Trauma Hidden in Plain Sight: A Somatic Approach to Treating Traumatized Children

Abstract
Children referred for therapy frequently present with trying behaviors, rapid mood swings, and poor attention. Often these symptoms are a response to underlying exposures to complex developmental trauma and toxic stress. The accompanying states of numbing, avoidance or high arousal challenge therapists to address the underlying traumatic memory. Somatic and embodied symptoms of trauma often go unrecognized, particularly for preverbal traumatic (under age 5) experiences. Current child trauma treatments frequently necessitate access to language capacity and symbolic thinking. Given these capacities are either truncated due to traumatic activation or not available due to lack of maturation, there is a need for treatment that accesses and addresses nonverbal traumatic expressions. In this workshop, we will offer participants a new approach that is complementary to many existing, more narrative-based child trauma treatments. We will introduce participants to a treatment approach (SMART) developed for children with complex trauma exposure, that addresses somatic regulation through various sensory and motor inputs and thus facilitates embodied trauma processing. By learning to recognize the traumatic content in their problematic symptoms and present moment play, therapists can transform these behaviors into an avenue for healing through playful and fully embodied games and activities.

Drawing from the Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment Model, (SMART) , we will introduce how trauma content presents in embodied and non-verbal ways in children resulting in a need for additional body-based, somatic body ways to process these memories. Participants will learn about the SMART Regulation Map, a simple accessible way to assess a child’s arousal and social engagement moment to moment in session. This map assists therapists in decision-making, whether to support arousal regulation, trauma-processing, or attachment building based upon rapid assessment of the child’s state. This workshop will use clinical film examples of the regulation tools facilitated by a SMART therapist to support improved arousal, increased social engagement, and greater integrative capacity in the child.

This workshop includes active opportunities to explore the tools of regulation. Participants will explore these tools through guided exercises to fully understand their effectiveness on the nervous system, arousal, and our sense of self. Then we will discuss how these physical bottom-up activities can be safely offered in the context of treatment.