Fear, anxiety & co.

In the work process with feelings, children sometimes do not want to observe unpleasant emotions or feelings. Especially painful or fearful emotions are difficult to describe for children and in some cases expressing fear verbally seems even impossible for them. The exercise “Monster world” provides a relaxed and humorous framework for approaching negative feelings without having to talk about them. Instead of speaking, children will simply translate unpleasant feelings into monsters and draw them. After the initial apprehension of seeing their fears so real and closely on a piece of paper, children usually engage enthusiastically in the game and invent their own monster zoo. Through this exercise, fears that are usually immaterial and thus perceived as immeasurable, suddenly become tangible, malleable and thus changeable. No matter how terrible a monster looks, from the moment a fear (or another unpleasant feeling) becomes visual, it loses its invisible mightiness and acquires an attackable surface. In further steps, children can imagine the monsters’ names, how best to fight them or in which places the monsters could live peacefully etc. On the one hand this game provides information about the nature of unpleasant feelings¹, and on the other hand it inspires children to deal with them on an imaginary level in the future (e.g. put the monsters back to their boundaries, fight with them or lead them to the right monster place). The imaginary work can give children skills to change their emotions and feelings. Additionally, the mental images influence the body level and can (depending on the image) harmonize physiological processes ². Therefore, Children are able to experience themselves as active agents of their life.