Delphine Merlys

I see children, adolescents, adults and families in my office, which is located in Rocourt.

I have been a special needs educator for 14 years in the Youth Welfare sector. I work with children who have a wide range of complex issues (family, relational, behavioral, psychological, …) as well as with their relatives.

In terms of care, the institution where I work has always aimed to consider each role (social worker, psychologist and educator) in the same way, except for the psychologist, who is the only one to administer tests to the children. Guided by the latter, I learned how to conduct interviews and discovered how to develop hypotheses and potential areas for intervention.

Feeling more and more comfortable in this practice, and with a desire to complement my knowledge, which had been only practical, I wanted to discover and learn various approaches by taking several trainings. I started with Brief Therapy; I won’t hide from you that the systemic perspective won me over, and that’s why I went on to begin Family Therapy at the C.F.T.F. These four years of training obviously taught me a great deal about myself and about my place as a therapist, but above all about this idea of not stopping at the “identified patient.” Bringing nuance by considering the whole system, that is, the family in its entirety, seems to me more promising and less stigmatizing for the patient.

In parallel, during a conference organized by the CFTF, my curiosity was sparked when a family therapist shared the use of buttons as a medium during her sessions. By experimenting with them with the children welcomed at my workplace, I realized that it was easier for them to confide through a metaphorical object than through speech. Using so-called imaginary stories allowed them to detach themselves from their feelings of loyalty toward the people they consider close to them. That is why I attended a 4-day training at the Systemic Village on floating objects, their use, and their objectives.

My latest learning in terms of knowledge is Access Bars; it is an energetic body approach aimed at destroying and deconstructing limiting beliefs. It consists of a treatment using light pressure on the skull. By placing the fingers on parallel points located on either side of the recipient’s skull and leaving them there for several minutes, the giver creates connections (called Access Bars). These connection bars help release the excess of our thoughts, emotions, memories, beliefs and repetitive patterns that are buried without the recipient’s knowledge in their unconscious.

This approach is fairly recent but nonetheless seems to have positive results. The motto of Access Consciousness is “At best it will change your life and at worst you will have had a good massage.”

I hope that my background has allowed you to better understand my professional path and also the fact that my work as a therapist really matters to me.