Trauma can occur and many stages of life, however treating adolescent trauma looks different than treating adult trauma. Does this come as a surprise to you? If so, I am going to break down what really is trauma therapy for teens. If you're a parent or a teen who has questions about trauma therapy, you’ll get answers that will tell you what trauma therapy for teens looks like, what a teen can expect in trauma therapy, and how trauma therapy for teens is different from adult trauma therapy.

Trauma-Focused Therapy

First of all, it is important to understand what trauma-focused therapy looks like. A clinician practicing trauma-focused therapy:

• Realizes the broad impact of trauma and understands treatment approaches for recovery.

• Recognizes the symptoms of trauma in patients, their families, and others involved in their world. 

• Responds by integrating knowledge about trauma into the therapeutic process.

• Seeks to actively combat re-traumatization.

Trauma-focused therapy seeks to understand how your traumatic experience impacts your overall well-being both psychologically and physically. The purpose of trauma-focused therapy is to offer a safe space to process trauma as well as learn skills and strategies to assist you in better understanding and coping with emotions and memories tied to the traumatic experience. The end goal of trauma therapy is to facilitate and encourage you to create a personally meaningful narrative of your life and find adaptive ways to move forward. 

Trauma Therapy for Teens

Working through trauma with teens requires understanding a few crucial concepts:

Trust

Trust is a key part of therapy. As a therapist who works with teens, I realize the utmost importance of truly getting to know an adolescent in order to build a genuine relationship. Without establishing trust, there’s no foundation to begin the work of trauma therapy. Therapists and teens working together must establish safety and respect for one another. It’s crucial to recognize that this step may take time to develop - relationships take time to establish.

Emotions

Therapy, especially trauma therapy, involves a lot of different emotions. This is why safety, trust, and respect are so important. Emotions that often emerge in trauma therapy include:

• Fear

• Sadness

• Shame

• Embarrassment

• Anger

• Worry

• Confusion

• Irritability

• So many more.

You may even experience more complex feelings like detachment from others and life. Know that this is part of the process and that you won’t always feel this way.

I like to use the analogy of waves to explain emotions. An emotion can wash over you. You might even feel like an emotion crashes down on you or you get swept into a current. But if you can lean into the emotion, as you dip into a wave that’s just about to break, you can often come to the surface easier. In therapy, you will work to explore emotions, make them more tolerable, and learn healthy coping skills.

Making Meaning

Much of trauma therapy involves making meaning from your experience - understanding an experience you’ve had, especially trauma, in a different way. This involves exploring different ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, in order to find healthy coping skills. In the midst of this process, you‘ll start to notice an increase in hope that things can be different and better. That suffering doesn’t have to be inevitable.

Mastery

One of my favorite parts of working with teens with trauma is helping them gain a sense of mastery. You’ll learn and establish new skills to manage difficult thoughts and feelings, and be able to adaptively navigate situations. This is so empowering and will lead to you feeling good about yourself. You’ll ultimately learn skills to become self-sufficient. In your therapy session with me, we will celebrate these wins when you successfully handle difficult circumstances.

Making the Most of Your Trauma Therapy Experience

Whether you’re a teen already in trauma therapy, or just thinking about starting, here are a few tips to help you make the most of your therapy experience:

Be Honest

Be as truthful as you can with your therapist. If you struggle to be open, talk with your therapist about what’s getting in the way. It might feel scary to verbalize certain thoughts and feelings but that’s exactly why you’re in therapy - to work together to walk through all those big emotions and tricky thoughts that are difficult to understand.

Practice

Therapy is a special way to create space for yourself to explore different patterns or habits, you’ve learned. You get to take a closer look at your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As therapists, we want you to practice the new things you’re learning in therapy in your life. Remember that it’s an adjustment to try new ways of relating or communicating with others. It will probably feel hard to slow down and take better care of yourself. Just like learning a sport or musical instrument, you have to practice new skills over and over again in order to become competent.

Give it a Chance

Therapy takes time. You may even feel worse before you feel better. If you struggle with crippling depression or anxiety, don’t expect to suddenly feel better after one therapy session. It takes time to process and make sense of your trauma experience. It takes time to find different ways to cope with your trauma and manage upsetting symptoms.

Be Open-Minded

Therapy can be challenging, but it is also a great opportunity to learn about yourself and grow. Your therapist might recommend activities or coping strategies you haven’t heard of before. Try things out! See if they work, and if they don’t, that’s okay. Talk about what happened with your therapist. We’re on your side and want you to be successful. There will be moments where things feel outside of your comfort zone, know that this is okay and also part of the process. Be open and willing to try new things. You never know what might work, and you may surprise yourself!

Are you a parent of a teen who’s experienced trauma? Are you concerned about their well-being and want to get them back on track to living their best life? Or perhaps you’re a teen struggling to make sense of your trauma experience. Consider booking a consultation with one of our Woven therapists (California residents only). We provide online therapy and have therapists who are trained in emdr therapy. We also offer many different types of trauma therapy groups. All of our therapists specialize in trauma informed care, and informed trauma therapy. Your best life is just around the corner.