Bloomington Center for Connection

This Mental Health Awareness Day, support our sliding scale program and wear cool stuff! (Or snuggle with an adorable Columbo blanket, or slap a hilarious bumper sticker on that car!)
https://www.bloomingtoncenterforconnection.org/2025/10/support-accessible-care/

Support Accessible Care At the Bloomington Center for Connection, we believe healing isn’t a solo journey. Now, you can wear that message wherever you go. Our new merch supports accessible care and looks fantastic. Grounded in our values We’ve been committed to offering accessible care to underserved, underinsured, or ...

You didn’t grow out of play.
You just got better at hiding it.

But your brain?
It still needs those wild, messy, imaginative moments.
That’s where flexibility, focus, frustration tolerance, and relational insight are built—
not in checklists,
but in connection.

So if you’ve recently had that
“Ohhhhh... I think I’m ADHD and probably need some therapy?” moment—
you’re not alone.
And you’re not broken.

Executive functioning isn’t about getting your life perfectly together.
It’s about practicing how we move through the world—together, imperfectly, playfully.

And when everything feels like too much—when the world is heavy, and joy feels far away,
that’s when we need play the most.
Not because it fixes everything.
But because it gives us a place to breathe, experiment, and feel alive again.

Executive skills like frustration tolerance, communication, and psychological flexibility get stronger, not through pressure,
but through puddles, storylines, sand trays, and connection.

Because play isn’t a break from the work.
Play is the work.

When everything feels hot and dangerous, even staying still can take everything you’ve got.

In Relational-Cultural Therapy, we talk about Positive Relational Moments—real, felt experiences of safety, connection, and attunement.
Moments we can return to.
Moments that remind our nervous systems what steadiness feels like.
Some of those moments come from memory.
Others come from imagination--- when we allowed ourselves to experiment with danger and safety,
and landed someplace safe.

Safety isn’t just an idea.
It’s something we feel.
Something we co-create,
Something we practice.
And many of us first learned how—through play.

Play is how we explored the difference between danger and discomfort.
How we practiced being brave, being scared, being soothed.
And it’s still how we find our way back to solid ground.

🧡 What helps you stay on the cushion when the floor heats up?
🧠 What memory, connection, or moment helps you feel steady?

We need that kind of play.
The kind that reminds us:
You’re not overreacting.
You’re just trying not to fall in.

Art by Dora Carter

We’ve seen a lot of mutuality and authenticity nurtured in these groups!