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I just celebrated my 30 year anniversary of providing for others what I wished I would have received growing up. From the educators and mental health practitioners I had while experiencing trauma, I wished I had felt a genuine warmth and presence that conveyed, at a visceral level, that I mattered.

Thirty years is also how long I have been journaling in detail, and when I look back on entries from that time, I longed for stability, balance, and peace. Enter the dearest friend and colleague I have ever known, Dr. Beth Randolph. She immediately began loving me unconditionally, celebrating me for being just as I was, including me in her family that was, and is, beyond what anyone could hope for.

I lost Beth a year and a half ago after her long and torturous battle with cancer.

Our last FaceTime together, in spite of the tremendous pain she was in, was filled with joy and celebration of the work. She and I shared a commitment and passion to bringing sensory, somatic healing to all. She radiated on that call. I will never forget it. She was so excited to share with me what happened after we had consulted on a previous FaceTime. On that call, after speaking together about one of her clients, we realized VOO would likely increase the clients’ vagal tone and bring much-needed, fast relief that would reinstate hope and commitment to this unusual process.

She challenged that client to VOO for 30 straight days, just a few minutes a day, and to write about what she noticed happening inside her body immediately afterwards. How grateful I felt and still feel that Beth trusted the zany tools I learned from my master teacher, Dr. Peter Levine.

It didn’t take more than a week for her client to come back into her office excitedly, wanting to understand how the strange tool was so profoundly life-changing for her. That Beth and I had the opportunity to bask in that beautiful reward before she left us, will be a comfort to me as I try to live without her.

Today I celebrate Beth, our 30 year friendship, the 30 years I’ve tried to be the best version of her I can possibly be, and the 30 years you all have allowed me into your lives. From using the very tools I teach to others, as well as experiencing Beth’s unprecedented capacity to love, I have that stability, balance, and peace I longed for. And I swear to you, I can viscerally feel how happy she is for me!

Thank you, Beth. I miss you everyday AND I carry on our work, always in your memory, always for you.

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Research conducted over the past two decades has explicitly revealed how stress and trauma change the brain and, ultimately, affect learning and behavior. I have witnessed the demonstrative effect of these changes in the many years I have worked as a school and clinical psychologist. When I receive referrals from teachers, nurses, administrators, and others, I always begin examining the problem by taking a detailed developmental history starting at the very beginning of the story: conception, gestation, birth, and the very first months and years of life. I thoroughly ask specific questions about accidents, falls, injuries, hospitalizations, and medical or dental procedures. When I do, I am reminded that an ever growing number of students’ academic and behavioral challenges began with a crisis or with one or more traumatic events. Without considering these early sources of the problem when developing interventions, I have seen firsthand that, regardless of excellent intentions, we needlessly exacerbate problematic conditions for our students.

No matter how ill informed or unprepared we may feel at times when trying to help students who experience the residual effects of trauma, we need not despair. There are many simple yet powerful ways we can make a difference. Science is now showing us that even our facial expressions, body language, and willingness to maintain supportive physical proximity to our students make a measurable positive impact on brain and nervous system functioning. When we smile at a student, for example, and thereby show compassion for their struggle or suffering, even if little can be done, their heart rate and blood pressure decrease, settling their nervous system into a more effective state.

Anything we can do to help students function within this “more effective state,” or what some researchers call the “Zone of Optimal Arousal,” is more than worthwhile. Learning and adaptive behavior are only possible within this “zone” because it is there that the most important capacity for learning and adaptive behavior is possible: self-regulation. No one can sit still, concentrate, assimilate information, and remember what they just heard when arousal levels are “stuck on high,” as they are for traumatized students, but that doesn’t mean they have ADHD, Bipolar Disorder or learning disabilities. It simply means they lack the necessary capacity to modulate their arousal.

When students experience trauma, especially when repeated or prolonged, their brain’s amygdala continues to fire messages of fear to the rest of the brain whether they are in actual danger or not. The amygdala “turns on” our students’ fight or flight response for survival, and “turns off” the neocortex, the part of the brain critically necessary for school functioning. This is why too many of our students have poor attention, poor impulse control, and a hairline trigger for anger. They live in a constant state of fear when their brain’s first and only priority is survival.

Without the healthy operation of the neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for foresight and planning, impulse control and mastery of language, it is nearly impossible for students to learn and behave as expected. Reduction of their anxiety and arousal through simple soothing techniques that keep them in the optimum zone is necessary. For instance, recent findings in the field of neuroscience highlight the biological importance of resources to the brain’s optimal functioning. Some of the most important resources to our students, especially those who have experienced one or more traumatic events, include safety, competence, and sensory awareness.

Educators can provide a sense of relative safety for their students through explicit rules and regulations, limits, and boundaries that are consistently enforced. Traumatized students have experienced an event(s) that was unpredictable and beyond their control, contributing to their sense that the world is not only dangerous, but deadly. We can offset this experience by making their world at school more predictable and less scary with our consistency and compassion. Posted “If-Then” charts, for example, can make it clear: “When you do ‘that,’ ‘this’ WILL happen” 100 % of the time. Though they will challenge these limits and test the boundaries, they will eventually come to see that their world is more predictable than they thought. This is calming to students and aids in their ability to settle into the optimum zone.

Creating opportunities for success, mastery and competence is an important part of what we can do to counteract our traumatized students’ sense of hopelessness, failure, and despair. Finding out what students are good at and providing them with chances to engage in those things has biological necessity, according to the latest neuroscientific research. Success and mastery change the brain, in all the ways that promote achievement and prosocial behavior.

Many educators already know the importance of incorporating sensory awareness into what they do, whether they teach reading through the Lindamood-Bell reading program or promote the critical capacity of self-regulation through the occupational therapy program called, “How Does Your Engine Run?” Teaching sensory awareness engages the part of the brain hijacked by trauma, and re-integrates it with the rest of the brain, making learning and adaptive behavior possible.
One tool I have found especially helpful and effective in developing and expanding upon our students’ resources in order to promote self-regulation is what I call a “Resource Inventory.”

I keep a record of what resources are available to students, as well as those that are missing and need to be created or restored. I never develop an intervention plan for a student without this information because of how imperative resources are to the optimal functioning of the brain. In addition to taking a detailed developmental history and resource inventory, as well as enhancing safety, competence, and sensory awareness, we can also provide important psychoeducation to colleagues and parents. Our psychoeducation about the effects of trauma on the brain and the importance of resources to ameliorate these effects is invaluable. I do this through conversations that emphasize strengths, what is working, and what we would never want to change. Neuroscience has proven the metaphysical hypothesis that what we focus on expands.

Finally, we cannot do any good work without taking care of ourselves. Let us first ask of ourselves, “Am I operating in this moment from my own zone of optimal arousal? What do I need to do to resource myself right now so that I am self-regulating my internal state and having a positive impact on my students?” We cannot give what we do not possess. To prevent my own burn-out, I ask myself every hour of the day, “What do I need right now? Do I need to go to the restroom? Do I need something healthy to eat or drink? Do I need to sit down quietly for a moment and take a few long, deep breaths?” Incorporating this simple self-care ritual has completely changed the way I experience my day and the people in it, including the traumatized students I serve who are, let’s face it, some of our greatest challenges.

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However, there is a growing number of students in every school district each year for whom we cannot seem to find an accurate match. These students continue to baffle educational professionals, despite their best efforts to understand and intervene. These are often the students who arrive to school, no matter how young, with a significant history already in the making. Some have been asked to leave their daycare or pre-schools. Some have been given disciplinary transfers from one school to another. Others come to school with long, often conflicting psychological and/or medical reports from outside agencies and hospitals with various diagnoses and recommendations, some tried, some abandoned, or are students quickly acquiring such reports. Numerous traditional forms of intervention were tried with little success. School psychologists review, observe, and consider what the situation may be with these students but cannot seem to put their finger on the specific challenges and needs of the students – on what the actual barrier to their successful education is. Designing and implementing effective interventions becomes futile because the problem is not clearly understood.

When the problem is not clearly understood, we miss not only the opportunity to intervene within general education in an effective way but also the opportunity to use the designating categories of special education in a more accurate and comprehensive way. Some designating categories are broader and more encompassing than their current use implies, Other Health Impairment and Traumatic Brain Injury, specifically. They are underused as a result. A number of the more baffling students assessed would be better understood as having health impairments or brain injuries because of their significant medical histories or traumatic experiences. Educators have not yet considered these designations for many of the students who need them, most likely due to limited knowledge of current brain and nervous system research. The findings of the last decade – “the decade of the brain” – are critical to the work we do. Such findings point to the importance of considering pre- and peri-natal development, trauma, and stress, in both the student and the student’s caregivers when we assess for potential barriers to learning.

