The accident that wreaked havoc on our world over ten years ago happened in a matter of seconds. Our eight-year-old child went from your typical rowdy, adventurous, free spirited kid to one on life support followed by months of painful medical procedures and surgeries that aroused exhaustion, fear and disconnection from the group of friends that were unsure how to be around their newly fragile friend
Nonetheless, we weathered through. With a combination of wonderful doctors, skilled therapists compassionate educators and solid familial support we got “back to normal” as quickly as possible.
However what we had no way of knowing was not “back to normal” were the thoughts and feelings swirling within our child. While we were patting ourselves on the back for coming through the event intact and expressing gratitude for the kindness shown our family, our child was squelching very painful feelings and distorted perceptions behind an effervescent smile and robust disposition. While we always offered comfort, compassion, and reassurance as needed, we didn’t know enough about trauma to try to intercept what we couldn’t yet detect.
Consequently, we were largely unprepared, for the surge of complex emotions and difficulties that surfaced in the teenage years.
What I’ve since learned however, is that an event does not necessarily have to be horrific to induce post-traumatic stress. It depends on the child.
Some children, despite reassurances to the contrary, will blame themselves for bad things that happen. Their limitless imaginations can spin out of control igniting a host of interpretations and feelings for which they lack the life experience, emotional maturity or brain development to effectively process.
I’ve discovered that the symptoms of post-traumatic stress are not limited to families such as ours who can point to a single harrowing, life changing event as a disruptive catalyst. There are children for whom unfortunate, yet fairly commonplace events such as a parents’ divorce, a death of a friend or family member, a disabled sibling, witnessing an upsetting occurrence, familial substance abuse or a parent’s depression - can trigger a neurological and pernicious stress response. A divorce to one child can be a bump in a road while to that same child’s sibling it can be devastating. It really has more to do with how the child processes an event than it does the event itself.
“Trauma,” writes Dr. Peter Levine in his book, “Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes,” “is defined by its effect on a particular individual’s nervous system, not on the intensity of the circumstances itself.”
The teenage years with its surge of hormones and social uncertainties are hard enough as it is. For a young person who has experienced, or, has processed an experience, as a trauma, it’s frequently when buried feelings explode. Such feelings appear, to unsuspecting parents and caregivers, to be, “out of the blue”. Consequently, adults may attribute the behavior to causes such as, hormones, rebellion, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, substance abuse, unhealthy friendships or poor parenting.
Getting a proper diagnosis is essential however, it’s important to not just know a child’s history but also to know how the child processed that history. Also, a young person may be concealing a painful episode from their past out of shame, fear of upsetting their loved ones or an assumption that not talking about it would make it disappear.
While it’s natural and certainly not harmful to reassure a young person that an unfortunate event was not their fault, reassurances in and of themselves do not address the underlying feelings - the fear, the shame and the guilt – that may exist. Naming such feelings and assuring that such feelings are normal, carries more weight in the long run than simply stating that the event wasn’t their “fault.” “It wasn’t your fault,” while accurate and kind, does not touch the core feelings; and it’s the feelings rather than the event itself that needs to be touched if a young person is to rise above the pain the feelings incite.
If it’s too hard for a teen or young person to go there, sharing a story from a parents own childhood in which they felt a similar sense of fear, shame or guilt - can be valuable. It can provide a back door way of offering solace and perspective while taking the focus off of the child’s pain.
Parents who suddenly find themselves living with an overly mercurial or reactive stranger should not necessarily write it off as a “normal” part of growing up. It can help to reflect on events – even events from long ago - that may have made an intense emotional impact; possibly more severely than on other members of the family. Also, make room for the possibility that something unknown may have occurred. If a teen or young adult is in fact dealing with post-traumatic stress, thankfully there is now much more knowledge, information and support available than there was ten years ago.
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