Child Trauma Therapy
You never thought something like this would happen to your child. You would do anything to take it away. You’d go through it for them if you could. You want to help them through this but you have no idea how.
Sometimes it seems like they’re fine, but you wonder if they’re struggling and hiding it. Sometimes it’s clear when they aren’t doing okay. They’re not the same child they were before, that’s for sure. You now only catch glimpses of that child before they disappear once again.
You notice your child isn’t sleeping well and is having nightmares. They often complain about stomachaches or not feeling well. They can’t stay focused and their grades are suffering. You can’t remember the last time they spent time with their friends. They seem to be avoiding so much that they didn’t used to.
Your child has been more irritable and gets mad about the littlest things. Most of the time, they seem scared or sad. They haven’t seemed truly happy in a while. They argue with you for no reason and struggle to get along with their siblings and friends. You hear them saying bad things about themselves when they never used to. This breaks your heart because you know they aren’t true.
You just want your child to be happy and to enjoy their childhood. You want them to grow up without this awful thing hurting them and making their life so much harder. You want them to have strong and healthy relationships, and you want them to heal from what happened and have a happy, successful adulthood.
These things you want for your child can happen. While I, nor anyone else, can’t take away what happened, and your child likely will never forget that it happened, it doesn’t have to have a lasting negative impact on your lives. What happened doesn’t have to be their whole story. There is much more to your child than the events of the past. Even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.
Healing is possible. I help children and their families recover from awful things. I help children heal from trauma and be more resilient. I also help parents learn how to help their child and talk to them about what happened. I will teach your child (and you) skills that will not only help them through this now, but throughout their lives.
In our work together we will focus on:
- Understanding and working through what happened
- Learning to relax and calm your child’s body and mind
- Building skills for managing big and difficult emotions
- Understanding thoughts and how they impact how we feel
- Working through your child’s trauma story
- Building safety skills for the future
- How to parent a child who has been through something traumatic
Your child can heal from what happened. They can go back to living their life as a kid – being the student they were, spending time with their friends, getting along with family, and having fun. This will be just one piece of their story. And the older they get, the smaller and smaller this part of their story will be. You can find more information about trauma here.