Rather than simply identifying the problem and developing solutions for the problem as defined, we need to understand the source of the problem. That is what we do when we consider pre- and peri-natal development, trauma and stress. Understanding the source of learning and behavioral challenges is more important to best practice than ever before. In light of compelling research on the developing brain and its effect on the nervous system and self-regulatory capacities, we now know that without understanding the source of the problem, we do not understand its solution. Re-consideration of both the criteria for the designating categories, as well as the use of the categories, is implicated.

Identifying barriers to learning is one of the most important things we do as educators. Within general education we have identified poor attendance, cultural and environmental conditions, second language issues, chronic illness, and economic disadvantages among others. Within special education we have assessed for developmental delays, physical disabilities, learning disabilities, emotional problems, and health impairments among others. There remains a group of students, however, whose inability to access their education with success is still not understood. There remains, in this twenty-first century, a misunderstood child.

We first heard about the “misunderstood child” in the 1980’s when the book by the same name was originally published (Silver, 1984). The author helped us put a name to those students who were struggling with learning disabilities that at the time we did not know enough about. We rose to the challenges then of those students and learned to intervene with them in more effective ways. We learned at that time, just as we continue to learn today, that when we misunderstand children, we leave them behind.

This is a new era. Twenty years after the publication of Misunderstood Child: Understanding and Coping with Your Child’s Learning Disabilities, we have new challenges to face in education. Post-9/11, in light of numerous school shootings, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters, and with media and internet access at an all-time high, our students experience exposure to local and global violence in frightening proportions. We would not only be naïve but also dangerously ignorant to think that this exposure is not having a significant impact on our students. In fact, we witness that impact in our classrooms and on our playgrounds every day. We hear more now than ever before about bullies, crises, and school violence. The growing focus of education on prevention and intervention in these areas is because we realize these problems are on the rise.

As we face this new era, having committed to “no child left behind,” a reconsideration of our priorities and commitments in education is called for. We need to ask important questions. Have we identified, in either general or special education, all the possible barriers to learning and behaving in school with success? Are the designating categories as they are currently being used comprehensive enough to account for the barriers our students face? Why is there a growing number of students who do not fit into the categories as they are currently being used? Who are these students who do not fit? What are the barriers to their education? What do we need to start doing to assess them more accurately, identify them more comprehensively, and serve them more effectively?

In an attempt to answer these questions, the groundbreaking book, Why Students Underachieve: What Educators and Parents Can Do about It, was written to review current research findings on the developing brain and nervous system – research that is completely relevant to education yet largely ignored. The findings of this research demonstrate that there is a direct and significant effect of experience on the brain and ultimately on learning and behavior. While the findings point to a single barrier that may underlie the struggles of both general and special education students, we must also acknowledge that our own limited awareness of these findings and their implications is also a barrier to the success of our students. We can only know how to help them when we know how their experiences have impacted their development. As the relationship between experience, the developing brain, and subsequent learning and behavior is made evident, it will become clear why no one needs this information more than educators.

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Once traumatized, two different patterns of responding to the environment emerge. Some children appear hyper and highly irritable – an overaroused-looking pattern – while other children look shut down, withdrawn, or dissociated – an underaroused-looking pattern. Whether overaroused or underaroused, the key to understanding traumatized children is to know that their nervous system is unregulated and out of balance. It is revved high and wound tight.

One trauma survivor described the dichotomy of undersarousal in this way: “You feel like a duck. You’re sitting on the water all regal but you’re pedaling like hell underneath.” Another trauma survivor said that with underarousal, “It’s like your body stops, but your insides keep moving.” The underaroused pattern only looks like the trauma survivor is calm and less aroused than in the case of the overaroused pattern. Inside, however, the nervous system is just as revved.

Overarousal often looks like children have lost control of themselves, while underarousal looks like children have given up. Picture the child who is constantly getting up out of his seat, trying to get involved in other people’s business, putting his hands and feet where they are not wanted. Consider the child who looks for fights, using his body and face to intimidate, threaten and provoke. Think of the child who looks at people suspiciously and often complains that people are looking at him funny, trying to start a fight with him. These are the children who are overaroused, who get noticed, and who are more obviously traumatized.

Alternatively, think of the child who has given up. The one who does not seem to try anymore, who sits at his desk claiming he is bored, or does not care, or nothing matters, or there just isn’t anything he likes. Picture the child who is withdrawn from friends, teachers, or other adults, who looks like he is trying to disappear. This is the student who is underaroused or dissociated. He may stare blankly, daydream, look through you, not hear what you are saying, or forget what you just told him.

