The Play Therapies Centre Ltd

The Play Therapies Centre Ltd Helping children resolve their problems through therapeutic play. The Play Therapies Centre is run by a team of highly skilled and dedicated professionals.

Together we have over 30 years combined experience of Teaching, Youth & Community Work, Child Development, Clinical psychology and Social Work as well as all being qualified to Post Graduate level in Non-Directive Play Therapy and are registered with Play Therapy International and the Academy of Play And Child Psychotherapy (APAC). We have 3 centres:
Belfast - Wellington Park, Malone Road
Derry -

Garden of Reflection on Pump Street
Newry - Hill Street

At The Play Therapies Centre we believe that each child is special and unique. We are passionate about helping and supporting children to grow and progress from being anxious, withdrawn or hostile to becoming more confident, content and satisfied with themselves and their environments.

Sinead – Clinical Director & Senior Accredited Play Therapist​Sinead is the Clinical Director and a senior Accredited IF...
05/08/2026

Sinead – Clinical Director & Senior Accredited Play Therapist

​Sinead is the Clinical Director and a senior Accredited IFS Play Therapist in our North West Centre based in Derry.
​In her therapeutic work with children, Sinead creates a nurturing environment of warmth, acceptance, empathy, and genuine regard for all her clients, which she believes creates a safe space for them to psychologically heal.

Sinead is committed to forming trusting, supportive therapeutic relationships with parents that honour their vital role and the sanctity of the parent-child bond. By helping families find their balance and health, children are able to reach their vast potential.

For over the last twenty years, Sinead’s experience has been working with children who have severe social, emotional, or behavioural difficulties. This work has allowed Sinead to gain extensive experience collaborating with statutory agencies within health trusts and education boards, as well as various voluntary organisations across Northern Ireland.

​Therapeutic Parenting: Alongside her clinical work with children, Sinead has twenty years of experience running therapeutic parenting programmes for both individuals and groups. She most recently has been commissioned to run parents programs via statutory and community organisations.

​Sinead is also qualified in various complementary therapies that she incorporates into her work with children and families, driven by a deep understanding of the roots of trauma and the mind-body connection.

​Internal Family Systems (IFS) Integration-
​Sinead is IFS Level 1 trained, bringing an extraordinary depth and transformative dimension to her practice. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidence-based, compassionate therapeutic approach that views the mind as naturally multiple. This model helps children and parents understand their inner parts—such as protective patterns, emotional burdens, and vulnerable young parts—with profound curiosity and self-compassion.
​
By integrating IFS Level 1 training into her play therapy and family work, Sinead helps clients access their innate "Self-energy." This allows for deep, lasting healing of core wounds and trauma, moving beyond symptom management to genuine emotional integration and inner harmony.

For more information or to book your child in with Sinead contact us on 028 90 923337.

www.theplaytherapiescentre.co.uk

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we learn that our inner "parts" don’t always use adult words—they speak through our se...
04/08/2026

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we learn that our inner "parts" don’t always use adult words—they speak through our senses. They might show up as the image of a younger self, an inner critic's sharp voice, or even a sudden smell from the past.
​When you look at this through the lens of Play Therapy, it makes total sense: play is the natural language of these parts.
​Instead of just talking about our feelings, expressive modalities like sandtrays, art, puppets, and miniatures give our internal system a physical room to play in. A scared little animal figure can represent an exiled vulnerable part, while a fierce action figure might embody a protector.
​By letting our parts "play" and externalize safely, we can finally listen to what they've been trying to tell us all along. 🎨🧸✨
​

If you find yourself facing an old pattern, an old memory, or a familiar challenge today—remember this: You are not star...
04/08/2026

If you find yourself facing an old pattern, an old memory, or a familiar challenge today—remember this: You are not starting over from scratch. You are meeting it with everything you’ve learned, grown, and survived since the last time.

​Growth isn't a straight line; it's a spiral. And every loop brings a wiser, stronger version of you. 🌿

​What’s a lesson or tool you have now that the past version of you needed? 👇

In psychotherapy, Homer’s The Odyssey isn’t just an ancient adventure story—it is a blueprint for deep emotional healing...
02/08/2026

In psychotherapy, Homer’s The Odyssey isn’t just an ancient adventure story—it is a blueprint for deep emotional healing. When we look at modalities like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Play Therapy, the epic journey takes on a whole new meaning:

⛵ Odysseus as the "Self": True healing begins when we step into our own "Self-leadership." Like Odysseus guiding his ship, we learn to navigate life with curiosity, calm, and courage, rather than letting panic steer the boat.

