Trauma impacts a PERSONS behaviour, emotions, learning and focus, relationships and long term future.
‘It is known that from early infancy through to adulthood, trauma can change how we perceive ourselves and the world around us, how we process information, and how we behave in response to our environment’
(Cozolino, 2006)
BEHAVIOUR
Children can struggle to contain and control such huge emotions that they feel due to feeling terrified and powerless. They need help to work out how to get them ‘out’ without being destructive to themselves or others.
Traumatised teenagers can often feel overwhelmed with negative emotions which can lead them to behaviours that can try and numb the pain and turmoil or they can become aggressive and angry.
Adults are similar to teenagers, except that they have often adopted coping mechanisms that try and help them survive and feel less vulnerable, sad, scared or hurt.
Essentially they can ‘act out’ with aggression, violence, agitation, bullying, fighting, disruption, risk taking etc or they can ‘act it’ with self loathing, self harming, depression, sadness, eating disorders, lethargy, compliance, anxiety etc
What we can do
Help them feel safe by getting to know their needs and best ways of helping them feel known and cared for.
Emotions
They can have huge, strong emotions such as terror, anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration that they carry around and they need someone to help them validate and understand these and then help them process them.
What we can do
Help them learn what different emotions are by talking about emotions in stories and explaining how they can feel in our bodies.
Learning and focus
It can be really hard for children or teenagers to focus and concentrate when their brain is wired and focused on survival. It can lead them to struggle to concentrate or they have to hyper concentrate and shut off the rest of the world.
What we can do
Help them feel safe and understand when they can’t focus…
Relationships
Everyone can feel very nervous about relationships and either want to withdraw and be on their own so that they don't have to risk further rejection and betrayal or they can want to be in control and be in a position of power so that they can stop such frightening experiences.
What we can do
Give children and teenagers opportunities to be in control by asking them to make choices or by giving them jobs and making them feel wanted and connected.
Long-term future
Children can be impacted by trauma into adulthood unless they have enough repetitive experiences that can re-wire their brain to know that other people can be a positive experience and may not hurt them. The ACE study is research that evidences the long term impact of trauma on children that impacts their mental and physical health (The Scottish Adverse Childhood Experiences Hub, 2017). Adults, teenagers and children can all recover from trauma with then right help and environment. Up-skilling the caring adults is essential to trauma recovery. Love is not enough.
What we can do
This is where we can see our roles in church as such opportunities to see all lives changed for the better, forever. When we make space for long term repetitive, kind, nurturing, warm, empathetic relationships to develop with children and young people in our care, we can see them changed forever and the natural trajectory of their life changed.
...we can see our roles in church as such opportunities to see lives changed for the better, forever.
picking up atmospheres
Traumatised people can often be hyper vigilant and so are also very impacted by the atmosphere of a home or other setting. They pick up on non-verbal atmospheres quite naturally and intuitively and can feel anxious when others are anxious, even when everyone is smiling! They can feel excited, even when others are trying to appear calm, they can pick up on anger and frustration even when the others are trying to speak calmly. When they become frightened, they then learn to ‘read’ other peoples faces and atmospheres so that they can prepare for anything frightening. This is called hypervigilence and it can make them analyse everything you say, your body language, your facial expression and your words. It can then make them nervous and jumpy wherever they are as they learn to ‘check’ and ‘read’ adults to see what is going on.
So it’s important that we recognise that we can create atmospheres that are warm, caring and safe. It’s also important to learn that sometimes children and young people are traumatised by seasons of life in a family that can't be avoided and so we need to recognise that and never blame or shame parents for tough seasons.