Fairy tale therapy arose 15-20 years ago as one of the directions of practical psychology.
This method of art therapy is widely used when working with children and adults.
Fairy tale therapy originated in St. Petersburg. The founder of this direction is Tatyana Zinkevich-Evstigneeva.
What is the method?
Fairy tale therapy - a method of psychological influence on a person, which contributes to the development of a person, a person’s creative abilities, correction of individual problems, as well as stress relief, due to the accumulation of which psychosomatic disorders appear.
Many people believe that fairy tale therapy is used when working with children, but it is not. It can be called “childish” only because it has an impact on the child’s beginnings of man, on his inner child.
In order for an adult to agree to fairy tale therapy, the psychologist must establish close contact with the client. Basically, this skill at a high level is experienced by experienced psychologists with extensive experience in the field of psychological counseling.
In this case, the patient will not be embarrassed and the result of work in this direction will be positive. Therefore, before the psychologist starts working with fairy tale therapy, he needs learn to make contact.
The main tool of this method is fairy tale or parable. The events of a fairy tale cause emotions in a person, and the characters and their relationships are projected by the patient onto their own lives.
It often seems to a person that this situation is very similar to that which occurs in him.
Thanks to the tale, the patient can solve his problems. Fairy tale therapy is used when individual and group work.
The advantage of fairy-tale therapy in the second type of work is that a person from other members of the group gets new ways to solve a problem that had not previously been revealed to him.
In order for the client to respond positively to this way of working with his problem, first her therapist includes inadvertently.
This is due to the fact that many adults categorically reject this type of work, considering tales to be meaningless.
You can work with a fairy tale in several ways:
- Analysis and discussion of a fabulous situation.
- Tell a fairy tale as one person, and several.
- To tell a fairy tale, and then come up with a sequel to it, and the last narrator must complete the story.
- Group making up a fairy tale.
- The story of a fairy tale from the first persons (heroes) with their preliminary distribution among the group members.
- Rewriting fairy tales
- Setting a fairy tale using dolls or as a play.
- Drawing tales, i.e. during the reading the patient is asked to portray what he represents.
Fairy Tale allows form a fresh look at the situation and display the internal conflict of the patient.
Fairy tale therapy as a technique includes two stages: awareness of the situation in which the client is located and therapy, i.e. customer problem solving.
What is it used for?
Fairy tale therapy is used to correct:
- Emotional-volitional sphere: the struggle with fears, anxiety, aggression, low self-esteem.
- Intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts.
- Relationship between spouses, children and parents.
- Psychosomatic diseases (ischemic heart disease, pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract).
- Relationships in groups.
- Mental illness (depression, panic attacks, anxiety-phobic disorders).
In addition, thanks to fairy tale therapy, you can prepare a person for stressful situations. After working through possible problems and their solutions, it will be easier for a person to transfer the problem.
If a person cannot determine the way out of the problem as a result of analyzing the tale, then in any case build a more correct behavior strategy to prevent the recurrence of the same situation in the future.
Fairy Tale allows develop creativity person
Due to this, he becomes more liberated with the people around him.
Very often fairy-tale therapy is carried out with older people, especially those who find themselves in a boarding house.
On this occasion, many studies have been conducted and positive effect was confirmed: patients become more resilient and gain strength for further existence.
The overall goal of fairy tale therapy is behavior correction and deliverance from fears that are embedded in the unconscious.
When working with adults, fairy tale therapy is used to determine the nature of the person and the disclosure of his essence. This can be done by reading and discussing an existing fairy tale. Those. in this case, we can talk about the diagnostic function of fairy-tale therapy.
However, fairy-tale therapy allows you to return the person’s faith in the positive outcome of the problem. If the patient resists when working with a psychologist and does not open until the end, then a fairy tale is used so that this energy is directed at the thought of the person.
Goals
In fairy therapy, several types of fairy tales are used that are suitable for adults and differ from each other in their the purpose of the impact on the client:
- Psychocorrectionalwhose goal is the correction of a certain psychological problem, i.e. finding a way out of a problem situation.
