Play Therapy for ADHD Adults: What Disney Gets Right

What play therapy means when you are an unmasking adult

Hello, hello. This is Danielle and one of our coaches, and we’re talking about play therapy today. We’re all about the play here, and I of course am playing with Thinking Putty right now, and will be all day. So what is play therapy? It’s not what you think of when you hear traditional play therapy.

Yeah. A lot of us neurodivergent people have a huge problem when we’re trying to unmask. We’ve been super conditioned to fit inside this little box. I was a teacher for a really long time, and kids don’t normally have that problem. It’s something that’s taught. All these little impulsive tendencies lose their joy. They stop trying things if they don’t think they’ll be perfect. All those things are conditioned responses.

So when I got my late diagnosis and I was really trying to get to know myself and figure myself out, it was, what did I like to do? Because I was a chronic people pleaser and a masker, so I would do whatever the situation called for. The way for me to reconnect to myself and figure myself out was play. What did I like to do when I was eight years old? What were things that gave me tremendous amounts of joy? I bought a bubble machine. I bought a gigantic hula hoop. I just started being silly. Little kids haven’t been told to rein that in enough yet, so they’re still super open to experiences. People say, “Oh, I could never be a teacher,” and it’s like, teach elementary school kids art. Elementary school kids love to make a mess. They love to make art. Their hearts are so open to it.

That, for me, was the big turning point for play therapy. It just made so much sense. I’ve seen OTs do it, I’ve seen PTs do it, all different stuff for kids in a therapy setting. But why can’t adults do this when we’re trying to reconnect with ourselves? You hear “heal your inner child,” but I really got to know myself through play therapy, and it was just a lot of fun.

Adults play too: the Bluey Stumpfest lesson

One of the amazing things is that you have to find what makes you happy, not what other people think you should be doing. As an adult, you don’t have to always be professional and quiet. Reading books, watching movies, watching sports, drinking, those aren’t the only things out there. Any crafter will tell you there’s way more to life than that.

Okay, so one of my favorite cartoons, and yes, I watch cartoons, I watch them every night before I go to bed, is Bluey. Lots of people love Bluey, but I liked her before it was cool, I’m just putting that out there. There’s an episode called Stumpfest. Her dad and his friends are in the backyard, playing music, about to rip up these stumps, and Bluey, her sister, and her cousin have decided they’re going to keep one of the stumps and make it a nail salon. Hijinks ensue. At the end of the episode, Bluey says, “You shouldn’t interrupt people when they’re playing,” and the mom goes, “Yeah, that’s why I stopped you.” And Bluey goes, “They weren’t playing.” And the mom says, “Yeah, they were. Look at them.” And you look at the dads out there, horsing around with each other.

So it doesn’t have to be little-kid things. That’s just what appeals to me. People that knew me as a child will tell you that I’ve been a hundred-year-old woman since the time I could walk, so for me, reconnecting with a part of myself that is super underdeveloped is pretty cathartic. But it can be anything that brings you joy. I see massive amounts of people spending ridiculous amounts of money on reissued G.I. Joes, because it’s part of their childhood and it makes them happy. People play video games. People watch movies. The thing about being a kid is that it’s about being open-minded and joyful.

And there’s a trope, the quirky girl who can do childlike things, and everybody’s kind of okay with that. Being a teacher, you can be weird and quirky and nobody says anything, because you’re around kids all day, so it’s acceptable. But there is a place everybody can go where being a kid is super acceptable, and I have seen people from one hundred to one just let it all out. And that is pretty much anywhere Disney.

The science behind how Disney World actually works

Disney World is definitely one of those places where it’s okay to do the thing, okay to be who you are. It’s fine to allow yourself to have fun there. And hyperfocus is putting on a show right now, because I’ve looked this up before and did some research on the science behind how Disney does everything. Did you know there is Disney science? There are PhD and master’s theses written on how Disney World operates and all of the science behind it. There are also several documentaries about this. I’ve watched all the documentaries and everything Disney puts out. I love the Imagineering channel. I’ve always found it fascinating, but now I’m looking at it from a clinical standpoint, as an ADHD coach, as a therapy person. And I say therapy person because, for those who don’t know, I have the degree, but I am not licensed, nor do I want to be.

