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Image may be NSFW.
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My daughter, Natasha, was 3.5 years when she came home and had major sleep issues for the first year she was home. She had some major (scared out of her mind) fears related to sleep.
She still actually has sleep issues. But now she doesn’t want to sleep because she is afraid she will miss something fun or interesting.
Natasha was home for 6 months before she started talking specifically about her fears. For example she was afraid her caretaker would find her and take her back to the orphanage. Natasha wasn’t afraid of the monster under the bed or in the closet. She was more concern with her old caretaker… her real-life bogyman. And she was scared-out-of-her-mind of the dark.
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One of the most effective things that we did was guided storytelling.
Why do any of us feel the need to tell stories? Psychoanalysts believe that we have an innate desire to express ourselves. We have an inner yearning to communicate what we feel or have experienced with another. This is the need for validation, the need to feel that someone believes we are important enough to listen to. Each of us has a story.
Many neuroscientists argue that we are composed of stories, that stories themselves are the basis of our consciousness. The building blocks of stories are nothing more than the logical sequence of events in our memory. The way in which this logical sequencing affects us emotively becomes the narrative arch for the stories we share.
From: The Need to Tell
I would get Natasha comfortable in bed and tell her a story. I used the classic stories like Hansel and Gretel, The Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs, Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. But I also used stories like the The Stonecutter.
I changed the stories. Gretel would be scared but she saved herself and her brother. Then she told the police about the witch who tried to eat them. And the witch went to jail.
The goal was to show an empowered girl.
Or with The Stonecutter… The Stonecutter would wish to be stronger, richer but it never felt right. And then at the end of the story he wished to be himself and finally felt good about himself.
And I encouraged Natasha to use her imagination and tell me a story. She started telling me stories about “baby Natasha” and how she would turn into the Pink Power Ranger. And the Pink Power Ranger would protect the “baby Natasha”.