and reach thousands of daily visitors
25 JUNE 2010
NO 1594
Structured storying
Emotions are challenging for youth when they feel overwhelmed by them; when this happens they may try to block out challenging emotions or find distractions from them. Enhancing emotional awareness is beneficial for developing problem-focused coping abilities that help youth to manage, rather than avoid, their feelings (Wesselmann, 1998). This involves increasing their tolerance for difficult feelings, safely exploring feelings, and being aware of choices of how to respond. With this ability, youth can respond to situations in ways that help them solve the problems involved in their distress (Wesselmann, 1998).
Art therapy aims to facilitate change by providing a supportive environment where youth can express themselves through the use of art materials (Waller, 2006). Most often, art therapy includes visual art activities such as painting, sculpting, and collage. However, art therapy can also include creative writing such as poetry, journal writing, and the completion of structured stories.
Creative writing is believed to have therapeutic benefits. For example, the creation of storybooks has been reported to support the expression of emotion, the clarification of beliefs, and externalization of troubling events (Hanney and Kozlowska, 2002). Communicating emotions through writing may decrease destructive behaviours that stem from a desire to be heard and understood. Further, using art to externalize troubling events can help youth develop awareness of the greater range of feelings, thoughts and choices available to them.
In this article, we reflect upon the completion of structured stories with a group of adolescent girls. The purpose of this activity was to support greater awareness of emotions, and the choices that adolescent girls make in response to them. Structured stories require youth to engage in sentence completion. Sentence completion provides a framework that guides participants through a constructive process of reflecting upon a specific issue. Moreover, the completion of structured stories is a process children of all ages can engage in (Arad, 2004), and can be particularly useful with children who are reluctant to communicate (Remotigue, 1980).
NATASHA EGELI AND LYNNE WOOLLAM
Egeli, N. and Woollam, L. (2009). Structured storying
to enhance awareness of challenging emotions. Relational Child and
Youth Care Practice, 22, 4. pp. 51-55.
REFERENCE
Arad, D. (2004). If your mother were an animal, what animal would she be? Creating play-stories in family therapy: The animal attribution story-telling technique (AASTT). Family Process, 43, 2. pp. 249-263.
Hanney, L. and Kozlowska, K. (2002). Healing traumatized children: Creating illustrated storybooks in family therapy. Family Process, 41, 1. pp. 37-65.
Remotique-Ano, N. (1980). The hidden agenda of story-making therapy. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 34, 2. pp. 261-268.
Waller, D. (2006). Art therapy for children: How it leads to change. Clinical Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 11, 2. pp. 271-282.
Wesselmann, D. (1998). The whole parent: How to become a terrific parent even if you didn’t have one. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
