FAQs about Trauma Therapy in St. Louis
Trauma Therapy in St. Louis for Kids, Teens, and College Students
A past experience with trauma can lead to some big behaviors and reactions.
Image credit: Sai De Silva @scoutthecity on Unsplash
When anyone in your family has experienced trauma, it impacts everyone. It’s hard to know how to help your child get better, especially when you’re struggling. When is it over? When will it be normal? Is my child’s anxiety and anger typical, or is it a symptom of this traumatic experience that needs to be addressed ASAP?
As a parent going through something really hard, you’re suffering. And if the trauma or grief has happened to your child or teen, you know that they’re really suffering as well - and you’re not sure how to help them.
Your child may be acting out more at school, getting in trouble with their teacher, and withdrawing from their friends.
Or, they might be acting like a perfect angel, helping out and checking in with you all the time because they don’t want to make things worse. They’re not sleeping well anymore. They have a short fuse. They get a blank look on their face at times and seem to space out, and you wonder...are they reliving what has happened?
Trauma Therapy in St. Louis helps you and your child heal from trauma.
Trauma therapy involves helping your child and teen learn about what happened, build the skills they need to manage their trauma symptoms, and move forward holistically. We can never change the trauma that happened to them, but we can change their reactions and their feelings about that trauma. Trauma doesn’t have to hold you back forever. Read on about how our team at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis treats trauma.
Image credit: Joice Kelly @joicekelly at Unsplash
What is involved with trauma therapy in St. Louis?
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we always start from an evidence-based trauma therapy framework.
Most of our therapists incorporate PRAC components, which include starting with psychoeducation, relaxation skills learning and practice, affective expression, and cognitive coping.
After this strong PRAC foundation is built, then we move on to the trauma narrative, helping the child or teen write down what happened to them and gradually challenging inaccurate or unhelpful thoughts and assumptions about the trauma.
We then move on to gradual exposure, sprinkle conjoint sessions throughout, and enhance safety if there are any future safety concerns.
Trauma therapy in St. Louis helps kids and teens:
learn about trauma and its effects
feel validated in their responses
learn how to implement calming skills when feeling stressed
better express thoughts and feelings
recognize unhelpful thoughts and feelings and work to replace them with more accurate ones.
What is Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?
Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or TF-CBT, is an evidence-based model that aims at helping children and adolescents address symptoms as a result of some type of trauma.
Learn more about trauma therapy with Molly at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis
TF-CBT is a more short-term approach at addressing trauma and its effects. Its goal is to assist individuals in coping with trauma related stress through development of healthy coping skills and to help both children and parents process thoughts and feelings related to the trauma. The model focuses on several different components including psychoeducation, relaxation skills, affect regulation and cognitive processing of the trauma, trauma narrative, conjoint child/parent sessions, and ensuring future safety.
Is TF-CBT only for trauma?
We reached out to our certified TF-CBT therapist, Molly Shaffer, to answer this question:
I think its aim is to address impacts of trauma, but we know that anxiety and depression can co occur with trauma. A diagnosis of PTSD is not required to receive this treatment. This approach can help to decrease or manage cognitive and behavioral problems that can come with trauma, anxiety and depression. It also can help improve guardians' understanding of their child's struggles as well as manage their own anxiety surrounding their child's difficult experience.
What are the 3 types of trauma?
The three types of trauma are acute, chronic, and complex.
Acute trauma is trauma from a single stressful event (example: a car accident)
Chronic trauma is repeated and prolonged exposure to traumatic events (example: child abuse, domestic abuse, bullying)
Complex trauma is trauma from exposure to multiple traumatic events repeatedly and cumulatively (example: someone who lives in a community with violence, being exposed to domestic violence, and experiencing physical and emotional abuse).
Regardless of the trauma type and identifier, our trauma-informed therapists are prepared to help you, along with your child and teen, heal from it.
What is trauma therapy called?
There are many different types of trauma therapy, including EMDR, Brainspotting, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and so on.
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis we primarily focus on providing our kids and teens with Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which includes sessions on identifying trauma and traumatic reactions, building relaxation and emotional regulation, and teaching kids and teens ways to re-examine thoughts. With TF-CBT, as compared to other therapy types, we really focus on building a solid foundation of skills before jumping into reprocessing the therapy.
How do I start trauma therapy in St. Louis?
To get started with trauma therapy in St. Louis, you can schedule a free phone consultation right here.
Our first session of trauma therapy in St. Louis would include some rapport building and some preliminary psychoeducation for you and your child about our treatment plan.
We would review components of our trauma treatment plan, identify the specific trauma to be addressed, and build some psychoeducation on that type of trauma and its effects. Sometimes a screening can be administered in the initial session and is used to track progress.
As mentioned above, we always want a solid foundation before diving in to processing the trauma itself, so we spend several weeks building comfort.
And then, we end every session with a rapport-building activity of your child or teen’s choosing. We know that the therapeutic relationship is the most important part of making clinical improvement - so we want to ensure that your child feels heard, understood, and respected in session, and that we have a solid foundation for our work together.
What if I have questions about trauma therapy in St. Louis before getting started?
If you have any questions about therapy, please schedule a phone consultation here. We always want to make sure we’re a good fit before getting started.
You can also review our FAQ’s page to get answers about counseling in St. Louis.
Learn more about our child counselors and therapists for teens at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis
And review our policies and procedures
Trauma therapy can feel scary to seek out. But it’s crucial.
The only way to get past trauma is to go through it, with someone ready to help guide you.
We’re happy to help.
Curious to hear more about trauma therapy in St. Louis? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anxiety and anger management therapy for kids, teens, and college students. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website.
