Jen talks with our trauma specialist and therapist, Madison. Madison walks us through how trauma impacts the brain, how triggers work, and how to talk to and help children who are struggling with trauma. Learn how to help your children navigate personal trauma and even world trauma that they hear about.
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Jen: Hi and welcome to the Parents Place Podcast. My name is Jen, and I am here flying solo today because Hilary has had a crazy day doing kids empowered, which is our abuse prevention program that we do in the schools here in Cache Valley. So, she is not here to help us today, but we're going to have a great episode, it's one we've been wanting to do for a long time. We are so grateful to have our guest today and I'll let her introduce herself.
Madison: Hi, everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name's Madison Elliott. I am a social worker in Utah and I am a therapist at the Family Place. I have been a therapist at the Family Place for two years, three years, if you count my year as an intern here at the family place, it's gone by so fast.
Jen: Yeah, we are so lucky to have you here. Everyone says, Oh, we love Maddie. We want everybody to go see Maddie.
Madison: No, that is so sweet. Oh my gosh. We have a really great therapy team too, so I promise it's not just me. We have a lot of good therapists here who are a lot more qualified than I am. No Just kidding!
Jen: We do have a great team and it's been amazing to see it grow. So, this topic that we've been wanting to talk about for a long time is just trauma and the effects it has on children. And Maddie is over our trauma resiliency project now here at the family place. So, she is an excellent person to help us understand the effects of trauma on a child. So, enlighten us because it is a big, a big thing. So, I think the first thing probably we need to do is just define what trauma is for our listeners.
Madison: Yeah, and I really like that you bring up the idea of doing a definition of trauma, Jen, or thinking about what trauma is. Because one thing that I'd want to point out is that trauma is subjective, and so everybody has a different definition of what it is. But to me, it feels most comfortable to say that trauma is a life changing experience. And when we experience a traumatic event, a lot of things change for us. Our perceptions of the world, change our worldviews, change our levels of self-esteem, change and also our coping mechanisms change. It has a very big impact upon all aspects of our self and well-being.
Jen: Yeah, thank you for that. I think about trauma and I think about for me, these past several years have been somewhat traumatic for me because it really affected the way I handled things during that COVID shutdown time and things like that. So, it does have a big impact. And I also had another experience on a plane to where if I see that same kind of thing, I go right back to that. And so, it does affect you and it can affect the long term. So, what are a kind of like the effects of trauma with kids?
Madison: Yeah. And that's a really good question, because going back to that subjectivity piece, I think each kid may demonstrate different symptoms after experiencing a traumatic event, but some of the most common would be an increase in anxiety and increase in nightmares. Some children may engage in behaviors like bedwetting or having accidents. Another thing that some children might experience, they might. You might notice that they'll have a dip in their levels of self-esteem. So, some kids may you may notice negative alterations in cognition or mood, or like an inability to experience positive emotions. So, you may notice that kids may present with more flat or blunted affect. And their emotions may be more on the sad or depressive side. Sometimes children can also show some signs of irritability or frustration. Sometimes children may exhibit those big behaviors that you all talk about here on the podcast, like tantrums. They may have more explosive behaviors. They may become physical, and occasionally children can engage in self-injurious behaviors also.
Jen: Yeah. One thing that I find interesting. I guess I read a book called Spilled Milk and it was about a girl that grew up in a very neglectful home. And, at one point she was at her boyfriend's house, and this is, I believe it's a true story, she was at her boyfriend's house and her his little brother spilled the milk. And that's why it's called spilled milk, because at that point in her home, there would have been a lot of trouble. Because of the milk. But in her boyfriend's home, it was like no big deal. Let's get a towel. Let's wipe it up. You know, basic things. And that's when she had the light go off of not every family is like hers because she truly believed every family functioned as her families did. But she, interestingly enough, did not go to those negative behaviors. She went on the opposite side. How often is that to where, like she started doing it was the one thing she could control, she said was doing good in school, making sure she was doing everything that she was supposed to be doing. So how often, I guess, is just, yeah, depends on the child.
Madison: But I think you're right. I think it does depend on the child. But I do want to tell you, I have seen that. I have seen that side of reaction to traumatic stress where people engage in people pleasing behaviors, or they may exhibit more perfectionistic tendencies where it's really important to be the best or get 100 percent on everything because, like you said, they can control that they're able to control getting 100 percent on every exam. And that's a good way to get positive acknowledgement if you're coming from an environment where everything is negative and unsafe. There's safety and success and their safety and being well perceived by your teachers and your peers, especially if that's not happening at home.
Jen: Yeah, so interesting. The other part that I find so interesting is just the effects that it has on a child's brain. We've talked a lot about brain development on this podcast and the importance of providing opportunities for brain development. But what happens to our brains with trauma?
