Through The Lens of Psychology: How can a Doll help?
Although dolls are primarily associated with children, they can offer significant therapeutic value and aid in self-development for adults in various ways. I didn't know dolls can help before people, who own my dolls, started to tell me that dolls help them. It felt weird at the beginning, almost untrue, and I had to look into this. For years I didn't have clear answers. I knew they help - they work with who knows what kind of miraculous force, but I still carried in me an unanswered question of 'how exactly?'. Recently Barb Kobe's stunningly beautiful book "The Healing Doll Way" fell into my hands. In this book the author offers a guided process of creating dolls for self-discovery, awareness and transformation. It sparked my curiosity again and since then I've been digging the internet exploring this topic looking for answers. Turns out, the idea that dolls can help isn’t just a weird thought of a few crazy witches. The power and potential of dolls as valuable tools for personal development, self-reflection and regulation, transformation, growth, healing and overcoming problems is well recognized, accepted and used in modern psychology and psychotherapy.
I wrote a short overview of Magical, Spiritual and Therapeutic Use of Dolls in The Past and Today. In that article I also touch a bit the topic of Doll Therapy that's organized in therapeutic settings led by psychotherapists. In this article here I don't want to talk much about Doll Therapy. I'm trying to answer to these questions:
How can a doll help in personal development, growth and healing if we look at this through the lens of psychology? How can any of us without professional help use dolls in our personal-development journeys? How are we - doll makers, doll collectors and lovers - already helping ourselves through dolls even if it's not a conscious process? Here is what I've found, what doll owners have told me and what I know by heart.
As I write this my computer keeps crashing from time to time. I'm annoyed and getting angry, and I want to scream at the computer and grab something from the kitchen to eat. I'm not hungry, I want to eat my emotions - that's what I've been doing for years and that's my first response to unpleasant emotions. I'm aware of this behaviour now and I'm working on stopping it, so I take a doll and put it by the computer screen where I can see her even when I'm not looking at her. A few months ago she came to me in a dream and I perceived her as some kind of a guardian, so I made a doll of this image from a dream. For me she is not just a random doll. She embodies wisdom, kindness and support she had for me in that dream. Now she sits by my computer screen and helps me to collect myself together. And look, I'm still here, I will probably go to grab that cookie later anyways (for sure, if my computer crashes again). A short walk or a cup of tea could help too, but it would require me to go through the kitchen - and that's a trigger for my unhealthy behaviour, so I stay where I am and sit with my doll. I'm still here and I've written another paragraph while procrastinating to react in the usual way to my unhealthy habit. The wave of emotions has rolled through me and it's fading away while I keep writing, taking short pauses to look into the lifeless eyes of my doll. It's a silent conversation between us just like it was in my dream. She is not lifeless to me. She just helped me.
It's not just me who has experienced and who acknowledges the power of a doll to aid in emotional regulation. Dolls can work as comfort items providing the sense of stability and security during times of stress and upheaval. They can help to withstand the wave of emotions and come back to normal mental and emotional state by redirecting your focus from the inside to outside - to an object outside of yourself, especially if it holds characteristics you lack at the moment of stress. The same way, for example, a calming painting could help. The only problem is that those dolls (and paintings) don't really run towards you when you need them. It's you who has to remember your doll, look at it or pick it up.
Engaging with dolls can take you a step further with stress relief and emotional regulation. The tactile experience of holding and moving a doll can help to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation by redirecting your focus and becoming a distraction from intrusive thoughts, negative habits and unhealthy behaviours. You could redirect your focus somewhere else too - to window, pet or... comfort food? ...maybe a cigarette? But a doll offers a bit of a different kind of support - it has that humanlike, lifelike look that creates stronger connection and bond to the object so it can comfort you. Dolls allow us to project our thoughts, feelings, and experiences providing a safe space to express complex emotions. This is particularly useful in understanding and working through internal conflicts. It's called projection.
Dolls promote mindfulness and creative expression. No doubt, making a doll - any kind of doll - is a creative process that keeps you fully present and in the moment. Making, dressing or customizing dolls encourages creativity serving as a medium for artistic expression, which can be highly therapeutic and reflective of the individual's inner world. We all have heard about Art Therapy, where inner darkness comes to light and healing happens through creating something, for example, a doll, right? I can only add that engaging with dolls and bringing dolls home often isn't any less creative activity than crafting them. You bring a doll home - sometimes you already know its place and sometimes you have to find it - that perfect spot for a doll - doesn't matter if you perceive the doll as your support object, decoration or representation of your style, way of life and personal values. I've seen people creating amazing settings for their dolls and even making new objects to surround the dolls with, especially for dolls that serve as altar dolls for personal spiritual practices. That's another topic I hope to explore in another article soon, but in any case, hands-on activities customizing the dolls or their settings is a form of mindfulness practice that fosters presence and reduces racing thoughts.
