Living at the Boundary of War: a personal experience.

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Living at the Boundary of War

Living at the boundary of war is a deliberate reference to the Gestalt Therapy Theory concept of Boundaries living alongside the description of those of us whose lives are on the non-invasion, supposedly peaceful side of the boundary which has on its other side the country of Ukraine being sieged and made war on by Russia.

There have been a number of workshops, seminars and conference activities over the past two years dedicated to the consideration of psychotherapy and its role and function in times of conflict yet specifically instigated because of the war inflicted on Ukraine by Russia. (IIPA, 2023), (EAGT, 2023), (G.I.I., 2023), (Marianne Fry Lecture, 2024), (IIPA, 2025).

The title is designed to evoke the reaction of us, the psychotherapists around the world, which includes Russian and Ukrainian, of the impact on our personal and professional lives.

The Gestalt Therapy Theory concept of Boundary encompasses the notion that it is at the Boundary the ‘Self is Discovered’ (Forrest, 2001). The Gestalt Therapy Theory has maintained an originally unique perspective on the meaning of Self and Personality that was at odds with that of Freud (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1994).

Hold on to the concept that the ‘you who meets me’ is formed in our shared moment of meeting. This shared moment holds our Contact Boundary and the ‘you meeting me’ is formed - configured - in relation to me; equally I am configured in relation to you. Additionally we are configured (continually) with the environment we inhabit.

In this essay there is an emphasis on how an environment saturated with war has impacted my life, my work, me sense of self, and my relationships.

I am realising I have only recently begun to question how it is this presence of war has remained unexplored. The persistent presence of war has never grown any interest of exploration, and it is this lack of curiosity that I now see as significant.

My relationship with war, my life and the boundary of war has not been an experience I have explored before, and I am reflecting how, considering the almost permanent presence of war, I have not addressed this before. Living at the boundary of war is very relevant for my life’s experiences however war presented no novelty for me and as such piqued no interest for me. What follows is an exploration of my close relational connection to the field of war.

War’s spectre and Figure-Ground

Gestalt Therapy theory uses the notion of Figure-Ground to help explain and theorise on the human personality. When you consider all the myriad stimuli in your environment, as you attend to each stimulus it becomes Figure; meaning Figure takes your attention and the other stimuli become secondary, even redundant of your attention. All these other stimuli recede into Ground.

This Figure-Ground concept describes well the dynamics of attention, or lack of, as the experience of war is brought into my attention in the moment. However this concept coupled with my lack of attention demonstrates a wider condition in my world brought about by how the environment in which I grew shaped what I needed to not-notice. My disquiet and disturbed senses with war.

The trappings, preparation and execution of military conflict was an ever-present background of my lived experience. I grew up living on military camps, specifically Royal Air Force bases in the UK, Cyprus, and Singapore. As a member of a military family, I have experienced more than a living at the boundary of war throughout my childhood, rather the conditioning of my development has been grounded in war. War was not something I responded to or kept in my awareness as a Figure to be attended to. In this way war remained a Ground condition that implicitly influenced my growth. There as a normality in my childhood of military preparedness for war.

War comes to our village.

My experience is not an isolated one. As a Ground condition in my upbringing I need to mention this is shared across the cultures, specifically those I was exposed to, and also this experience is shared historically. We are all situated in a collective field.

Yet all of us have been living with an ever-present backdrop of war. Peace in our time was an optimistic cry in 1938 that was destroyed one year later with the outbreak of the Second World War, that for European nations was from 1939 to 1945. In the Far East, the invasion of China by Japan in 1931 makes the warring years to be 1931 to 1945. There is no universal peace on our planet. We, as a species have, in some capacity and in some regions of the globe for over two hundred years, at least, been at war.

Wherever we look, we see people engaging in or preparing for war (p38) (Perls L. , 1992)

Advances in science and technology has brought the communications and visibilities of war and conflict closer to all of us.

Our world has for a long time now been regarded as a global village (McLuhan, 1964), meaning we are one community. Our actions, as they are in our own family community, impact the family around us. Our relationships impact more than those of our own family, traditionally our actions impact our village, our community. In describing the world as a global village is to raise awareness (Mann, 2021) to the impact we have across the world, and, by definition, from across the world there is an impact on each of us. The impact of the communities of Earth have now long since rippled towards our own world, disturbing any equilibrium that existed behind our closer, personal, boundaries.

