TRAUMA SYSTEM THERAPY – Flashcards

A traumatized child who is unable to regulate emotional states AND a social environment and/or system of care that cannot help contain this dysregulation

1. Psychpharmacology: medications if child needs it (psychiatrist) 2. Skill-based psychotherapy: working with the child in therapy 3. Community-based: meet with child's teacher employ skills and strategies in school/after school programs 4. Legal advocacy: legal services, prosecute perpetrators, justice for the victim

1. Affect (emotions) 2. Awareness (focus of attention orientation, sense of self, memory) 3. Action (behaviors)

1. regulating 2. revving 3. re-experiencing 4. reconstituting (coming back to being grounded)

child is in calm, continuous regulation state, and well engaged with environment

child is triggered by a provocative stimuli and is engaging coping skills to manage emotion

child's coping skills have been overwhelmed. He/she has entered into a state of extreme emotion

Child's state of emotion has diminished. Child is using existing coping skills to manage emotion and to reengage with the environment

-In on study, researchers placed a cat hair in a mice cage with mice who had never been exposed to cats. Results showed that rats had a stress response to the cat hair, and even when it was removed their activities decreased -Cat hair is a PHYSICAL TRIGGER to traumatic response -Cat hair are patterns of links between specific stimuli and emotional/behavioral dysregulation

1. Regulated: main Affect, awareness, action (3 As) over a usual range of stressors 2. Emotional Dysregulation: Shift in affect, awareness, action (3 A's) over a range of stressors, but does NOT involve risky or dangerous behavior 3. Behavioral Dysregulation: shift in 3A's (affect, awareness, and action) over a range of stressors and DOES involve risk/dangerous stressor AND emotional dysregulation

-In one study, scientists placed a cat hair in the cage of rats who had never been exposed to cats. They found that the rats had a traumatic response and showed reduced activity even when cat hair was removed -Cat hair is a PHYSICAL TRIGGER to traumatic response -Cat hair are patterns of links between specific stimuli and emotional/behavioral dysregulation

1. Regulated: maintain affect, awareness, action (3 A's) over a range of usual stressors 2. Emotional Dysregulation: SHIFT IN the 3 A's over a range of stressors but shift in action does not involve risky or dangerous behavior 3. Behavioral Dysregulation: SHIFT IN 3 A's over a range of stressors, AND shift is action DOES involve dangerous/risky behaviors & emotional dysregulation

1. Stable: child's caregiver can adequately help child regulate emotion ; protect them from environmental triggers 2. Distressed: child's caregiver cannot adequately help them regulate emotions and protect them from environmental triggers 3. Threatening: there is a clear and present danger in the environment

-TST focuses on what happens in very specific moments -the ratio of moments when is child is dysregulated vs. all the other moments in his/her life

-Patterns of links between a traumatized child's experience of threat in the present environment, and the child's transition to a survival-in-the-moment state -(PATTERNS OF LINKS between stimuli and emotional/behavioral dysregulation)

-Safety-focused treatment: protect the child from environmental signals experienced as threat ("cat hair") until child is able to manage them. Protect child from actual threat -Regulation-focused treatment: Build child's ability to manage environmental signals experienced as threat (cat hair) when the environment is safe and stable enough -Beyond focused treatment: Prepare child to GROW INTO THE FUTURE in a way that is no consumed by the past

1. Surviving 2. Stabilizing 3. Enduring 4. Understanding 5. Transcending

-Protect the child from threatening environment ; dangerous impulses and to set stage for intervention in other phases of TST -Child is BEHAVIORALLY DYSREGULATED and the environment is THREATENING -use home ; community -based treatment

-create a safe social environment -interventions delivered on-site -child is EMOTIONALLY OR BEHAVIORALLY DYSREGULATED and the environment is either DISTRESSED or THREATENING

-development of skills necessary to manage emotion and respond to the establishment of a safe social environment -emotion regulation skills training

-establish therapeutic communication about the traumatic experiences to that the child and family are no longer consumed by the events (use CBT; after completion of emotion regulation skills training)

create lasting meaning and perspective out of traumatic experience once trauma is over