Therapeutic Story Writing

Therapeutic Story Writing for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties


Presenting problem:
Children are often referred to me for emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The cause of these difficulties can be wide ranging. It is common for children to find it hard to talk about their difficult emotions and feelings. Some children find an issue is too overwhelming or too painful to talk about. Other children cannot stop talking about an issue and will inappropriately discuss it with anyone. Often children have not reached the linguistic maturity to be able to verbally navigate and process complex issues.


Therapeutic Story Writing is one way of exploring unresolved or troubling issues in a non-confrontational manner. See below for information on Therapeutic Story Writing and two case studies where Therapeutic Story Writing resulted in some some very successful results.


What is Therapeutic Story Writing?
Therapeutic Story Writing was developed by Trisha Waters in 2002. It is an intervention which uses the medium of story writing to support children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.


Trisha Waters (2004) explains that Therapeutic Story Writing works through metaphor that unconsciously emerge within children's own story writing in order to address issues that may be too emotionally overwhelming for children to talk about directly. This approach, which encourages children to write from their core sense of self, can also increase children's motivation to write, and therefore supports the development of both emotional and academic literacy.  


Who is suitable for Therapeutic Story Writing suitable?

• Children attending the Therapeutic Story Writing group need to be able to write independently to some degree (at least a National Curriculum level 2c is recommended).
• Waters suggests that children need to be between the ages of 7 - 12.
• Therapeutic Story Writing is suitable for children with general emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. This can include: children who are having difficulty with a divorce/separation, children who have been abused, bullied, friendship issues, not coping with a bereavement/loss, or suffered trauma of some kind.
• If running a group it is important to be aware of how individual children may affect the group dynamic. The facilitator needs to feel the group will be manageable. Dr. Waters (2004) considers that often children with EBDs will fall into one of the following two categories: 1.) Withdrawn and need encouragement to join in group discussion; 2.) Acting out, attention seeking with difficulty listening to others.  The inclusion of children from both categories created a broader dynamic within the group.

Trisha Waters  suggests it is sometimes useful to include one or two children who do not have overt emotional anxieties and are not on the Special Educational Needs register in order to provide positive role models for other group members. This can also help to normalise the group and avoid any possible stigmatising in the minds of other children.


How long are the sessions?
Ideally each session will be in the same room and occur on the same time and day each week. Consistency itself can represent a therapeutic factor for children whose lives have been disrupted. Each session lasts for fifty minutes.


Case Studies:
Olivia - case study 1:  
Olivia was a 9 year old girl in Year 5. Over the summer holidays she was held hostage in her family home. When she returned to school staff described her as a ‘different girl.’ She was displaying signs of anxiety and becoming withdrawn. Olivia completed a 7-week Therapeutic Story Writing group session.


When Olivia first joined the Therapeutic Story Writing group her stories always involved a menacing figure, often in the form of a fairy tale monster-like creature. In the first couple of sessions Olivia found it difficult to conclude her stories. It was as if problem solving an ‘ending’ was too painful or overwhelming for her. I facilitated the other group members to imagine different endings of Olivia’s story. Half way through the sessions Olivia’s stories started to develop an ending, including a fish that could help her breath under water and talk to her about escape routes.


By the 7th week the menacing figures had completely disappeared from Olivia’s stories. Her last story was a touching tale about enjoying Christmas with her family. Pre and post measures on the Behaviour Profile showed a significant improvement in Olivia’s emotional development. Olivia’s mother and class teacher reported that Olivia was happier and ‘back to her old self’.


On reflection the use of Therapeutic Story Writing enabled Olivia to explore a traumatic experience that she was unable to speak to anyone about. Using the metaphors in her stories she was able to work through some very difficult emotions. The supportive presence of the group (although no one else knew of her hostage experience over the summer) also helped Olivia reconnect with her peers in a positive way.


Ben - case study 2
Ben was a twelve year old boy in Year 8 at a mainstream secondary school. Ben lived with his maternal grandparents after Social Services removed him from his mother’s care. Ben was subject to physical abuse and neglect. Ben’s biological father was in prison. Ben presented with emotional and behavioural difficulties at school and was at risk of permanent exclusion.


I encouraged Ben to engage in Therapeutic Story Writing. I was unsure how he would respond and I was also concerned he was too old for this intervention. Ben surprised me by how much he did engage and enjoy writing his stories. On the first one to one session he developed a character called Storm the dog. Every week Storm went on different adventures such as : ‘Storm and the playground bullies’,‘ Storm on the bus’ and ’The day that Storm forgot his homework.’ Ben would happily start writing the beginnings of  the stories (which often reflected everyday incidents in his own school life) but always asked earnestly, ‘but what should Storm do now?!’ He needed help to jointly discuss how Storm could problem solve a way out of these situations.


Ben explained that his character was called ‘Storm’ because he created mayhem wherever he went but he couldn’t help it. When he drew Storm, he had scars on his body. Ben was unable to tell me where Storm got his scars from but it is reasonable to hypothesise that these could represent the scars from Ben’s own physical abuse in his early years. I never made my hypothesis or interpretations explicit to Ben, it felt safer for him to explore his issues through the metaphor of Storm.


Ben avoided permanent exclusion and started to demonstrate more pro-social skills amongst his peers. Although I was worried that Ben was too old for Therapeutic Story Writing, his emotional development was delayed therefore he quite happily worked within the story metaphor. Therefore I suggest looking at the emotional age of a child, and not just the chronological age when deciding to use Therapeutic Story Writing as an intervention. I typed up the stories and along with his drawings we made up a booklet for school and home. When Ben became distressed at school he liked reading the book to himself or reading it through with his trusted Teaching Assistant.


Interested in training or further reading?

• Please visit http://www.therapeuticstorywriting.com/ for information on how to join a 3 day course in Therapeutic Story Writing. I can highly recommend it.
• Waters,T.(2004) The Use of Therapeutic Storywriting to Support pupils with emotional difficulties. Support for Learning·Volume 23·Number4·
• Waters,T.(2004) Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Schools.London:David Fulton.
• Waters,T.(2004) Writing Stories with Feeling:an evaluation of the impact of Therapeutic Storywriting Groups on pupils’ learning, SERSEN Report, Therapeutic Storywriting.com.