Play & Creative Therapy Bundaberg

08/04/2026

Here’s a gentle re-share of a piece I wrote on alexithymia.

It’s a word that’s being used more and more… but it’s never quite sat right with me.

What I see, both personally and in the therapy room, isn’t a lack of emotion, it’s emotion that doesn’t always live in words.

Not an absence… but a different kind of fluency.

What are your thoughts on the term?

Alexithymia is often described as a difficulty identifying or describing emotions. The word itself means “without words for feelings.” It emerged in psychiatry in the 1970s, when clinicians observed people who seemed detached from emotion or unable to verbalise what they felt. Since then, it’s been measured through self-report scales and language-based questionnaires, tools shaped by cognition rather than by lived emotional experience.

But as a therapist who works closely with the nervous system and expressive forms of communication, I’ve come to question this. Alexithymia has become another one of those heavily used terms in the neurodivergent community that I feel we need to gently challenge. Not because it isn’t real, but because it might not mean what we think it does.

Traditional psychology assumes emotional awareness is something that happens in the mind, a cognitive act of identifying, naming, and interpreting. But emotional awareness is a living, sensory, and relational process. For many neurodivergent or trauma-impacted people, emotions aren’t tidy concepts that translate easily into words. They move as energy, rhythm, colour, imagery, vibration, or breath. They show themselves through art, sound, play, movement, stillness, music, writing, or the quiet presence shared between people.

When we measure those ways of feeling against a verbal or cognitive model, they’re often misread as absence or deficit. Yet “difficulty describing” is not the same as “not feeling.”

What we often call Alexithymia may be better understood as non-linguistic emotional fluency, the capacity to feel, process, and communicate emotion in ways that exist beyond words. For some, what appears as emotional disconnection is actually a protective adaptation, a nervous system holding emotion safely until it senses security again. When we label this a disorder, we risk pathologising what may have once been a wise and necessary survival response.

The construct of Alexithymia also reflects the limits of the framework that created it. It grew out of analytic and cognitive traditions that prioritised thought over felt experience, language over sensory awareness, and interpretation over connection. These traditions were never designed to recognise the sensory, relational, and intuitive languages of emotion… the ones spoken through posture, tone, gaze, resonance, rhythm, and shared presence.

So maybe Alexithymia isn’t a deficit at all. Maybe it’s a mirror showing us how incomplete our understanding of emotion still is.

Because when we only value emotional expression that sounds like words, we risk missing the beauty of all the other ways humans feel, process, and connect. Maybe what we call Alexithymia is simply a unique emotional grammar.

08/04/2026

Youth Week is almost here… and behind the scenes, it looks a little like this.

Paint, canvas, colour, texture, tools…
but more than that… space.

Space for young people to show up as they are. Space to explore what’s inside without needing the “right” words. Space to create, connect, and being met, understood, and experienced alongside.

Kara and Jo have been preparing for our Youth Art Therapy workshop as part of QLD Expressions of Youth, and I keep coming back to this…

It’s not about what they make.
It’s about what gets to move.
It’s about giving their inside world somewhere to go.

Sometimes expression doesn’t come out in sentences… it comes out in colour, in pressure, in layers, in deep focus, or bold strokes across a canvas. 🎨🫟🖌️

And every single version of that is so so welcome here.

We can’t wait to hold this space 💛

06/04/2026

The best part of kids’ movies is absolutely the ripple of tiny giggles echoing through the cinema, so much joy in every seat today, super duper heartwarmingly cute 🎬✨

Hope you’ve all had a lovely long weekend 🍃

05/04/2026

Queensland’s Child Safe Standards are now in full effect.

As of today, commercial services, clubs and associations, cultural and sporting organisations, religious bodies, and transport services join the list of sectors needing to comply with the Child Safe Standards, marking the last phase of commencement for these important reforms.

The Standards – part of Queensland’s Child Safe Organisations law – aim to create environments that protect children from harm when they interact with businesses and organisations. They’re an important way we will strengthen our culture of safety for all children in Queensland.

There are now more than 40,000 businesses and organisations that work with Queensland children or provide spaces or services specifically for them that will need to show they’re child safe by introducing these Standards. This includes small volunteer and community groups and sole traders, through to large and well-established organisations, like schools and hospitals.

If this applies to your organisation, we’re here to help! While we’re responsible for monitoring implementation, our focus is on working cooperatively with organisations to support their compliance – particularly in the early stages – as part of a graduated model of regulation. Visit our website to find our implementation guides and resources, and start your journey to being child safe today: qfcc.qld.gov.au/childsafe.

04/04/2026

Wishing you a gentle, joy-filled Easter… in whatever way it unfolds for you and your family… many blessings to you all 🐣💛

02/04/2026

The way you see yourself didn’t come out of nowhere.

Narrative becomes identity.
Identity is formed from the integration of our emotional experiences.

The stories we carry about ourselves aren’t just descriptions. Over time, they begin to shape how we move through the world. Not just “this happened to me,” but “this is who I am because of what happened.” And slowly, the story stops being something we have, and becomes something we live inside.

It’s not just what happens to us that shapes identity. It’s what is felt in those moments. What is held. What is left alone. What is met with care, or isn’t.

