulty with this. And my first worry in doing in agreeing to do this was that I was in a sense doing something very similar, that children were arriving with all sorts of relationship difficulties, and they were being put in a situation with somebody that they didn't know at all. Um and I felt this was you know not fair, but uh but actually my first experience of it did make me feel better because although the children, almost all of them did arrive like this, I think something you know about the way I was not trying to make it too easy, but I was ensuring that my community my communications of safety were something I was really keeping my eye on. I could talk more about that another time, but that you know, and that my tone was good and so and I felt I was alongside them, you know, imaginatively and in my heart about this experience they were having in sitting there with me. And they were having obviously they just arrived all around the whole community with lots of people, and I did see them actually, almost all of them changed from this state, which were, you know, if you'd read the histories, you'd never think this child was capable of sitting still like this, you know, for one second, let alone 10 minutes. But you know, I think once they had this experience of uh of kind of feel of feeling a little. A little safer or feeling the connection a little more. That's what I hoped was happening. They would, in a sense, go up the kind of the ladder in terms of an autonomic nervous system and move into fight and flight. They became very interested in outside noises, wandering around, you know, picking things up in the room, and really, they really changed in a way that was quite striking to see. They went below that. And again, coming in with how the community worked, you know, we did try really hard to make this um the best experience we could for them, recognizing how difficult it was. So I would always try to ensure it was the same carer that they'd all began to form a relationship with, who would bring them over and we would spend that moment together before the child sat with me on their own. And then the uh we the carer would say, you know, I'll come back and you know, come and collect you, you know, in in so many minutes. Um you know, and so that was an important part of the process. Uh and obviously I took steps you know inside the room to make sure that that they realized that they could go at any at any point and what would happen if they if it was becoming too much, and so on and so on. No one they never ever did that. Um so I think we were ourselves co-regulating in-team meetings, which I think was really, really important. As I said, it certainly was to me because I did say to the children in this first meeting, you will see me around the building. You should know that when the adults are coming for meetings, it's me they're coming to talk with. And you know, I'd like you to feel that you could have you could come whenever you wanted to for any kind of reason. Um but the but the other thing too was I was always very worried for them, you know, because I had met them and seen how fearful they could be and how they could freeze, you know. Uh and also, you know, I knew their histories and had that kind of felt that connection and responsibility towards them too. And similarly, for for the adults, you know, who came in not really knowing what to expect, we prep I prepared them as John and others did as well, as best we could, um, to what they might. I and I used to say to them, look, it's not if um your your your histories of your own are being stimulated, it's it's when really we we have to, it's gonna it's going to happen. And and and you know, I think we all tried to give them obviously uh you know a way to think about this as very important to the child that they do have this impact on us, and it's not personal, you know. We we obviously explained it in that kind of way, but I was careful at the same time not to try to you know soft um soap this and to make this sound as though this is actually quite an easy thing to do, because it's you know, as we all know, it isn't, it's very, very difficult work. And and it was obviously what we wanted was people who you know were prepared to stick with the work, uh, you know, and and see the you know, the have the longer view and see the benign intention of everything there. Um, but it was you know it's a it's a lot of to ask of people to do, of course. Um somebody when I that meeting I had in 1980 where Richard Balburney was there, one of my uh colleagues on the day said, How do you get people to Richard? Had said that adults work 80 to 90 hours a week. And somebody said to Richard Belburney, how do you get adults to do that? And he said, Well, I say to them when they come, you get into this work or you get out of it. Uh when you said it, he said it very nicely, uh, but you know, I mean it's it's it's so true, really. And getting into it was, you know, in a sense, uh exposing yourself to these kind of situations, uh, which were all, in a sense, opportunities for the child to test you know the strength of the environment and to test out how good the parenting that we were uh promising them really was, because that was the sense in which they needed the adults to survive their aggression, of course, and their destructive behaviors uh and so on, and to carry on being good parents, being resilient, you know. This enabled the you know, the children to start to believe that that the unit was strong enough, you know, to withstand whatever the child threw at them, because their own experience was, you know, they had these early experiences were uh of a of a very difficult kind, and subsequent placements all broke down. And of course, their conclusion was that this was to do with them and to do with what they did and to and their beliefs about themselves. And it takes a lot of challenging, um, for uh for us to uh and and and we come and and it's um and you know they're not gonna believe in what we say we're gonna do, they're gonna put it to the test, of course.

How Cotswold Should Be Remembered

Colby 1:11:52

Um that I think that that was just a wonderful um insight of some depth into the work that was done uh by you and I guess with you in that time um that you're at the Cotswolds community, it is of course uh no longer uh around. Um how do you think that the Cotswold community should be remembered? How do you think it should be remembered?