No longer does war break out and wane, rather permeates our lives. Consider how the ever-present conflict of war alters our sensitivities and contact.

The ripples are, perhaps, beginning to saturate the environment creating a desensitisation towards tensions, conflict, and warring events.

Whilst war has a particular politic definition, I will not discriminate war from conflicts, emergencies, insurgencies, tensions and the like and instead maintain these are states of war, warring states in our communities.

We all live at the boundary of war. There are degrees in our experiences and situatedness of war. Our awareness and behaviour determine the degree to which we are in Contact (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1994) with war; and it is the degree to which we recognise the novel, or not, in this global village. I recognise much more readily the novel experience of war unfolding in Ukraine; yet much less for the war currently being waged on the borders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; or on the borders of Pakistan and India; or India and China.

Consider the Gestalt Therapy theory of Figure/Ground, Novel(ty), and Awareness.

Now what is selected and assimilated is always novel; the organism persists by assimilating the novel, by change and growth. (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1994) p6

Anything not novel is discarded, it is ordinary, routine, the same as before. When the daily news reports on a particular conflict there seems to only a matter of a few days and the reports cease to be news. War sits in the environmental Field.

A field is not a physical entity by itself, but instead, the term describes mutually influencing forces that act upon each other. (Schulz, 2013)

War has become routine reporting of an ongoing experience; a habitual aspect of the environment that no longer demands our attention.

Putting this another way, the Novelty in the initial reporting is psychologically assessed and assimilated into our thinking and being. Our Self is disturbed and our Awareness activated by this Figure of the reported news, leading to a process of assimilating this news into our Self, that then return to an equilibrium, an undisturbed state.

However although the figure of the experience being reported receded to Ground that experience is not complete, it persists as unfinished business (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1994). These news stories do not complete our experience of exposure to the events; they only activate our cognitive processes and fail to assimilate our feeling and bodily responses. Of course this is variably to each of us and there is some affective and physiological recognition. We each adjust to the reporting of the war events in a way that enables us to continue our lived experience. The stimulus bringing war (story) into awareness is not attended to instead it is interrupted. There is a repeated failure to complete (fulfil) the Contact process where the full response to the stimulus is not taken and not completed.

With each occasion of the news reports there is a repeat of this process. However, the disturbance either in the individual or in the editorial decision, becomes blunted, is less impactful, and the disturbance is insufficient to activate any further awareness. This news story has become not-novel; the news story has become

pervasive, always the same, or indifferent (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1994) p.6

Under these conditions the news story becomes part of the Field, of the environment.

Let me describe for your what would be Figure-Ground for myself, and for a soldier and for a generic civilian. For the soldier war becomes a consistent Figure; its novelty maintained through the practicing for war and, of course, through the actuality of war (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1994).

For the civilian war has a Figure that solidifies and dissolves with interest or boredom (ibid). The degree of interest in war is a determining factor in the strength of excitement of the Figure of involvement.

Then, for myself, through examining my own interest, or boredom, I have come to recognise that war is not Figural, rather it sits in the Ground, not so much as a condition but as part of the environment, an aspect of the Field. This is like the grass on the hillside is not so much a Figure-Ground phenomena but part of the environment, a condition of the Field.

Understanding war as a field condition in my upbringing brings into question how my identity, outlook and sense of belonging has been shaped as a response to this environment.

Third Culture B.R.A.T.

My position is not as a generic civilian but rather as someone that has been described as a ‘Third Culture Kid’ (Pollock, Reken, & Pollock, 2010), (Stedman, 2015)

Growing up outside of my British UK culture during developmentally important periods exposed me to behaviours and attitudes beyond and outside of those I met when returning to live in the UK. Third culture kids find themselves caught between cultures. For me there was the British UK culture and that of the culture within the Armed Services and this also interspersed with cultural influences of the countries I spent several years at a time in.