And from a behavior management standpoint, that’s my hyperfocus. So our combined hyperfocuses are diving into this. Take the sound at Disney World, and how sound is manipulated there. I am the wife of a sound engineer and the mom of an audiophile, and a musician myself. I’ve done sound for years, for live bands and conferences. Music is my thing. So music is one piece of it. Sound, not music, ambient sound, is another piece. Then you have smells. Then you have visuals.

We all know the garbage cans are painted for each area of the park, but do you know there’s science behind why they’re painted the way they are? There are different smells piped into different sections of the park. There are different sounds for different sections of the park.

Master-level crowd management, and characters who never break the hug

And if you ever want to see master-level crowd management, master-level de-escalation techniques, just people-watch at Disney. A hundred people will show up for Pirates of the Caribbean, and within five minutes they’ve got those poles set up, they’ve got people in an orderly line, and nobody has gotten irate. Every now and then you’ll see a Karen, but watch how the Disney crew has been trained to handle it. I wish more corporations did that. And everybody has problems, we aren’t talking about that. We’re talking about the environment created at a Disney park, and how it allows you to use play therapy and connect with yourself.

The characters that walk around, they walk around in certain patterns for a certain reason. And we all know that a Disney character, when hugged by a child, never breaks the contact until the child steps away. They are never the ones to break the hug, because that is a sensory need. There are so many things. It’s sensory input from every possible sense. So I really started diving into that, and asking, how do we adapt that to daily life? I had figured out ways naturally to adapt it to my life, and I’ve been doing that a long time.

Superpowers, executive dysfunction, and learning to staff your weaknesses

That’s part of why we’re doing our trip. It’s not a retreat, it is totally not a retreat, it’s more of a neurodivergent dopamine adventure quest. We’re going to teach you how to use the neurology of your brain. How to work with sensory overwhelm and sensory overload, how to flip that switch, using everything you can learn from being in Disney World, to help you live a better life with ADHD and find where your superpowers are.

We talked this morning about ADHD superpowers, neurodivergent superpowers. We all have our superpowers. That does not mean ADHD, ASD, whatever your neurodivergence is, is a superpower overall. We all have our struggles with it, and we all have the superpowers with it. I want to help you capitalize on the superpowers so that you can staff the executive dysfunction issues you have. And staffing them doesn’t necessarily mean hiring somebody. It could be learning how to use AI for the thing you need. It could be learning how to organize something in your home to deal with your executive dysfunction. That looks different for every single one of us, because if you’ve met one neurodivergent person, you’ve met just one. We all do things differently, and our brains work differently.

Zentangle and meditation, rock star style

We actually have an art teacher coming to teach Zentangle. He is a neurodivergent person himself, he has ADHD, and he went to this super cool training. It’s meditative doodling. You can look up Zentangle. There are lots of knockoffs, but it was invented by a calligrapher. She said she would get in the zone doing calligraphy, and the world around her would just fade away. Her husband would have to call her name multiple times. So they started teaching people how to find their Zen. This art teacher uses it with all his classes. He’s taught it at churches, he’s taught it at conferences. Even if you’re thinking, “I’m not an artist,” you can totally do this.

And I’m going to teach you how to meditate rock star style, because I totally do not meditate like anybody else. I’m ADHD, I’m a musician. When I’m feeling good and my autoimmune issues aren’t bothering me, my energy level is off the charts, and I had to figure out how to calm myself and my brain down so I can focus. Which is not doing just one thing at a time. I have taught this to other musicians, including working musicians who tour, and there are musicians who still use it today. Understanding how to create mindset, how to decrease your overwhelm, all of these things.

And why are we talking about this on the podcast? For those listening who can’t see us, we are both in crazy headbands right now. It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, so I’ve got St. Patrick’s Day stuff all over me, and there are shamrocks on a headband over here. We are all about creating more fun in our lives to help us with our executive dysfunction skills. It’s not just about being fun and quirky and weird. It’s to help us with our executive dysfunction. That’s why we do this.

