The Parallel Story: How Metaphor Helps Us Approach Trauma with Care
Originally written in 2015 and updated in 2026.
Trauma-informed practice asks us to hold two important truths at the same time.
Our stories matter. Finding ways to name, organize, and make meaning of what has happened to us can be an important part of healing.
And no one should be pushed to tell a traumatic story before they have enough safety, support, and choice.
This tension has stayed with me throughout my work as a drama therapist, psychodramatist, and trauma-informed clinician. How do we help people approach experiences that may need to be witnessed without asking them to return too quickly, or too directly to something overwhelming? How do we create space for the story while allowing the person telling it to decide how close they want to come?
One answer can be found in metaphor.
More Than Retelling the Story
Trauma does not live only in the words we use to describe what happened. It can also live in the body, in relationships, in repeated patterns, and in the roles we have learned to play in order to survive.
For some people, directly recounting a traumatic event may feel necessary and meaningful. For others, particularly when safety, time, trust, or stability are limited, beginning with the literal story may be too much.
Trauma-informed work is not simply about whether we address the story. It is also about how, when, and at what distance we approach it.
Before moving toward traumatic material, we need to consider therapeutic rapport, containment, resourcing, affect regulation, and the larger environment surrounding the work. We also need to pay attention to choice. The client, not the therapist, should have meaningful control over how much is explored and how quickly.
Drama therapy gives us ways to approach a story without demanding that it be told literally.
What Metaphor Makes Possible
Metaphor can create what drama therapists call aesthetic distance: enough distance from an experience that it becomes possible to explore, while still remaining emotionally connected to what matters.
A client does not always need to say, “This is exactly what happened to me.”
Instead, a group might create a kingdom searching for peace, a character trapped behind an invisible wall, a superhero who has lost their powers, or a community trying to rebuild after a storm.
The imagined story is not separate from the person’s real experience. It may carry its emotions, conflicts, relationships, fears, and wishes. But because the story is held within a fictional world, the person can choose how directly to connect it to their own life.
I have come to think of this as a parallel story.
A parallel story allows people to explore aspects of their lived experience through an imagined character, role, relationship, or world. The story runs alongside the personal narrative. It does not replace it, and it does not force it into the room before the person is ready.
It offers another doorway.
My thinking about parallel stories developed during my years at Creative Alternatives of New York, where I helped lead clinical and training programs grounded in a trauma-informed drama therapy model.
Our work was guided by three central principles:
Creativity as health
The group as a therapeutic agent
Metaphor as a healing tool
We often worked in schools, shelters, and community programs where time was limited and the larger system was not always trauma-informed. A young person might leave a drama therapy group and go directly back to class. Someone living in a shelter might attend only two or three sessions before being relocated. Newly arrived refugees were often focused, understandably, on housing, employment, documentation, language access, and other immediate needs.
These were not always settings in which it would have been responsible, or useful, to ask people to recount traumatic experiences directly.
Yet meaningful trauma-informed work was still possible.
Through play, role, metaphor, and group storytelling, participants could build resources, experience connection, practice new roles, and begin approaching parts of their stories at a distance they controlled.
Fedu’s Story
One group that shaped my understanding of the parallel story was held within a larger cultural-orientation program for newly arrived refugees.
Group members had often been in the United States for only a week or two. Attendance could be unpredictable because job interviews, appointments, housing needs, and other urgent concerns understandably took priority.
One participant, whom I will call Fedu, often helped translate for other members. His name and identifying information have been changed to protect his privacy. He was generous and attentive, but he rarely took up space for himself. His focus was usually on making sure everyone else understood what was happening.
During one session, we invited group members to name different kinds of relationships. Participants offered examples such as mother and child, teacher and student, and brother and sister.
When it was Fedu’s turn, he quietly offered: “Government and people.”
He appeared uncomfortable as soon as he said it, but other group members began nodding. They understood that this was an important relationship to explore.
The group chose to create a fictional story about a utopian society in which everyone had what they needed and the government treated people fairly. Participants selected roles within this imagined world: a teacher, a soccer player, an inventor.
Fedu chose to be the king.
Then he clarified: he would be a kind king, one who listened to everyone and treated people fairly.
Within the drama, Fedu was no longer only the person helping everyone else participate. He stepped into a visible leadership role and embodied an alternative to the leadership he had known. He did not have to begin by recounting what had happened to him. He could begin by showing us the world he wished were possible.
When the story continued, one of the group leaders entered in the role of a skeptical reporter who could not believe that such a peaceful place existed. This role gave Fedu and the other group members someone to address. They could explain what they valued, defend the possibility of peace, and speak to someone who doubted them, all while remaining inside the imagined world.
Fedu described a place without war or government conflict, where people had come together from unhappy places in search of something better. He told the reporter to speak to the people and hear their stories.
The parallel story had become a container for the group’s shared journey toward safety.
After the drama, group members reflected on the society they had created. From there, some began making connections to their own lives. Fedu spoke about the struggle he had endured, the strength it had required, and his journey to New York City.
Most importantly, he allowed himself to take up space and receive support from the group—the same support he had continually offered to others.
In the sessions that followed, something about his presence had shifted. He remained helpful, but he also stepped more fully into leadership. It was as though he had carried a piece of the benevolent king out of the drama and into the room.
He had tried on a new role, and discovered that some part of it already belonged to him.
The Story Belongs to the Client
Not every member of the group connected the fictional story directly to a personal experience. They did not have to.
Those who were ready could move closer to their own narratives. Those who needed more distance could continue speaking through the utopian society and the roles they had created. Both forms of participation were meaningful.
That is part of the power of metaphor: it can hold many levels of meaning at once.
A parallel story offers choices. A person can move closer, step back, change roles, pause the action, rewrite the ending, or simply witness. The therapist can remain curious without deciding too quickly what the metaphor “really means.”
Trauma-informed drama therapy is not about disguising an interpretation inside a creative exercise. It is about creating enough possibility for people to discover their own meanings.
Playing a New Role
When we enter an imagined world, we are not escaping reality. We are creating a space in which reality can be approached differently.
Within that space, someone who has felt powerless can experiment with authority. Someone who has survived by disappearing can practice being seen. Someone who has always cared for others can experience being supported. A group shaped by rupture can imagine—and briefly inhabit—a world built around connection.
The imagined role does not erase the roles a person has needed in order to survive. It expands the repertoire.
That is what continues to draw me to drama therapy and psychodrama. We do not only talk about what happened or imagine what might change. We create a place to experience something different, even if only for a few minutes.
Sometimes healing begins with telling the story directly.
Sometimes it begins with a kingdom, a skeptical reporter, and a kind king.
Sometimes the parallel story is what allows us to find our way back to our own.