Madison: Yeah, there's a lot of things that can happen as a result of traumatic stress when we experience a traumatic event. Our brain takes in the information and a part of our brain called the amygdala sends a signal to the rest of our brain to go into what's called fight, flight, or freeze mode. And when we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode, we do just that. We may freeze up, we may try and fight back, or we may try and run away. So, after our amygdala has been lit up, the rest of our brain goes offline. It's like that, It's that, thing that Dr. Dan Siegel talks about the flipping your lid where we're not thinking with our smart part of our brain. And by no means am I saying that people are going through a traumatic event are not smart. What I'm saying is we're not thinking with our prefrontal cortex that part of our brain that evaluates. And is responsible for decision making, impulse control and other executive functions were functioning primarily out of fear and we go into safety mode or survival mode.
Jen: Yeah. I've seen that in different people that I've worked with. When you talk about certain things and visiting or parenting classes, you can just see, you know, people go into that and they're triggered into that. And yeah, the other day, I because another way that our brains are affected is it makes stronger pathways. And you explain that so awesome the other day when we were doing our training. So, can you explain that with the little pathways and things like that?
Madison: Sure. So, whenever we make something a habit or we commit it to memory muscle memory and continue to do it repeatedly, our brain lays down neural connections. And I like to describe this to people as walking through a heavily wooded forest. When you walk a path in a wooded forest back and forth multiple times, it starts to form its own little pathway, so it's easier to get from point A to point B in a shorter period of time. And the same is true for our brain. So, when we learn a new hobby, like playing a musical instrument or when we learn how to cook something and we no longer have to read music or read instructions on how to do it, our brain has done that same thing. It's laid down the path in that heavily wooded area so we can get to and from different neural connections a lot faster. And we do the same thing with trauma responses and triggers. One way I like to explain this to my clients or I like to talk to my clients about triggers is I like to give them this example. Let's say you were victimized by an individual who was wearing a plaid shirt. Now, every time you see someone wearing a plaid shirt, you start to feel uneasy inside. The rational part of your brain knows that that person is not going to hurt you. But the part of your brain that is triggered or may be responding to past traumatic memories doesn't understand that. So, in order to rewire your brain or in order to stop thinking about triggers that way, you have to practice and you have to expose yourself to that as many times as you can. Even though it feels uncomfortable and that's the part of therapy that can be really hard, is that we have to push ourselves to overcome these triggers. And it's a slow process, and it's definitely a trauma informed process. I would never tell my clients to make themselves uncomfortable for hours on end of the day. We do it in a safe way and we do it in a desensitizing way. So, going back to the example of walking through the heavily wooded forest, the same thing happens with the plaid shirt example. The more we see somebody with a plaid shirt and we practice our coping mechanisms like taking a deep breath, grounding ourselves and walking ourselves through some of those statements that can help us reframe those negative thoughts or those over accommodated thoughts. The more we're laying that pathway down in our brain to overcome those trauma triggers.
Jen: I really like how you say that we're going to do it in a trauma informed way. You know, lots of people don't understand the way trauma works and how it affects the brain and that there is that strong pathway, especially if they've dealt with it for years and years. Because some people just say, suck it up, and that's not going to work.
Madison: And that’s not going to work
Jen: Yeah, yeah. And I'm looking at that person with a platter. You know, that's not going to hurt you.
Madison: And how invalidating for a survivor of violence to hear. Oh, just because they're wearing a plaid shirt doesn't mean they're going to hurt you. Sure, they're not going to hurt that person, but does that person's body know that right? No, no. And so, it doesn't do any good to tell people it's like that. That's saying with anxiety, right? So, I saw a meme the other day that said I told someone I had anxiety and they told me just to take a deep breath. And now my anxiety is cured. And it was obviously sarcastic. But it made me laugh so hard and I shared it and everybody just thought it was the funniest thing. But how often do we do that? I mean, we undermine someone's experience, or we don't we don't really appreciate what they've been through, we just say, Oh, just deal with it, you're fine now. Or the classic, you've got a roof over your head, you've got clothes, you have everything you need. How can you be sad?
Jen: Yeah, I just think with validation can come. There could come a lot of healing with that, as well as just that someone knows and understands. And can empathize with you that you've gone through this, the other thing that I really like that we do here at the center is, you know, when we do meet a victim of sometimes some type of trauma, we don't say what's wrong with you? It's more of what happened to you. Tell me what happened to you. And I like that the abuse is not defining the person or the trauma is not affecting the person. It never does. That's just part of their life story. And there's so much more to people than that. But when they're not validated and they're told to suck up, then they do start to feel well. This must be who I am. I am that I'm not dealing with this appropriately, so I better just suck it up. And then there's ramifications from that.
Madison: Oh yeah. And we're seeing I think a lot of therapists will probably identify this with this, that we do see the ramifications of that in our clients with complex trauma who are, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s who experienced a lot of these events back in the day. And there was really no well, there was trauma treatments. I mean, there was psychotherapy and it wasn't like Sigmund Freud psychotherapy, right? Tell me what your dreams tell you, even though that can be powerful in some ways and fun. But I think now that we're asking those questions, what happened to you versus what's wrong with you? That statement in and of itself is validating, and I think it sends a message to people that individuals who have experienced trauma are more than trauma. Like you said Jen. And one thing I would encourage people who are listening to maybe consider is person first language. So, we're not a traumatized individual. We're not a traumatized country. We're not we're not a traumatized group of individuals, right? We're individuals who have experienced traumatic events or a country who has experienced traumatic events right where people first and our experiences are just a part of our story.