🧌 The "Monsters" are Just Wounded Parts: In IFS, characters like the Cyclops or the Sirens aren't enemies to destroy. They represent our internal "Protectors" or "Firefighters"—addictive impulses, raging anger, or deep coping mechanisms born out of trauma. Healing happens when we stop fighting them and start understanding their protective intent.

🎨 Play Therapy & The Sand Tray: For children (and adults!), the playroom becomes Ithaca. By using puppets, toys, or sand trays, we can safely externalise our inner monsters, face our fears with a wise guide (the therapist as Athena), and rewrite our survival stories.

Your struggles aren't a sign of failure; they are the trials of your own hero's journey. Every storm faced is a step closer to nostos—the joyful return to your authentic, integrated self.

www.theplaytherapiescentre.co.uk

Just like Augustus, who couldn't stop consuming because he was driven by an insatiable, immediate need for more sweet tr...
31/07/2026

Just like Augustus, who couldn't stop consuming because he was driven by an insatiable, immediate need for more sweet treats, kids (and adults!) caught in screen dependence are trapped in a loop of instant gratification.

Their "chocolate river" is the endless stream of notifications, videos, and games that constantly flood the brain with dopamine.Think of screens like a delicious dessert.

​You wouldn't give your child dessert to eat all day, or they’d get sick.

​The challenge is that kids can easily get caught in an addictive dopamine cycle when screens become the default.
​Just like a healthy meal balances out the sweet treats, helping them mix it up with offline play, reading, and talking gives their brains the variety they need to feel their best.

​To help raise a healthy child in a digital world, we as parents can focus on addressing the root causes of screen dependence rather than just fighting over device limits. Here are practical ways to support this:

⭐️​Understand the "Why" Behind the Screen: Screen dependence often begins because a screen is meeting an emotional or neurological need—like a quick escape from boredom, anxiety, loneliness, or frustration—that has become difficult to meet elsewhere.

⭐️​Look Beyond the Behaviour: Watch for signs of dependence, such as intense distress when screen time ends, a loss of interest in hobbies, or using screens as the default way to feel better.

⭐️ Recognizing what the child is really seeking helps address the root need.Balance high-stimulation digital activities with a healthy meal of offline experiences—such as playing outside, reading, talking, and creative hobbies—so that everyday life doesn't feel boring by comparison.

⭐️​Build Alternative Coping Skills. Instead of simply taking devices away (which often triggers high conflict), help children build alternative, healthy ways to feel calm, connected, and emotionally regulated.

Navigating screens in modern parenting is one of the toughest challenges because technology is woven into daily life, and we as parents are often juggling a million things at once.

​When we are tired, working, ill or just trying to get through the day, a device can feel like the only reliable way to get a moment of peace.

It is okay to acknowledge that we are only human and that falling into the "screen trap" happens to almost everyone (myself included).

​The goal isn't to be a perfect parent or to banish screens entirely, but rather to give ourselves some grace while slowly helping our children build other ways to find comfort, connection, and balance.

We don't want our children falling into the chocolate river and being swept away!

"Letting go of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better." — Eckhart Tolle​Does this apply to...
29/07/2026

"Letting go of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better." — Eckhart Tolle

​Does this apply to children?

Absolutely—in fact, children often show us this truth more vividly than anyone else.

​Kids don't usually intellectualize their stress; instead, their bodies act as a direct barometer for everything happening around and inside them.

When children experience overstimulation, anxiety, transitions, or trauma, their bodies register it instantly. They get stomachaches before school, act out impulsively, freeze up, or complain of aches that have no medical cause. This is physical resistance—the body bracing against an environment or emotion it doesn't know how to process.

​When adults try to force a stressed child to "calm down" or stop a behaviour through sheer control or punishment, it often backfires.

Pushing against a child’s resistance usually increases their internal friction, sending their nervous system further into fight-or-flight.

​Children learn how to release physical and emotional resistance by borrowing our calm. When a trusted adult meets a child's meltdown or physical tension not with resistance or anger, but with grounded presence, the child's nervous system begins to co-regulate. Their shoulders drop, their breathing deepens, and the physical symptoms of distress often melt away.

​Ultimately, children don't learn to let go of resistance through lectures—they learn it when we create an environment where their bodies feel safe enough to finally exhale.

The Trap of Labels: From Attachment to Neurodiversity​We’ve seen the exact same pattern happen with neurodiversity label...
28/07/2026

The Trap of Labels: From Attachment to Neurodiversity

​We’ve seen the exact same pattern happen with neurodiversity labels (like ADHD or autism) that we saw with attachment styles.
​What started as a helpful way to describe a nervous system or natural variation has often morphed into a rigid identity: "I'm just so ADHD, I could never do that."

​Just like "avoidant" or "anxious," a diagnosis can quickly turn into a fixed script. The brain accepts the label, builds a predictable story around it, and suddenly a survival strategy or neurodivergence becomes a permanent ceiling on human potential.

​Even worse, labels can flatten completely different underlying realities. Two people might struggle with the exact same executive dysfunction or social burnout, but the root cause could be entirely distinct: neurodevelopmental wiring, chronic trauma, severe burnout, or nervous system exhaustion.

Treating the label as the final answer stops us from looking deeper at what the body actually needs.

​Diagnosis and framework are useful maps, but they are never the territory. Healing begins when we stop asking "What box do I fit into?" and start asking what our nervous system is trying to tell us.

www.theplaytherapiescentre.co.uk

Story nourishes. It lives not just in the mind, but deep within the body—in the quiet hum of the bones and the silent ge...
27/07/2026

Story nourishes. It lives not just in the mind, but deep within the body—in the quiet hum of the bones and the silent geography of the soul.

​When we step into the worlds of Play Therapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS), we enter this exact living landscape. We realize that the psyche does not speak in straight lines; it speaks in symbols, metaphors, myths, and play.

In the sacred space of play, children do not analyze their pain—they enact it, move through it, and alchemize it.

​A sandtray becomes a sweeping desert or a dark, sheltering cave.

​A handful of figurines becomes an army of protectors, exiles, and wounded wanderers.

​Through play, a child threads that shimmery golden strand, stitching together the fragmented pieces of their world into a new, whole pattern.

we discover that we are all universes of story, carrying ancient echoes and cultural memories deep in our marrow.

​Our inner parts hold the maps of our history—the swamps we survived, the towers we built to stay safe, the fires we tended.

​When we sit with our parts in Self-energy, we are doing the sacred work of re-membering. We are reaching into the shadows to retrieve what was lost, scattered, or exiled, bringing them back into the warmth of the circle.

How are the stories inside your own bones asking to be met, held, and nourished today?

Artist unknown

What are the most joyful things that have happened to you recently?Joy is one of the hardest emotions to feel.Joy is act...
26/07/2026

What are the most joyful things that have happened to you recently?

Joy is one of the hardest emotions to feel.

Joy is actually an emotion that is tied to gratitude 🙏 and giving. So think about what are you truly grateful for and how much do you give to others.. to the world? These are great dopamine release activities.

Being creative also gives us joy. When you engage in creative tasks, your brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with motivation, pleasure, and reward.

During the flow of creative activities, self-doubt and anxious thoughts quiet down as the prefrontal cortex temporarily decreases its activity. This deep focus provides a mental break from daily stressors and promotes profound contentment.

"Creativity is intelligence having fun." — Albert Einstein

So imagine how much joy you would bring to your life by being grateful for your children, giving them your time and being silly and creative with them. Recognising the simple things in life will bring you the greatest JOY.

Artist unknown.

Play therapy provides the exact type of experience the nervous system needs to update, shifting the work from cognitive ...
23/07/2026

Play therapy provides the exact type of experience the nervous system needs to update, shifting the work from cognitive understanding into visceral release.

​Traditional talk therapy speaks to the language centers of the brain, helping a client understand why they hurt. Play therapy bypasses those logical defenses entirely, giving the deeper, emotional, and physical centers of the brain a concrete experience of safety and mastery.

​Play therapy achieves this through several core mechanisms:

​Externalization via Metaphor: Instead of asking a client to verbally recount painful memories—which can trigger defensiveness or dissociation—play therapy uses sand trays, miniature figures, art, and movement. By projecting internal conflict onto external objects, the client can safely look at, move, and reshape their trauma outside of themselves. The body experiences the conflict as something tangible that can be managed, rather than an overwhelming internal threat.

​Bypassing the Language Barrier: Trauma, fear, and shame are stored in subcortical brain regions that lack access to language. Play therapy operates in the native language of the nervous system—imagery, sensation, and action. It allows clients to "speak" and process through movement and sensory engagement long before words are available.

​Physical Grounding and Discharge: Through expressive movement, positioning objects in a sand tray, or sensory-rich play, the body is actively involved in the present moment. This grounds the client physically, allowing the nervous system to discharge pent-up survival energy (such as the freeze or fight response) rather than just talking about it.

​Re-writing the Narrative through Mastery: In talk therapy, clients often get stuck reliving a passive role as victims of their history. In play therapy, the client holds the miniatures or shapes the clay. They physically direct the story, change the endings, and take the driver's seat. This creates a brand-new lived experience in the body: I am no longer helpless; I have agency here.

​Insight tells the brain what happened. Play therapy gives the body a physical experience of resolution, allowing the wound to finally close.
Art- The Healing of the Inner Wound by Laura Makabresku

Address

Office 5, 3 Wellington Park Business Centre
Belfast
BT126EE

Telephone

+442890923337

Website

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