Using Story To Help Heal

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Re: Using stories in therapy

From: Ellen-Marie Silverman
Date: 12 Oct 2004
Time: 19:21:56 -0500
Remote Name: 205.188.116.201

Comments

Janea, Bibliotherapy uses stories where children encounter someone experiencing a problem similar to their own, identify with the character experiencing the problem so as to vicariously experience their thoughts and feelings about it, consider along with the character reasonable options to resolve the problem, and finally apply similar solutions to their own situation. Bibliotherapy helps children reading selected stories face their own problems and recognize they are solvable. For bibliotherapy to work, children must be able to identify their own situation as similar to the character's, be willing to face their own problems, and apply what they have learned from the character's circumstance to their own life. So, it's not so much an "ice-breaker" as a reality check, requiring identification and acceptance of their problem, their thoughts and feelings about it, and setting about changing. Finally, the other powerful feature of bibliotherapy is to dispell feelings of isolation, so important to healing both the child and the child's caregivers. In narrative speech pathology, the stories are those of the child himself and herself. The helper, using specific analytic techniques I mentioned, comes to understand the child and the problem the child becoming able to provide the most meaningful intervention for healing. Ellen-Marie Silverman


Last changed: 09/12/05