How to create healing stories for children

Countless children have been badly affected by the lockdown and coronavirus pandemic, and we still don’t know what the long term effects will be. This inspiring, interactive workshop with Pamela Woodford gives you powerful therapeutic tools which anyone can learn and adapt for the children (or adults) they work with or care for. You will have plenty of opportunities to ask questions and we will break into small groups for the exercises. All you need is a quiet place to watch, a computer or tablet and a strong internet signal, the rest is easy – simply book your place and we will email you details of how to join the Zoom workshop the day before the live event.

Why take this course

Stories are powerful therapeutic tools, which also play a crucial role in children’s 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.

As all children love stories, this natural affinity provides us with an incredibly powerful, non-intrusive and non-directive way to help emotionally distressed and abused young people, who can sometimes be hard to reach in any other way. All successful psychotherapy and counselling involves storytelling and the apposite use of metaphor – they bypass assumptions and rigid thinking to offer a new way of looking at things, awaken innate resources and offer crucial hope.

On this practical and inspiring course you will learn how to tap into your own metaphorical brain to create therapeutic stories and metaphors that are appropriate to each young person’s individual circumstances and experiences. Practising the steps involved with a master storyteller gives you innovative new 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.

Indeed, you may well be surprised at how quickly positive psychological changes occur as a result of the stories you yourself will create and tell.

What will you learn

Knowledge and experience of how to create and use short stories, in the moment, that are specifically tailored to quickly bring about positive psychological changes in children and young people
A clear understanding of how to address emotional issues in children
How to find the right metaphor for each situation
Tips for igniting your own imagination and creativity
The importance of paying attention to the words children use when telling you something
Ideas and metaphors relevant to the impact of Covid-19 and the lockdown to help children who are struggling
Case histories which illustrate the effectiveness of stories and show why they are such powerful therapeutic tools
Flexible skills that can easily be adapted to working with adults
Why subtly entwining a child’s interests into a story makes its impact stronger
Plenty of opportunity to get feedback on the story you create and to ask questions from the tutor – a highly experienced and creative psychotherapist who has spent decades working therapeutically with distressed children and young people
Different ways to use therapeutic stories, such as those in Pamela’s acclaimed Brighter Little Minds series, to develop emotional literacy
A greater appreciation of the subtle power of metaphor, imagination and embedded suggestions and how to use them to help the young people you care for
Increased confidence in creating and telling therapeutic stories yourself
Simple ways to calm and relax children – “it’s the way you tell ‘em”
Breathing life into inanimate objects and taking inspiration from nature – how to tune into your metaphorical mind
Lots of new ideas from Pamela Woodford’s ‘treasure chest of healing spells’ to spark your own creativity
Tips for improving your own storytelling abilities
and more…