Clover House Therapy - The Complementary Therapy Centre for Children

329M Julian, aged 14

Separation, Anxiety, Confidence, Sleep In & Out

The Problem

Mum found Clover House on the internet and reported that Julian had trouble sleeping away from home and having friends to stay. He became very anxious at the thought of being away from home and from Mum and would suffer panic attacks, stomach aches and vomiting and he had never had friends over to stay. He was very worried about a compulsory school trip which he had to go on shortly, which involved 4 nights away.

The Treatment – 3 sessions

Imagery

During Julian’s first session, the imagery therapist discussed with him previous instances when he had stayed away from home overnight. Julian told the imagery therapist that when he was in year 5 at school, he went on a club camp trip while he was very new at the school and did not enjoy it at all. He then explained that when he started senior school he went on a seven day trip, of which five of the days went badly. The image therapist built a framework for thinking about what happened on the club camp trip and did a ‘rewind’ of the event. At the second session, the image therapist installed a technique to substitute a confident way of thinking about sleeping away. Julian was quite impressed by this and told his Mum that it really works. During the final session, the image therapist did some more work with Julian on confidence. Julian told the image therapist that he is now really looking forward to sleeping away from home on his school trip and that he has arranged for his friends to sleep over.

Nutrition

The nutritional therapist advised Julian that eating sweet foods and cereals may affect his mood and may increase any anxiety that he already feels. The nutritional therapist described the blood sugar balance diet to Julian and his Mum and explained that his meals and snacks can be altered to provide him with more stable blood sugar and more energy throughout the day. By the second session, Julian had put into practice most of the suggestions that the nutritional therapist had made and Julian said that he wasn’t feeling too bad about his upcoming school trip. At the third session Mum and Julian scored themselves at 9 out of 10 for nutrition and said that they were pleased with the results.

Massage

At the first session Julian seemed a bit worried about the massage, the massage therapist did some reflexology with him and Mum and gave them some massage oil and a booklet and asked them to try and do some massage at home. At the second session Mum said that they had done some foot massages at home. Julian chose to have a head massage done and the therapist discussed breathing into the abdomen with him and explained that it can be helpful when he is stressed or fearful. At the third session Julian had a face and scalp massage He relaxed a lot and spoke about the sort of activities that he will be doing on his school trip and said that he feels much better now compared to when he started attending Clover House.

Results

Mum e-mailed us to say in the recent half term Julian “had a friend stay over for the night - which is a first - he and his mate had a great time, chatting and laughing until the earlier hours of the morning - everything that a sleep over is about, I could hardly knock on their door and tell them to go to sleep having waited so long for this to happen, so I ended up falling asleep to the sound of a pillow fight!!”

5 months later mum reported scores, and wrote “all of this is a great success and we are also pleased we found you.”