Therapy designed to heal
When children experience trauma, it affects the entire family. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) can help when children (ages 3-18) experience a traumatic event such as physical or sexual abuse, domestic violence, community violence, a natural disaster, or the unexpected death of a loved one. It’s designed to help children, teens, and their parents begin to heal.
Signs of trauma
A variety of factors can shape how children and teens respond to a traumatic event. TF-CBT is designed to help if your child is exhibiting one or more of these common symptoms:
- Inability or unwillingness to recall trauma details
- Difficulty stopping thoughts about the trauma
- Emotional and physical numbing
- Recalling physical sensations that occurred during trauma
- Difficulty staying still or fidgeting
- Sleeping routine is disturbed (not wanting to sleep alone, nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night)
- Rapid changes in mood
- Difficulty concentrating
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Low self-esteem
- Inability to trust others
- Substance use
- Desire to hurt oneself or others
TF-CBT has three phases that work like building blocks
1. Skill building Your child will learn and practice new coping skills they can use to handle everyday stress. This also prepares your child to cope with strong thoughts and feelings about the trauma. You and your child will also learn more about trauma and how it affects people.
2. Telling the story Your child may have an opportunity to gradually tell what happened and process it in a healthy way. While we often want to avoid talking about upsetting experiences, telling the story is a key part of healing. Many kids say it was the most helpful part of TF-CBT.
3. Pulling it together Your child may share their story with you once you’re prepared. We’ll address lingering fears and teach your child personal safety skills. Together, we’ll celebrate your child’s success with a graduation from TF-CBT.
Over the course of therapy, your child will learn:
- The trauma was not their fault and they are not the only ones who have survived a similar traumatic event
- To identify feelings and how to manage them
- How to relax and tolerate trauma reminders
- To identify negative thoughts that cause depression and anxiety
- How to replace negative thoughts with more helpful thoughts
- How to resolve problems
- Safety skills
