Tides of Change
:: Things have to change, now.
What we are doing in most cases with children and families is simply not working. In the past two decades the social service and mental health systems have suffered significant loss in available resources. At the same time research into and knowledge of the etiology of trauma in mental, emotional and behavioral disorders is exploding in a new field of neuroscience.
Trauma informed care is leading the charge in effective and efficient child welfare, mental health, educational and juvenile justice service organizations. Those organizations working to remain viable in the coming decade will be called to join this movement.
What is Trauma Informed Care (TIC)?
What is Emotional Regulatory Healing (ERH)?
Glossary of Terms
Recommended Reading (PDF)
:: What is TIC?
Trauma Informed Care (TIC) describes a purposeful, healing approach to individuals, organizations and communities exposed to trauma. TIC has been implemented as part of organizational development interventions, family systems interventions, and also as part of individualized responses to children, adolescents and adults in care.
TIC serves to increase appreciation of the relevance of trauma in understanding children, families, organizations and communities at large and in planning to meet their needs.
TIC provides paradigms for healing without re-traumatizing clients through coercive, punitive and restrictive interventions such as restraint and seclusion.
TIC refers to recognition of the pervasiveness of trauma and a commitment to identify and address it early, whenever possible. TIC also involves seeking to understand the connection between presenting symptoms and behaviors and the individual’s or organization’s past trauma history .
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:: What is ERH?
Emotional Regulatory Healing, ERH, is an integrative, theory based, trauma informed, and whole culture approach to healing of trauma. The objective of ERH is toward the maximization of human potential through healing, regulated relationship.
Created by Juli Alvarado, ERH effectively provides a cohesive framework within which healing can be addressed at the organizational level as well as in clinical programming.
As an organizational intervention, ERH is designed to facilitate the creation of trauma informed management, leadership, and supervision that counteracts the affects of trauma on the macrosystem of providers. As a clinical paradigm for healing, ERH, offers processes, structures and behaviors of staff that serve to increase affect regulation as a decrease in the client’s problematic behaviors is supported. Read more ... (PDF)
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:: Glossary of Terms
Trauma Informed Care and Emotional Regulatory Healing
©Coaching For Life!/Juli Alvarado
Attachment: The relationship between an infant and parent that begins to develop in utero. Attachment is the process by which the child comes to trust and depend on the caring parent to provide for all needs. It is the memory template for human to human bonds and serves as the ‘world view’ in all future relationships. The attachment system is influenced primarily in the first 3 years of life through the type of parenting relationship provided.
Emotional or psychological Trauma: Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless and vulnerable in a dangerous world. Often the result of abuse, neglect or abandonment.
Emotional Regulatory Parenting/Therapy: Serves to strengthen the attachment process through the stabilization of the emotional regulatory system. A healing paradigm for trauma and attachment challenged children and families developed by Juli Alvarado. It is based on the several underlying principles, one of the most vital that all treatment must be geared toward prevention rather than intervention and that until we understand problematic behavior we can not treat it effectively. It is also based on the belief that the family serves as the most profound conduit to body/mind healing for traumatized children and that it is within the home that we will find true, long lasting healing.
Regulatory System: A neurophysiological (body/mind) system that begins to develop in utero and continues its growth throughout the lifespan. It is responsible for the management of social and emotional experiences that manifest in external behaviors.
Regulation: Regulation is a calm state of arousal for the body/mind.
Dysregulation: Dysregulation is a state of stress for the body/mind.
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:: Other important terms:
Amygdala: A part of the brain important in the processing of emotions and regulation. Begins to develop in utero and is fully functioning at birth. Referred to as the fear receptor; it is the unconscious fight/flight/freeze mechanism in response to real or perceived threat.
Attention: A component of relationship between two people, wherein one provides all energy directed at understanding, listening to and caring for another. VITAL between parent and child for healthy development.
Attunement: The ability to align your own internal state with that of another, through both verbal and nonverbal communication skills.
Bonding: The reciprocal process to attachment. Children attach to their caretakers, caretakers bond with children.
Cortisol: A natural neurohormone, known as a stress hormone, released anytime the mind/body becomes dysregulated. Too much cortisol is dangerous to brain tissue and can interfere with the development of attachment and regulation systems.
Cvs2bvs: Acronym for Current View of the Situation ….to…. Better View of the Situation. A strategic thinking strategy taught by Juli Alvarado in working within Child Welfare and highly dysregulated situations.
Dyadic regulation: The level of calm, affectionate and attuned communication between two people, primarily between parent/child.
Hippocampus: A part of the midbrain that serves as a memory map, and utilizes memory of similar experiences when determining level of threat in the present moment. When children suffer trauma at young ages the hippocampus can remain riveted on the memories of fear causing a cascade of fear responses, even when there is no real threat present.
Hyper and Hypo Arousal: Mind/body/behavior responses to fear.
Hyper is more outward such as anxiety, hostile/aggressive and threatening behaviors and Hypo is more inward, such as depression and isolation. Often misdiagnosed in children as ADHD.
Both are results of dysregulation.
Mind/body connection: The mind/body is fully connected. In the past decade we have learned that what happens in the body is happening in the mind and vice versa.
Narrative story telling: Stories, whether in memory or verbally articulated, are the way we make sense of life. Using stories to teach children about why they are the way they are in an effort to normalize experiences for children as we work through the attachment process later in life.
Neurophysiology: The study of the mind/body connection: Neuro is Mind, Physiology is Body
Neuroscience: The new field of science focusing on the mind/body connection in trauma.
Neurosequential Treatment: Developed by Dr. Bruce Perry, MD, PhD: A model of treatment for traumatized children focusing on the building of brain functions not optimally developed at the appropriate stage of development due to trauma for children. Often referenced by Juli Alvarado as a basis for her Emotional Regulatory Healing paradigm for children and families.
Orbitofrontal cortex: Known as the social and emotional control center of the brain. Responsible for the management of and mediation of interpersonal communication, reading of non verbal social cues. Vital in the attachment process, yet if underdeveloped due to trauma can wreak havoc on the child’s ability to attach.
Reactive Attachment Disorder: A diagnosis frequently given to children who have suffered early abuse and neglect. Marked by lack of empathy and inability to connect with others and often accompanied by manipulative and antisocial behavior: RAD can occur when infants don’t receive enough attention, affection and nurturing. The regions of their brains that help them form relationships and to read social cues do not develop properly and they grow up with faulty relational neurobiology including an inability to receive pleasure from healthy human interaction later in life.
Self Awareness: Recognizing that we are a combination of all that we have experienced and that if we have unfinished business emotionally, that unfinished business can seep into current relationships unconsciously. The development of increased self awareness is a critical component for parents and therapists who practice Emotional Regulatory Healing.
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