Last week I attended the New Hampshire Infant Mental Health
Conference. The primary focus of the
conference was evaluating for and treating trauma in children. Cassie Yackley, Psy.D. of the Dartmouth
Trauma Intervention Research Center adapted and presented the following from
Dan Hughes’ Basic Assumptions for Parenting and Treating Traumatized,
Attachment-Resistant Children. I thought
it would be valuable to post here.
Whenever you are working with a parent or child who has
suffered trauma remember:
1.
They are doing the best they can.
2.
They want to improve.
3.
Their life, as it is not, is “a living hell.”
4.
They try to be safe by controlling everything in their
environment.
5.
They try to be safe by avoiding everything that is
stressful and painful.
6.
Their “attacks” reflect a fear of your motives for the
nurturing and support you provide.
7.
Poor affect regulation, fragment thinking, a pervasive
sense of shame, inability to trust, and lack of behavioral controls inhibit
them from being able to have the relationships they desire.
8.
For them to change, they will need you to accept,
comfort, and teach them.
9.
You will need to validate their sense of self (and
family) while teaching them important developmental skills.
10. You
will need to understand their developmental stage and adjust your expectations
to match so that they will have success, not failure. Your physical and psychological presence are
the foundation of your comforting and teaching them.
11. Under
stressful emotional conditions, they will regress and revert to basic, solitary
defenses that they have used to survive.
12. They
will have to work hard to learn how to live well. You cannot do the work for them, nor can you
save them. You can comfort and teach them.
13. You
will need support and consultation from trusted others if you are to be able to
successfully comfort and teach them. You
will make mistakes and will need to face these, learn from them, and continue.