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Role play . Role reversal for an adolescent and an adult .
ROLE PLAY EXERCISE
Aim . To practise role reversal with an adolescent . Duration . 15-20 minutes . Instructions :
• Ask one participant to play an adolescent and another to play the adult .
• Take two chairs . One chair represents youth today ( the “ youth chair ”); the other represents youth in the future ( the “ adult chair ”).
• Invite the adolescent to sit in the “ adult chair ”. Ask : “ Do you , as the adult , have good advice for yourself as a young person ?”
• Now ask the adolescent to sit in the “ youth chair ”; repeat the advice from the “ adult chair ” so that the adolescent can hear it .
• Discuss together what the adolescent discovered or felt during the exercise .
4.4.7 Help children to gain meaning and a sense of coherence
Children need information that is appropriate for their age about what has happened to them and what will happen in the future . They also need explanations that will enable them to give meaning to their experiences . This is particularly true for children who have been sexually abused . When children have overwhelming experiences , it challenges the memory system and it becomes difficult to integrate information in a normal way . Traumatic memories can “ pop up ” when a child sees , hears or touches things . A person ’ s face can suddenly morph into the face of the child ’ s abuser . Even young children can have strong visual and somatic memories , which they cannot articulate or understand . It is important to monitor carefully the child ’ s capacity to gradually and spontaneously process its trauma .
For some children it is very important to tell and recognise their story . This is so , in particular :
1 . When the child ’ s experiences feel unreal to the child , as if they did not happen ( derealisation ); as in a film . Or when it seems to the child that the events did happen but to someone else ( depersonalisation ).
2 . When the child ’ s experiences do not form a coherent narrative but are retained in fragmented pictures and sensations . To store the memory in the child ’ s mind as something that happened then and not now , the child needs to create a narrative that has a beginning , middle and end .
HELP AND ACTION
The abuse that traumatised the child left it in a helpless position . Helplessness may have become a part of the child ’ s belief system . “ There is nothing I can do or change .” Helping children who have been sexually abused is therefore also about strengthening their feelings of agency , enabling them to believe that they are the subject of their lives , in charge of what they become and do next .
It is important to help the child express emotions in a range of ways , through play , conversation , sport , music , dance and other creative activities .