Blossom Play Therapy

06/12/2025

✨So much of what we call “leadership” is really about relationships.✨

A recent piece I read captures something we often feel but rarely name:
attachment has ripple effects across our lifespan — shaping how we relate, how we lead, and how safety is experienced in every context we move through.

Key insights that stood out:

• Psychological safety begins with the leader’s nervous system. When a leader is regulated, consistent, and emotionally available, teams settle too.
• Our attachment patterns come with us to work. Whether we lean anxious, avoidant, or secure, it shows up in how we delegate, manage conflict, set boundaries, and hold responsibility.
• Effective leadership is relational, not performative. It’s about attunement, presence, trust, and co-regulation — the same ingredients that allow children to explore and flourish.
• The hopeful part: attachment patterns can shift. With awareness and support, leaders can move toward a more grounded, secure way of relating that strengthens teams and reduces burnout.

This framework doesn’t just make leadership more humane — it makes it more effective.

Introducing our new attachment-informed leadership (AIL) framework

20/11/2025

🌿 When Big Feelings Show Up in Small Bodies
At Blossom Play Therapy, we often see children whose emotions first appear in their bodies — wobbly tummies, tight chests, shaky hands, or that “I might be sick” feeling. It can be confusing and frightening for a child, especially in school.

But here’s the hopeful part:
when children understand what their body is doing, they feel less scared and more in control.
And when adults understand it too, we can support them long before things become overwhelming.

That’s why I appreciate simple, accessible strategies that help a child’s nervous system settle — the kinds they can use anywhere: at home, in school, or in the playroom.

The Guardian recently shared a thoughtful piece with quick, evidence-informed ideas to soothe stress. Many of these overlap with nervous-system work we use in play therapy, emotional literacy sessions, and everyday regulation support.

If you’re parenting or supporting a child who feels their feelings in their body, these strategies can offer a gentle starting point.

Here’s the link if you’d like to read more:
👉 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/nov/20/hold-an-ice-cube-and-shake-like-a-dog-therapists-on-16-simple-surprising-ways-to-beat-stress

🟡 A gentle note:
These ideas are general suggestions. They are not a substitute for tailored therapeutic support, especially for children who have experienced trauma, sensory overwhelm, or ongoing emotional distress. A trauma-informed approach always adapts strategies to the child’s nervous system, history, and relational needs.

It can cause physiological and emotional problems, but none of us can avoid it entirely. Here are some of the best ways to react when stress hormones start coursing through your body ...

14/11/2025

Reading Nick Walker and this stood out. We so often talk about neurodiversity as if it begins and ends in the brain — but that’s years behind what we now understand about children, embodiment, and the nervous system. Neurodivergence isn’t just cognitive; it’s sensory, relational, physical, emotional, and deeply rooted in the whole bodymind. This quote captures that point:

“It used to be commonplace for people to speak of neurodiversity as diversity among brains… I think this is a mistake, an overly reductionist and essentialist definition that’s decades behind present-day understandings of how human bodyminds work. … The neuro- in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as referring not just to the brain but to the entire nervous system — and, by extension, to the full complexity of human cognition and the central role the nervous system plays in the embodied dance of consciousness.”

From Nick Walker, Neuroqueer Heresies (2021), Autonomous Press.

13/11/2025

🌿 Safety Before Strategy: What Gabor Maté Reminds Us About Therapeutic Work

I’ve been reflecting on a recent British Psychological Society interview with Gabor Maté, and three themes keep circling back for me — especially in play therapy, where so much change happens beneath language.

✨ 1. Safety and compassion always come first.
Maté emphasises that technique matters, but it never outranks the emotional tone of the room.
Children and adults don’t open because of clever interventions — they open because the relationship feels safe.
Presence, intuition, warmth, and genuine curiosity create the conditions for healing long before any “method” can.

✨ 2. Therapists stumble when presence slips.
Maté names some very human pitfalls:
• being triggered and not noticing
• trying to rescue
• making unspoken assumptions
• retreating into intellect rather than staying embodied and connected

These are not moral failings — they’re invitations back into awareness.
They’re the moments that ask us to slow down, breathe, and reconnect with the child or adult in front of us.

✨ 3. We have to do our own inner work.
One of the strongest messages in the article is that therapists cannot guide others where we haven’t gone ourselves.
In Compassionate Inquiry, trainees spend months turning inward before they ever begin applying the approach.
Our own patterns, wounds, and blind spots inevitably colour the space unless we meet them with honesty and compassion.

These insights reaffirm something timeless within therapeutic practice:
technique is the surface; presence is the work; safety is the medicine.

10/11/2025

🌿 Fitting In vs. Belonging 🌿

Toko-pa Turner writes:

“The difference between fitting in and belonging is that fitting in asks us to parcel off our wholeness in exchange for acceptance.”
— Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (2017)

So many children — and adults — learn that being accepted sometimes means being smaller. They soften their voices, hide their quirks, or work hard to be “easy.” Turner calls this false belonging — when people trade authenticity for approval.

But real belonging doesn’t ask them to shrink. It welcomes the whole self — the messy, playful, tender, and powerful parts that make them who they are.

