Beyond the Surface

 When I wrote FROM THE INSIDE OUT,  I hoped to bring to life a story of adoption and what it could be like if an adoptive family were ready for the challenges they might face. It is also about a family full of faith and hope. As I wrote, I thought about what could go right rather than what was wrong. I imagined the family lived in a world where people asked the right questions: What is driving this behavior? Why am I getting so upset? How can I create felt safety and love? What can I do right now to improve my relationship with this person?  What if the school and church was part of the treatment plan? What is really going on and what does this child really need from me? What resources can we use? How do we connect through every difficulty? What is happening inside the child (or any of us) resulting in this behavior seen on the outside?

Based on what I experience and learn in my work with adoptive families, foster children, hurt kids and adults with past pain, I believe we have to focus on deeper issues than the behaviors seen on the surface. We must work from the inside out to provide healing, understanding and real changes. Having said that, I find myself as a therapist working on the outside to provide support for people who are desperately trying to reach inward for personal healing, for their families or for their children. In doing so I find more than ever I am looking closely at behaviors and I am challenged by the puzzle a person's actions often create. It only works because I have to look beyond the surface into motivation.  My question about behavior is not how to stop it, but more of a curiosity as to what it means and what the person (adult or child) needs. I am not the healer or even the provider to meet the needs. I find I am part of the scaffolding to support the individual or family as they begin to work from the inside out.

So no matter where you in this process...perhaps things are not working for you personally and your own behaviors, thoughts and feelings need a deeper look; or maybe you are a parent of a child or two and you are struggling to provide a safe place for your hurt kid to heal. Maybe while you tear down some walls, or work to rebuild a life torn apart by tragedy you are in need of support-scaffolding so to speak so you can feel safe to go to ground zero. Here are some considerations that are quickly becoming core value beliefs for the work I do:

• Trauma produces a sense of hopelessness, helplessness and/or powerlessness. These three feelings often drive aggressive and/or defensive behavior because no one wants to feel this way. Fear is a main factor hiding below to the surface of it all.

• Stress makes relationship impossible.  Love gives and understands nothing can be given back until a person is safe enough to give.

•  You might be in a position to give something to someone (your adopted child, a step-child, an abused person, etc.) because of a loss they have suffered. Think about their loss through their eyes. It is difficult to receive when the person giving does not understand what you have truly lost.

• Challenging people need a balance of nurture and structure. The structure set up without understanding and nurture is just another set of rules, where as love and nurture without the structure of boundaries within the confines of relationship is often seen as manipulation or something weak and too frail to trust in.

Recommended for more information: From the Inside Out by Michelle Alden,  The Connected Child by Karen Purvis, Beyond Consequences by Heather Forbes, & Achieving Success with Impossible Children by David Ziegler.

Is Time Out a Good Option?

When our kids are having a melt-down or we as parents are close to losing it, isn't time out a great idea? Doesn't it provide the needed relief, at least for the moment? Doesn't it keep us from reacting poorly in a stress-filled situation? It seems like such a non-violent option. The problem is it really isn't as effective in helping misbehavior as one would hope.

When our children need correction we need to be efficient. This is much different than acting harshly, irrationally or punitively. But even more importantly, our children, especially those coming from hard places, need to be connected with us. In replacing fear with trust, isolation with connection we also need to replace reactive discipline with purposeful, mindful parenting.

Here are some considerations when faced with correcting (I prefer training) our children:

• Bring compassion and acceptance into stressful situations. Look for ways to train your child that keep you mindful of their histories and of your goal to keep them connected to you.
• Make sure you are managing your own emotions first. Are you reacting? What do you need in order to help your child right now? Maybe you need a time-out. Let your child know that you need a moment to calm down.
• Ask your child if they would like a re-do. This works great when we don't like the way a child reacted or responded in a situation. Ask them to "try it again". Keep the mood light. It may take a while, but most of the time the reminder to try again can help with many situations.
• Try moving in closer to your child, give a hug or ask them to sit by you for a moment. Sitting with someone when they are upset is a great way to show compassion. If the child is hitting or kicking, stay as close as is safe for you. 
• Keep in mind that when a person is very upset-angry or melting down, it is not a teachable moment. 
• Re-direct. Instead of telling a child to stop think about what you want them to do. Try humor to redirect if you can. But also be clear about what you want or need them to do. If you don't want them to scream or yell what would like them to do when they are angry or frustrated? 

This may seem like we are allowing the child too much liberty to misbehave. Parenting children from hard places or working with abused children may mean we encounter others who do not understand or share our ideas about connecting with them in order to help them heal and grow. It is not about allowing a child to dominate his or her family through tactics such as tantrums, whining, etc; but it is about staying calm, fair, and consistent while offering limits, providing structure, redirecting to better choices and honoring the impact of their histories. 

Trauma Drama and How to Help

Children (and adults) who have experienced trauma, especially chronic trauma, can be affected in all areas of their lives. Even once removed from the trauma (neglect is also chronic trauma), the child is likely to have the effects in their overall functioning, thoughts, patterns and behaviors. It will effect how they interact with others. This is not pathology. For the child, it is survival and it is how they are communicating their trauma. Understanding the impact and how it seeps out is vital to providing true healing.