Jen: Know I'm going to throw a little bit of a curveball we didn't hear you about, OK before we started the podcast. That's OK. But we had a traumatic experience just a couple of days ago where this shooting in Texas. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot of parents out there that are like, how do I explain this to my children if my children have been watching it on the news, you know, things like that. So, yeah, how I mean, for me, it just breaks my heart that someone would think to do that. So, I can't imagine what children are thinking at this time, either when they're supposed to be able to go to school and be safe and know that they're going to go home that day. And so how do we talk to our kids about events like this?
Madison: That's a really great question, and it's such an important question because a lot of parents are shaking their head or scratching their head right now, wondering the same thing. And I'd like to start, maybe with a suggestion if we could all take a second and reflect back to our childhoods. We knew what was happening. We weren't as oblivious sometimes as I think we assumed that children might be. They know what's going on. They're hearing about it. They listen to us, talk to one another. They don't live under a rock. And as much as we'd like to shelter them from these horrible things that happen in our communities. We can't. So, we have to talk to them and we have to tell them in an age appropriate way, explain to them what happened. Explain to them the gravity of the situation, but also let them know that your that you as a parent are committed to their safety and that you as a parent, love them and care for them and do your best to make as much of a safe environment as you can in your home. I think that is the best way to go about this, and I think also one thing that I encourage parents to do is sometimes when they have concerns like these about school safety or the school setting is don't ever hesitate to reach out to that child's teacher because chances are the teacher wants to tell you what they're doing to keep your children safe. And I have a lot of friends or people I know who are teachers and they are committed to children's safety as well. And they love their kids and they want to make sure that they're safe. And perhaps if your child is experiencing more anxiety than normal as a result of this tragedy. Talk to your child's teacher and see if there's anything that the two of you can come up with to help your child feel more comfortable in the classroom setting because they should be learning, should be a learning environment, should be a safe place for them to go and explore and figure out who they are.
Jen: Thank you. I don't know that just that whole situation just boggles my mind and breaks my heart. And kids should not have to deal with these kinds of things I say about all the time. And yeah, they just don't think they should have to do it.
Madison: I agree. And as a therapist, I teach my clients not to should on themselves or not to say I should always be perfect, I should always do a, b and C. But this is one should that I can get behind because kids should be safe at school and they should know that they'll be protected. And unfortunately, sometimes parents and children don't feel that way. But I think by parents normalizing their children's emotions about the most recent tragedy and talking to them. Also, parents continue to check in with your kids and don't assume that if they don't ask you about it, that they don't know or they don't care. Just keep checking in with them and making sure that they're OK and provide them with that validation by saying something along the lines of this must be really hard for you. This must be really scary for you. I can't imagine what you're going through. Help me explain how you feel inside. Help me explain where these uncomfortable feelings are coming from and just allowing them to open up and talk about how they feel will relieve so much distress that they may be experiencing as a result of this tragedy.
Jen: Some kids may need to have, may need to talk about it over and over and over again. And that is their process. You know, dealing with it. So be kind and patient when your child does ask the same questions about this. I think in things like this, if they have. A loving person that can talk to him about these things. those pathways aren't made as deep because they've had someone to help them process.
Madison: Yeah, and that's also on the flip side, Jen, I think it's reinforcing that belief that if I'm upset or if I'm scared, I can go talk to a grown-up who can help me regulate myself. And folks, that is such a wonderful thing for kids to know that they have a grown up. They can talk to you that's going to treat them with respect and validate them and listen to them, because that also helps them establish a secure attachment and continue establishing a secure attachment to their caregivers to know that that caregiver is going to soothe them to completion.
Jen: Well, I think we've talked a lot about hard things. Yeah, yeah, and I just really appreciate your knowledge and your willingness to come on the podcast and talk about these hard things. I think parents, you know, sometimes just don't know what to do and how things affect their children. So, it's great that we can give them a little bit of information. Yeah. So, go ahead
Madison: One thing I just want to say, too, is not every child that experiences trauma or a traumatic event will go on to develop post-traumatic stress or acute stress. Each child is different and each experience is subjective. But one thing I just want to remind parents is don't assume that they won't. Don't assume that they don't need anything because they're a strong kid or because they're mature for their age. Some of those terms that we use for kids don't assume that they don't need that support or they don't need that love and care.
Jen: All right. Well, we'll wrap up for today and want to thank all of those who joined us and please reach out if you are wanting more information or have questions. We can always get the answer for you. You can reach us by email, Parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or on Facebook. You can find me. Jen Daly - The Family Place. This week, I challenge you just to talk with your kids. Give them a hug. Let them know that you love them and that you are there for them if they are needed and talk about anything that may be stressful for them. If you are interested in any of our programs that we provide here at The Family Place, you can find more information on our website, TheFamilyPlaceUtah.org. Lots of our educational classes are online and so you can zoom in and learn that information as well. So, I just want to remind you to be kind to one another and be kind to yourself. And we will see you next week.
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