Dealing with Traumatised Teenagers

As mentioned in the previous blog (HERE) last month, I attended the online conference: Trauma Informed Practice Using Biopsychosocial Models to Promote Recovery organised by ICTC and IRCT. In this blog, I want to mention the presentation given by Jane Herd, who shared her experiences working with ‘troubled’ teenagers. I feel what she said was very important because particularly when it comes to teenagers there is a tendency to blame all ‘misbehaviour’ to their age and ‘unwillingness’ to control themselves. Pointing out the ways in which traumatised teenagers are quite simply unable to self-regulate, will hopefully lead to more understanding.

Jane pointed out that despite what is often claimed, the teenagers she worked with were not ‘being difficult’, they were ‘experiencing difficulty’, which is a whole different thing. Very often these young people do not understand why they react the way they are reacting. They may not even quite understand the emotions they are experiencing and may have difficulty reading the faces of people and misinterpreting their meaning. This means that it is not helpful to ask them ‘why did you do that?’ That will only lead to more confusion and resentment. Instead, it might be more useful to find a way to explore what happened and why things happened the way they did, together.

She also stressed that there is no point trying to discuss things while the young person is dysregulated. It takes at least 45 minutes for adrenaline levels to start going down and while adrenaline is still high, the teenager will have little or no access to the higher reasoning parts of his brain: he is in fight or flight mode. It makes much more sense to give him time to cool down – or to help him by co-regulating – and then to discuss things when he is regulated again.

Another important point to be aware of is that many teenagers (and children) who were traumatised have experienced a world that is chaotic and unreliable. While this is stressful and damaging, to them it is what is familiar. This leads them to be drawn to these kinds of situations and may even lead to them creating such circumstances, simply for the comfort of familiarity.

And when you try to engage these young people, in an attempt to help them, you need to find them where they are – both in a physical and psychological sense – rather than trying to make them come to you. Otherwise, you are not likely to be successful in reaching them and creating the bond required to be able to provide them with support. This can even involve small practical things, like the awareness that there is a good chance that they do not have a good sense of time. So showing up late for an appointment is often not an act of defiance, and putting sanctions on this is counterproductive.

I really found it helpful to have many of the points that are basically known, but often disregarded laid out so clearly.

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