Growing up as a military service child, war was neither a consistent figure as it is for the soldier, nor a figural response, as it is for the civilian. For the British Services child war presents as a constant background. Service children are situated within an environment where the Field is configured, or is it reconfigured, by war. In presenting the presence of war as a constant background I am addressing the redefining by Gestalt Therapy theory of our everyday interactions

from the viewpoint of the organism/ environment interaction, aimed at the resolution of the individual needs …, to the viewpoint of the organism/ environment field, a unitary phenomenal event, from which modalities of contact emerge p37, (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2013)

For those who were Service children, war was a Field condition; being a constant characteristic influencing, shaping, and adapting their growth and it is to this experience I will reflect on and share in relation to current events impacting myself, and my peers.

Living in the Field of war

Placing war as a field condition for those of us raised in military families I have explored through the social communities that I inhabit in this webbed world. I have increasingly noticed how Service Children have begun to question and unfold their experiences of times past troubled by conflict and war. In exploring my own experiences as a Service Child I can recognise how war, and the associations of war are in the environmental field in which I have stood. The commencement and escalations of war in Eastern Europe, particularly, seemed to have fractured unquestioned characteristic of my relationship with war; unquestioned characteristics, or modalities, of my contacting that had served to maintain a childhood sense of safety and security; a soothing of the fears and anxieties experienced whilst living at the boundary of war.

What I am noticing with my peers in these present times is a remembering, voicing, and a curiosity of childhood experiences and earlier adult life experiences in which they, and I, were situated within the Field of war. The Figure, meaning the coming into awareness, of war today is creating vicarious responses by a number of my peers.

These peers of which I speak belong to the community of British Armed Services children. We form a community, being the dependents of the Navy, Army, and Royal Air Force personnel – within the Armed Services we are affectionately known as Service Brats; an acronym of British Regiment Attached Traveller. (Clifton, 2004), (Shealy, 2003), (Giusti, 1975:2016)

My generation of Service Brats were often living in places like Singapore, Aden (now Yemen), Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta, Kenya, Gan, and other (then) Dependencies and Protectorates of the UK. We were witness to the transitions to independence of a swathe of British territories. In addition we were present on military bases across Europe; we were front line observers of Cold War conflicts. We were observers to the turbulent times of the preparation for war. (Huxford, 2022)

In examining this more closely I recognise something more pervasive in the environment of childhood. The introjection of the normality of war preparations; of drills and exercises for defence of the military base – of my home.

The children of Service personnel are socially and culturally militarised and indoctrinated.

In my teens our family moved to an RAF base in the Mediterranean where I, along with other arrivals, were lectured on the requirements of caution and confidentiality; we could be targeted by spies looking for intelligence regarding troop movements, aircraft deployments, squadron locations, and the like. This is not fiction; this was part of the culture I grew up in.

My childhood was one in which the threat of, and indeed actual, military conflict was ever present. I recall sitting with a group of friends and the conversation is something that remains vivid to this day. Our conversation was regarding the instructions we were given of how to react, and how to lie down on hearing the shout “grenade”. This wasn’t banter, or schoolboy swagger. This was seriously ensuring we understood what to do. Disturbingly, the conversation was very matter of fact, and serious. I am disturbed, appropriately as I write this, with feelings of shock and sadness, and fear.

On other moves to RAF bases in England where we were required to have an identity pass. To visit the cinema, to go swimming, or to visit our Families Club we were required to show our identity card to the Military Police. Living in Singapore and Cyprus I was accustomed to occasions when we were prevented from leaving the military base because of escalation of conflict; the military base had moved to a war footing.

Families remained in their homes whilst husbands, fathers, were at their posts alert for dangers. I recall an occasion when my father was recounting times he was rifle-in-hand patrolling the perimeter of the airfield and watching out for insurgents. Alongside this story I have a diary entry in 1967 noting “two service men shot and killed on patrol”. My father’s shooting trophy for best marksman became a sinister, disturbing object in my mind.

A question from someone I went to school with seemed quite innocuous, yet masks terrifying possibilities:

Who else remember … watching them [aircraft] doing practice bombing runs on targets out at sea in the 70s? (CS, 2024)

Think about what is going on with this question. Practice bombing runs – practicing for real live bombing. The bombing of an enemy; to be killed and destroyed. The terrifying possibilities become worse given the context that these aircraft were designed to carry a nuclear payload. I was living in close proximity to aircraft with, potentially, nuclear weapons on board; and by deduction in an area in which nuclear weapons were stored. I lived with the terrifying possibility that in the event of nuclear conflict my home was an enemy’s priority target for annihilation.

