Meeting a Monster
The boy who could finally unsee what his older sister showed him
Liam was eight years old. A few weeks earlier his older sister had shown him a trailer for a movie called Venom.
The scene that stuck was towards the end.
A human being physically overtaken by an alien parasite. His face slowly rippling with a black, oily substance that wraps around his head like a living mask. In a matter of seconds it turns him into a snarling monster with big white eyes and rows of razor-sharp teeth. Then the creature’s mouth unhinges, and a long, slimy tongue lashes out.
Every evening the same thing. Liam would lie down, close his eyes, and there were those images.
He couldn’t sleep in his own room anymore. And rarely fell asleep before 11pm. This carried over into school where he seemed tired, unmotivated and struggled with concentration.
Eyes closed, I took Liam to a loud, busy film set. Cameras and lights everywhere. Crew moving around with clipboards and coffee. A director in a chair. Many people going about their work, completely unbothered, completely calm.
Nobody was afraid. Nobody running.
In a chair at the center of it all sat the main actor. Ready to have a costume put on.
Then the work began.
A makeup artist approached. Started applying something to his face. A costume technician brought pieces. One by one, layer by layer.
Liam visualized the whole process. The prosthetics. The black material stretching over skin. The teeth fitted into place.
By the time Venom was fully assembled and stood up from that chair, Liam had a new understanding and wasn’t afraid of the monster.
I encouraged him to walk over and have a conversation with the actor.
Will you hurt me?
Does Venom really exist?
Does he crawl into human bodies?
Tom reassured him there was nothing to be afraid of. And patiently answered the many more questions Liam had.
Why make films like this? Because making them is fun and they look cool on big screens.
Are you afraid during filming? No. Because we actors know all of this isn’t real.
Tom Hardy even apologized for scaring him with his Venom costume.
As I guide children through conversations like this, you can see their body language change. Shoulders drop. Breathing slows. In a child’s vivid inner world, these moments are experienced and felt as if they were real. Which is precisely why they work.
The images that had been scaring him every evening had lost their power.
Liam slept in his own room that night.
Six weeks later he was back.
New nightmares. This time because of Granny.
A horror game where you’re trapped in a house with a terrifying old woman who hunts you down. And there’s nowhere to hide.
This is something no session can fully protect against. Every child lives inside a family, a school, a group of older siblings with phones and no filters. The work we do together can sometimes be undone in just a few minutes by someone else.
Unlike the movie set this time I shared a trick with Liam. I told him that laughter shrinks Granny. We both laughed out loud and Liam visualize her getting smaller and smaller. So small, he could pick her up and hold her in his hand.
The roles were reversed. She was now terrified of him.
And because he no longer wanted her around, he flicked her off his hand into space.
Children don’t need logic to overcome fear. They need a different experience of the thing that frightened them.
That’s what we built. Twice.
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