ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the use of story in Theatre of Attachment practice for the purpose of securing the children’s attachment to their adoptive, foster and kinship families. In light of the stress imposed by the children’s fear induced behavior, story sharing is promoted for building their relationship with their caregivers. Reflection is made on the historical use of stories as human’s longstanding means of entertainment and problem resolution. These include hero stories and fairy stories, which illustrate the survival of adversity. The familiar lines in fairy stories invite repetition that builds neural connections in the brain. Therapeutic stories are noted for their effectiveness in enhancing self-belief, and life stories for their correcting of the children’s wrong assumptions prolonging self-blame. The process of creating stories is demonstrated to increase children’s self-esteem and facilitate their emotional closeness to caregivers. An outcome of my doctoral research is the “Storying Spiral” paradigm. Built on Fahlberg’s arousal relaxation cycle, and the ‘attachment dance’ (Hughes, 2017; Stern, 1985) the joint creating of stories by parents and children is found to enhance the children’s intuition, narrative competence and sense of self-fulfillment.
