Returning to the idea of ??Home Therapy, it is clear that our home is a projection of our life. Simply looking at where we live, we see how we live, we see what we love, how we organize our spaces, how we fill them, how we keep them empty. We are mirrored in the choice of colors, furniture, accessories ... and interestingly enough by analyzing our homes we can get almost an objective vision on our positive and negative sides, a perception of our dreams and nightmares, tidy rooms (too tidy?) or messy ... areas of our lives that need attention ...
I used to play a game with all my classes when I used to teach English: the House game.
This game, which I more or less invented and developed over the years of teaching,initially started as a way to use vocabulary of the house, such as rooms, parts of the building and furniture.
It worked like this, let's play it together: Imagine your dream home and take notes.
No. 1: your ideal home: what is it? A farmhouse? A villa? A castle? A bungalow?
No. 2: where is it? In the country side? In the city? By the sea? In the hills?
No. 3: How many floors as it got and which floors are they? Ground and first? Ground and basement?
No. 4: The windows, are there many or few? Are they big or small?
No. 5: What is the environment surrounding the house like? Is it a garden, a patio, a field? And is there a wall around it? Or a fence or a hedge?
No. 6: imagine being at home now. Where are you? In which room? What are you doing?
No. 7: which three elements of that room do you notice the most? (objects, furniture ....)
No. 8: Look out the window of that room. What do you see?
Done.
It is clear that there are many parallels with life and the interpretation of each part is quite evident.The type of house you imagine represents the kind of person you are: a country house is a simple, authentic, natural and practical kind of house; a villa slightly more sophisticated; even more so a castle. Whatever your choice of home, write down at least three adjectives (and these should reflect your personality). The place where the house is located will tell you more about your thinking patterns: if it is the countryside it means that you have a practical way of dealing with life, if it is the sea, you are a bit more a dreamer, the mountains are a bit distant and remote, the hills are a bit frivolous, but fun, the city is socially oriented, business- like and constantly in a hurry.
The floors represent the phases of your life you are working on at the moment: the ground floor is the present, the floors above the future, the basement the past. If you have many large windows you are very outgoing and open-minded, on the contrary if they are small and few, you are fixed on your ideas and reserved. The garden is your attitude towards the world around you: if you have a nice landscaped garden,it means that you do what you can to make the world around you more pleasing, if it is a field full of flowers it means that you appreciate the beautiful things of nature. The wall means that you fear outsiders and change, you have a strong sense of privacy and even selfishness, the hedge or fence are "softer" boundaries between your world and the world around you.
The room you are in represents the issue you have to work on and what you are doing indicates how you are dealing with it. The three elements are the keys or tools that should give you an idea of ??what to do to solve the problem. The view from the window is how you see your future ...
Rooms and interpretations: the living room is your social life; the kitchen your family life; the bedroom your sex/ love life; the bathroom health; the attic your future; the basement your past…
Like the game, we can try to analyze our real home. Our choice of house and where it is may be more a matter of where we ended up because of work, family, financial decisions; as to floors, windows and garden… but have a look at the rooms and describe each one with five adjectives and reflect that in which area they lie…. A fun game… but an interesting glimpse into your soul!