In play therapy, children are invited to rediscover this truth. Through play, they learn that they don’t need to fit in to be loved. They learn that they can bring all of themselves — the quiet, the curious, the angry, the brave — and still be met with warmth and safety.

10/11/2025

🌿 Dreams Fruiting From Us 🌿

Toko-pa Turner writes:

“Dreaming is nature naturing through us. Just as a tree bears fruit or a plant expresses itself in flowers, dreams are fruiting from us.”
— Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (2017)

Sometimes, when life feels heavy or confusing, our inner world still finds ways to speak — through dreams, stories, and small moments of imagination. These are not distractions or random thoughts, but messages from within; gentle fruit ripening out of our lived experience.

Dreams often appear symbolically — through story, art, or movement — reminding us that the psyche continues to create even in silence. 🍃

In Play Therapy, we hold space for these quiet expressions — where children (and adults too) can rediscover the parts of themselves that still want to grow, create, and belong. 🍃

07/11/2025

Information and support for parents of neurodivergent children

The City of Edinburgh Council’s Additional Support Needs section offers guidance, resources, and community connections for parents, carers, and families navigating autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other neurodevelopmental differences. Let’s celebrate difference, support one another, and build inclusive spaces where every child can thrive.

Learn more here

Neurodiversity

06/11/2025

✨ Connection Before Correction ✨

At Blossom Play Therapy, we often talk about the power of connection — especially in moments when children are struggling. It’s easy to slip into correction mode when big behaviours appear, but real change begins when a child feels understood.

As Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson remind us in No-Drama Discipline (2014), our role isn’t to control a child’s behaviour but to help them learn from it. When we pause, attune, and connect first, we create the emotional safety that allows self-regulation, empathy, and reflection to grow.

💛 In practice, “connection before correction” might look like:
• Taking a breath before responding.
• Naming and validating the child’s feelings.
• Using gentle tone, touch, or shared activity to re-establish calm.
• Reflecting together after the storm has passed.

Over time, this approach strengthens trust, emotional intelligence, and accountability — turning moments of rupture into opportunities for growth.

04/11/2025

🧩 Building Trust in Play Therapy 🧩

Brené Brown reminds us that trust isn’t built through grand gestures, but through consistent, reliable, grounded actions over time — the way we show up, keep confidences, apologise, and honour boundaries.

In play therapy, this truth lives quietly in every session:
🌱 The therapist who keeps the same time and space each week.
🤝 The pause before speaking, allowing the child to lead.
🪞 The moment we own a mistake or repair a rupture.

These small acts — often unseen by the outside world — are the building blocks of safety and relational repair. They teach children that relationships can be steady, predictable, and safe to return to.

Trust grows slowly, moment by moment, until it becomes the ground on which healing play can unfold. 💛

30/10/2025

Monotropic vs. Polytropic Thinking

Every brain pays attention differently.
Some children focus like a spotlight — drawn deeply into what they love.
Others move like a lantern — noticing many things at once.

This week’s Substack explores how play therapists can support these different attentional rhythms through a neurodiversity-affirming lens, grounded in the work of Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, Mike Lesser, Ruth Jones, and BAPT guidance.

Read more:

by Carmen Cecen, Blossom Play Therapy

29/10/2025

🌿 All About Neurodiversity: Sharing What You Love

When a neurodivergent child talks about their special interest, it can feel like words are tumbling out faster than you can keep up. Facts, stories, details — all flowing at once.

It might look like “info-dumping,” but in truth, it’s often something much deeper.

✨ It’s trust — a sign that they feel safe enough to share.
✨ It’s connection — their way of reaching out and saying, “Come see my world.”
✨ It’s regulation — a nervous system moving toward calm and engagement.

In play therapy, we listen for the meaning behind the moment. When a child’s enthusiasm overflows, we don’t interrupt or correct — we join. Because behind the rush of words is a child inviting us into what brings them joy.

Like the dog in the card reminds us, when we find something we love, our concentration and dedication are wholehearted. 🐾

By meeting that energy with curiosity instead of correction, we help children feel understood — and that’s where real connection begins. 💛

29/10/2025

🌿 Moving Beyond the Deficit Lens

Ruth Jones, in her powerful book Neurodiversity-Affirming Practice for Speech and Language Therapists (Routledge, 2024), invites us to shift from a “deficit” view of neurodivergence toward one grounded in empowerment, autonomy, and authenticity.

This call is not only relevant for speech and language therapists — it resonates deeply across all helping professions, including play therapy. When we view difference through a medical lens, we risk individuals being experienced by systems as broken or in need of fixing. But when we listen with curiosity and compassion, we begin to see the wholeness that was always there. 💛

✨ “When we think of neurodivergence, we are moving towards thinking of positive things: empowerment, autonomy, authenticity. However, historically, a neurodivergent profile was viewed through a medical lens… The language itself of ‘disorders’ creates a narrative that is heard and perceived by society as negative, and in turn has created a negative narrative of self for many neurodivergent individuals. They have to work hard to challenge and develop an authentic understanding of self, and in turn the advocacy skills to be who they are and seek the support they require.”
— Ruth Jones, 2024

In every therapeutic encounter, we have the opportunity to affirm difference, nurture identity, and co-create spaces where authenticity feels safe. 🌈