How to create healing stories for distressed children
Children’s natural affinity with stories gives us an incredibly powerful, non-directive way to help emotionally distressed and abused young people, who can sometimes be hard to reach in any other way. On this practical workshop you will learn how to tap into your own metaphorical brain to create therapeutic stories and metaphors there and then that are appropriate to each individual’s circumstances and experiences.
Throughout the day Pamela – a master storyteller and highly experienced psychotherapist – draws on her own case histories and story examples as she guides you through the steps involved in ‘thinking on your feet’ and creating a story yourself in the moment. By the end of the day you will have lots of new, innovative ways to engage with and help distressed children deal with the experiences they have had – whilst also offering them hope, understanding, and new ways of thinking and feeling about life and themselves.
Indeed, you may well be surprised at how quickly positive psychological changes occur as a result of the stories you will create and tell ‘in the moment’.
Stories also play a crucial role in child development – through the ways the different characters think, act and overcome difficulties, children gain important templates for understanding the world and dealing with the challenges and situations they will meet in life – both now and in the future. They are a wonderful way to help build resilience.
Storytelling and the careful use of therapeutic metaphor are crucial elements of successful counselling and psychotherapy – they help bypass assumptions and rigid thinking to offer a new, broader way of looking at things, awaken innate resources and offer crucial hope – just what struggling children need…