As I am writing, I am aware that the holiday surroundings I am currently relaxing in are the very same surroundings that as a child was a seemingly carefree environment yet was in fact an environment wrapped in vigilance for violence.  At that time, as a family, we lived on a military base that was subject to threats both local and international.  This was a time in which where the country in which we lived was moving to independence from the UK, and there was unrest that was additionally a cover for communist infiltration.  Views on Empire or militarism are not pertinent here, consider, instead, the thought your father might be shot today; your classroom might be burnt down; the school bus is strafed with machine gun fire; or the friendly shopkeeper of the day before is suddenly screaming at you and the air is filled with animosity.  The bogey man for me was not from a fairy tale or parental whispers, but from the other side of the security fence; in the shadow of the searchlight sweeping across the bedroom window.

Sitting with these memories my narrative comes alive through my body, in my posture, in sensations and affect. Unfinished business is asserting itself.

I am also experiencing, as I write, a familiar sense of foreboding. The images of those childhood surroundings easily form in my mind, and I recall how the sounds, or more accurately, the lack of sounds is so powerful in my mind. I see the scene in my head clearly. The sound of rifle shots split the silence; a body drops to the ground. My body is reluctant to react, there is a forceful rejection of shock, fear, and horror from what I witnessed. My concern is instead focussed on how to return home unseen to avoid my punishment for disobedience, for having sneaked out of the house to see what was going on. In the situation I have described with rifle shots, the energy of shock and horror to what I witnessed was held in, my fear was reconstructed to be for the punishment of being caught out of the house. After all this time, sixty-five years of time, my body experiences, now, the unfinished business pressing on me now - the feeling, thought, and reaction from then. I am surprised yet not surprised; this is what I became used to; this has been my cultural norm.

I recognise the impervious nature of the introjection, to accept as a given, the nature, attitudes, and behaviour of militarism. War does not shock; war does not scare; war is prepared for; war just … is; and with war are the retroflections required to live by the introjections.

Experiences such as living through a war, … give rise to clinical problems that conceal a profound personality disturbance. It is not only the memory that can’t be assimilated, but also the breakdown of our beliefs about ourselves, others and the world around us. (Gonzalez, 2018)

At their origin, my experiences lacked the support that would have enabled me to process my fears and discomfort. Different Field conditions were needed, and these came within the therapeutic relationship I entered into much later in life. A partnership that transformed a once unmanageable relational Field into one that for the first time I could be met, seen, responded to, and in which the other person stayed with me.

Only when I began therapy did I become aware of the depth of the crises I was experiencing in my daily life. I had thought I was ok and that the crises and conflicts of violence; isolation, silence and falseness were ordinary, common experiences - didn’t everyone have to deal with such an environment? What was wrong with me that I was not coping? Therapy showed me this was not a common, nor normal, existence. My living had been creatively adjusted to from an early age in a severe and powerful manner.

Without the relational presence of my psychotherapist, I would have remained on a war footing; living with my feet planted in Field conditions infused with war conflict. Only when I experienced the sustained therapeutic relationship could I recognise how my life was grounded in an atmosphere of conflict, (civil) unrest and (military) tension with multiple moves of goodbyes and hellos; changing friendships and loss of friendships; the struggles to meet with new people, to assimilate a new school, a new town. The therapeutic presence of my therapist allowed the Field to transform and provide a responsive presence to initiate and be willing and available to be impacted with strength, love, and security.

In adulthood I carried my childhood fear of the dark, of a curtain left open, of a door not secured, as shameful behaviour and I spoke of this in therapy. I discovered there was nothing shameful about my fear of the dark since this was the translation of my early childhood terror. The watchtower and sweeping searchlight remain clear in my mind. A clear and certain reminder that there were people waiting and trying to breach a security fence to attack us, to kill us all in our beds.

As I am writing I want to both choke, and vomit; and my ability to think and put words to paper becomes frozen. I regulate with thoughts of the other side of a military childhood; a cosmopolitan upbringing being introduced to many cultures, languages, social mixes, beliefs, and being able to appreciate our good fortunate. This was the creative adjustment for how the atmosphere of conflict was regulated and accepted.