So what are we looking for? In a child trauma drama is behavioral and affect-related dysregulation.
It looks like: defiance, aggression, argumentative, explosive, hyperactivity, irritable, oppositional, over-emotional, with-drawn, sullen, attention issues, bi-polar or depression. We frequently mistake behaviors as the problem instead of what is going on inside the child. Being more effective in treating the underlying issues will help with the symptoms.  

When we continually misread a child's trauma as behavior problems, manipulative, defiance or avoidance we then discipline the child for managing their trauma in the only ways they know how. This does not help them to resolve it, or heal. We (parents, care-givers, teachers, grandparents, etc) help when we intervene and support the child as we teach better, healthier ways to live. We must be committed to helping the child to feel safe even in their trauma drama. Primarily the family, not the therapist is the anchor for the child. A loving family is crucial to healing, but if everyone on the child's team (teachers, coaches, youth pastors, parents, & therapists) provide safety, there are more opportunities for healing and intervention.


Another key component in understanding trauma is the awareness of fear in the survivor. Fear can be masked with anger, controlled by manipulation, and reacted to by pushing people away. It is a core issue that our hurt kids may be unaware of and yet experience every minute of every day. Think about the behaviors you wish would change in the child in your classroom, or home and then think about what it is they are really afraid of and how they are managing that fear. How can you make it safe for them? Please keep in mind this fear and trauma response can last for years and has many layers to it.

How to help (taken from Dr. Sheila Sturgeon Freitas, Ph.D.@ www.drsturgeonfreitas.com)

1.Create Safety. Over and over again until they can hold onto this.
2. Help the child to understand their responses to fear and trauma
3. Help them share what they are experiencing
4. Recognize early trigger signs of trauma drama.
5. Remember the child does not feel in control, but that something is happening to them. They are fighting for control in anyway they can.
6. Help the child develop a sense of self and their life story.
7. It is okay to reflect on who we have been so that we can understand who we are becoming and our place in the world.
8. Help them with problems relating to others: it doesn't come naturally for this child. Understand the fear is all around relationships and need for protection.
9. Help them with their core common beliefs about themselves and the world around them.
10. Safety, understanding and love.

As I was working on this I saw on Twitter from Foster2Foster: "You may know my name, not my story. You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through."

 

Fox News highlights issues in foster care

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1845958025001/

Adoption Stories

Today I am reflecting on the adoption stories I have heard over this past year and on my own. I just got back from DC where I met more adoptive families, heard more adoption stories and told my own story to many people. It is really starting to hit me how many people there are that could tell "my" adoption story in the first person.

From my point of view (briefly): I was six years old when I was adopted out of foster care where I lived in a horrible foster home for a little less than a year. My brother then 7 was to be adopted with me, his adoption placement failed and he was later adopted by our grandparents. My little brother, 4 was immediately adopted and the last time I saw him was when he was 5. My adoptive parents provided a good home, had two biological children after the adoption. I had off and on contact with my older brother once we were adults. He died in 2011 which is also the year (and about the same time) my little brother contacted me and together we met our birth mother (again). We also found our sister who had been placed at birth and in March 2012 we all were reunited.

This is the brief account, without a lot of details, but consider all people touched this adoption. There are my adoptive parents (they have yet to really share with me the adoption story from their point of view), my birth mother (her story is a book in itself), my older brother (no longer here to share it but it too could be a book), my younger brother (he doesn't remember much pre-adoption, but he is a huge part of my past story and now my present), my siblings I grew up with (not adopted but it would be interesting to know more of how they view adoption and what it means to them), my sister (her history of adoption is different than my brothers and I but just as compelling), and then a whole array of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and family friends (both adoptive and birth) on the fringes of each of our stories. One adoption and yet so many people.

In DC I also realized there are others that make adoption possible (or impossible). There are lawyers, judges, agencies, CPS, advocacy groups, social workers, counselors, doctors, teachers and child care workers. There are even (in some states) very involved congressmen and women, and lobbyists that are working tirelessly to improve on the process, to make more homes available and to get more and better support for pre and post adoptive families. The list goes on and on my friends.

I think all this struck me because as a child, my adoption seemed to be such a small thing. My little life, a little part of my life that was tucked away and hidden from just about everyone. My parents didn't ask me about what I thought or felt about adoption, we didn't talk about it really. I felt different at times, was treated differently at other times, but mostly I wanted to be like everyone else. I had no idea there were so many others directly or indirectly touched in life changing ways because of my adoption. Now as an adult I am starting to put all the pieces together. I am meeting adopted children and families almost everyday. And I am seeing what a big deal it is. What a great story every adoption is no matter how young or old the child, how big or small the trauma, every adoption affects a lot of people in HUGE life changing ways even if they don't want it to.

Once again, as I reflect on adoption, mine and others and the many more adoptive stories I will be a part of in the coming days, months and years, I realize to be adopted is an amazing adventure. I am thankful for the journey.

Trauma and addiction

Please read this article on addiction and trauma. It is from Medical News Today.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249756.php

What is Behavior?

