Case Study: Lumi Nova and Mollie
How Lumi Nova helped Mollie confront her fear of dogs and shift her mindset.
“She was bringing the phone and showing me when it was saying ‘Think about being around a dog’... You could see that she was starting to channel her thoughts into that kind of challenge. Before, it was a case of she just wouldn’t even think about it.”
Meet Mollie, an 11-year girl who lives in Caerphilly, South Wales
Mollie is an 11-year old girl who lives in Caerphilly, South Wales, with her mum Sharon, and younger brother. Mollie enjoys after school clubs and when at home she likes cooking and baking cakes. It’s a busy home life with Sharon managing work and the children as a single parent.
Night time can be tough with Mollie worrying about school work and “getting everything done” - she finds it difficult to switch off and Sharon often needs to put her own tiredness to one side to help sooth Mollie, otherwise she’d be awake for hours on end. According to Sharon “the sleep thing can sometimes be ridiculous. That's hard for me to understand when I'm exhausted because I really need her to go to sleep.”
Sharon describes Mollie as “a bit of a perfectionist... if she can't complete it the way she wants in her head, she gets quite worked up. If she doesn’t understand the work then she goes into a bit of a meltdown straight away.”
Although Mollie’s worries have been ongoing for a few years, she struggles to put into words exactly what her worrying thoughts are. She knows she feels hot and panicky and her heart can start to beat really fast or she feels sick. It helps to catch the worry before it gets to a meltdown.
Taking a step to face her worries with Lumi Nova
Sharon’s concerns are now about high school and helping Mollie feel comfortable going out with friends. She wants Mollie to learn some coping strategies so that when confronted with a new situation away from mum, she can feel confident in herself. In Sharon’s words, “I don't want her worrying all the time. It's hard to tell somebody not to worry but I don't want her to feel like that.”
Sharon found out about Lumi Nova from a friend and Mollie decided to work on her fear of dogs. Mollie wasn’t able to be around dogs. She avoided them or stayed behind her mum or asked the owner to keep the dog away.
Noticing changes since playing Lumi Nova
From quite early on, Sharon could see a change in Mollie’s mindset. “She was bringing the phone and showing me when it was saying ‘think about being around a dog’...You could see that she was starting to channel her thoughts into that kind of challenge. Before, it was a case of she just wouldn't even think about it.”
“Her mental attitude has changed and she’s trying to confront it whereas before she wouldn’t have entertained it.”
When it came to starting her first action challenge, Sharon explains, “we were in the park and Mollie spotted the dog. She actually suggested that we go over. Before she would have been clambering on me! You can see that she's confronting the fear. With Mollie there's a lot about what's going on in her head. The fact that she was trying to deal with it, for me that's a big thing.” Mollie agrees, saying “before I wouldn’t go close, I would stay on the other side of the park.” She tells how “there was a big dog and then a small dog and I stood next to a big dog!” She is genuinely very proud.
“I think it helped me become more confident around different types of dogs. Before, if they scared me, I would just think that if they’re barking they’re going to hurt me and they’re going to start chasing me.”
Having completed her first goal, Mollie explains that “I think it helped me become more confident around different types of dogs. Before, if they scared me, I would just think that if they're barking they're going to hurt me and they're going to start chasing me. If I’d just had to stand next to a big dog, I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t done all those other challenges before it. I think it just takes quite a while but I will get there eventually. I think if I just get the challenge done then I’ll start to like dogs a bit more than I used to.”
Mollie is realistic about her feelings towards dogs now that she’s finished her goal. She’s still a little wary of dogs she doesn’t know or of big, jumpy dogs, and she admits to feeling nervous when she realised she would have to do action challenges with actual dogs. Sharon agrees that it’s “a work in progress” but what she’s most pleased about is “her mental attitude has changed and she’s trying to confront it whereas before she wouldn’t have entertained it.”
“Mollie’s very internal and she doesn’t verbalise things. So this was the first time we were actually breaking it down together. It’s kind of making me realise how to get into Mollie’s mind a bit because there have been occasions where I can tell that she’s having a bit of a moment and it’s all gone inside her head. In the past she’s just always gone internal and ‘exploded’ as such. But she’s starting to realise that when she’s in that kind of mindset, I’m here to help her and perhaps we can calm the situation down.”
Another big area of change for them is the way they communicated with each other over this fear of dogs. Sharon understands that “Mollie’s very internal and she doesn’t verbalise things. So this was the first time we were actually breaking it down together. It’s kind of making me realise how to get into Mollie’s mind a bit because there have been occasions where I can tell that she's having a bit of a moment and it's all gone inside her head. In the past she's just always gone internal and ‘exploded’ as such. but she’s starting to realise that when she's in that kind of mindset, I'm here to help her and perhaps we can calm the situation down.”
Mollie describes Lumi Nova as “challenging, helpful and fun” and she’s ready to start her second goal focussing on being away from her mum.
“We were in the park and Mollie spotted the dog. She actually suggested that we go over. Before she would have been clambering on me! You can see that she’s confronting the fear. With Mollie there’s a lot about what’s going on in her head. The fact that she was trying to deal with it, for me that’s a big thing.”