For therapists: why I started using miniatures in sessions

I was a few years into my practice when I first put a set of figures on the table. I was nervous about it, honestly. It felt like a risk — would it seem trivial? Would a client who had come to do serious work feel patronised by what looked, from the outside, like playing with toys?

The session changed my practice.

What happened when words weren't enough

The client had been circling the same material for weeks — articulate, self-aware, clearly intelligent. She knew, intellectually, what the dynamic was with her mother. She could describe it in clinical language if she wanted to. And yet nothing was shifting.

When I offered the figures, she picked up a tiny one for herself and placed it at the very edge of the table. Then she chose a large figure for her mother and put it at the centre. She looked at what she'd built and her face changed.

"I always thought she was the one pushing me away," she said. "But I'm the one at the edge."

We had been trying to reach that insight for weeks. The figures got there in thirty seconds.

Why this works therapeutically

Projective techniques have a long history in therapy. What miniatures offer is a version of this that is concrete, embodied, and spatial. The client is not imagining — they are arranging. The arrangement externalises an internal world, making it possible to see it, question it, and ultimately change it.

For trauma-informed work, this is particularly valuable. The figure does the holding. The client maintains the distance they need. They can approach their own material obliquely, from the side, through metaphor — which is often the only route available when direct approach triggers overwhelm.

Bringing TALA into your practice

TALA offers training, supervision and practitioner kits for therapists and coaches who want to bring this methodology into their own work. You don't need to start from scratch — the methodology is learnable, the objects are available, and the approach can be integrated into practices of many different orientations.

If you're curious, the best starting point is to experience it yourself. I offer practitioner introductory sessions specifically for this purpose.