Month: January 2023

Expressive arts therapy is a multimodal therapeutic approach that incorporates movement, music, play, storytelling and art. People who have suffered trauma, particularly long-term or early-life trauma, may feel disconnected from their bodies. They are unaware of how their bodies communicate with themselves or their immediate environment. To help in the healing process, expressive arts therapy creates a safe space encouraging the individuals explore embodied, nonverbal, sensory-based practices to enable new perceptions of one’s own identity, interpersonal interactions, and physical environment.

The therapeutic use of expression is associated with greater emotions of security, connection, and altruistic behaviour. In trauma-informed therapy, the significance of regaining a sense of security cannot be stressed. Exposure to the arts improves both people’s feeling of self-worth and the quality of their interpersonal relationships. This requires creating circumstances that encourage imaginative play and mimic the stable bond observed in loving families. The arts have a good influence on both individual and community well-being when practised in a group environment. In brief, trauma-informed expressive arts therapy combines neurodevelopmental awareness and the sensory qualities of the arts in trauma intervention, and it includes many concepts unique to the practise of expressive therapy, such as the Expressive Therapies Continuum (Malchiodi, 2012). Expressive Arts Therapy is a strategy that helps people in the first phases of trauma integration and recovery to self-regulate affect and modify the body’s responses to traumatic situations.

Inspired by the works of Dr. Cathy Malchiodi

Neuroscience gives social workers hope because it shows that the work, they are doing has a good chance of improving a child’s life, and because it helps to understand the challenges that children face so that everybody can work together to find solutions.

Children who were neglected or who did not receive adequate attention at home may be more likely to look for it in places that are not as desirable or safe, such as cyberspace. We had worried that they could be more prone to being nurtured and eventually joining a gang or fleeing county boundaries. Some foster kids may be at a higher risk than other kids because of where they live.

There is a lot of rejection that can occur for a child who has experienced trauma in their younger years, and it manifests as sabotage of relationships and difficulty forming relationships, which then translates into bullying.

What’s really important for the adults is to be able to appreciate the knock-on effect of the child’s response to, you know, trauma and past experiences, which can manifest as a lot of perhaps sabotaging relationships and being quite difficult to form a relationship with, which then translates into bullying.

I believe that it is really important for the adults around the child to be able to appreciate the knock-on effect of their response to you know their past trauma and past experiences.

Inspired by the works of UK Trauma Council

Early relationships characterised by abuse and neglect have lasting effects on children. Overreacting to potential threat cues can cause one to miss positive social cues like a playful nudge, making it more difficult to negotiate stressful interactions and acquire confidence in new people, even in enjoyable situations like joining a new sports team.

These responses may make it more likely that further stressful occurrences will occur.

When a child lacks self-assurance and anxiety, they may struggle to meet the demands of daily life, and he or she may also have trouble forming and maintaining healthy relationships with others. This can lead to the premature loss of friends and the guidance of adults, which in turn can challenge the child’s personal development.

All children need care and encouragement from adults who value them and show them attention and love. These positive experiences shape a child’s brain development while traumatic experiences like abuse and neglect impact regions of the brain that are involved in emotion regulation, impulse control, and memory formation. These changes can increase the risk of mental health problems in later life. Hyper vigilance, in which the brain responds more to threat, may result from exposure to domestic violence or physical abuse.

It seems that after experiencing trauma, bad memories become more salient than happy ones, and daily recollections might become less detailed. This is a difficulty since we rely on our prior experiences to guide us through social settings.

Changing our perspective on children’s actions may lead to new responses, but there is still much to understand before we can create strategies that effectively foster resilience and healing. As adults, we may facilitate the development of children’s social skills and provide them with chances for their brains to learn and grow in new ways. 

Inspired by the works of Ann Freud National Centre

Heart-breaking, searing emotions are at the core of what it means to have experienced trauma. This has nothing to do with our mental processes. The core issue here is that our body has become immobilised in a pattern of unbearable feelings.

That’s not really how most people discuss trauma these days. They claim it has to do with digesting a painful memory. It’s about how painful emotions and states like being stuck, may immobilize our bodies. Trauma is characterised by distressing somatic experiences.

The real problem is not what occurred to us so much as the fact that our physical body is unable to get past the grief and pain it experienced. The immune system and trauma are closely connected and it was found that people’s immune systems essentially overreacted and turned against themselves after experiencing traumatic events.

One of the best ways to work with trauma is movement in a trauma sensitive setting. Movement gives us the agency to be in a particular position for some time and at then shift from that posture according to our will.

Additionally, we are able to get a perspective on the passage of time, which is crucial in assisting with the recovery from trauma. That’s just the way you have to go through life: accepting that today might be challenging but looking forward can create better tomorrows. To put it another way, it’s our awareness of passing time that gifts us such insight.

Finally, trauma sensitive movement may help people learn to control their emotions and have a positive, non-threatening relationship with their bodies. When this happens, people are able to experience emotions and connect with them. For true healing to occur, reclaiming our body is essential. Feelings have to do with the body sensations. A delighted heart invokes a happy sensation. We experience the pain of a broken heart through a different sensation. Emotions, then, are rooted in the body. Trauma sensitive movement can help us to regain our agency in understanding and regulating our emotions in a safe space.

Inspired by the works of Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk