
Parents can play a significant role in helping their children heal from trauma. Children are resilient by nature and have the emotional capacity to handle adversity or even the most stressful things and come out doing well with the right support. Finding an experienced trauma therapist who can work with your child, ensure their social and emotional needs are met, and develop strong, healthy relationships is essential. At Trauma Therapy Center, you can look forward to the best guidance and support for your child. Liz Chelak recommends the most appropriate treatments that ensure your child overcomes their trauma and embraces a life of fulfillment.
Begin personalized therapy, online or in-person, in West Palm Beach, and Boca Raton, FL.
Traumatic events can affect children’s growth, and ability to function normally and trust others. After experiencing a traumatic event, a child may feel tense, scared, or even alone, sad, angry, and guilty, depending on what they went through. Sometimes they end up blaming themselves for what happened. For some children, there is a loss of self-esteem and dignity, while for others, there is deep grief.
Parents may not understand how their children feel because due to the impact of what happened, some children are scared to share their feelings. They try to fight the overwhelming emotions on their own or expect things to get better but it is not so easy. at times, they fail to understand what has happened to them and this lack of realization can result in unusual behaviors.
Trauma Therapy and PTSD Treatment for Children
Trauma can affect a child’s mood, behavior, and emotional patterns. Some children become depressed, appear sad all the time, or act strange, while others may indulge in wild behaviors, and their academic progress may decline. Some have new fears or have trouble sleeping, and some will have upsetting memories, known flashbacks. Research shows that children cope with trauma by avoiding things that remind them of what happened.
Counseling is the only way to help your child if he or she has been through a traumatic experience and shows signs of PTSD. Starting with therapy may pose some challenges, and your child might not accept it readily or respond to it initially, but it is nothing unusual. Children fear the unknown, and as it is something that you or they have not done \before, it may take some time before the treatment works.
Finding trauma therapy for your child who works well with children and understands traumas is important. It is normal to feel apprehensive when starting a therapy as you don’t know how the sessions will proceed and if your child will really benefit from it. The right therapist will win your child’s trust and help them move slowly and gradually toward healing.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for Children
TF-CBT is an effective trauma therapy for children between 3 to 18 years who have experienced trauma. It is a relatively brief therapy that usually lasts 12 to 20 sessions. The counseling techniques are based on cognitive, behavioral, family therapy, and humanistic principles that focus on healing.
You must make an effort to understand how trauma therapy can help your child cope with the anxiety they feel after traumas so they can feel better and live a better quality of life.
Goals of TF-CBT
TF-CBT has been designed to promote healing in children who have been through a stressful or traumatic experience. It helps children and youth, as well as their caregivers, and enables them to outgrow their trauma and regain their life.
It teaches them:
- Effective skills to cope with trauma-related emotional and behavioral problems
- A thematic way to face and resolve these problems safely
- How to effectively integrate their trauma experiences so they can move on with their lives in a positive manner
Role of Parents or Caregivers In TF-CBT
Trauma can be devastating for children. They begin to fear the world and have trouble trusting people, including their parents, to keep them safe. This unusual behavior can also affect parents, and they find themselves unable to respond the right way to assure their children. When the parents or trusted caregivers are involved in TF-CBT, it helps them react appropriately to their children’s trauma and set fitting behavioral limits. With their care and attention, parents can restore their children’s trust and help them move forward.
The therapist teaches children to express their thoughts and feelings about the trauma. They help a child learn skills that can reregulate trauma responses and avoid trauma reminders and memories. The therapist shares the child’s progress with caregivers and how well they are progressing. At times, parents are asked to join a session if it is beneficial to the child to learn how they can positively impact their child’s progress.
Phases of TF-CBT
TF-CBT is a structured trauma therapy, and it follows specific phases. Stabilization, trauma stabilization, and processing and integration and consolidation are the three phases of treatment.
The specific components of TC-CBT are:
Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation focuses on normalizing exposure to trauma. This starts from the first session. The therapist tries to find out about the type of trauma the child has been through and how they feel about it. They explain each step and help the parents and children understand what happens during the session.
Parenting Skills
In most cases, parents find it difficult to understand how they should react and what to do to establish a stable relationship with their child after trauma. They want to do the best for their child, but their child is not letting them come close or having unusual, which creates further complications. Therapists teach positive parenting strategies that include praise, selective attention or ignoring, and rewards and punishment for desired results.
Relaxation
Going through a traumatic experience is not easy. Children do not know what has happened and how to react, which makes it difficult to help them. Therapists understand behavior patterns, identify stress, and develop strategies that can help children manage their unhelpful thoughts and emotions.
