Trauma? ADHD? Your brain needs play

You're never too old to play. And your brain will thank you.

In this episode, I share why play isn't just for children and how reconnecting with your playful side can be transformative for ADHD brains and trauma survivors.

From my dolphin encounter to pretending to be dolphins on the harbour with a friend, I explore how silliness and joy can heal.

This episode includes:

✨ Why our brains learn so well through play (and how to do it deliberately)

✨ Permission to be 'foolish' and silly, even as an adult

✨ How play creates safety and co-regulation with others

✨ Simple ways to start playing when you feel 'too serious' or don't have energy

✨ The ripple effect your playfulness has on everyone around

✨ You're never 'too old' or 'too serious' to play

If this resonates, please subscribe, share with someone who needs more play in their life and let me know in the comments: How will you add more play to your week?

About

Feel Better Every Day! Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on.

With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:

Feel… regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from

Love… accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and

Heal… turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large.

Thanks for listening or watching.

New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode.

Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each Wednesday morning.

Want to work with me?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos.

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net

• You can join the Sole to Soul Circle on Substack (https://evemc.substack.com ) and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme.

• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc

• While my private practice for one to one work (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision) is almost always at capacity, if you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s still worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together.

Want to connect on socials?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say ‘Hi’ and tell me what you want to ask or say:

YouTube @evemenezescunningham

Substack @evemc

Bluesky @eveimc

TikTok @evemenezescunningham

Insta @evemenezescunningham

Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay

And if you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD take better care of their whole selves and create lives they don’t need to retreat from.

Chapters

(0:02 - 0:30) Introduction to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

(0:30 - 1:06) How we learn so well through play

(1:07 - 16:22) We're never too old to play. And dolphins

Resources

- Episode 7 with Nick Williams on play as a business benefit

- Sole to Soul Circle membership for bonus content

- Book: 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing

Disclaimer

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice.

Thanks for listening. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

Full transcript

I did not expect to see dolphins. A pod of them came over to us so we were back to the harbour. Someone else said go out there at 11 o'clock! Dolphins!

And they came over to the boat and they were swimming under the boat and they were leaping through the air and they were being their magnificent miraculous amazing joyful healing transformative selves and I couldn't get over it.

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. To help you feel better every day and create a life you don't need to retreat from.

You can find out more at the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com or selfcarecoaching.net.

Today we're looking at the power of play and the strongest way in which we remember things is through trauma. We're very, very present during traumatic experiences, so those memories go really deep.

The second best way to learn is through play, which is obviously way more enjoyable and you get to choose what you learn.

So you might feel that you can't remember how to play, you're too old to play, you never knew how to play and I thought I'd explore some ways in which you can have more fun with today's episode.

And you might also enjoy episode 7 with Nick Williams, the author of The Work You Were Born to Do and many, many other books.

He's talking about how play has become so important to him in terms of helping business leaders do their best thinking and being creative. But ultimately play is restorative, it's fun, it's healing.

We play with others, we co-regulate it's never too old to learn. As George Eliot said, it's never too late to be who you might have been. So even if you feel like it's silly, if you're open to the idea of remembering how to play, like you might have kids, you might play all the time, you might kind of get into their fantasy worlds and have adventures and do all sorts of things or you might be the way I used to be, very, very, very serious and play is just so beneficial if you can turn what you're learning like kind of as a student in any area into a playful approach like through music or anything like that.

It's far easier to remember but also just for your own wellbeing, just for your own happiness and your own joy.

Lots of things take effort, so in terms of the feel better element of my work, the regulation, the working with the will in psychosynthesis terms, the things we actively do.

For example for me, I have my first ever hobby as an adult having joined the Roscommon Sub Aqua Club a couple years ago nearly now and I did not expect to be joining or doing anything like that and I regularly question my life choices with 5.30am starts and I'm not a morning person and often dives get cancelled.

I'm still a snorkel member because we're on the west coast of Ireland and the weather ... but I know without a shadow of a doubt that while I was already playing in the water with my sea swims and my pool swims and my underwater handstands, learning to snorkel has changed my life. It's incredible and to see the seaweed let alone the crabs and the fish and the dolphins that I got to see a few weeks ago out on the boat, never experienced anything like it.

I wanted to anchor that sensation of awe and wonder and I realised that the dolphins I would never have seen had I not kind of encouraged myself quite sternly, I'm not going to say forced myself, but to get back on the boat after I'd got so seasick previously.

I'm not the most elegant person getting on and off of boats like walking along, I nearly broke my toe getting onto a yoga mat to teach a class a few weeks ago. I'm not the most graceful person so other people seem to leap on and off more easily, other people seem to get seasick less but I thought, 'Nope, it's a nice day. I'm going to go out there and I'm just going to see what it's like. And then, when I upgrade to dive member I'll be able to get the most out of the experience.'

I did not expect to see dolphins. A pod of them came over to us so we were back to the harbour. Someone else said go out there at 11 o'clock! Dolphins!

And they came over to the boat and they were swimming under the boat and they were leaping through the air and they were being their magnificent miraculous amazing joyful healing transformative selves and I couldn't get over it.

Had I not done the thing, like I couldn't have predicted dolphins, I did say that before we went out on the boat I did ask hopefully will we see dolphins and I think people felt a bit sorry for me.

And then they all felt really jealous of me because I was the only one with the driver who saw them close up.

They were all on shore after their dive so you have to be willing sometimes with play to put yourself out of comfort zone.

For example, the sea swims that are quite playful for me.

But almost as fun as the dolphins was then being on shore with one of my