Dealing with your own trauma can be a tricky thing in itself. Helping your child who is distressed from a traumatic event can be entirely different. Here are some ways you can be there for your child to ensure their healing process is healthy and successful. 

Identify Their Triggers

Your child may experience negative emotions when particular things remind them of the traumatic event. Identifying these can help you prevent your child from experiencing the distress that this causes them. Don’t worry if you feel clueless at first, part of helping your child to heal is interpreting their behaviour as they display it. You can only help them once you know what you can protect them from to avoid any trauma response they may have. It may be a sound, a smell, a place, or even the mention of a person. Once you pinpoint these, you can help your child by either preventing them from coming into contact with their triggers or by guiding them in a way which helps them healthily process their reactions to such things which remind them of distress. The latter will prove to be more helpful for you as a whole. It’s difficult to say that you will always be able to prevent them from being triggered but knowing how to help them by responding to these will be a lot more beneficial for yourself and your child’s healing process.

Help Your Child To Learn To Relax

Introducing different techniques to your child to help them relax can be very helpful when they begin to experience a response to their trauma. If they begin to remember a distressing event or they begin to react to something because of ingrained trauma, you must teach them how to bring themselves out of it just in case you may not be there when they experience such. A step-by-step routine is usually an easy way to help your child remember the techniques rather than just explaining them. Numbering the steps can help them remember them better, or even attaching the techniques to a character can help! For example, perhaps their favourite fictional character got overwhelmed about something but they take certain steps to reduce their feelings of distress. This may help your child remember how to calm themselves down.

Introduce Them To Therapy

It’s okay if your child needs professional help. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, it’s what therapy is there for. A lot of children find it easier to tell therapists what is wrong and by doing this they process their emotions better and become increasingly better at communicating as a whole. Different types of therapy can be tried in an attempt to help your child process their distress. The EMDR and Counseling Center are extremely beneficial in their ways of management. They provide a safe environment to process trauma and provide ways for your child to cope with their experiences without having them hinder their growth and development. Trauma can be a difficult obstacle to overcome, especially for a child, but EMDR has shown that 90% of participants did not show symptoms of PTSD after their treatment. Taking your child to therapy may be the first step in helping them heal and healthily process their distress.