Project Play

Project Play Experienced occupational therapist offering home-based and school services. Contact us for more information.

There’s a version of “growth” that quietly turns into endurance. Push through. Stay in it. Tolerate more.But nervous sys...
19/02/2026

There’s a version of “growth” that quietly turns into endurance. Push through. Stay in it. Tolerate more.

But nervous systems don’t expand through force.

When intensity rises, the body moves into protection. Shutdown, avoidance, appeasing, pushing through… these are not failures. They’re intelligent strategies. They’re trying to help.

Capacity grows when that protection is met with safety. Not by flooding someone. Not by overriding signals. But by meeting what some people call the "growth edge" with support.

A mentor of mine describes it as learning to be "comfortably uncomfortable." And that comfort doesn’t come from grit or willpower. It comes from signals of safety in the body and from co-regulation.

I think of it less as a test of tolerance and more as a dance. There’s an art to staying close enough to intensity that it can be metabolised, without tipping into overwhelm. That art lives in relationship.

Children borrow our nervous systems. Clients feel our steadiness. And the truth is, someone else’s edge will activate ours too. We won’t get it right all the time. We’ll misattune. We’ll wobble. That’s part of it.

What builds safety isn’t perfection. It’s repair. It’s noticing when we’ve missed something and moving back toward connection. That’s what secure relationships are made of.

For sensitive and neurodivergent nervous systems especially, this distinction matters. Growth isn’t about enduring more discomfort. It’s about learning, slowly and relationally, that intensity doesn’t have to be faced alone.

These ideas are nuanced. I’m always thinking about them in my own work and relationships. I’d genuinely love to hear what comes up for you.

This January I kept returning to a quote by Joko Beck: “What makes pain unbearable is the mistaken belief that it can be...
18/02/2026

This January I kept returning to a quote by Joko Beck: “What makes pain unbearable is the mistaken belief that it can be cured.”

The idea that suffering comes less from pain itself and more from our resistance to it. Anyone who has experienced a panic attack might recognise this. Fighting it tends to amplify it. Settling into it, however counterintuitive, shifts something.

Around the same time, I revisited Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. His reminder that we are finite. That life is not something to optimise our way through. There is no moment of final arrival when everything will feel settled.

All of this sat in quiet contradiction to the energy of January. Fresh starts. New goals. Better versions of ourselves. I have never felt particularly at home in that narrative.

January seems to amplify the fantasy that we should already be moving faster and feeling better. In my own work (and in my nervous system) I see the same pattern. There is no permanent state of calm waiting for us. In no version of life does it stop being hard, emotional or demanding. That is not a failure. It is the human experience.

Accepting that doesn’t mean we stop changing what we can. It means we stop chasing a fantasy of permanent ease.

What I am more interested in is something slower. Awe. Wonder. Letting the default mode network do what it does when we are not constantly trying to fix or improve ourselves. Making meaning. Strengthening connection. The small, ordinary moments that don’t need improvement.

A few bits of January:
Starting the year in New York, in actual winter. Cold mornings, heavy coats, slightly frozen and very grateful. Art. Food. Live sport.
Movement as a way back into rhythm.
Being cared for by thoughtful friends.
Making marks on paper, following a stone rather than an outcome.
Learning in Hong Kong with friends who continue to shape how I think.
Dog-sitting our god-pup.
Live tunes. Books I’ve been waiting to sit with properly.
Family visiting our little red dot.

Not a new version of me. Just a steadier relationship with being human.

14/02/2026

From a very young age, many of us are taught that being regulated means being independent, self-soothing, and not needing others. That support is something to grow out of. But human nervous systems do not develop in isolation. Regulation develops in relationship.

As a species, we are born neurologically immature and rely on caregivers for far longer than any other mammal. Our nervous systems learn what intensity, stress, and emotion mean through repeated experiences of being met by another person. Through tone of voice, facial expression, rhythm, proximity, and responsiveness, the nervous system learns whether activation is dangerous or survivable.

This is what co-regulation is. It is not about fixing feelings or making them stop. It is not about staying perfectly calm. It is about being tracked, responded to, and staying present in connection while something difficult is being felt.

Those experiences teach the nervous system something very specific: I can feel this. I will not be abandoned because of it. This intensity can move. I will survive it.

Over time, these relational experiences are internalised and become the foundation for what we later call self-regulation. But co-regulation does not disappear in adulthood. We continue to regulate in relationship across the lifespan, depending on context, stress, and what we are carrying.

This also means that co-regulation does not require one person to be perfectly settled. What matters most is responsiveness and attunement, not composure. Being met matters more than being calm. I will talk more about what this looks like in practice, including why co-regulation does not always mean going low, slow, or quiet, in the next episode.

If we have not met, I am Nikki. I am an occupational therapist, and Nervous System Diaries is where I share grounded, relational, and neuroaffirming ways of understanding regulation.

Take what resonates. Leave the rest.

This piece has just been published in the New York Review, and it captures a lot of how I think about stress, overwhelm,...
12/02/2026

This piece has just been published in the New York Review, and it captures a lot of how I think about stress, overwhelm, and nervous system support.