- Psychotherapeuticaffecting the relationship of a person with the environment and himself, as well as affecting the human psyche and containing wisdom (parables, tales).
- Meditative tale, which contributes to the removal of human stress after suffering stressful situations. It can be used after a hard day at work.
The important point is that the narrator must have a certain timbre of voice in order for the person to be fully immersed in the tale.
Principles
Practicing psychologists stand out several principles of fairy tale therapy.:
- Reporting information about life values.
- The principle of vitality. It lies in the fact that the patient, turning to a psychologist, suffers from a lack of vitality, and that is why he cannot change his life on his own. With the help of a fairy tale, a client can restore his strength, i.e. accumulate internal resources.
- Versatility, characterized by the fact that the psychologist views the tale from different sides. Thanks to this principle, the patient begins to look at some problematic situation from different points of view.
- The relationship between mental and social reality.
Examples of fairy tales for adults and elderly people
Psychologists for fairy tale therapy suggest using folk tales that allow you to transfer life experience to the client.
Examples of psychological tales For both adults and elderly people can serve:
- "Chicken ryaba";
- "Gingerbread Man";
- "By magic";
- "The Tale of Rejuvenating Apples and Living Water."
In addition, you can use and author's fairy tales, such as "Little Mermaid" (G.-H. Andersen), "Christmas of animals" (M.-L. Ver.).
In some textbooks for practical psychologists on fairy tale therapy, other examples are given depending on the problem and the age of the person.
In the manual T.D. Zinkevich-Evstigneeva "Workshop on fairy tale therapy" in the application you can see a fairy tale for older people who have problems with adults, which is called the "Old Queen".
You can find a large number of psychological tales on the Internet. They can also be used to work with patients.
Writing techniques
How to write your story? In addition to ready-made fairy tales, you can create your own. Anyone can compose it independently, be it a psychologist or a client, or with a psychologist.
Currently there is 4 techniques of writing fairy tales, each of which is distinguished by its simplicity and efficiency.
Since the fairy tale is created depending on the problem situation, the problem should first be formulated.
After that, you need to perform the next step - study the problemi.e. it is necessary to remember when and how the situation arose, as well as what methods were used to solve the problem.
The third stage in the work on his fairy tale is turning a problem into a problem.
This is that it is necessary to decide what the client wants to achieve from this situation.
Then it is necessary to describe all participants in this problem situation and describe the behavior and reaction of each of them, i.e. who behaves like.
As a result, a person has a contradiction between what is and what is required to receive.
Then the client is given the task to create a story in which the hero faces the same problem, then he tries to solve it, but it does not come out, but then he still finds the right way out of it. Heroes of fairy tales, you can think of their names.
The following technique is very suitable for creating a fairy tale by yourself. It lies in the fact that you need to write a little fairy tale, which consists of 10 words. They must be linked together in meaning. They can be taken from different areas of life and can be inclined.
In addition, psychologists for writing a fairy tale recommend thinking about what a person is worried about at the moment and what he wants to talk about at the moment.
This can be a problem, ranging from conflicts in the family, and ending with financial difficulties. After that, you can start writing a story. As it is created at the client may appear new, fresh solutions this or that problem.
The third technique is that it is necessary present any subject. He must live in this moment in the natural environment.
Then you should imagine what can disrupt the usual way of life of this thing.
There may be many such options. In any case, a fairy tale will be created on one of them, which will cause a solution to a particular problem.
For writing a fairy tale you can also use small piece of paper. Next, take a pen and start drawing doodles. At some point you will want to stop.
After that, you need to carefully look into your drawing and write down all associationsthat come to mind. Then immediately you need to start writing a story about them. All the above techniques should be used to determine the most suitable for further work.
Fairy tale therapy allows to solve a large number of problems that have arisen in a person, as well as to prevent the occurrence of errors in the event of conflicts.
This art therapy method is currently considered one of the discussion and about this conducted a lot of research.
Fairy tale therapy. Fairy tales for adults:
