helped a little and some haven’t been very helpful at all. Much as you might not want to, I guess you
have built up a reasonable understanding of just how a person feels when they have difficulty getting
off to sleep at night, or what happens when they wake up and can’t get back to sleep. So I’m won-
dering whether we can talk about what you have done to see whether those things might help this
other boy that I know. You see, the reasons he developed his sleeping problems in the first place may
not be exactly the same as for you but, as I tell you about them, you may agree that there are some
similarities.
His parents separated a while ago. It wasn’t a happy time and hadn’t been for a long while. There
was the usual arguing and fighting that adults often get into at such times. That was when his sleep
problems first started.
He told me how he would lie in bed at night and hear his mom and dad yelling at each other,
wondering what he could do to stop it but feeling as useless as a Gameboy without batteries. When
they did separate it was sort of a relief in some ways, but he’d lie in bed at night thinking about
whether they’d separated because of him and things that he’d done or hadn’t done.
He wanted to stay with his dad. His bedroom was at one end of the house and his dad’s was at
the other. He got pretty scared when his dad turned off the light at night and he was there, in the
dark, all by himself. Lots of scary thoughts raced around in his head like an out-of-control merry-go-
round. Much as he tried to stay in bed, he couldn’t help himself. He had to go down to his dad’s bed-
room and climb in beside his father.
Now and again, his dad wouldn’t have objected, but every night was a different thing. “You are
too big now,” his dad told him. “You need to sleep by yourself.”
Well, he tried, but the scary feelings didn’t stop, so he would wait until his dad was asleep, then
sneak into his room and sleep on the floor beside his bed. There he drifted off to sleep much easier.
I would like to tell this boy a story that may offer him some hope and show him some things that
are useful to do, or not do, so that he can feel comfortable about sleeping in his room by himself.
What do you think would be helpful for him to know? What would be a useful story for us to cre-
ate for this boy on the basis of the things that you know and have learned? What new things might
be helpful for him to explore? And what difference do you think it will make for him when he can
sleep restfully again in his own room?
STORY 74
THINKING THROUGH A PROBLEMTherapeutic Characteristics
Problems Addressed
■ Failure
■ Feelings of helplessness
■ Lack of acceptance
■ Facing a monstrous problem178 Healing Stories, Teaching Stories