Rather than treating stress as something to eliminate or push through, the article explores what it can look like to understand emotional responses as protective, shaped by experience, sensory load, and nervous system capacity, and why working with the nervous system matters.

If you’d like to read it, comment ARTICLE and I’ll send you the link.

There’s a moment in overwhelm that often gets misunderstood. The moment where a child can’t explain what’s wrong or enga...
09/02/2026

There’s a moment in overwhelm that often gets misunderstood. The moment where a child can’t explain what’s wrong or engage with reasoning, even though in other moments they can.

This isn’t defiance. And it isn’t about motivation or willingness.

In states of stress, the nervous system reorganises around safety. Thinking doesn’t stop, but it becomes organised around threat and action rather than reflection or explanation. The kind of thinking we’re often asking for is simply harder to access in that moment.

That’s why reasoning, questioning, or encouraging a child to “use your words” so often escalates things during a meltdown. Timing matters.

In the moment of overwhelm, the focus is safety and regulation, not insight. That usually means co-regulation through presence rather than instruction. Less talking. More attunement. Working with the body and the energy that’s there. And noticing our own activation and supporting ourselves to stay present, because these moments can be activating for adults too.

This doesn’t mean we never explore what happened. Reflection and meaning-making are important skills, but they’re best supported outside the peak of distress. Often sideways, through play, shared stories, modelling, art, or gentle revisiting once things have settled.

These reflective capacities develop gradually, with support, and continue to mature well into adulthood.

This work is about choosing when we invite thinking, and when we support safety first.

If this reframes how you see overwhelm, you’re in the right place 🧡

There’s a common misconception that co-regulation or therapy is always about "borrowing someone else’s calm."And sometim...
03/02/2026

There’s a common misconception that co-regulation or therapy is always about "borrowing someone else’s calm."

And sometimes it is. But that calm usually only becomes accessible once a person first feels seen, met, and felt in their experience.

This is why our connection to our own body matters so much.

Our body is our most important tool, not just for movement or sensory work, but because it’s how we notice what’s happening and stay available in relationship. Many of us in helping roles have lost contact with our own bodies along the way, which is why reconnecting to ourselves is such a central part of this work.

Nervous systems are relational and dynamic. They meet each other and they move each other. Over time, it’s the repeated experience of being with someone who can stay present and responsive that creates change.

A client might arrive carrying heaviness, agitation, or intensity. As I’m with them, I may notice that same quality in my own body. That sensation is information.

When I’m connected to myself, I can initially match the experience so the person feels met. Sometimes, that presence and validation alone allows the intensity to shift. Other times, from that shared place, I help the system move through gentle movement, changes in pace, rhythm, pressure, or other forms of safety signalling.

At the same time, I’m also regulating myself. How I breathe, organise my body, and stay present is picked up by the other nervous system below conscious awareness, through things like mirror neurons. It’s felt, not explained.

This process of "match, mirror, and then move" is something I’ve learned through Kim Barthel’s work.

And importantly, this doesn’t always happen in a single moment. It unfolds over time, across many experiences of being met, staying present with intensity, allowing movement, and repairing when things wobble. Over time, these experiences become something the nervous system can draw on for itself.

Co-regulation doesn’t start with techniques. It starts with our relationship to our own body. Imagine if more people understood and prioritised this.

28/01/2026

When the world feels intense, it makes sense that our nervous systems respond. That isn’t a failure or a lack of skill. It’s a protective system doing what it’s designed to do.

Practices like the one in this reel aren’t about calming down or fixing how you feel. They’re about offering small, accessible signals of safety so the nervous system has a little more capacity to stay present, rather than being pulled entirely into threat or anticipation.

This is where titration matters. That means working in small doses. Trying a little, noticing how it feels, and stopping or shifting if it becomes too much. Presence isn’t something to force. It often grows gradually when safety is felt, even briefly.

It’s also important to say that coming back to the body does not feel safe for everyone. For some nervous systems, because of wiring, trauma history, or lived experience, turning toward sensation can initially increase distress. Survival responses exist for a reason. They are protective strategies, not problems to override.

Safety also doesn’t always mean the absence of danger. Many people find regulation through rhythm, routine, predictability, or connection, even in genuinely hard or uncertain circumstances.

This kind of regulation work doesn’t replace therapy, emotional processing, memory integration, or relational repair. It helps create the conditions that make those deeper processes more possible.

This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It often works best in relationship, with support, and at a pace that respects the nervous system.

Take what resonates. Leave the rest.

Regulation isn’t about escaping what’s happening.It’s about staying present with what is, finding the edge of what your ...
27/01/2026

Regulation isn’t about escaping what’s happening.

It’s about staying present with what is, finding the edge of what your nervous system can hold in that moment, and having enough support to move through it.

In times of chaos and uncertainty, survival responses are appropriate. Our nervous systems are designed this way for a reason.

We’re not trying to pretend things are safe when they aren’t. We’re looking for small, momentary ways to signal safety to the nervous system within the danger, so we can stay oriented, present, and resourced enough to respond.

You don’t need to do all of them. If one feels accessible, start there. Maybe share it with a friend.

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