Paul 1:12:26

Um I think I think really in the way I think Mrs. Drysdale's work should be remembered, you know, in a very uh systematic and serious way to apply some of these uh these terms and ideas that you know could sound idealistic or woo-woo, even I think, sometimes. But I thought she was, I think that paper on damage and restitution is is a masterpiece, I think. And I used to say to people, read that, then read everything else she wrote, and then come back to that one again, because I think it's all really implicit in there. Um, and and what the community did well, which I think um should be done, is they they took, you know, we we took seriously the the needs of the adults as best we could, the ones um doing the work. They had access to the range of consultants, they did have, you know, they were encouraged to read, uh, and you know, they uh and training days were organized. This kind of, you know, putting it crudely, but this feeding of the uh adults and this respect um for the work that they were doing, I think the and value valuation of it was is is really really important, I think, you know. Um, and of course, ideally this is reflected in you know better uh pay for this very important work, but and and also I think for um I think moves towards a more kind of professional um uh trainings and so on, which I think I think there are organizations who are who are who are doing that. Um but the legacy I think really you know is about um how do we uh support the adults best to to do this really, really important work. Um, you know, I mean and that I think that does need a lot of I think people who commission services ought to go into the speak to people who were at the community uh and hear directly from them, I think. Um uh because it it it it certainly was an inspiration to me, and I you know think I became a you know a better person for my own uh time I I spent there. Um I think a lot of uh people that that were work there would would say the same. Yeah, um and of and of course lots of children and young people benefited hugely from it. Yeah, yeah. So I think you know, I think in keeping in keeping the literature alive, I think, you know, and uh the importance of training and support and regular uh reflection spaces for the adults, meeting all the needs of the children that I said, but then meeting the adult needs as well for co for co reg for co-regulation and so on.

A Growing Environment For Everyone

Colby 1:15:53

And also, I mean, what's coming through really strongly for me is that uh it is the creation of a growing environment. That's jo uh John Whitwell talked about the creation of a growing environment, and I think um, and in other ways, things that he has said about the Cotswell community across two podcasts, interviews with me, as well as other conversations I've had, reflects that it was it was a growing environment not just for the boys, but also for the staff.

Paul 1:16:25

Yes, absolutely, yes, yeah. Yes. Yeah, I think that's definitely definitely the true, I think. Um and you know, I think you know, people did uh adults did begin to say things like they felt this had impacted on the you know, on the uh themselves as as partners, you know, uh and as and as friends and as and as parents and you know and family members, you know, they felt you know that this uh being put in these difficult situations and and coming through them was it was a very important experience for lots of people there, I think. And you certainly find, you know, you know, we tend to pick our friends, don't we, by the by the by the people who will support our own kind of versions of ourselves. And the children, you know, of course are not interested in that, doesn't do anything for them. You know, they they will um give you impact on you and give you, you know, uh uh exposure to parts of yourself that you may not be very comfortable with, but it'll really be very important to you to own those and recognize them in yourself if you want to be a better partner and so on.

Closing Reflections And Thanks

Colby 1:17:47

And I I think that part of the legacy of the Cotswold community is there's no shortage of people for me to have on the podcast who have who have um gone on to um to have quite remarkable careers, um, and that's amongst staff and um and young people that were residing in the in in the Cotswell community in the day. But Paul, um it's been I wonder it I wonder if you feel like the time has gone quickly, because it does very much feel to me like our convers the time of our conversation has gone very quickly. We're uh about um an hour and a half into it. I feel like I could talk to you for a lot longer.

Paul 1:18:37

I did I did anticipate this difficult. I mean, I just have uh you know nine years of of this you know incredibly rich experience. You know, I I know I'm I'm I could feel I was in such a hurry, really. Um I checked up hard on myself and so on. I just felt there were so many things I wanted to say, and I apologise at the speed at which I was delivering it. But um it it reflects really you know how important it was to me and and how alive you know I felt in you know including the ups and downs of roller coasters rides and so on. But I there's so much you know I want to say and to express about it.

Colby 1:19:19

Um you know, so maybe we can have another conversation, maybe maybe we can have another conversation soon. Um there's lots of lots of what you've said that really resonates with me, and I've learnt some things as well, um, obviously, as you do. I love I actually really it's not been put in this way, and I think you said it was a it was in part either a Winnicotdian or or Dockar Drysdale or or both, but um the this the idea of the children revealing different parts of themselves to different people, and I think John said something like that, but but the idea of the of the team meeting being uh an integration, mean creating a whole child in the in the eyes of the adults, and I think that'll that's certainly the something that I'll take away from this conversation and and apply in my own work, I think, because I mean my work is primarily as a psychotherapist um with the children and young people, and I see a certain side of them, I guess, and uh uh um it it is uh helpful to I think I don't always get to see what other people get to see. I get I sometimes I hear about it, but but not in a deliberate way, and that's I think something that I really wanted to uh turn my mind to going forward. But thank you, Paul. That was great.

Paul 1:20:57

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Colby.