UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA RESPONSES

Living with and loving a child who carries trauma pain through their daily life is a humbling and exhausting experience. As parents, the good news is that healing happens, especially when a child has safe, consistent, and loving people to care for them.  

These children have been on a harrowing journey and their strength and ability to keep going, even when the world feels dangerous and frightening is an incredible thing to be a part of.  It also means day-to-day life is demanding, unusual, chaotic, scary, rewarding, and at times bizarrely funny. 

Trauma can look like a lot of different things and manifest itself in different ways. It can be rooted in deep psychological wounds such as separation from their biological family, neglect, and abuse.  It can also happen prenatally. Sometimes the effects are conscious—a child can’t stop thinking about the trauma. Other times, the effects are unconscious—they might be jumpy or anxious, but not understand why. The loss, abuse, neglect, or abandonment a child experiences, changes the neurobiology of the brain. Even infants separated from their birth mother experience a degree of trauma that impacts their neurobiological development. The amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for survival, gets activated and turns on our “fight, flight, freeze or fawn” response. When the survival brain gets turned on, it turns off other areas of the brain responsible for regulation, language, and executive functioning skills, which can make simple tasks and experiences really hard for children.

So how can we parent in an effective way when our kids are impacted by trauma?
As you work to understand and recognize your child's trauma responses, there are 3 key things to keep in mind.

WORKBOOK

Source: http://www.innerworldwork.co.uk/


When you understand the origin of behaviour, your entire perspective changes.

What survival (Trauma Response) can look like for a child

WHEN I AM IN FREEZE RESPONSE I FEEL LIKE...

WHAT I LOOK LIKE

WHAT I AM AWARE OF

HOW MY BODY FEELS

HOW YOU CAN HELP ME FEEL SAFE AGAIN

WHEN I AM IN FLIGHT RESPONSE I FEEL LIKE...

WHAT I LOOK LIKE

WHAT I AM AWARE OF

HOW MY BODY FEELS

HOW YOU CAN HELP ME FEEL SAFE AGAIN

WHEN I AM IN FIGHT RESPONSE I FEEL LIKE...

WHAT I LOOK LIKE

WHAT I AM AWARE OF

HOW MY BODY FEELS

HOW YOU CAN HELP ME FEEL SAFE AGAIN

WHEN I AM IN FAWN RESPONSE I FEEL LIKE...

WHAT I LOOK LIKE

WHAT I AM AWARE OF

HOW MY BODY FEELS

HOW YOU CAN HELP ME FEEL SAFE AGAIN