Kimochis Feeling Pillows Guide:
Activities for Mental Health Professionals to Help Children Process and Regulate Big Feelings
Authors: Jill Kristal, Ph.D. and Ellen Pritchard Dodge, M.Ed., CCC-SLP
INTRODUCTION
Kimochis feeling pillows offer a hands-on, playful and interactive way to help children explore feelings.
The Kimochis®Feeling Pillows Guide: Activities for Mental Health Professionals elevates the feeling pillows to a therapeutic intervention that provides novel ways to help children ages 5-12* process and regulate BIG emotions.
Created through the collaboration of a clinical psychologist, educational director and Kimochis co-founder, and tested by child therapists around the country, the 49 activities provided in this guidebook will lead children to:
- Actively communicate feelings with more showing and less talking
- Build the mind-body connection which underlies the belief that ‘feelings fuel behavior’
- Confront hard to have feelings by being physically able to hold, move, sort, hide and throw them around
- Nurture compassion for self and others
*Everyone has feelings and these activities are easily adapted for children of all ages, working one-on-one and in groups. Adults too can benefit from having feelings they can see and touch!
Group 1 Activities focus on building a feelings vocabulary.
Group 2 Activities examine the physical nature of feelings and their impact on thoughts and behavior.
Group 3 Activities explore the importance of talking about feelings.
Group 4 Activities look at sharing feelings—how to and with whom.
Together, these tasks impart beliefs that comprise the Kimochis® philosophy, including:
- Feelings are neither good nor bad; it’s what you do with them that makes the difference.
- Even big, hard-to-have feelings are important and can be handled in helpful ways.
- Much can be expressed without a lot of speaking but with a lot of good listening.
At their most basic level of usability, the Kimochis® feeling pillows can just be tossed into a basket or bowl in your therapy area, seeing what your clients will spontaneously do with them. This is a “less is more” approach to using the pillows as a therapy tool, and it can lead to some very good interactions.
By repeating each activity numerous times in different scenarios, we’ve learned that some work best with certain clients, some with others. Taken together, these activities represent our “home runs” and are meant to guide and also to serve as ideas for stimulating your own imagination and creativity. Although the sections below are ordered in a way that allows for the growth and development of feelings, the activities within each section do not need to be done in any particular order.
Do what you believe will be most effective for you and the child(ren) with whom you’re working. Combine activities, repeat activities, repeat activities from one section in another, come up with something totally new.
There’s no limit to how you can apply, adapt, and adjust the activities to yield the greatest impact.
Along the way, be sure to acknowledge the changes you observe in the children you work with as they develop their capacity to recognize and express what they feel.