Experiences on their own don’t define us. It’s the meaning we make of them, especially through emotion, that does the deeper shaping.

When emotions are met, named, and supported, they begin to integrate. The story has room to soften, to expand, to shift.

When emotions are overwhelming, dismissed, or carried alone, they can become fragmented, sometimes left unprocessed. And the story can tighten, becoming protective in ways that can limit what feels possible.

Identity isn’t fixed. It’s something that continues to organise and reorganise over time, shaped by how our experiences are understood and held.

And this is where co-regulation, through safe and attuned relationships, begins to shift the pathway.

If you’re starting to notice the patterns you carry, we offer depth-orientated counselling for young people and adults that makes space for the deeper layers, the parts of your story that haven’t always had the chance to be understood or held.

Here when you are ready 🍃

www.playcreative.com.au

31/03/2026

Today marks the start of World Autism Understanding Month.

I find myself sitting a little outside of “awareness” these days, because if I’m honest… it can only take us so far.

It names Autism, but often from the outside, staying at the surface rather than truly understanding lived experience, not just as a parent, but as an individual walking this path.

I sit with families every week who aren’t needing more awareness. They’re needing environments that understand their child, and support that genuinely meets their neurodivergent needs.

And this doesn’t stop at childhood.
It extends into our schools, workplaces, and wider systems…

We’re still seeing the impact of outdated thinking, where nearly one in four Australians expect Autistic individuals to adapt to fit the world around them.

I completely agree, the pressure on schools, and the wider system is significant.

But that pressure doesn’t change what children, or adults, actually need.

If anything, it highlights how much our systems are struggling to meet diverse needs, and why the solution can’t be expecting individuals to adapt at the cost of their wellbeing.

That’s not inclusion.

Inclusion isn’t asking someone to override their nervous system just to belong.

Real understanding asks something different of us. It asks us to shift the environment, the expectations, and the narratives, not the person.

So, this month, when you see “Light It Up” and early-stage awareness campaigns, ask yourself… are we really moving toward understanding, or are we just staying where it feels comfortable?

Awareness might start the conversation. Understanding is what changes lives.

And we are long overdue for that shift.

💛 Kara James
Autistic Founder of Play & Creative Therapy Bundaberg & Neuroinclusive Co.

27/03/2026

When we stop looking at behaviour to manage, and truly start responding to a nervous system that wants to be met, we create felt safety.

And when felt safety is there…
everything shifts.

🤍 Kara

27/03/2026

Diversity Kids 💛

24/03/2026

🩵

23/03/2026

The sensory system isn’t a specialised issue that is only relevant in certain therapies or with certain diagnoses.

It’s a foundational layer every nervous system is built on.

Every child has a sensory system.
Every moment, their body is taking in and responding to the world around them.

Before behaviour. Before words.
There is sensation.

What we now understand through neuroscience is that a child’s capacity for regulation, connection, and participation is shaped by how their body is experiencing the world.

Not just what’s happening…
but how it feels.

When input is overwhelming, the nervous system moves into protection. When input is not enough, the system seeks more. And when there’s a mismatch between the child and their environment, what we often see gets labelled as behaviour.

But it’s not behaviour in isolation.
It’s a nervous system trying to find its way back to safety.

This doesn’t belong to one discipline. It shows up everywhere.

At home. In classrooms. In relationships. In the playroom.

In play therapy, we see it in movement, in repetition, in intensity, in avoidance, in connection.

We’re not working around it.
We’re working with it.

At Play & Creative Therapy Bundaberg, we take a holistic approach, guided by our counselling backgrounds, child-centred and synergetic play therapy, grounded in a nervous system, depth orientated lens, and held within a neuro-affirming and neuro-aware framework.

Our work is informed not only by formal training, but by lived experience, ongoing professional development, and a deep commitment to evolving practice in line with current neuroscience and neurodiversity-affirming care.

Which means we’re not just looking at what a child is doing. We’re looking at the whole child.

🍃 Their emotions, anxiety, emotional wellbeing, and capacity for regulation.
🍃 Their sensory experiences and nervous system state.
🍃 Their executive functioning and interoceptive awareness.
🍃 Their need for movement, pressure, space, and connection.

And also…
🍃 Their relationships and sense of safety with others.
🍃 How they seek, hold, or move away from connection.
🍃 Their communication, both spoken and unspoken.
🍃 Their environment, and how it supports or overwhelms their system.
🍃 The patterns, themes, and repetition that emerge through their play.
🍃 Their identity, their strengths, and the way they experience the world.

Because none of these exist in isolation. They are constantly shaping each other.

When we begin to see the child through this lens, we’re no longer responding to behaviour alone… we’re understanding the system beneath it.

Regulation isn’t something we can instruct from the outside. It’s something the body finds when it feels safe enough to do so.

And when we understand the sensory system as something every child has, not something only some children “struggle with,” we shift from managing behaviour… to understanding the body.

And that shift changes everything.

www.playcreative.com.au

22/03/2026

Parenting often asks you to care for the younger parts of yourself while also showing up for the child in front of you. It’s one of the hardest and most unseen layers of this role.

Some days it’s not just about guiding them. It’s about holding yourself at the same time.

For some, it means breaking a pattern while you’re still inside it.

And that’s real work.