Blossom Play Therapy

04/09/2025

Play Therapy Isn’t Just About Expanding the Window of Tolerance—It’s Also About Expanding the Capacity for Joy

Trauma-informed play therapy does more than help care-experienced children regulate distress—it also creates entry points for joy, curiosity, and emotional aliveness.

In The Joy Reset, Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald reminds us:

“Joy does not exist only in the moments that are free of pain. In fact, the brightest, tiniest, most important pieces can only be found in the dark.”

For children who’ve learned to build fortresses around their hearts, these glimpses of joy—tiny, gritty, and beautiful—are just as healing as calming anxiety or soothing fear. Through gentle pendulation into joy (like Dr. McDonald’s concept of titration and pendulation), we don’t just expand capacity for discomfort; we expand capacity for delight.

✨ Tiny joys—a shared laugh in play, the texture of a soft toy, a moment of connection—can open cracks of light in even the most guarded hearts.
✨ Joy isn’t a reward to be earned; it’s resilience in motion.

30/08/2025

✨ ✨ Currently reading Reflections on Play Therapy by David LeVay, and I’ve come across the powerful idea of the play therapist as a time traveller.

When I first read this passage, it struck me with a depth I am still digesting. The image feels profoundly accurate. In the playroom, we are constantly moving across timelines:
🌱 Into the child’s past, where attachment ruptures, traumas, or unmet needs still live.
🌱 Into the present, where these experiences take symbolic form in play.
🌱 And into our own histories, where parallel echoes stir — sometimes tenderly, sometimes painfully.

It is this constant time-travel that makes play therapy both transformative and demanding. We are not only witnesses to the child’s story; we can be pulled back into our own. And within this, there is potential — for healing, for reworking old wounds, and for deepening our capacity to sit with the vulnerability of another.

29/08/2025

✨ Our nervous system is at the heart of how we respond to the world. When it becomes dysregulated, children (and adults!) can move into fight, flight, or freeze. One of the most powerful gifts we can give ourselves—and our children—is to proactively regulate our nervous system rather than waiting until we are already overwhelmed.

I’ve shared a brilliant video from Lisa Dion, founder of Synergetic Play Therapy, where she offers 5 practical tips for nervous system regulation. These are simple, accessible strategies that anyone can weave into daily life. (Link in comments 👇)

💡 Proactive nervous system care isn’t just about calming down in a hard moment. It’s about preparing the body and brain to handle life’s ups and downs with more resilience.

27/08/2025

🌱 A Human Need for Aliveness 🌱

Psychologist Abraham Maslow reminded us that beyond survival needs like food, shelter, and safety, every human being carries a deeper need: to feel fully alive. Once the basics are met, we naturally seek connection, belonging, esteem, and—ultimately—self-actualisation.

Author Thom Hartmann, in his “Hunter vs. Farmer” interpretation of ADHD, adds another layer. He suggests that some people—often those with ADHD—have a heightened need for sensory input, movement, and stimulation in order to experience this sense of aliveness. In other words, what looks like distractibility or restlessness is often the nervous system seeking vitality and engagement with the world.

For children, this “aliveness” often shows up through play. In the playroom, they move, create, imagine, and experiment—tapping into the sensory and relational experiences that help them grow. Play therapy honours this process by offering a safe space where children can explore who they are, work through challenges, and find joy in being alive.

At Blossom Play Therapy, we hold this belief close: play isn’t just fun, it’s a pathway to wholeness. When children feel alive, safe, and seen, they blossom into their fullest selves.

27/08/2025

✨ Safe. Seen. Soothed. Secure. ✨

Dr. Daniel Siegel, a leading voice in attachment and brain development, reminds us that children grow best when they experience these four essential things in their relationships:

🌱 Safe – feeling protected both physically and emotionally.
👀 Seen – having their inner world recognised and understood, not just their outward behaviour.
💛 Soothed – knowing that when they are upset, someone will help them calm and feel cared for.
🌳 Secure – over time, these experiences weave together to create secure attachment, resilience, and trust.