When children play with dolls mimicking human relationships and behaviours they witness, and imagining different scenarios, or when adults play with toys together with children, such play can be not just entertaining and educational, but it can encourage socialization, cooperation, and relationship building. Children may also find it easier to express themselves through dolls rather than directly through words. Similarly, interacting with dolls can also help adults practice empathy by imagining the experiences and emotions of the doll, which can translate into greater understanding and compassion for others. Engaging in imaginative play with dolls can help adults as much as they help children to process their emotions and life experiences in a non-threatening manner. This play can mimic real-life scenarios, allowing for exploration of possible outcomes and reactions. We grow up and forget the joys of imaginative play, so for adults it's usually happening in therapeutic settings together with a professional.
What I know is that dolls can be used for storytelling - not just as a part of performance entertaining or educating others, but also for inner storytelling that allows individuals to narrate their life stories or create fictional scenarios that provide insight into their own thoughts and struggles, and that's what adults do - explore themselves through dolls, stories they keep personal and inner conversation these dolls evoke. By using dolls to represent different aspects of oneself or others in their lives, individuals can explore their relationships and feelings from a different perspective - it's externalization that helps.
Sometimes adults bring dolls home because they evoke memories from childhood, providing a pathway to explore nostalgia. In my experience, this is often the case with Kitchen Witches. People often share their sweet and heart-warming memories of grandmother's kitchen in which a Kitchen Witch lived - a traditional home décor with the functions of an amulet, usually a hanging poppet with a broom, witch’s hat or headkerchief, and often also other attributes like spoons, forks, bowls, herb sachets etc. Bringing in one's own kitchen a Kitchen Witch is often not just a tradition, but also serves as a reminder of a beloved and deceased relative who had one at home too.
Sometimes adults get themselves dolls to satisfy their inner child that also helps to strengthen their connection to childhood. This connection further helps to understand how their past affects their current behaviour and emotional state, and to revisit and reprocess past experiences, turning negative memories into opportunities for healing.
As we all know, people like to collect things, and some are doll collectors - a good enough reason to bring home yet another doll, right? From my observations I can tell that mostly the reason for adults to bring home dolls that are not toys and not just decorations is this: dolls serve as catalysts and vessels of thought for personal growth and development, as the tools for self-reflection, projection and goal setting. This is where I think psychology and magic perfectly overlaps, blends and merges. People use dolls to project different facets of their personalities or life experiences, encouraging self-reflection and deeper understanding of their emotional states. When a doll has a story that touches individuals' heart or is created as a representation of a specific trait or value, it becomes a physical affirmation of the goal and aspiration. It serves not just as a reminder that keeps the person on track, but also can become a tool for facilitating goal setting and tracking personal progress.
I've seen this happening multiple times: people find their love of dolls during difficult periods of their lives (but not just that, it’s just a repeating pattern I’ve noticed) - times of changes and transitions. They haven't been into dolls previously, they don't decide to bring home dolls because of any specific reason, there is just something special, something different that calls them to get a doll, and then another one, and probably another one. I suspect it's an intuitive response to the personal search for solutions, change, transformation and healing. And guess what? It works! Without the terminology or knowing specific methods of how to work with dolls in order for them to help, dolls provide comfort and support that brings transformation. It's the subconscious mind, the inner voice that leads and gently guides people to the desired change and improvements through connecting with dolls and using dolls as tools for personal growth, reminders and enhancers of their own personal power, strength, unique journey and personality. This connection sprouts and develops naturally, without the need of assistance or the need for a system or specific steps that would form this helpful connection. I think it's because they are made in the image of a human, they have familiar features and it allows us to project, externalize and imagine a lot easier than working with other objects and symbols.
Dolls serve as mediums for expression, exploration, and reflection, making complex emotions and issues more tangible and manageable. It's definitely not the tool, the medicine, the right cup of tea for everyone in the room, but for many it turns out to be the right road to take. The therapy and self-development potential of dolls lie in their ability to promote creativity, self-expression, emotional regulation, and a deeper understanding of oneself. Engaging with dolls—whether through therapy or personal exploration—can be a unique and productive method of facilitating personal growth and healing.
