You know your kid “has trauma.” You adopted them after they were subjected to years of abuse and neglect. Or, you’ve been with them from the start, but the trauma therapy they’ve had hasn’t fully resolved their symptoms. Maybe you’ve concluded, after lots of research, that they have “developmental trauma” or “complex trauma.”
Trauma-focused therapies like TFCBT and EMDR can work wonders with specific memories of overwhelming and threatening events, but on their own, they don’t resolve everything that ends up under the umbrella of “trauma.” They’re not designed to.
Children with complex or developmental trauma often experienced disconnection in the very earliest months and years of life, when they were most dependent on others for their survival. This can happen for many, many reasons, even when parents and caregivers are giving everything they’ve got to offer their children safety, consistency, and shared delight.
When children learn that the core adults in their life are unreliable or scary, it’s much harder to develop a strong and flexible sense of self, reliable emotion regulation skills, and a healthy give-and-take in relationships. When specific experiences of violence pile on, these kids can really struggle.
For your kid with complex trauma, your relationship with them is the most powerful tool for their healing. Through parent-child therapy, I help you and your child (re)connect to access the full potential of this precious, powerful resource.
I use Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP, also called Attachment-Focused Family Therapy) to guide this work. First, I meet with you, the parents, to understand what this tremendously important relationship with your child is stirring up in you, and to share concepts and tools to support your journey of therapeutic parenting. Once our foundation is strong, we invite your child into therapy to make sense of their experiences together. As your kid feels your understanding, acceptance, and delight, over and over and over again, their trust in the relationship grows, and the behaviors they’ve been using to control the relationship become less necessary.
I also use principles from Ross Greene’s model of Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS, formerly Collaborative Problem Solving) to help parents and kids get back on the same team and solve problems together.
For more information about how therapy for developmental trauma works, see this comprehensive explanatory article by UK trauma therapy center, Beacon House.
Wondering if parent-child therapy for complex trauma is right for your family?