28/02/2026
Five years ago, I began my counselling practice journey under the name Evolve.
At the time, I was working primarily with women, pre-teen and teenage girls, and through this work, I developed a program called Mindful Me workshops.
But beneath the name, the work was deeper than mindfulness alone.
I was using holistic modalities to explore how the nervous system holds story. How trauma imprints itself in the body long before we have language for it. How identity subtly reshapes itself around protection.
We worked with breath, body-based awareness, creative expression, narrative reframing and relational reflection.
I was watching in real time how girls contort to belong. How women disconnect from their bodies to survive. How patterns of hypervigilance, perfectionism, people-pleasing and shutdown are not personality traits, but adaptive brilliance.
I was fascinated by the moment someone realised,
“This isn’t who I am. This is what I learned to be.”
The work was about reclaiming self from survival.
Looking back, that work laid the foundation for everything that followed.
Four years ago today, I stepped fully into full-time private practice in play and creative therapies. I had always worked with children, so the shift wasn’t a change in direction. It felt like coming home.
At that same time, I completed my training in Neurologic Music Therapy.
That training deepened something I had always intuitively known: that rhythm regulates, that sound bypasses defence, that the body responds to music long before cognition catches up.
Music became another doorway into the nervous system. Another way to reach children who did not yet have words. And another way to meet protection with gentleness.
From there, I immersed myself in Play Therapy training. Child-Centred. AutPlay. Synergetic.
Each approach deepened my understanding of regulation, attachment, co-regulation and the relational field between therapist and child.
What I was really studying was not technique.
It was protection.
It was safety.
It was what happens when a nervous system finally feels understood.
Even early on, I felt a real incongruence in the way children were often spoken about and worked with.
Behaviour framed as defiance.
Compliance framed as success.
Interventions focused on modification rather than understanding.
Something in me utterly resisted that.
I have never been interested in fixing children. I have always been interested in what their nervous systems are communicating. I am innately curious.
What looks like behaviour is often protection. What looks like non-compliance is often overwhelm. What looks like opposition is often a boundary.
Over time, that early discomfort sharpened into philosophy.
My work is not about reshaping children to fit systems. It is about reshaping systems to honour children.
It is about dignity.
Context.
Relational safety.
Children do not exist in isolation. And that clarity has only deepened.
Which is why NEUROiNCLUSIVE Co. was born.
Not as a rebrand.
But as an extension of the same philosophy.
If children are to be understood, then the environments around them must be willing to change.
Classrooms. Care facilities. Policies. Expectations.
If families are to feel supported, then systems must move from tolerance to true neuro-affirmation.
If we are serious about inclusion, it cannot begin and end in the therapy room.
These five years have shaped me as much as I have shaped the work.
They have required me to unlearn productivity as proof of worth. To honour my own neurodivergent rhythms. To sit with complexity without rushing to resolve it. To hold relational safety as non-negotiable.
And now, another deepening is emerging.
Alongside this work, I spent some time deepening my understanding through Disability Education studies. After exploring that space, I have decided to continue my path in Psychology, with the long-term goal of becoming a Clinical Psychologist.
Not as a departure from play or creative therapies. And certainly not as a rejection of lived experience.
But as a strengthening.
I want to deepen my clinical fluency.
Strengthen my voice within systems I cannot currently access.
Contribute to evidence-based, neuro-affirming practice at a broader level.
Five years ago, I began Evolve.
The name was intentional. It was about becoming. About growth that isn’t rushed. About identity unfolding rather than being forced.
At the time, I didn’t know how much that word would shape me.
Today, that same thread runs through Play & Creative Therapy Bundaberg and NEUROiNCLUSIVE Co.
Different expressions.
Same philosophy.
Becoming has never been about reinvention. It has been about deepening into alignment.
And to every family, colleague, friend and community member who has followed, read my ridiculously long posts, supported me or walked beside me on this journey… thank you.
Your trust, your conversations and your willingness to grow alongside me have shaped this path more than you will ever know.
Four years in full-time private practice.
Five years since Evolve began.
Still becoming.
Still deepening.
What an adventure this has been.
A sky-wide thank you to everyone who has trusted this work and believed in the vision. 🙏
With so much love,
Kara 🍃💖✨