And I say Disney is the happiest place on Earth, but I went at Christmas time. As a neurodivergent person, never go at Christmas time. Just don’t do it. The crowds are insane, and very few people there were happy. But you can make those kinds of situations happier. When we first started talking about this a week ago, I said, if you’re an introvert, this is not your trip. No, if you’re an introvert, come learn to adapt outside of your comfort zone.

The ultimate game day: practicing coping skills in the real world

It’s so important for our community to do things together and build your network, and you can’t build your network on Zoom as well as you can in person. This is the ultimate game day practice. You work with neurodivergent coaches, you work with your ADHD coach, and you learn all of these coping skills, and we send you out into the world and you practice them, and then you come back and we ask, how did it work? At these kinds of summits, retreats, adventures, you actively put these things into practice, and then we debrief. You’re going to see us use coping skills. You are going to see us probably fail at least once. But how do we bounce back? How are we resilient? How do we model behavior?

We need more places where neurodivergent people can gather, collaborate, help each other, and give each other permission to be the awesome sparkly little people that we are. That’s one of the reasons to do it at a place like Disney: Disney gives you permission to be joyful. It gives you permission to ride rides. I see old people on the teacups just living it up. There’s nostalgia, there’s all different kinds of things. The whole environment is built to give you permission to have fun, and we want to capitalize on that environment.

If you are struggling to have fun as a neurodivergent person, if you are struggling to connect with yourself, if you’re struggling to recognize what your sensory overwhelm issues are, because we all have sensory overwhelm issues, and everybody’s are different, we can help you figure out what they are and learn how to work with them. Are you going to be able to overcome them in every situation? No. But there’s a difference between learning about a tool and actively using a tool. We teach active tools to overcome your overwhelm, and active opportunities to connect with other ADHD people. There’s a lot of support while we’re there. If you’re really struggling and need to talk, all you have to do is text us, and we will meet you where you are. Or you could just follow us around all day, because we are the fun in Disney World.

Recovery time: the skill neurodivergent people skip

We’re so smart, but we have a hard time taking attainable action for ourselves, and that’s what we teach: how to create attainable action steps you can use every single day. And the thing we haven’t talked about is recovery. If you go to the park and spend two hours there, or all day there, we are going to teach you how to recover from that. Because in my own personal experience, the neurodivergent crowd is not really good at recovery time. No, absolutely not. We want to make sure that you learn these skills, learn to recover, have fun, and then go home and put these things immediately into practice in your life.

This is about learning to live a better version of yourself, to be out loud, to be neurodivergent, to be yourself, the best version of yourself, at least most of the time. Not every day is perfect. This is why I talk about good, better, best days. Some days I’m my better version of myself than others, and that’s perfectly acceptable and okay. And understanding how to take care of myself, and those in my home, because we all have people in our home, or furballs, who need that recovery time too.

Our trip includes training sessions, park time, and support materials, including calm, low-stimulation spaces mapped out for you, and it’s planned by a fully neurodivergent-owned travel agency, designed by people who get us, because they are just like us. Families are fully allowed. Spouses are allowed and can attend all of the training with us. This trip is for everyone. We don’t care where you are, what you are, or how you present. You are more than welcome with us. We want you to find a space where you are one hundred percent accepted, because we have struggled to find those our whole lives.

We hope to make this something we do every year, because finding your community, an in-person, face-to-face community, is so important. The relationships I’ve built by meeting somebody face to face are way more life-changing for me than anything I’ve done on Zoom. And even if you don’t join us for the trip, join us for the other things we do, because we teach all of these skills in every training. Go to our Facebook group, where you can find a lot of these for free. We do a lot of free things, and we are not high-ticket coaches. We are here to support you in the way that you need to be supported.

Play is how you learn anything faster

I hope you learn that play is necessary for your life. It’s necessary. And here’s my next teacher thing about this: you will learn a lesson faster if you are playing while you’re doing it, faster than anything else. If your kid is struggling to learn their times tables, you turn it into a game, a song, something, and they’re going to learn it. Our minds take in play differently. We don’t shut it out. We’re not afraid to mess up, because we’re playing. We can allow ourselves that space, and it’s absolutely amazing when you do. I’ve learned that so much over the last six months, and I’m learning how to implement it every day, more and more.

I hope you join us. Have an amazing day, everyone, and follow us on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere.