Trauma-focused therapy provides a space for children and their families to learn about normal responses to trauma and specifically how a traumatic event has impacted the child and family. This type of discovery and learning helps you and your child to digest why certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors might occur, gives names and explanations to his/her experiences, and reminds your child that he/she is not alone in his/her experience.
By engaging in trauma-focused treatment, your child can learn more about what he/she is experiencing, how to effectively address their concerns and symptoms, and develop healthier ways of coping.
The following are a few examples of the benefits of trauma-focused therapy:
-Learn About Trauma.
Trauma-focused therapy provides a space for children and their families to learn about normal responses to trauma and specifically how a traumatic event has impacted the child and family. This type of discovery and learning helps you and your child to digest why certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors might occur, gives names and explanations to his/her experiences, and reminds your child that he/she is not alone in his/her experience.
-Re-Establish Safety.
A traumatic experience by definition results in a violation of your child’s sense of safety. This includes violations of physical, emotional, psychological,and/or relational safety. A benefit of trauma-focused therapy is to assist your child in re-developing internal (emotional, psychological, relational) and physical (touch, the environment) senses of safety, through activities and discussions that target these domains.
-Identify Triggers.
Participating in trauma-focused therapy can help your child learn to identify, understand,explore, and express memories and feelings related to the trauma. Often times, children may show reactions that appear to “come out of nowhere” or are out of proportion for an experience, but it may be that these are actually reactions to trauma reminders. Another benefit of treatment is that your child can learn to recognize what experiences or feelings may be associated with traumatic reminders (also known as triggers) and work to be able to more appropriately adapt his/her response over time.
-Develop Healthy Coping Skills.
Trauma-focused therapy sessions aim to help youth discover skills and improve coping strategies to better respond to reminders and emotions associated with the traumatic event. Some of these skills include anxiety management and relaxation strategies that are taught in youth friendly ways. Developing these types of skills in response to trauma supports resiliency, or assists, your child in “bouncing back” from his/her traumatic experience.
-Decrease in Traumatic Stress Symptoms.
Engaging in trauma-focused therapy and working closely with the therapist can help your child develop and practice skills that help decrease traumatic stress symptoms and other mental health symptoms associated with the trauma. Your child may experience decreases in depression, anxiety, dissociation, trauma-related shame or guilt, and/or intrusive symptoms such as flashbacks and nightmares.
-Practice Trauma Processing or Integration.
One goal of a trauma-informed therapy is to help the child regain power and control over past experiences by sensitively assisting the child to re-narrate his/her story. Over time your child has the opportunity to “process” or organize these unique experiences into his/her everyday life and ,make meaning of the event(s) and how they relate to your child’s view of him/herself and the world around.
Recognizing trauma’s role in a person’s experience is essential to treating and healing the toxic stress of trauma on one's life. Untreated, this stress can result in many negative health outcomes. In her TED Talk, Nadine Burke Harris discusses how childhood trauma affects health across an entire lifetime.
Tauma Focused Therapy in San Antonio is helpin
g children, adolescents, and families overcome traumatic experiences through trauma focused counseling services. Call our experienced therapists today at 210-418-2546. We can help.