I listened to a couple of women talk about their children's temper tantrums and problems getting their children to clean their rooms. I listened while they knowingly told each other how they would discipline and traded ideas on things they could try to make them mind.  It was a normal conversation between moms, but it made me a little sad.  I didn't say anything, in fact I walked away. They weren't my clients, they are barely my friends and they were talking amongst themselves, not to me. They weren't doing anything wrong by most standards, but I guess I hoped for better. I have been hanging around a different group of parents and child-care workers and hadn't heard this kind of banter for a while. I also expected a little more, since these parents were also teachers. 

I realized that there is a lot of teaching and training that needs to happen in order for people to understand there is a better way, a more effective way to work with children--a way that is balanced between nurture and structure. There is a way that gives parents practical tools and insights to mirror God's love as they build strong and meaningful connections with their children.A way that comes along side our children and teaches and trains while building strong bridges of trust.

I think the challenge facing us parents or teachers is how to really love and care for children in a ways that express it with practicality. This can be especially difficult when we can't see beyond the child's behaviors. We need to see past a tantrum to the fear, confusion, or hurt a child maybe experiencing. But first our primary goal can not be about getting good behavior. Our goal, as Karen Purvis (The Connected Child) so wisely puts it, is to build strong and healthy relationships. In teaching our children right and wrong, we must remain focused on building a foundation of safety, self-worth and empowerment that allows true growth to transform them.

I love working with parents who really want things to be better in their families and really want to help their children heal or adjust. I love it when the parents begin to see their child's behavior in new ways. When they see behavior as communication (even if they don't get what they are saying), they also begin to look for different solutions rather than simply punish and expecting the behavior to stop. I enjoy helping parents look for other options. The parents begin to find ways meet the child's real needs and let go of power struggles. In the process, parents discover that they can win their child's heart because they build trust and help them to find better ways to communicate what they are really feeling.




.

One Church One Child

Jade Wallace: Giving Back

What is Trauma?

In a day and age where the word trauma is referred to when talking about any kind of stress such as breaking a nail, losing one's keys or anything demanding, or uncomfortable, it may be necessary to clearly define what is meant by trauma from a true mental health perspective.

In Eliana Gil's book, Helping Abused and Traumatized Children, she defines it in light of the DSM-IV (the diagnostic Bible for providers) which looks at trauma as an event that is either actual or threatened to the person or witnessed by another. This includes serious injury, or death, learning about an unexpected death or a violent death, serious harm or injury of a family member or one close to the person (DSM-IV-TR: American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

One of the critical issues about trauma is that it is a debilitating loss of control that people, especially children, experience. This loss of control has a huge impact on the person and can be very distressing and overwhelming. This can last over long periods of time, coming and going, and seen in a variety of behaviors.

Children have a difficult time and are usually unable to modulate their arousal, process or categorize what is happening to them and their internal stress. They are not able to discern the impact of what has happen or what they may have witnessed.

Every person is different in how they handle a traumatic event and every situation varies in terms of internal and external support the individual has in helping to overcome their loss of control. How long the trauma occurred, how old the person was at the time, how intense it was, how the family and those close responded, the temperament of the individual, their coping skills, how quickly they were able to regain control, and other compounding effects all come into play when addressing trauma and healing.

Thoughts on Adoption

Today I was watching my friends with their adopted and "home-grown" children at huge church picnic we had. I was remembering the stories they told me about their adoptions and the effort, sacrifice and faith it took to bring these children home. I thought about my other friends that are waiting to adopt, several in different phases of the process. I considered my own adoption and what it took for my parents to bring me home from the foster care system. I thought about how much hope there is in the act of adoption. Hope to bring home a child, hope to bring healing and health, hope for the child to have a family and hope to see that child grow and know our Father who has also adopted us.

But adoption is also about parenting and parenting is challenging! It is a long journey that is full of hope, but also tests our strength and faith at times. Parenting kids from hard places, children who have been through hurt, trauma and loss that most adults could not bear is a great challenge and a great calling. It it is far more intense than bringing the child home. It is nothing less than healing for the whole child. And the healing that we desire for our children is a process and it is anchored in real hope.

Our hope for our children is similar to the hope that God has for us. We are His adopted, often traumatized and certainly attachment deficient children. He uses a balance of nurture, tender mercies and structure. He continually leads us into relationship with Him. In parenting our children we too must lead our children intentionally, firmly and lovingly into a relationship of trust and healing. In doing so our children are able to discover real life-changing hope.

About Us....

Hi and welcome! Healthy Foundations is a blog that is designed to help people with their primary relationships...your family. Many of our posts will be done by licensed professional counselors or other experts in the field of family and relationships. Many of the blogs will center on issues of adoption, foster care, helping kids heal from trauma, blended families and helping families to connect in deeper ways.

Healthy Foundations is an actual support center that is located in Boise, Idaho. (learn more at www.healthyfoundationssupportcenter.com) It is owned by Michelle Alden a licensed professional counselor and author. Michelle has written two books and you can learn more about the books at www.michellealden.com.

If you have questions or issues you would like to see discussed on this blog, please let us know!