@Gnomeshatecheese @Flick It's not the soft toy in and of itself. It's the concept of needing a prop to cope.
I've seen it hundreds of times when I used to work in schools. It often comes from adults who like to position themselves as caring and compassionate. They collect children who may have problems and organise plans to help them to cope. These often take the form of *x needs a fidget toy to concentrate* and similar. The child can never be weaned off these because then the adults wouldn't be able to show how much they care.
Then the children become adults, but they've never learned to manage themselves. They have zero resilience. So the childish behaviour persists as habit. It's a story they were told (you need your support squirrel as part of your self-care) and it remains a story they continue to tell themselves.