Jeffrey Man

About Jeffrey

How I work

Younger children rarely have words for the hardest things, so in the playroom they lead and I follow. With teenagers and adults the room is quieter and the work happens in conversation, but my stance does not change. I trust that a person given a space that is safe, accepting and genuinely their own will move towards what they need, at their own pace. My part is to stay alongside them while they do it, without steering or hurrying. What changes with age is the medium, whether that is play, talk, or something in between. What stays the same is that I am not there to correct a person, I am there to understand them clearly enough that they can hear themselves think.

Who I work with

I see children in play therapy, and adolescents and adults in individual counselling, for anxiety, low mood, family change, school pressure, difficulty in relationships, and the times life stops making sense for a while. I also work closely with parents. Being a father to a young daughter has changed how I sit with them: I understand the tiredness, the second-guessing, and how much of the real work happens in ordinary moments at home rather than in a therapy room. Parents who come to see me are not asked to perform, and nothing they bring is treated as a failure.

What I bring into the room

I work in English, Cantonese and Mandarin at clinical level, so a child or a parent can speak in the language feelings actually arrive in, and move between them mid-sentence. I trained in play therapy through HKPCCA, an approved training centre of the Center for Play Therapy at the University of North Texas, and most of my courses were taught directly by their trainers. I am also trained in Child-Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) and draw on its principles in my work with parents, having facilitated three five-week parenting workshops. Alongside my clinical work here, I have counselled in an international school and in community youth mental health, which means I am used to working with teachers, schools and families as one system rather than treating a child in isolation.

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