24/08/2025

🌿 Paradox in Play Therapy 🌿

As therapists, parents, and caregivers, we often feel pulled toward either/or thinking.
Is this child capable or lost? Strong or vulnerable? Happy or struggling?

Dennis McCarthy, a leading voice in play therapy, reminds us that healing doesn’t happen in neat, single boxes. It happens in the paradox—the space where two truths can live side by side.

In the playroom, a child can be both powerful and frightened. They can laugh while showing deep pain. They can build worlds of order while living with inner chaos. Holding these contradictions is not a problem—it’s the pathway to integration.

👉 When we make space for paradox, we tell children:
• You don’t need to be “one thing.”
• All your parts are welcome here.
• Wholeness includes both light and shadow.

This is why play therapy is so transformative. It gives children a language beyond words, a place where contradictions are not wrong but sacred clues to their story.

✨ The work of Dennis McCarthy invites us to see paradox not as confusion, but as possibility.

23/08/2025

Deb Dana’s extensive clinical experience and work on Polyvagal Theory teaches us to notice and name our glimmers.

✨ Glimmers are the opposite of triggers — they are the small, everyday moments that bring our nervous system into safety, calm, and connection.

In play therapy, glimmers show up all the time. A child might feel soothed by the texture of sand, by creating rhythm on a drum, or by making safe eye contact during imaginative play. These moments are not small — they are the building blocks of healing. By helping children notice and return to their glimmers, we support them in strengthening their capacity for resilience, regulation, and connection.

🌱 Glimmers invite us all to pay attention to what nourishes us, so that even in the midst of stress or pain, we can return to moments of safety and hope.

21/08/2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mkdg

Special effects make-up artist Laura designs a look for Kim to help visualise what living with ADHD feels like to her.

21/08/2025

What a wonderful reminder from Marcel Proust that literature acts like a mirror or a lens. A writer doesn’t hand us truth directly, but instead offers a way of seeing—an instrument through which we can discover what has always been within us. The real value of a book is not in the author dictating meaning, but in the recognition we find of ourselves in its pages.

20/08/2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002c6bb/inside-our-minds-inside-our-adhd-minds

Chris helps a tour guide with ADHD reveal to his parents what’s really going on inside his head, and a project manager come to terms with the mixed emotions of a late diagnosis.

20/08/2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0bbnh47/inside-our-minds

See the world differently. Chris Packham shines a light on different aspects of our brains, helping neurodivergent people create beautiful films to explain how their minds work.

20/08/2025

🌿 The Complexity of Emotions in Play Therapy 🌿

Children don’t just feel one thing at a time. In the playroom, joy often arrives with sadness, love with loss, and curiosity with fear. These feelings overlap — sometimes pulling in opposite directions, sometimes blending into something new.

When a child has lived through uncertainty or stress, emotions can feel intense or difficult to manage. The ways they’ve learned to cope — perhaps by withdrawing, becoming very close, or needing to stay in control — have often been essential for helping them feel safe. At the same time, these protective patterns can make it harder to feel at ease in relationships or to trust that emotions will be understood.

Play therapy offers a gentler way forward. Within the safety of play, children can explore what it’s like to hold two feelings at once, try out new ways of relating, and discover that emotions don’t have to be overwhelming or dangerous. A child can be angry and compassionate, hopeful and doubtful, joyful and grieving. And in this space of paradox, resilience begins to grow.

🌸 At Blossom Play Therapy, we believe every emotion has wisdom. By supporting children to integrate the opposites, they can develop a stronger connection with themselves, deepen trust in others, and feel more secure in their emotional world.

✨ This image is a reminder: emotions rarely arrive alone. With the right support, children can learn to notice, name, and navigate them — moving towards greater wholeness and wellbeing.