Many adopted children who have been traumatized, whether through abuse, neglect, or other form of trauma, are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When a person has PTSD, he is vulnerable to triggers in his life that cause him to remember a prior trauma. This is true even after doing lots of healing work.

I just went through this yesterday, when I saw that my husband had taken our seven-year-old child out onto the roof to help him paint a window. I don’t think I am going out on a limb to assume that the vast majority of adoptive parents would agree that taking a seven-year-old boy with impulse control issues out onto a slanted roof is a bad call. However, most adoptive parents probably would not have reacted quite as strongly as I did.

I was diagnosed with PTSD several years ago. I have worked very hard to heal from the PTSD, but I am still vulnerable to triggers. Seeing my precious child up on a roof was a huge trigger for me.

When I was around six or seven, my then-four-year-old sister and I witnessed a young child fall from a deer stand. Our abusers put the child up on the deer stand and left him there. We were forced to watch as the child toddled around and then eventually fell over the side. I choose to believe that there was some sort of padding, so the stunt was risky but did not kill the child. My sister believes otherwise. I will never know whether I witnessed a murder that day, but my PTSD symptoms from that experience are as severe as if the child died.

I used to be plagued with nightmares about my son falling from various high places. I had a particularly distressing nightmare about him falling off the church balcony and refused to sit up there without holding my son very close. As you can imagine, seeing my child up on a slanted roof triggered all of those old fears.

I hyperventilated, cried, punch pillows, fought the urges to self-injure, and then called my sister, who helped me calm down. I am fortunate to be far enough along in healing from PTSD to have developed coping tools to use in place of self-injury and other damaging options. If this had happened three years ago, I likely would have self-injured and binged on food. I managed to pull through the triggering without doing either.

This was an obvious trigger that would have been upsetting for many people even without a history of PTSD. However, some triggers might seem innocuous to you but really set off your traumatized adopted child.

If your traumatized adopted child is suddenly free falling emotionally, help him ground himself, just as my sister did for me. Just hearing her voice helped me pull myself back into the present and remember that I am here today in a safe place. I am no longer the little girl who was frightened in the woods. My son was safely in the house, and nothing bad happened to him. (After my reaction, I do not believe that hub will be taking our son back out onto the roof anytime soon.)

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt