Coping Skills: Using Bubbles in Therapy

I love bubbles! Even as an adult, I think they are a relaxing activity to engage in; they’re beautiful; and I love seeing the wonder of a child as they chase after them.

In addition, I am a believer in deep breathing as a coping skill to release tension and decrease stress. My first year as a counselor was as a Therapeutic Day Treatment Behavior Specialist (say that 10 times fast!) in a public middle school, but, basically, I was a therapeutic counselor for students with a severe mental illness. I worked with 2-5 kids, not the whole school like a school counselor. My co-worker and I did a group counseling series on “Coping Skills” to give our students resources to use to calm down when they feel stressed out. Now, we were working with several too-cool-for-school pre-teens. When we got to the deep breathing session, we got blank stares.

No one was going to take a deep breath in front of their friends.

We explained how deep breathing physically expands your diaphragm and causes your body to relax, how it causes you to stop and think through the consequences of your actions, and how it is a way to calm down when you’re angry. The response:

“I’m not doing that.”

Well, that was a bust. Because we discussed each coping skill over two sessions,  my co-worker and I discussed how to proceed for the next session. I had read in several articles the use of paper windmills and using bubbles to help calm down an angry toddler. I thought it could possibly work for middle schoolers too.

So, next session, we gave all the kids a bottle of bubbles and took them outside. They loved it! With 6 people, we had bubbles everywhere. The kids were laughing, having fun, and not too worried about their reputation in that moment. I have found that young kids, teenagers, and adults enjoy this activity. It’s fun and an active lesson (great for working with kids with ADHD), but also creates a visual. Here are my bullet points for using bubbles to teach deep breathing and problem solving:

Bubbles, like most problems, will pop on their own

I have lost count the times a child has told me “Ms. E! Ms. E! I had to talk in class because so-and-so wouldn’t stop talking!” When we backtrack through the scene, I usually ask the student “what would have happened if you just ignored “Brittany” and kept doing your work? Do you think “Brittany” would have eventually given up?” Not always, but they will begrudgingly admit “ I wouldn’t have gotten into trouble.” Leaving the problem alone is sometimes the best advice and hardest life skill to master.

However, you do have to be mindful of the children you’re working with. Some of them have problems in their lives that will not pop on their own, and they struggle to function in the school setting because of them. I would never tell a child that all problems solve themselves. You can point out that some bubbles are out of reach, and it can be frustrating to see the problem and have no way of popping it. If child mentions a serious problem, I would ask the child if he/she wants to talk about it in an individual therapy session.

Bubbles, like problems, come in different sizes.

We brainstormed different common problems and ask the kids to determine if the problems were big or small (Also, check out my post on scaling emotions and problems). In our next session, we discussed how to solve these problems without getting in trouble.  Some suggestions: broken pencil, a friend talking, forgot something in locker, etc. 

There can be a lot of bubbles.

At one point, we had all of our students stand in a circle and blow bubbles into the center with one person trying to pop all the bubbles. After everyone had a try, we talked about a teacher working with 20+ kids in the room. Our kids would always tell us “Ms. Smith hates me!” “She only ever hears me talking.” “Mr. Smith is so unfair.” etc.

In an effort to develop empathy for their teachers, we told the kids “this is your teacher’s classroom and all the problems that are in her class. This bubble is two kids talking. This one is the smart board not working. This bubble is that the room is too hot/cold. This big bubble is all of the students are yelling that they forget their homework. We stressed to our kids that teachers pop as many bubbles as they can, but they can’t always pop all of them. For the talking in class, the teacher sometimes pops their talking bubble before he/she can get to another group of kids’ talking bubble. One of our boys said “Man, I would hate to be a teacher. These kids would drive me insane.”  HUGE realization!

You can get hurt trying to pop a bubble.

This little truth was not in my original session plans, but it applies. Besides warning our kids to watch where they were going as they chased after bubbles (we were on a sidewalk with a curb), bubbles also served as a tool about popping someone else’s bubble. Our kids were always telling us stories about how they got in trouble helping a friend out. While one kid was blowing bubbles, another was running after his bubbles and popping them. At one point, a bubble popped in his eye. It stung at first, but he was fine. I said “And that’s what can happen when you chase after your friend’s problem.” One of the girls said “that’s deep Ms. E.”

Deep Breathing

So, to begin with, this was all about practicing deep breathing. During this session, we asked the kids to take 3 deep breaths and blow bubbles. Instead of blank stares, we got action! After the first 3 deep breaths, we asked them to deep breathe 2 more times and really pay attention to how their body responds.

In the end, it was one of my favorite group counseling sessions!

Have any tips for group counseling sessions? I would love to hear them. Leave them below in the comments! Don’t forget to pin!