From the author: From my personal website I have a box of soft toys in my office. They are most often used in working with children and in play therapy, but sometimes they are also useful for adults. All the toys are cute and good, but their destinies are different. Some are taken into the game often, others occasionally, others are only considered and put aside. The most hard-working is the hippopotamus. Purple, with a red belly, bulging eyes and a zippered mouth. He is always on topic, always to the point, and he already has solid therapeutic experience. I decided to combine several sketches about the use of toys in therapy. Out of respect for the hippopotamus and in recognition of its merits, I call the article Hippotherapy. 1. The client talks about her resentment towards her ex-lover. He tells a long story, a lot, beautifully, artistically, passionately. From such stories, works of art are created - dramas, operas, urban romances. But so far I am the only listener, and my role is not very clear to me - I can’t clarify the request in any way. When I ask what the client wants from therapy, she brushes it off: Just listen and help me figure it out. Figure it out with what? I listen, I pay attention, I begin to feel like the odd one out in this pair: the client and the insult. It seems that her other interlocutors also feel superfluous, because the initial request was about loneliness, isolation and the inability to start a new relationship. The shadow of the ex hovers over us, but we cannot make contact with her - the client does not want to. Perls said that being offended is an indicator of a person’s value to you; being offended means I value you; I’m expecting something and not getting it. I agree with him, but the client does not. The lover is no longer important and not needed, but the resentment lives on and weighs heavily. And every time, speaking about the resentment, the client points in front of her, under her chest, with her hands folded like a ladle - here it is, like this! At the next show, I put a hippopotamus there. It is just the right size and even close in color - the client describes her resentment as such a soft clot of lilac-violet color. The hippopotamus as the embodiment of resentment looks a little strange, but the client is happy and approves: yes, that’s something exactly like that, soft , but tangible, my hands are busy, I’m not free. And he looks at me triumphantly: now you see how I suffer! My proposal to leave the hippopotamus, throw it aside or talk to him does not find a response, only my hands press the toy harder to the body. Well, let's go get the client. The session ends and I suggest the client take the hippopotamus with her for a week. Carry it like your own grudge, don’t part with it, notice what you want to do with this grudge, and do it if possible. That’s where we parted. A week later we couldn’t meet for good reason, so the hippopotamus stayed with the client for two whole weeks. And this turned out to be very helpful. As soon as I entered the office, the client handed me the hippopotamus: Take it, I can’t see it, I’m tired of it! But she agreed to discuss the two weeks we spent together with him. The first week was idyllic. The client, whenever she could, pressed the hippopotamus to her chest, feeling that here it was - an insult, long-standing, constant, pressing, holding, not letting go! How hard, how bitter! Eternal companion, only friend! The hippopotamus stared at her with googly eyes, keeping his mouth shut. Then his constant presence began to bother me. It’s one thing to think about offense, to speak, to suffer. Another thing is to constantly hold it in your hands. The client is responsible, she promised not to let go of her hands, but she doesn’t let go. But no one canceled household chores. Have you tried cooking, washing dishes, cleaning while cuddling a stuffed hippopotamus? Also constantly remembering what it means, listening to your feelings, to your attitude? The first days she took the toy with her everywhere. When leaving the house, I carried it in my bag, but remembered that it was there, nearby. Then I started to forget. I was looking forward to the session to give the hippopotamus, but the day before my son got sick, the meeting was canceled, there was no time. A few days later I remembered. The hippopotamus sat alone near the computer, the recovering son managed to open his mouth and stuffed candy wrappers insidesweets The offense looked pitiful and frivolous, I didn’t want to hold her close to me, and my hands were busy with household chores. For the rest of the week, the client hardly remembered the offense, and when she saw the hippopotamus, she felt annoyed - he had somehow trivialized the tragedy, turning it into a farce. The night before the session, the client dreamed of Carmen with a bouquet of plastic flowers (the client played in a drama club in her youth and regretted that she could not continue studying). Smart, subtle, nervous, demonstrative - the client was disappointed, and admitted it. All the interestingness, drama, and mystery of her offense turned into artificiality, farce, and staging. In the absence of an object of resentment, resentment itself was only a way to attract attention to oneself, on the one hand, and to prevent new relationships, on the other. Thanks to the hippopotamus, thanks to its weight and materiality, the client was able to experience something that would have taken a long time to come to in conversations and reasoning. The next stage of therapy was about ways to establish contact, fear of intimacy and self-image, but we did this work together. 2. It was difficult for the client to talk, he asked me a lot of questions, told me some unimportant, in his own words, things about himself, and talked about general topics. At the same time, he was very tense and depressed. I understood that there was no need to rush, that it was important to create a safe space (Harm Siemens said: “Perhaps this is the client’s first experience when he speaks seriously and honestly about himself”), but the matter was complicated by the fact that the number of sessions we had was limited - the client was going to move to another country. At the next session, seeing a man fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater, I offered him a replacement - and suggested that he choose any item from the shelf. The client chose a hippopotamus. The hippopotamus has a zippered, locked mouth. Closed tightly. The client turned the toy over in his hands, was touched and continued talking. In conversation, he constantly pulled the zipper and fiddled with it. At the beginning of the next session, he found the hippopotamus himself, picked it up and began to tell it, pulling the lock and opening it slightly and closing it again. By the middle of the session, the hippopotamus periodically opened about a third of its mouth. I was confused - should I draw the client’s attention to what is happening or should I not rush to conclusions? I decided to wait, especially since the contact began to slowly improve, a topic was emerging. And the next time the client began to speak, while opening the mouth of the hippopotamus almost completely, then he abruptly stopped, fell silent and closed the zipper. I couldn’t help but say this. And it’s good that she said it - the client was happy. He admitted that all this time he had been fighting with himself, weighing whether he could tell me his terrible and shameful secret, and could not make up his mind. After that, he completely unzipped the hippo's mouth, took a deep breath and began to speak. Pre-contact has been completed. The hippopotamus had done its job and was now listening with its mouth wide open. 3. The client at the next session started a conversation that he couldn’t separate himself from his mother, he constantly turns to her mentally, argues, evaluates her from her point of view, but wants to not remember at all. But he doesn’t believe that this is possible. - Why, why do I carry it with me?! - he asked me pathetically. And I gave him the treasured purple hippopotamus. Here, I say, is your mother. Carry it, I say, with you and don’t leave it for a moment. Take it with you everywhere and don’t let it out of your hands. Take it with you to sleep, take it to work, to the store, to the gym, and so on. In a week you will understand why you need it. The Truth will be revealed to you. The client and the hippopotamus arrived early for the next session. The client said it was a great week. Mom was always with him! He hugged her, pressed her to him, put her to sleep next to her. And he felt so good, sincerely, calmly from this. That it’s even a pity to part. That all morning he was thinking about how he would say goodbye to her, and then be sad. And then I revealed a Terrible Secret to the client. “It’s not mom,” I said. This is a toy hippopotamus. And your mother, real, alive, real, lives many thousands of kilometers from here and you last saw her three years ago. - How can that be! - speaks.