Research and themes in Melva

Instead of using big words like fear, worry or anxiety, in the Melva world we talk about ‘worrits’.

Worrits are described as “squirmy creatures that live inside every human’s tummy”. Good worrits are important – they exist to keep you safe from danger. But sometimes, good worrits can turn ‘bad’, wriggling their way up from your tummy and into your head. These worrits can have strange effects on your mind and body – making you think of things that might never happen, or that you have no control over.

Talking about worrits in this way helps children to critically analyse them – developing a better depth of thinking and helping them to understand the link between our thoughts and our physical responses.

When we’re experiencing worrits, it can be easy to fall into a spiral of negative thinking – sometimes referred to as catastrophising – where we picture one bad thing happening, which leads to another bad thing, which leads to another bad thing, and so on and so on. This build-up can make something relatively small, feel huge.

For Melva, these thoughts usually start with a “What if…”

Melva’s What If moments are deliberately playful and funny, to help draw children’s attention to this behaviour. It makes it easy for children to understand how ridiculous Melva’s thoughts are getting – an observation they can then be encouraged to apply to their own thinking and responses.

We all have that niggling voice in our heads. When they’re on their worst behaviour, we might catch them telling us that we’re not good enough, or funny enough, or that nobody likes us. But our niggling voice is actually a really important part of healthy psychology.

Healthy psychological maturing is all about learning how to interpret the information we get from our niggling voice, and making decisions about how we behave based on whether this influence is productive or inhibiting.

Melva’s niggling voice is personified in the character of Gideon who, over the course of the Melva stories, becomes a more supportive and positive influence for Melva.

This motto tells us that confidence is not the absence of fear. Learning and growing require us to do things that we’re unsure about or that scare us, but we aren’t defined by those feelings. What matters is the action that you take and the choices that you make.

Everybody has things they’re scared of or that worry them, because it means we care about what we’re doing. The important part is developing self-awareness and skills to work through fear and not let it stop you.

Sometimes, in an effort to protect us, our brains can make our bodies react certain ways when we’re in stressful or scary situations – but it’s not always helpful or appropriate. For example, we might feel frozen on the spot, or like we have bundles of energy inside us, waiting to explode.

It’s not always easy to think clearly when we’re feeling that way, so we need to address the physical symptoms before we can make a good decision about what to do next. Once we recognise our physical fear symptoms, we can identify what strategies help to manage them – like deep breathing, or exercise – and eventually we can understand what triggers those feelings in the first place.

In the Melva world, a ‘Grussle’ is a shape-shifting creature, whose favourite thing to do is taunt and tease you, by remembering all the most horrible things people have said in the past to upset you, and repeating them back to you.

The Grussle character is there to teach children about the importance of surrounding themselves – wherever possible – with people who have a positive influence on how they feel, and not the opposite. It is designed to spark important discussion about what constitutes a positive friendship or relationship, and how not to let things that have upset you in the past, hold you back in the future.