When my son was about three or four, he decided that his baseball and football became monsters at night when the lights were turned off. He "saw" them coming to life; they looked evil and they were trying to get him.
Now, rationally, that makes no sense at all. Our consensual reality knows that it's not real. My wife (X) and I attempted to explain to him what was real and what was not. He listened very intently and when we finished, he said "but they're coming to get me."
For whatever the reasons, his unconscious mind had created this inner reality, and it had suddenly leaped out to become his outer reality. Logical, factual, linear left hemispheric explanations accomplished the sum total of nothing.
We then decided to become illogical (some might call it creative) to solve the problem. We went to a local building supply store and obtained a piece of wood doweling, two feet long and one-half inch in diameter. We wrapped the dowel in purple velvet and put a little gold tassel at one end. Next we purchased the kind of box one would put roses into a placed the soon to be "magic stick" inside.
We brought the box home and explained to our son that we had been to see a special doctor called the magic doctor. We told him that the magic doctor had made a magic stick that would scare away all monster balls. We then told him the "magic" words that the magic doctor had given us. We explained to him, that for two or three nights he was to point the magic stick at the monster and say the magic words.
That night we all went into his bedroom and went through a solemn ceremony of opening the box and presenting him with the magic stick. He took the stick and with a great determination, went around the room. At each corner of the room he stopped, pointed the magic stick and said the magic words.
That night he slept without his previous nightmares and sudden awakenings. The second night, he went into his room alone and repeated the magic ritual. After the third or fourth night, he put the magic stick in a corner and he stopped using it. He slept without problems and no longer talked about monsters. About two weeks later he gave us the stick and said he no longer needed it.
From the book "Monsters and Magical Sticks"
Monsters and Magical Sticks:There is no such thing as hypnosis?
by Steven Heller, Ph.D. and Terry Steele
Steve Heller, together with the help of his friend and colleague Terry Steele, has provided readers with a dynamic and brilliant entrance into a magical world within each of us - a world where it is believed our true abilities, inner learnings, and healing resources reside. Through the use of humor, metaphor, and enlightening case examples, Heller takes us far beyond the conscious world of what we "think" and "perceive" reality to be and stretches our minds into the dimension known as the unconscious.