The shots being fired that I talked of above evoked memories that repainted my experiences of my time in Singapore. A photograph of the house I lived in gave me warm and pleasant feelings from those days. For many years I looked at that, and other, photographs fondly. Once I was in therapy talking of the innocuous, yet worrying, fear of the dark, the photographic colours changed; fading from deep hues through sepia tones to dark monochrome shades. No longer could I look at the photo of that home with warmth, instead there was a darkness of dread, anger, fear and sadness. Today, post therapeutic explorations I can gaze on the image and hold the joy alongside the dread that existed in that period of my life.

Completion and integration are achieved when life before and after the trauma are perceived as parts of a meaningful continuum. (Loc. 7703) (Vidakovic, 2013)

When I let myself explore and feel the experience through the retelling of my stories, I learnt to relax my posture more and breathe more deeply with my diaphragm. One of the impacts is a huge reduction in my need for an asthma inhaler; my upper body is relaxed more, and my shoulders no longer feel heavy and tense.

I am also fortunate to be able to process my experiences. Through deep psychotherapeutic work in the years before (as well as after) I trained as a Gestalt Psychotherapist, I was able to transform my fears and untangle the creative adjustments I needed to survive the frightening atmosphere of my childhood.

Now, as a practicing clinical Gestalt psychotherapist, the Field that shaped my development now enters more and more to my therapy room.

In my clinical practice I have worked with civilian and military individuals on experiences of war and civil unrest. I can meet my clients in their despair, depression, and anger with the horrors of their war experiences and remain Grounded. My empathetic responses are guided through my own experiences that include being held at the point of a bayonet by two Cypriot Army soldiers; and another time being confronted with the sounds of weapons being cocked, held and pointed at me by a group of Cypriot Army commandos emerging from the darkness to surround me.

Through the exploration of this topic ‘therapist and war’ I have awoken the childhood dangers, threats and confrontations, and wonder how, and if, I will still be as grounded whilst working with clients when they are describing their war experiences.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. (Kierkegaard)

This unfinished business remained in the fabric of my existence, unknown and unanswered until now, when the thread was snagged and pulled in the exploration of the unrest in today’s world.

What further personal therapeutic work on my experiences will enable my grounding and assimilation of the thoughts, feelings, behavioural and physiological reactions that are now being expressed? There is no final resolution here. What has emerged is awareness on which I must now act. For the benefit of my clients and myself, the Field continues to move, and with it so does my relationship to what remains unfinished.

The experiences are not the trauma, rather the unfinished business is the trauma. The work will need to address the unmet needs of my younger self; adjusted within a structure of introjections and their resultant, required retroflections.

I am not alone with such unfinished business; I am one of many Service Brats raised in an atmosphere of alertness and conflict; raised as insiders to war situations.

A recollection from a person in a Facebook group I belong to;

I was only 8 years old … happily playing in the edge of the sea … there was a mighty explosion. I am having flashbacks of me now lying down of my front with my fingers in my years, so it must have been noisy. There was a ship in the distance, at least in my memory it’s a ship and I could see fire on it. Then suddenly my friend's dad ran and grabbed me and yelled run. I remember it well as I cut my foot open on something as we ran. I knew something bad was happening. (JA, 2024)

This incident was an attack on the military base in the mid-1980s, a mortar attack that did result in a number of injuries. (Kouroushi, 2024).  This was one of several such random attacks.

Other reflections on that time from children of military personnel living on the island of Cyprus include:

Definitely, I felt nervous going back (WC, 2024)

I was evacuated from Famagusta... very scary events... I only went back for the first time this year [2024]. (GS, 2024)

As a 12-year-old, I was evacuated from Cyprus in 1974 and I’ve never wanted to go back …because of the invasion. I know it probably seems silly to feel anxious… (JS, 2024)

In face-to-face conversations this past year I recognise expressions pointing to the fears of past experiences and equally notice and recognise the way such fears are dulled by deflection and retroflection. A deep sadness overcomes me in writing these lines.

The creative adjustment towards the introjection of a world view encapsulated in conflict required the retroflection of authentic fears and confusions to enable an outward normalised sense of confidence, clarity and action that was positive and purposeful.

