When we end up in a really good conversation with a friend, we sometimes pay them a slightly unusual but sincere compliment: we say that chatting to them feels like talking to a good therapist.

What we tend to mean is that they’re giving us space to talk, they’re not interrupting us or pushing their own advice aggressively forward: they’re properly listening.

This game cannot turn us into real therapists (that would take years of training). But like many good games (ones about flying or being a detective for example), it gives us a chance to try out, entertainingly but safely, one of the most interesting sides of a great profession. The Therapy Game offers us a rare opportunity to listen and speak to one another at truly fulfilling length and depth.

The cards cover five categories:

Work
Sex
Relationships
Anxiety
Self