A practical workshop exploring how sensory integration, anxiety, overload, emotional safety, and wellbeing intersect in school life.
Explore the links between sensory integration, anxiety, emotional safety, and school wellbeing.
This workshop explores the overlap between sensory integration, anxiety, emotional safety, overload, shutdown, avoidance, and wellbeing in schools. It is especially relevant for participants working with children and young people whose needs may otherwise be framed only as emotional or behavioural challenge. The focus is on compassionate, neuro-affirming, and context aware reasoning that supports safety, trust, and participation.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- describe how sensory integration differences may interact with anxiety and emotional safety
- identify signs that distress, overload, shutdown, or avoidance may have sensory and relational dimensions
- discuss more compassionate and neuro-affirming interpretations of need
- reflect on practical ways to support emotional safety in routines and environments
- identify one change they could make to strengthen emotional safety in practice
Participants will learn it through focused teaching on sensory integration and wellbeing, discuss it in relation to real school concerns, apply it to scenarios of distress and overload, reflect on their own language and reasoning, and take it back into practice through safer, more compassionate support.