As a group, we have so many happy and fun memories of living in warm and exotic climates; of carefree times on beaches, jungles, mountains and valleys; experiences we feel we were lucky to have. Why would we dull and compromise such happiness with worries and concerns of being attacked, or shot at?

Uncompleted situations from the past, accompanied by unexpressed feelings never fully experienced or discharged... they obstruct our present-centered awareness and authentic contact with others (Vidakovic, 2013)

As I digest these recollections, and those from others Service Children, I feel a confusion inside me. This confusion, and sadness, speaks to the gratefulness for such wonderful moments and experiences in childhood that was also a childhood of dangerous possibilities.

In listening and watching the news and experiences of the conflicts in Ukraine, particularly, I notice an impact on my peers as we sit in discussion. Our talking has an edge that is a disturbance on memories that we share through living at the boundary of war.

My impression is there is a realisation of the fragility of our childhood existence. The experience of living at the boundary of war today is creating a vicarious response to question and enquire of events from our shared past. These vicarious responses of my peers point to trauma experiences that have been buried beneath the positivity of the advantages of Service Brat life.

When I contextualise my experience and those of my peers I despair at the anguish, fear and loss of rationality; the shattering of security and belief in goodness and fairness experienced by those now subjected to conflict, persecution, imprisonment, and displacement in what was a supposedly safe European living space.

Whilst my entire childhood was wrapped in warring vigilance now there are children living their entire lives with not simply warring vigilance, but warring experience.

… regularly uprooted and moved about the country – the children of British military personnel have become a "ticking time bomb", a major report warns today.

the stark warning paints the children as the forgotten victims of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, highlighting the traumatic impact that conflicts have on young minds and on families struggling to hold their lives together while a parent is on the front line. (Garner, 2009)

 Whilst my childhood was in a culture specifically conditioned towards war this is not the case for today’s children, and this points to a potentially serious psychological breakdown of beliefs, values and identity.

Experiences such as living through a war, … give rise to clinical problems that conceal a profound personality disturbance. It is not only the memory that can’t be assimilated, but also the breakdown of our beliefs about ourselves, others and the world around us. (Gonzalez, 2018)

When I consider the impact related by my peers

I have been back [Cyprus] a few times and loved being there, … but have always felt resentment towards Turkey due to the invasion, … in my young mind they were monsters (PN, 2024)

and

Yes, I feel the same! … there was a knock on the door about 5.00am and the RAF Police telling everyone that Turkey had invaded, and we had 30 mins to pack and move. We left pretty much everything we owned behind … I’ve never been back since and really have no desire to. RH

and

… having been evacuated myself during the invasion and the Turkish soldiers killing people whilst we were still in Limassol I was not sure how to react to Turkish people. (BC, 2024)

I recognise how a person might develop a skewed belief of others that can grow into a prejudice and bias towards a particular group or, in this case, a nation.

Adjusting and reversing negative and oppressive views derived through introjects and projections is achieved through explicit intervention; challenging the projection; redefining the introjection; and undoing the retroflection.

Within the British Services my own experience was that conflict was an accepted norm, as such was more than a ground condition, conflict saturated the Field. Again this points to a cultural aspect of military service life. Ground composition is important to examine for children of Service personnel, and indeed for Service personnel themselves who might come to therapy. Exploring the field conditions of a client’s development begins with recognising the creative adjustments and contact styles that have normalised conflict. Met with such a presentation requires the therapist to recognise and consider the lack of figure as itself the figural presence in their contact with the client that needs to be illuminated and held with curiosity, sometimes through a simple phenomenological enquiry, such as wondering aloud about the client’s relationship to conflict and war.

Our work is to stay with the emerging figure and this sometimes this occurs slowly, and our task is not to force their appearance, but also to remain present keeping our attention to what is absent, muted, or taken as given. I am asking, what comes next?

Personally, there will be a deeper exploration of this phenomenon to discover more of my Self and an objective to uncover any clinical facing shortcomings and recognise any blocks in my awareness that I can unpick and assimilate into my clinical work.

I hope my exposition here will enable you, the reader, to pay attention to what is unsaid by your client who comes with a background that includes in some way Field conditions, if not saturated, but wet, by war. Clinically, this means allowing the boundary of war to sit, unforced, in the therapy room.

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