triggers after child abuse

Trauma Thursday: How to Teach a Traumatized Adopted Child to Live in His Body

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 05/22/2008 - 08:22

Yellow Flower (c) Lynda BernhardtIn my blog entry, Trauma Tuesday: Traumatized Adopted Child and Disconnection From the Body, I said that adoptive parents need to teach their traumatized adopted children how to live in their bodies (versus staying disconnected from their bodies). The obvious question that many of you might be asking is how can you do this? If you have never lived your life disconnected from your body, you might be baffled about how to teach this skill to a traumatized adopted child.

Another way of wording teaching a traumatized adopted child to "live in his own body" is to teach him how to stay present. When a traumatized child is being triggered, he is returning to the past. The opposite of this is staying present, or keeping your awareness in the present moment.

The most important step toward learning to stay present, or live in your body, is to live in a safe environment.

Trauma Tuesday: Traumatized Adopted Child and Triggers

Submitted by FaithA on Tue, 05/20/2008 - 08:53

Single flower (c) Lynda BernhardtOver on her blog, Julie gave some good advice about Keeping A Behavior Log if you are parenting a traumatized adopted child. She wisely pointed out that the traumatized child often does not even know why he is acting the way he does when he is triggered. Because I have spent most of my life experiencing triggers without knowing the cause, I thought I would write about this phenomenon from the traumatized child's perspective.

A trigger is anything that elicits an emotional reaction from the traumatized child. While it appears that the child is overreacting to a stimulus, he really isn't. Instead, he is reacting appropriately to something traumatic that he experienced but has not yet dealt with. Because you, as the adoptive parent, do not know what that trigger or experience is, it appears that your child is overreacting and just being difficult.

For example, I absolutely cannot stand to get dirt in my fingernails.