I partnered with an Occupational Therapist I know in Des Moines, IA to host a “Befriending Your Feelings” AWBW group for kids ages 7-12 with their parents participating too. We did several activities to explore our feelings. We started with a scribble drawing to get out any specific emotions we were feeling at that moment. Then I gave options for the next activity, and the kids chose the pipe cleaner warm-up activity, where you shape pipe cleaners into any feeling you want to express. 

After this activity, one 11-year old girl said, “I liked the piper cleaners building the feelings because it wasn’t straight, and it wasn’t perfect. And we aren’t perfect, and our feelings aren’t perfect. They are just feelings.”

As this child expressed perfectly, the pipe cleaners really resonated with the group participants because they felt like an accurate medium to express their emotions in all their mess and imperfection. 

One mom created a mobile of her different feelings with a different colored pipe cleaner for each feeling, i.e. red for anger, blue for sadness, green for peace, and yellow for happiness. Each pipe cleaner was either tightly wound in a circle or more drawn out and curled less tightly to express the pace of each feeling. Afterwards, she shared, “My sadness goes really slow, and my anger goes really fast, and I feel like when I am more regulated, I go in between,” indicating the yellow and green pipe cleaners. 

After we built our feelings out of pipe cleaners, we moved into a body mapping exercise of drawing our feelings where we feel them in our body. I gave each participant a blank outline of the human body and let them know they could choose different colors and draw where they feel different feelings in their bodies. 

One girl showed her drawing, and said, “I feel sadness in my head (blue), because it just goes there, and then I want to just sit down or lay down for several hours. I feel happiness and peace in my chest (yellow), because your heart just slows down. I feel anger in my gut (red), because it just makes me feel like my stomach is in knots and like it can’t go anywhere. And I feel excitement and nervousness in my feet (orange) because I just want to run and get the energy out.”

After the activity, this 11-year old girl said,“I liked the body map activity because it was like a scavenger hunt or a treasure hunt in your body for your feelings.” 

It was really beautiful to have the parents and kids together in this group. The parents and children had open discussions about their feelings, what they look like, and where they feel them in their bodies.