Speaker: Helen Willis
Who are you and why did you train in Magical Change?
Helen Willis: Hi, I'm Helen and I'm a therapist working with children and also with adults. I specialise in anxiety. I first met Trudy, who was the founder of Magical Change, about 7 or 8 years ago. We were doing a training course with NLP for Kids, and during the training she told us about this technique that she developed. to help children, mainly with anxiety, but with other issues as well, and told us that she'd had a lot of success with it and it just sounded quite intriguing. So when she approached me a few years later to train in Magical Change, I was very keen to get involved and find out more and to start using it.
What can you say about the quality of the training that you had in the Magical Change method ?
Helen Willis: I really enjoyed the training for Magical Change. I found that it was very comprehensive. Trudy went through step by step all the different parts of the process, and it was easy to ask questions and to get support when you needed it. There were also handouts and little crib sheets that you could use to help you when you were first using the technique so that you didn't forget anything. I think the best thing about it was just Trudy's passion for helping children and also the years of experience and knowledge that she's got, that she's happy to share with everyone. It was nice to learn from other people on the course as well, because there were people from all walks of life and just to hear about their experience and their. advice on different things. The support was great, so afterwards, if you have any questions, then Trudy or other people in the group are happy to help you. So overall, I thought it was a really good training course.
What experience have you had of seeing Magical Change in action with a child or young person?
Helen Willis: I've been using Magical Change for quite a few years now, so I've worked with lots of children of lots of different ages. Just as one example, I worked with a girl. She was 9, 10 years old, and she had been a confident little girl and then things happened at school. There was a bit of bullying and friendship issues, and she just really lost the confidence and was reluctant to go to social events and just didn't even want to go to school. So we worked, we used Magical Change and it just made such a huge difference to her confidence. Within a few weeks, she was more or less back to her old self and her mum said to me afterwards - she said, you know, thank you for giving me my little girl back. So that was one success story just as an example.
What changes did you see in any children or young people that you have worked with?
Helen Willis: So some of the changes that I've seen in children that I've worked with for most of them - I think all of them, there's been increased confidence. Just the fact that they're using this method, they're owning their own problem and they're solving it themselves. And I think that just gives them a massive confidence boost and Improves their resilience and their ability to deal with things in the future. So it's really setting them up for life with the tools that they need to solve any problems that come along. Changes that I've seen? So improvements in sleep, improvements in the ability to control emotions, ability to discuss emotions, reduction in things like meltdowns; some children who haven't wanted to go to school, and we've managed to address that or things where sometimes children don't want to do something new. So that relates quite a lot to confidence. And they're now keen to try lots of new things. So a whole range of changes that I've seen, but mainly increased confidence.
Why is Magical Change different from other services for supporting the mental health of young people?
Helen Willis: Magical change is different because it provides a very simple and straightforward framework. And it's very visual. So for the child, it's a great way for them to be able to see exactly where they're heading, how far they've come. Each week they can assess how well they've done and how many stickers they're going to have, and it keeps them engaged throughout the whole process. So it's not just one week having a session and then the next week another session. They've got something in between, that can motivate them to continue and to really feel like they're making progress. I think the fact that it's visual and it's fun is really important as well. And also in the first session, the talk, a lot of things were addressed that are really useful for the child. And what the therapist can then do is address those things again and sort of reinforce them throughout the process. But the fact that it involves the parents as well, so the parents can see. what's happening and what the goals are, I think is also a very important part of it.
