The Humphylumph

This was five year old David’s third session. He was out of control, with tantrums, having been abused two years previously: his parents were distraught because they couldn’t protect him.  David talked incessantly, cracked good jokes and pulled funny faces. He sat between his parents smiling like an angel, whilst they described his outbursts, voices edged with despair.

What is he like when he has an outburst? I asked.

They said he became ‘humfy’

I’m like a humfylumph!’ David added, excitedly

I asked what a humfylumph looked like and he stretched his little arms out very wide.

'He takes up a lot of space’ I observed.

David nodded frowning.

 'Too much space?'  I inquired.

His angry outbursts spoiled bedtimes. He longed for his story with his mum or dad but often missed it because Humfylumph arrived. I asked him to describe what happened.

He jumped up shouting and ran round the room acting out the humfylumph, lurching across the floor like the hunchback of Notre Dame with terrible horns and a ferocious grimace. His narrative became very complex. David worked hard, breathlessly changing characters, a soldier fighting the angry monster to becoming the actual monster. Finally he curled up on the carpet making baby snuffles and all the time whispering the words of the story which he asked me to record:

The Humfylumph Monster, a story with words and actions, by David

 The humfy would be a big monster. It would stamp and have big claws.
 Humfsmonster says
 
 'you’re not my friend, to its wife.’ He gets a bite on the
 head, saying this so loud he's getting red in the face.
 
 He needs a surprise party when he comes back from his adventure.
 He's looking for some hunters that he can pick up and eat.
 
 The hunters scream 'there's a Humfy monster'.
 They get picked up by Humfy Monster and he eats the hunters. He only
 eats the bad guys
 

A baby person
 a baby person dressed up. The real babies are in the ground so small
 you can't see them
 They all know Humfy Monster eats people so they don't go off in the
 woods
 Bad guy is dressed as a baby, robot dressed in clothes holds baby
 Know what they are going to eat by the smell
 Should be good in the story
 Might know that they're not bad guys

David asked his Mum to read his story out whilst he sat on his Dad's knee, sucking his thumb. When she had finished, he handed it to me before leaving at the end of the session..

David and his parents were attending the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service  in Sheffield, where I work as a Family Therapist; part of a multi-disciplinary team with a common aim to help mend the lives of children.    My responsibility was to help David mould and breathe life into a new preferred story about himself.

David had drawn the story of his abuse with his body. He allowed his narrative to inhabit his physical being just as his unresolved anger had inhabited his everyday world.   His fear had metamorphosed into anger; the drama mirrored the frightening abuse and David conquered it, witnessed by adults.    Witnessing David’s journey through the difficulties seemed an essential part of his healing. David understood his parents respected and believed his portrayal of the emotional trauma which had been his experience

He drew on ever-changing thoughts, images and metaphors to feed his imagination. The stories were laid out as puzzles of apparently disconnected ideas. He used words as reflections of his internal landscape which became part of his external landscape during our sessions. I wrote alongside him, capturing moments to preserve this child’s magic. If David could recognise his own creative qualities, he could believe in his own capacity to heal himself. He communicated metaphorically. Eventually the story would unfold.

                         

‘By putting into words I can make e it whole;

This wholeness means it has lost the power to hurt me.’

Virginia Woolf.

David was able to put the horrors and fears surrounding his traumatic experience into drama, and actions giving me the role of ghost writer to record his story.

With a child’s ability to leap into the surreal world of magic and monsters he was able to create the humfylumph. This monstrous creature was no longer a secret in the deep recesses of David’s mind. As soon as the monster had been externalised, David would no longer dig a deep hole within himself. He was able to find form for the monster and place it outside, amongst those he trusted. It would become a diluted part of everyone’s experience and eventually dissolve into the ether.

To summarise, this is what happened

·       We turned the abuse  into a humfylumph monster

·       We created  space for David to act out the complex story

·       We seized the moment  David said ‘ I’m like a humfylumph monster’ as the cue to create something outside David, himself, which could be conquered

·       When David saw his story on paper he understood he was no longer fighting alone, the adults could take over.

·       David delivered his frightening narrative with humour and dramatic intensity.

·       We all collaborated to invent a character which David could use to communicate his innermost fears.

·       When David started acting out his narrative there was no further need for me to ask questions, I simply needed to record his performance.

·       David’s  parents gave us the words and the cues to build this drama

·       I wrote because David liked words and  used them eloquently

·       He told us the story when he was ready, in session three

·       I made no effort to change or explain what he acted/wrote. It belonged to him.

Finally David drew a picture of himself very wobbly on stilts.

‘It’s hard to be big and balance’; 'you need help from your Mum and Dad'.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
This piece was published in "Writing Works; A resource handbook for therapeutic writing ,workshops and activities" by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field, Kate Thompson; Jessica Kingsley publishers 2006