Story Sharing

Challenge

As a member of Student health & safety executives it was required from  our team to figure out the right way to communicate with traumatized  students, we were always encouraged to keep a learning mind set and  generate ideas considering where we are and where we heading to ,  the  idea of support group or group therapy to begin with was rejected to  avoid the feeling of shame among peers. Specially for teenaged  students, knowing how sensitive this age could be, we needed a prier fix  to help the students break the silence and then the next step could be  group therapy.

Tool Selection

We started running research and handing questionnaires to make sure  that these teenagers can be opened to the idea of talking to a single  person and then to a group, noticing patterns helped us mind mapping  and brain – storm fruitfully . We human as social creatures have the  need to belong, sometimes this can motivate people to relate and  empathize , the only thing that can make it work is similarities between  us and those whom which we choose to connect and bond with . so  Sharing a Story was likely to be the key to communicate.

Application

The social workers knew how to communicate through telling a story ,  the only addition was to tell a story that similar to the student case and  to add gradually the details that can help open a door for some light for  the student to be able to have hope again and heal , and to know that  they are not alone in what they are facing and that pain can be a reason  for us to start over,  be successful, creative and see new horizons

Insight

Starting with small steps we requested help from the IT team to create a  platform for our students to enable sharing pseudonyms or with user  names of their choice .  the idea was clearly explained to school  therapists who've  welcomed it and all agreed to start right away,  knowing that they will need to provide feedback about the progress.

Learning Launch

The story sharing was a big leap that helped our students to open up and  share their thoughts and their fears , it helped shortened the distance  for them to reach and communicate, the feedback came as expected  very successful, our students were able to get better and perform better  at school . the platform was then opened to public as well for all school  students to participate . and for therapy solo sessions were followed by  group sessions and it is still very effective .

