Children employ necessary defenses to psychologically negotiate the various stresses of illness,
to help them feel more secure while integrating their experience of cancer and healing poten-
tials. (1998, p. 139)From a review of the literature, they claim the data are “well established and illustrate how children
are highly susceptible and are naturally imaginative” (1998, p. 140). These factors of suggestibility
and natural imagination contribute to the potency of metaphor therapy with kids.
Jacobs, Pelier, and Larkin (1998) explore the question of what we know developmentally about
kids and how we can adapt strategies that will access those developmental competencies for managing
situations such as life-threatening illness. Preschool children, for example, are growing in autonomy and
tend to be highly imaginative. They believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, participate in imagina-
tive play with dolls or rocket ships, and have the ability to drift easily between fantasy and reality. This
richness of fantasy combined with a high level of self-focus has both an upside and a downside. On the
downside, it could be easy for a child’s fantasies of danger, vulnerability, and separation from parents to
be validated by admission to a hospital, the diagnosis of cancer, and traumatic treatment procedures.
On the upside, it is possible for the therapist to join the child’s imaginative world, playfully and
informally, through the creation of healing stories. Jacobs, Pelier, and Larkin (1998) talk of helping
to assist a child with procedures such as chemotherapy by absorbing them in play and imagination –
an intervention remarkably similar to the storytelling offered to nine year old Jacob Grimm for the
surgical removal of a tumor in 1794 (discussed at the end of Chapter 1). A case example they give of
working with one preschool child was for a therapist to sit on the floor with him, blowing bubbles.
This strategy utilizes the characteristics of this developmental age and is incorporated into Story 81,
“Blowing Away Pain: A Kid Story.”
Story 82, “Managing Pain: A Teen Story,” is a hero story based on an adolescent client’s favorite
sports hero. For the sake of the written story in this book I chose a basketball player, but it could in-
clude any game and any athlete. As with all metaphors, it is the therapeutic characteristics of the story
rather than the content that matters most. Here, the story again follows the developmental charac-
teristics described by Jacobs, Pelier, and Larkin (1998). The therapeutic strategies incorporated into
the story tap into adolescent metaphoric thinking, while seeking to build skills of empowerment,
mastery, and pain management.
STORY IDEASWhere Do I Get the Ideas for Healing Stories? 245
EXERCISE 15.4 METAPHORS BUILT ON
THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES
■ Make a note of the goal or goals your client wishes to achieve.
■ What therapeutic strategies or evidenced-based approaches do you know are helpful
to reach that goal?
■ What particular interventions in those areas are likely to help your client reach his or
her therapeutic goal?
■ Structure a story that describes those effective interventions in a way that your listen-
ing client will be able to identify with and absorb the message.