Healing Traumatized Children. Faye L. Hall
never be a member of our family. The new paradigm allows for the recognition that this family and these parents are working to help the child heal from the early trauma. It transforms and properly elevates the parenting effort as heroic in joining with the child to overcome problems caused by someone else.
Sally’s Family
Jane’s new in-home staff was quick to reframe Sally’s behaviors through the trauma lens. They identified Sally’s attempts to deflect emotional closeness, disrupt adult communications and relationships and recreate the chaos from her past. Jane was reluctant to allow the staff to talk to the school, because of the protective services report with its inferences of her being too harsh with Sally. She had noticed the looks between teachers and heard from them in muted form the same derogatory remarks inflicted by her sister. Nevertheless, she decided to give the staff a chance to meet with the school personnel along with herself. She was surprised at how credible the information sounded coming from knowledgeable professionals. One teacher even admitted that a family member was showing similar behaviors and asked for resources. Buoyed by this experience, Jane scheduled the in-home staff for a meeting with her parents and sister in order to explain to them how early trauma damages a child, the impact on the new family and how to help. The support system thus created allowed Jane to begin to effectively parent a child hurt by someone else.
Old: All the child needs is love.
New: Love is expressed differently to children with early trauma.
Unconditional love is a requirement for healing. Expressing that love to a child of early trauma becomes highly complicated. Parents must understand that the actions that typically express unconditional love actually become fear-inducing due to the child’s N-IWM. Early traumatic experiences predispose the child to assuming that parents are untrustworthy and dangerous. Once that “knowledge” is pre-verbally acquired, the child will experience any parental interaction with suspicion and fear. Parents must understand this, label the child’s behavior as emanating from the early trauma and become able to predict resulting behaviors. That is, we must be able to read the child’s internal state before we can successfully demonstrate unconditional love, assist in recovery and accurately express our emotions to the child.
Otherwise, parents can only offer conditional love and are unable to help their child navigate fear, sadness and anger. Before recovery, most children cannot achieve “average” levels of emotional intensity or regulation. Parents are handicapped in expressing their own full range of emotions due to the constant background of the child’s projected fear. Before the child can accept our love, she must know why it’s so scary to do so. Children absolutely need love. The traumatized child needs to learn how to experience love before she can receive love and interpret the experience. The early trauma damage leaves children without the ability to receive the very thing they need.
Amy’s Family
It was clear to both James and Lori that “just loving Amy more” was not working. They began a new in-home service that was to help Amy learn to love them. Amy stated that she did not feel loved by her parents: “They are just trying to please Child Protective Services. They don’t like me, ’cause I’m too bad.” James loudly protested, “If anyone else treated my wife the way Amy did, I would have kicked them to the curb long ago!” As treatment progressed, the family learned why Amy constantly feared good things. Lori was taught to help her daughter notice the fear in her body and see how it affected her behavior. Amy enjoyed the activities with her mom and was able to voice when she had “too much good.” James and Lori learned to reduce the number of gifts to special occasions and infrequent surprises. They expressed sorrow and reframed destruction of property as Amy saying that she had “too much.”
Amy was scared of her parents’ deeper understanding, but her fear slowly decreased, as they consistently did not regress to angry reactions toward her behavior. She felt for the first time that her parents understood and accepted her. Working together, the family recognized the early trauma damage, found ways to connect with Amy despite the damage and eventually developed ways to express love that facilitated Amy’s healing.
Old: The child will be filled with gratitude.
New: Because of early trauma, even the good things that I provide will be experienced fearfully.
When the child’s internal world does not match his external world, he will experience fear. A child with a N-IWM will experience a situation as ominous despite others not seeing bad intentions in either themselves or their parents. It’s like the fear you or I would feel while swinging from a trapeze as novices; the performer who slowly learned the skills growing up in the circus would not feel any fear at all.
Parents need to recognize their child’s fear and label it ahead of time. Until the hurt part of the child is healed or begins to heal, they will be scared by, rather than grateful for, any attempts to provide good things.
The new paradigm helps parents to be more reflective and forgiving about the child’s behaviors. Parents are encouraged to find alternative ways to feel good about themselves without expecting reciprocity from their child. Parents can be freed from the need for gratitude and from feelings of rejection, making them more emotionally available to co-regulate with their children.
Amy’s Family
James and Lori assumed that Amy would reciprocate their kind actions. None of the caseworkers explained why this would not occur. Consequently, they interpreted Amy’s actions as rejection and negatively reacted to her in turn. When the family began the new in-home service, Amy could not explain why she felt uncomfortable when receiving gifts. As the team explored Amy’s emotional world, they noticed that she would not talk about being sad or scared. But they recognized and interpreted her nonverbal behavior as “talking.”
For example, Amy deliberately tore a hole in her new jeans. She quickly responded that she did not want these jeans. But what was she really “saying?” In this way, she could avoid feelings of fear or looking good and having good parents. The tearing reduced any feelings of loss to zero and ripping the jeans evoked anger in her, an emotion with which she felt more secure.
But without the paradigm shift, James and Lori interpreted Amy’s behavior as: She’ll destroy things just to get more; she doesn’t appreciate what we do for her; we’ll go broke trying to make her happy; she thinks she’s entitled to anything she wants and we don’t supply good enough things. All of these inferences caused fear in James and Lori. Without the paradigm shift, families succumb to the Downward Spiral. With training and practice, James and Lori were able to stop asking Amy why she did the things she did. Instead they would define the experience through the trauma lens and label her fear.
At first, Amy was angry in response. “That’s not what I’m feeling!” But with constant repetition she began to recognize and tolerate more vulnerable emotions. She went from “I know what you’re thinking” to “it makes sense but I don’t like it” to “when will I stop feeling this way?” It was calming to be able to anticipate feelings and behaviors. The family members felt better about themselves and were able to enjoy their relationships.
Old: The child has negative motivations and intentions.
New: My child’s problematic behaviors are motivated by the need to feel less afraid.
Until parents believe that all of their children’s problematic behaviors are motivated by want of safety, the healing cannot begin. With the new paradigm, “Why can’t he earn a contract reward?” is answered with, “He doesn’t trust the person who created the contract” or “He does not feel he is competent enough to complete the contract.” “Why does he say things like that about me?” is answered with “He doesn’t trust me.” By recognizing the damage of early trauma, parents will have an alternative explanation for the child’s misbehavior. “Parts” theory can help the parents to understand that the “hurt part” of the child is behind poor behavior, while they look to foster development of the “healthy part.” The concept of “parts” also helps