Therapeutic Stories Research Articles

The Effect of the Therapy Program with Stories on the Emotional Management Skills of Children with Speech and Language Disorders

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the Therapy with Stories Program on the emotional management skills of children with speech and language disorders. The study, in which a single group Pre-test-Post-test experimental design without control group was used, was conducted with 14 children aged 5-8 years with speech and language disorders. There are 9 stories (3 anger, 3 sadness, 3 anxiety) prepared by the researcher in the Therapy with Stories Program. The prepared stories were read to the children three times and the program was completed in 14 weeks. In the program, the strategies of asking questions and drawing pictures were used along with using figures while reading therapeutic stories. Before and after the application, Children's Emotional Management Skills Anger, Sadness and Worry Scales and semi-structured interview forms were applied to mothers. The obtained data were analysed with the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. As a result of the research, the therapy program with stories increased the ability of children with speech and language disorders to cope with anger, sadness and anxiety; It has been found to be effective in suppressing and reducing the use of unregulated expression. According to the mother's observations, it was determined that the therapy program with stories decreased the unregulated expression of anger, sadness and anxiety in children with speech and language disorders, and increased their coping skills. In addition, while 10 children provided emotional regulation with parental support before the program, it was seen that 4 children provided emotional regulation with parental support after the program. According to these results, it can be said that the therapy program with stories is effective in helping children with speech and language disorders gain the ability to manage their emotions and control their emotions without parental support.

Book review: Savanna Therapeutic Stories 5 Volumes: Silo’s Sadness

Book review: Savanna Therapeutic Stories 5 Volumes: Silo’s Sadness

An action research on the use of therapeutic stories as a new method of piano education

This research is an action research on the applicability of therapeutic storytelling in piano instruction. There are many studies showing that art instruction that enables the discovery and development of artistic talent, has positive effects on the psychological states of individuals. No research was found where therapeutic storytelling was used as an instructional method in piano education. In this study, a preliminary study, in which the researcher was the practitioner, was conducted on the design and implementation process of an instructional method based on therapeutic storytelling for piano students. This study was designed in accordance with action research design in qualitative research methods. Due to the ongoing pandemic process, the participants of the study conducted with the hybrid education model are 3 piano students whose ages are ranging between 10-12. Semi-structured interview form, observation form and documents were used as data collection tools. In the application of therapeutic stories, the preparation of the instructional design, the difficulties experienced, the measures taken for effectiveness were determined through interviews and observations. The research lasted for 3 weeks. One private lesson of one and a half hours was held with one student each week. In each lesson, 1 therapeutic story was read to the students and the student was asked to create a music composition about the story. In the course setup, predetermined questions were asked to the student while the story was being read, after the story was finished, and during the student’s composing process. It was aimed to measure the reactions of the students to the stories through the questions, to examine how these reactions were reflected in the composition process and to determine the effect of the designed instructional method on the motivation of the students. As a result of the research in teaching piano students based on therapeutic storytelling; It was determined that giving music composition time periods suitable for students’ individual differences, instructional differentiation in accordance with the level of student readiness, and the choice of story subject for student interest increase the effectiveness of instructional design.

Keening for Carl: Mentor and Poetry Man

This evocative autoethnography reflects the author’s grief following the death of a professor on her doctoral committee. She weaves poetic inquiry “to capture the contextual and psychological worlds of both poet and subject.” Autoethnography can “capture, probe, and render understandable the problematic experience,” and convey therapeutic stories as we write to make sense of ourselves and purge our burdens. Overall, autoethnography grounds the author with a deeper understanding about the personal and cultural influences of grief.

Exploring How Chinese Primary School Psychological Counsellors Understand and Use Therapeutic Stories

Psychological counsellors in western countries have used stories and storytelling for therapeutic purposes for decades. However, the development of the profession of school counselling in China is at an early stage and little research has been done on using therapeutic stories in Chinese primary school settings. This exploratory study presents qualitative data on using therapeutic stories collected from interviews with Chinese psychological counsellors who work with primary school students. Findings from a grounded theory analysis revealed that therapeutic stories were used by the participants in various therapeutic approaches. A spectrum of therapist directiveness was developed to integrate different ways of using therapeutic stories.

Stymulacja rozwoju językowego i emocjonalnego dziecka… poprzez zastosowanie logopedycznej bajki terapeutycznej

In contemporary speech therapy there is a need for new, effective methods and tools for preventive and therapeutic action, especially in the case of children. A good practice is the use of fairy-tale therapy in logopaedics, to be precise the use of speech therapeutic stories. Such a piece of writing deals with a specific logopaedic problem and contains a strategy to overcome it (instructions, a series of exercises interwoven with the plot). A speech therapeutic story facilitates the acquisition and the consolidation of the accurate realisation of the linguistic patter, as well as of a proper emotional attitude towards the articulation problem. The text helps to eliminate speech impediments and language communication disorders, simultaneously reducing the child’s anxiety. The tool can be used by speech therapists in both prevention and therapy. Moreover, due to its composition, it is also possible to use the story at home by the parents in order to strengthen the positive results.

Can I Author Myself? The Limits of Transformation.

Narrative medicine is predicated on the importance of narrative to human life. Although that in itself is not controversial, an extension of this principle that has sprung up in narrative psychiatry--namely, that by coming to imagine a different life story one can become a different person--ought to be. One reason one cannot remake one's life in the image of a story is that life is not to be mistaken for a story in the first place. The seminal study of psychotherapy, Persuasion and Healing, although recommending that the demoralized absorb more uplifting stories about themselves, appears to recognize some limit to the possibility of modeling life on story. The same study likens therapeutic stories to placebos, but as it happens, placebos themselves have their limits, alleviating symptoms but not curing or "healing." In order for someone to become a different person through the agency of the placebo effect, it would have to be more robust than it is. The argument that life follows narrative is an ironic one for a discipline devoted to narrative to make, given the salience in the tradition of the novel, from Don Quixote forward, of works that explore the fallacies of that presumption. In keeping with its attention to narrative, this article challenges the use of a short story by Chitra Divakaruni as an illustration of the principles of narrative psychiatry.

The Transformative Power of Therapeutic Stories. The Tactical Applications of Metaphor

According to an old Scottish proverb, a story “is told eye to eye, mind to mind, and heart to heart.” It is this intimacy that distinguishes live storytelling from other forms of communication and entertainment. Storytelling creates a bridge between teller and listener across which authentic communication can take place. And it is within this intimacy that the 'healing' or 'therapeutic' aspects of story lies. As author and storyteller Diane Rooks explains in her article: “Therapeutic stories can change the way we see our lives and the world. Using metaphor and imagery, stories offer healing and growth to everyone -- those who tell them and those who listen. They connect us to each other and help us find meaning as we imagine new possibilities and find hope.” Since time immemorial, stories have helped us discover the meaning in our experiences, offered possible explanations for what we struggle to understand. Stories invite our imaginations and hearts to stretch over the void to reach out to one another and to realize what it is to be human.

Evaluating Animal-Assisted Therapy in Group Treatment for Child Sexual Abuse

This study evaluates and compares the effectiveness of three group interventions on trauma symptoms for children who have been sexually abused. All of the groups followed the same treatment protocol, with two of them incorporating variations of animal-assisted therapy. A total of 153 children ages 7 to 17 who were in group therapy at a Child Advocacy Center participated in the study. Results indicate that children in the groups that included therapy dogs showed significant decreases in trauma symptoms including anxiety, depression, anger, post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociation, and sexual concerns. In addition, results show that children who participated in the group with therapeutic stories showed significantly more change than the other groups. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Therapeutic story writing in schools

A therapeutic story is one that heals (Burns, 2005). We use stories to make sense of the world, communicate and influence others. Bettelheim (1975) described how fairy story themes reflect children’s experiences, helping them find meaning and purpose, exciting their curiosity and yet satisfying their sense of enjoyment. Therapeutic stories, told in safety, address an issue and give an element of hope or resolution.

Plausible, Convincing and Appealing. Characteristics and Development of Therapeutic Stories in a Shared Reality Approach

In this article we present a Shared Reality Approach to the understanding and implementation of narrative therapy, based on the idea that reality as experienced is the product of reciprocal confirmations which are exchanged through social narratives. This does not rule out that underneath rigid stories, often concealing power differences, it is possible to identify existing alternatives of other preferable stories, equally shareable and confirmable. In the light of social constructionism theory as classically described by sociologists Berger and Luckmann (1969), narrative therapy is seen as a process of co-construction in which the therapist has the larger share of responsibilities. This approach implies a different, more involved role for the therapist than that which is commonly recommended in narrative therapy: the therapists' duty is that of facilitating the emergence of preferred stories and overcoming the resistance of everyday consolidated routines, even by means of persuasive interventions implyin...

Exploration of therapeutic targets for sexual dysfunctions: lessons learned from the failed stories

Introduction: The ratio between research and successful targets in a disease class gives a good indication about the extent of the exploration of additional targets for diseases in that class. This ratio is still very low for the field of sexual medicine. ‘Failures’ in drug development can be highly instructive, but are not often addressed.Areas covered: We performed a review of the literature based on published data on four failure stories including targeting adrenergic receptors for erectile dysfunction (ED), targeting dopamine receptors by apomorphine for ED, serotonergic transporters as a target for premature ejaculation and PDE5 as a target for female sexual dysfunctions. The search included: i) a MEDLINE search from 1966 through November 2010 limited to English language medical literature, ii) relevant abstracts from 2009 and 2010 and iii) a pipeline search for therapeutics in development. The aim is to inform readers about the lessons learned from four selected failed therapeutic stories during therapeutic target exploration for sexual dysfunctions.Expert opinion: By learning from failures, a drug may not only be kept alive, but also better therapeutic strategies and design of new drugs may be developed.

The Use of Therapeutic Stories in Counseling Child and Adolescent Sexual Abuse Survivors

Counselors will regularly counsel children and adolescents with histories of sexual abuse and be challenged with providing supportive and empowering interventions that serve to move the client from victim to survivor status. Therapeutic stories are a creative counseling technique that can be used when counseling child and adolescent sexual abuse survivors. Theoretical support and guidelines for using therapeutic stories when counseling sexual abuse survivors are presented. In this article, case examples, sample therapeutic stories, and applications of therapeutic stories are provided.

Therapeutic Storytelling Revisited

This article (a) relates the many beneficial features that employing stories in psychotherapy can have, (b) offers guidelines for presenting, clarifying, and applying them to patients' unique situations, and (c) presents a sample of therapeutic stories that may be used with a variety of patients. The work is intended to build upon, and is heavily indebted to, the work of many previous authors in the tradition of therapeutic storytelling.

Helping children explore their emotional and social worlds through therapeutic stories

Story telling has universal appeal as the oldest medium through which to pass on knowledge in a way that engages the interest of others. A type of story telling based on therapeutic principles is especially accessible to children as it uses the natural language of metaphor and dreams. Therapeutic stories are a powerful intervention in the lives of children who have experienced abuse, neglect, loss, bereavement or rejection. Using casework examples, this paper demonstrates how an educational psychologist can effectively use therapeutic stories to enable children either individually or in groups to have their feelings of hurt acknowledged through carefully constructed and co-constructed stories. This technique provides an evidence-based resource for educational psychologists to use, enabling the damaged identities of children to begin to be repaired.

The application of therapeutic storytelling techniques with preadolescent children: A clinical description with illustrative case study

For the past 10 years, the first author has been using therapeutic stories with a wide variety of children in an outpatient, private practice setting. Clinical findings have suggested that this Therapeutic Storytelling Technique (TST) may be a useful addition to the armamentarium of the cognitive-behavioral child therapist. The present article provides a detailed description of the theory, rationale, and procedural components of TST. Finally, the TST approach is further illustrated by means of a formal case study and sample story vignettes. It is hoped that the current work will lead to well-controlled, larger-scale research efforts to further delineate the usefulness of this promising technique.

How Can You Tell when a Goldfish Cries? Finding the Words in Therapeutic Stories with Children

Stories provide one way to say the unspeakable. Drawing on systemic, constructionist and narrative ideas, this paper offers a commentary upon the development of a therapeutic story for a seven year old child and her mother.

Exploring the Therapeutic Fairy Tale Motifs of Silence, Betrayal, and the Search for a Voice in the Film “The Piano”

Fairy tales can be used as therapeutic stories to deal with psychological issues. This essay shows how the film “The Piano” reflects themes addressed in the fairy tales “The Little Mermaid,” “Bluebeard,” and “The Handless Maiden.” It demonstrates how the film can be used with clients to address the archetypal motifs of silence, betrayal, and the search for a voice as aspects of personal growth and transformation. Using a Jungian approach, the symbolism of the film is discussed and its implications for therapeutic use with clients are explored.

Therapeutic Stories with an Ethnic Flavor

Therapeutic Stories with an Ethnic Flavor

Medical family therapy with somaticizing patients: the co-creation of therapeutic stories.

Medical family therapy with somaticizing patients: the co-creation of therapeutic stories.