Feelings Groups
It’s hard to learn when you’re hurting. Feelings Groups provide safe spaces for children to talk about their emotions.
““Feelings groups is, well, there’s no way to explain, but it’s like a big family that’s aways there for you. They helped me get through it all. It helps with our feelings and mental wellbeing. It is a safe place.” ”
So many children find it hard to learn when they are hurting inside.
Feelings Groups use Beyond Words pictures. The books tell a story. How children interpret the images depends upon their own life experience. They provide peer-group support to give children and young people a safe place to talk about their feelings, helping emotional healing to take place.
The Feelings Groups use Beyond Words pictures and books, during the sessions. The books tell a story. How children interpret the images depends upon their own life experience. The Feelings Groups provide peer-group support to give children and young people a safe place to talk about their feelings, helping emotional healing to take place. As pictures are used and not words, the children talk about the characters and wonder about how they might be feeling. These groups have a structured approach to well-being, guided by the experience of the child.
Our picture books have no words.
No words means that children use their own words, creativity and lived experience to explain what they think is happening. The group takes away the stigma of isolation, allowing each child or young person to identify with each others' trauma, feelings, experience and emotional pain.
Over time, the children start to speak about their own lives and not the characters. They begin to relate the stories to themselves. The children develop the emotional vocabulary to express how they feel. These groups are a safe place where children who have suffered trauma learn they are not alone. They are able to talk about their fears, worries and confusions without judgement, in an empathetic, encouraging environment.
Beyond Words invited Marie to work as a schools’ mentor, to recruit, train, support other mentors, as well as to train other schools to set up Feelings Groups. Some of the mentors have introduced similar groups into special schools, thus building on the Open Book Project, which had also included group work.
We want to bring our stories to both mainstream and special schools across the country, to help alleviate the crisis in children's mental health. We can recommend trainers and suggest resources to get you started. We can introduce primary schools to the Survivor Training- Beyond Just Words CIC, if you would like to learn how to start your own Marie Grant’s Feelings Group™. Please contact Survivor Training to discuss costs and training.
For any other queries about the books and other resources and other ways to use the books in schools, please get in touch using the form below.
