What happened to you?
Navigating your child's mental health can feel overwhelming, especially when you suspect that past or ongoing trauma may be a factor. Trauma-informed counseling for adolescents is an approach that recognizes how deeply traumatic experiences can affect your child's behaviors and emotional well-being.
Rather than focusing on "what's wrong," it asks, "what happened?" and "what's strong?" This method works to create a safe and collaborative environment where both you and your child are active partners in the healing process. It's about empowering your family by building trust, strengthening relationships, and teaching practical skills to manage emotions and navigate life's challenges.
By understanding the link between past events and current struggles, this type of counseling can lead to more complete and lasting healing, helping your child build resilience and find their voice.
Core Principles
Safety: This involves creating both a physical and psychological sense of safety for everyone, including the adolescent, their family, and the counseling staff. This means the environment is predictable, non-threatening, and welcoming.
Trustworthiness and Transparency: Building and maintaining trust is crucial. Counselors are transparent about procedures, boundaries, and what to expect during sessions.
Peer Support: Integrating individuals with shared experiences can be a powerful tool for healing. Peer support helps adolescents and families feel less alone and provides models of resilience.
Collaboration and Mutuality: The counselor and the family work as a team. This approach reduces power imbalances and empowers the adolescent and their family to actively participate in their own healing and decision-making.
Empowerment, Voice, and Choice: This principle focuses on strengthening the adolescent's and family's inherent strengths. It gives them a sense of control over their treatment and life by providing choices and validating their experiences.
Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues: Trauma-informed care is responsive to the unique cultural, historical, and gender-based contexts of each individual and family. It acknowledges how systemic issues, such as racism or historical trauma, can impact well-being
Techniques
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT): This is a structured approach that helps adolescents and their parents process traumatic memories and learn new skills to manage their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It's often delivered in a short-term format (12-20 sessions) and includes components like psychoeducation, emotional regulation skills, and gradual exposure to the traumatic narrative in a safe way.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): EMDR helps individuals process traumatic memories by using bilateral stimulation (such as side-to-side eye movements or taps) while recalling the traumatic event. The goal is to reduce the emotional intensity and vividness of the memory.
Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competence (ARC): This is a comprehensive framework that addresses the developmental impacts of complex trauma. It focuses on helping children and adolescents build stable and secure attachments, learn emotional regulation skills, and develop a sense of competence and self-efficacy.
Benefits
Improved Engagement: When adolescents and families feel safe, respected, and understood, they are more likely to engage in the counseling process and stick with it.
Prevention of Re-traumatization: By being mindful of potential triggers and power dynamics, this approach actively works to prevent the re-traumatization that can occur in traditional settings where a client's past trauma isn't acknowledged.
Holistic Healing: Trauma-informed counseling addresses the whole person—their physical, psychological, and emotional needs. It helps them understand the link between their past trauma and their current struggles, leading to more comprehensive and lasting healing.
Enhanced Resilience and Coping Skills: By empowering adolescents and families, this approach helps them build resilience and develop practical coping skills for managing stress, regulating emotions, and navigating relationships more effectively.
Better Relationships: It can improve communication and strengthen relationships within the family, as it often involves caregivers in the healing process and helps them understand and support their child's trauma responses.
References 📝
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). (2014). SAMHSA's concept of trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach. HHS Publication No. (SMA) 14-4884. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
This is the primary source for the six core principles of trauma-informed care: Safety, Trustworthiness and Transparency, Peer Support, Collaboration and Mutuality, Empowerment, Voice, and Choice, and Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues.
Cohen, J. A., & Mannarino, A. P. (2008). Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy for children and adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 17(3), 559-576.
This article provides an overview of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and its effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress, depression, and other behavioral problems in children and adolescents.
Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). The Guilford Press.
This is a foundational text on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). While this book is a general reference, the use of EMDR with adolescents is a well-established practice, with numerous studies supporting its efficacy in this population.
Blaustein, M. E., & Kinniburgh, K. J. (2010). Treating traumatic stress in children and adolescents: How to foster resilience through attachment, self-regulation, and competency. The Guilford Press.
This book is the core resource for the Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competence (ARC) framework, detailing its application for children and adolescents with complex trauma.
Lieberman, A. F., Ghosh Ippen, C., & Van Horn, P. (2015). Don't hit my mommy!: A manual for child-parent psychotherapy with young witnesses of family violence. The Guilford Press.
This manual is a key source for Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), a model designed to support and strengthen the relationship between a child and their caregiver as a vehicle for healing from trauma. The model is based on decades of research by its developers.
