24/03/2026
In my work as a therapist, I love using buttons to help explore emotions.
Quite often feelings don’t arrive in neat sentences. Especially for children and young people - but honestly, adults too. A button is small, familiar, and easy to hold. And in the therapy room, that matters: when the hands are busy, the pressure often drops, and the story has more space to emerge.
Buttons can become a gentle way to express what’s going on without needing the “perfect words”. We might use them to choose a colour or shape that fits a feeling, create a simple feelings map - big feelings, small feelings, mixed feelings, or build a little scene that shows what life feels like right now. A button can represent a worry you carry, a brave moment, a “not ready to talk yet,” or a quiet “this is me trying.”
It’s not about being crafty. It’s about giving the mind a safer route into the conversation - at your pace.
Sometimes the smallest objects help us say the biggest things.