from minecraft to meaning: when therapy doesn’t feel like therapy.

By Luke Mihail - Lumi Counselling, Geelong

A young client recently taught me more about Minecraft than I ever expected to know. We were at the whiteboard, and he was explaining the Overworld, the Nether and The End. I got some of the terminology wrong. He corrected me. More than once. Fairly enthusiastically.

But as he taught me about his world, something else started happening. We used Minecraft to talk about his strengths, what gets in the way, what helps, how his brain works and where he wants to get to. The Overworld became the parts of life that feel okay. The Nether became the hard stuff. The End became where he wanted to go next.

It looked like Minecraft. It was therapy.
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sometimes the best work starts in their world

Kids and teenagers spend a lot of time being asked to step into adult spaces. Sit here. Talk about this. Explain what happened. Tell me how you feel. Tell me what you want to change. For some young people, that works really well. For others, it does not.

They might say “I don’t know” over and over. They might give one-word answers, shut down completely or spend the whole session waiting for it to finish. That does not always mean they are unwilling to engage. Sometimes we are simply asking them to communicate in a language that does not make sense to them yet.

At Lumi, I try to do the opposite. I enter their world.

their interests are not a distraction from therapy

Sometimes parents are surprised when they hear that a session involved Minecraft, Lego, footy, colouring, Play-Doh, chess or even jewellery making. I understand why. There can be an assumption that the activity is there to make the young person comfortable before we eventually get to the “real work.”

But often, the activity is the real work.

A game of chess can become a conversation about slowing down before making a decision. Footy can become a way of exploring goals, values, pressure or what happens when emotions take over. Lego can help a child build something they cannot quite explain yet. Colouring can create enough quiet for a conversation to happen naturally. Play-Doh can make big feelings feel less intimidating. Jewellery making can give a teenager something to focus on while we talk side by side instead of staring at each other across a room.

The activity changes depending on the young person. The purpose does not. We are helping them understand themselves, communicate, build skills and move towards what matters to them.

the Minecraft session was not a trick

I was not pretending to care about Minecraft so I could sneak therapy into the conversation. Young people can smell that from a mile away.

I was genuinely interested in something that mattered to him. He got to be the expert. He got to teach me. He got to laugh when I got something wrong. And somewhere inside all of that, we found a shared language for things that would have been much harder to talk about directly.

Instead of me saying, “Tell me about what happens when you become overwhelmed,” we could talk about what happens when his brain ends up in the Nether. Instead of asking him to list therapeutic goals, we could talk about where he wants to get to in The End.

Same work. Different language. And for him, a much better way to understand his own amazing brain.

helping kids understand themselves

One of my favourite moments in counselling is when something starts to click for a young person. Maybe they begin to notice what happens before they explode. Maybe they understand why certain situations feel overwhelming. Maybe they realise their brain moves very quickly when they are angry. Maybe they discover they are not “bad” at something, they just have a skill they are still learning.

That kind of self-understanding matters because it changes the conversation. Instead of, Why am I like this? we can start asking, What is my brain doing here, and what might help?

I do not want a young person leaving Lumi thinking, There is something wrong with me. I would much rather they leave thinking, My brain does some pretty amazing things. Some things are harder for me. And I can learn what to do when those hard things show up.

Sometimes a Minecraft map on a whiteboard gets us there far more effectively than twenty carefully worded counselling questions ever could.

therapy does not have to look like therapy

There is no rule saying a meaningful counselling session has to involve two chairs facing each other and fifty minutes of talking about feelings. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it looks like a chessboard. Sometimes we are outside kicking a footy. Sometimes there is Play-Doh everywhere. Sometimes someone is making a bracelet while telling me something important. Sometimes a whiteboard has somehow turned into an entire Minecraft universe.

The question I care about is not, Does this look enough like therapy? The question is, Is this helping this young person move forward?

Are they understanding themselves better? Are they learning a new skill? Are they putting words around something that has been hard to explain? Are they building confidence? Are we working towards something that matters to them?

If we are, then the work is happening.

connection changes everything

I use evidence-based counselling approaches and therapeutic tools in my work, but there is something that has to come first: connection.

A great strategy does not mean much if the young person does not trust the person delivering it. That is why I care so much about learning what a young person loves, even if I know absolutely nothing about it when they walk through the door.

I do not need to know every Minecraft world. I do not need to understand every game they play or every player on their favourite team. They can teach me. In fact, that can be part of what makes the relationship work.

For once, they are not the kid sitting in front of another adult who knows everything and is asking all the questions. They get to know something I do not. They get to lead. And then we build from there.

I enter their world because that is where the growth happens

That is probably the simplest way I can explain the Lumi approach. I am not trying to make young people fit into my version of therapy. I want to understand their world, their language and their brain.

Sometimes that world is Minecraft. Sometimes it is Lego, footy, colouring, Play-Doh, chess or jewellery making. It does not really matter what the activity is. What matters is what becomes possible when we meet a young person there.

When they feel understood, they are more likely to understand themselves. When they feel safe, they can try something new. When the language makes sense to them, the tools are more likely to stick. And when therapy feels like something we are doing with them rather than to them, growth starts to feel possible.

That is why I enter their world. Because that is where connection happens, understanding starts to click, and growth happens.

At Lumi Counselling, I work with children and teenagers in ways that are practical, creative and built around who they actually are.

If your child has struggled with traditional sit-down-and-talk counselling, you can book a free Meet & Greet to see whether therapy that does not feel like therapy might be a better fit.