A father helps his son erase a nightmare by drawing the monster and rubbing it out. A therapist has a child trap a monster in a shoebox, then deliberately releases it so the kid can catch and reseal it, turning fear into something the child controls.
Part of his story is— I tell his story again, it's not mine to tell— is he had bad nightmares when he was a kid, but he would wake up and his dad would sit with him and he would draw the monsters. And then after a while, his dad was like, you know, you can erase the monsters. If you draw them, you can erase them. And that was kind of how he started getting control over his fears and his nightmares.
It reminds me of a great story, and I can't remember exactly which one of the two creators of it, David, uh, David Epson or Michael White, uh, there was a classic example of a little kid who was having nightmares. And so the therapist, whichever one it was, and, and And I know that I'm going to get crap from some of my colleagues for not remembering which, but they were both incredible human beings who have done so much wonderful work that he asked the little boy at night to go get a shoe. He gave him like, you know, get a shoebox. But I want you instead of to try to like get rid of it, see if you can capture it. But I want you to bring it with you to the therapy office. And, you know, being as creative as possible with this little kid. And somehow this little kid conjured up the strength and, you know, captured the imaginary scary ghost or, you know, monster under the bed and brought it into the office. And, and, and the therapist asked to hold the box that he brought in, and he was like, can I peek into it to see? And he peeked into the box, and the therapist on purpose tipped his chair backwards, right? Fell out of the chair, let the box open up, and he goes, oh my gosh, I need your help to get it back in the box. And the kid's like, I got it. And he went, and he's like, I got it, and I put it back in the box.
And And there it is. And now you're safe.
That was the last time the kid ever had a monster fear. Because he transformed this whole perspective into, it's not just about me, I can protect other people. I can do this for even for adults. And he became the monster hunter. And his fear, right? And all these fears went away because we're changing the relationship to the belief about the problem, right? And, and 99% of the time, and this is why I love linguistics and language, that, right, the problem is never the problem. It's the beliefs about the problem. And how do we figure that out? What are the words? What are the stories that people use to describe it?
Howard Behar Starbucks Former International President Heartwarming Story #kindness #shorts