They use muscle relaxation, mindfulness, controlled breathing, and guided imagery strategies, as well as listening to music or exercising that encourage them to stay calm and reduce stress at home, school, and in the community.
These skills are taught to children during the trauma narrative sessions. The goal is to help children feel relaxed and learn to cope with traumatic memories successfully.
Effective Expression and Regulation
When children suffer trauma, can experience a variety of emotions when they go through trauma, but they may have a hard time expressing or regulating them. Some children may scream, yell, cry, hit, or throw, or others might become numb, which prevents them from feeling anything.
Therapists know the right strategies that help children express and manage their emotions better so they can normalize their feelings. They make them brainstorm all the feelings they can think of for a few minutes to analyze the type of emotions they are going through to guide them through their emotions.
Cognitive Coping
The cognitive triangle is made up of feelings, thoughts and behaviors that are all related and cause distress if there has been a trauma in the past. A therapist teaches children how they can reframe or process these thoughts, feelings and behaviors in a much better way and achieve a calmer state of mind.
Trauma Narrative and Processing
Therapists provide children with a safe and comfortable environment where they can express what they went through and how it has affected them. Talking about their trauma enables them to better understand their feelings and the unpleasant emotions that are causing problems. As they identify and reframe unhelpful or inaccurate trauma thoughts, they can learn to think positively about themselves, others, and the world.
Therapists also work with parents and make them understand what their child has been through. This prepares them for conjoint parent sessions so they can work with their child for better outcomes.
Invivo Exposure
Children affected by trauma end up avoiding people, places, or activities that bring back memories of the traumatic event. This is unhealthy as they may start missing school, and skip being with family, or any extra-curricular activity which can further affect their condition. With the right help, they can overcome the distressing event so they no longer feel scared or avoid a situation.
Conjoint Parent Sessions
This is the session where therapist sees the parents and the child together any time during the treatment to ensure maximum benefit. The goal is to help parents understand what their child is going through so they can clear up misunderstandings about the event, the trauma narrative and related topics and develop a better, stronger relationship.
Enhancing Future Safety and Development
Therapists focus on creating a safety plan at any time during the treatment to prevent ongoing danger such as domestic abuse, living in a violent neighborhood, or struggling with self-injury or suicidal thoughts.
They help children understand how to behave when faced with risky situations at home, outside or when they are alone with strangers, how to identify warning signs of danger and get away, call the police or use relaxation skills in case of unwanted thoughts and emotions.
For more information about our counselors or to schedule an appointment for your therapy, call our office by number:
(561) 363-7994What Happens During and After Therapy?
The therapists work hard to understand the level of distress a child is facing during therapy. They also ask children to fill out a PTSD inventory throughout treatment to determine how therapy is benefiting them and if the symptoms of PTSD are reducing.
The treatment continues till the unwanted symptoms are gone to ensure complete recovery from trauma. It is up to the parents and the child to determine when they want to stop treatment and how. Once they are informed, therapists plan ahead so the children are ready for the therapy to end and move forward.
Having a reminder to complete therapy helps children. They learn to take control of their emotions and life without support.
Is TF-CBT Really Effective?
Yes. TF-CBT can successfully reduce the symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and help with trauma-related depression, anxiety, behavior problems, and common cognitive and emotional problems such as fear, shame, embarrassment, guilt, and self-blame. It also provides caregivers a chance to learn better parenting skills so they can offer better support to their children and improve relations.
As TF-CBT is a structured therapy, it makes treatment fun for children as they come for their sessions. It is a combination of talk and play, which helps children learn coping skills so they can express their emotions without fear. TF-CBT addresses a wide range of issues you or your child may be struggling with after being through trauma.
There may be times when your child may not want to discuss their sessions or what happened during therapy. It may be because they are tired or have reached a point in treatment they don’t feel like discussing. All these responses are normal, and your therapist can help you deal with these problems at home.
Begin personalized therapy, online or in-person, in West Palm Beach, and Boca Raton, FL.
Experiencing trauma therapist at an early age can leave a lasting impact on children and even progress to PTSD if it is not treated timely. Liz Chelak is a certified trauma therapist and has years of experience working with children and adolescents who have been through trauma. She realizes the significance of treating intense emotional responses with the right therapy so your child can learn the coping skills and strategies to avoid distressing situations. Liz also works with parents and caregivers and ensures they understand what their children go through so they can provide them with the best support and help them heal from painful memories.