Some traumatized students may demonstrate one or the other response pattern most of the time, but others may display both of them at different times throughout the same day. Some children alternate between shutting down completely when something challenges them, and jumping out of their seat to look for a fight for no apparent reason. They may alternate between staring blankly for several minutes at a time, daydreaming, and then accusing their siblings or classmates of looking at them funny and threatening them violently.

Additional signs and symptoms of traumatization are as follows:

fears, anxieties, worries, nervousness, thoughts of doom psychosomatic complaints (sore tummy, headache, aches/pains) inattentiveness, distractibility, difficulty concentrating, confused, dazed daydreams, spacey, “floating through life” quality, out of body experiences tantrum behaviors, easily upset, difficult to soothe, excessive crying anger, rage, aggression, violence, threatens and/or attacks others selfinjurious behaviors (cutting, mutilating, threatens/attempts suicide) difficulty processing, learning, and retaining information difficulty retrieving information already learned compulsive behaviors (excessive talking, hitting others) eating disturbances (eating too much or too little) sleep disturbances (nightmares, sleepwalking, night terrors) attentionseeking behaviors anxiety disorders (school phobia, separation anxiety, OCD, panic attacks) ADHDlooking behaviors (can’t sit still, can’t concentrate, “ants in the pants”) reenactment of the trauma (obsessive thoughts regarding guns/death; looks for fights and/or dangerous situations, fearless, instigates punishments) difficult to engage, avoids or refuses to work perfectionist, rigid, inflexible (big upsets over small mistakes) enuresis (wets pants), encopresis (soils pants) selfmedicates (sniffs glue, smokes marijuana) bullies or is the “scapegoat” excessive clinging easily startled and jumpy irritable and agitated withdrawn from family and friends sad, listless, decreased activity extreme sensitivity to light and sound sexual acting out fear of going crazy

TRAUMA CHANGES THE BRAIN

The fact that trauma changes the brain, does not mean that with the right kinds of intervention we cannot do much to reverse the effects of trauma on the brain. That is very important to remember. With the right kind of help, children who have been traumatized can heal and regain much of their pre-trauma abilities.

Once traumatized, children’s baseline levels of arousal and anxiety become elevated or “stuck on high,” even when they look like they are underaroused. This is the result of several different neural and biochemical systems responding to the experience(s) of terror. For instance, people who have been traumatized develop abnormalities in the release of brain chemicals that regulate arousal and attention (van der Kolk, 2002). In untraumatized children, stress activates all the principle anti-stress hormones which enable active coping behaviors. In traumatized children, however, relatively low levels of these anti-stress hormones exist causing an inability to regulate or manage responses to stress (van der Kolk, 2002). This is why traumatized children are easily overwhelmed by the demands of their environment, especially school.

The elevated baseline levels of arousal and anxiety in traumatized students leaves them in a persistent and biologically-based state of low-level fear (Perry, Pollard, Blakley, Baker, & Vigilante, 1995). Their more sensitive system can now become highly aroused by what we may consider minor stressors, such as attending school and learning new academic material.

Research in the field of psychology has for decades made us aware of the need for an optimal level of arousal in order for learning to take place. Arousal has the potential to stimulate learning, memory, and performance when it is optimal, and has the potential to inhibit learning, memory, and performance when it is in excess of what can be comfortably regulated by the learner’s nervous system. When functioning within the optimal zone of arousal, children are able to process, integrate, and remember information. This is key to understanding children who have great difficulty learning and performing in the classroom.

High levels of arousal interfere with information processing in all people, not just children. Advocates in the field of health and medicine today recommend that patients bring a friend or family member with them to the doctor’s office when facing potentially life-threatening conditions. This is because we know how difficult it is for patients to process information while in a highly aroused state. Any one of us who has had to face this alone knows how little we remembered of what the doctor said. Only after getting into the safety of our own home, for instance, do we think of all the questions we had wanted to ask but forgot in the moment.

The traumatized child has difficulty processing verbal information especially. Various studies assessing trauma’s impact on the brain found increased activity in the right hemisphere, involved in nonverbal processing, while the activity of the left hemisphere, responsible for language processing, was decreased (Teicher, 2000; van der Kolk, 2002).

High levels of arousal cause our children to feel more anxious, and when more anxious, closer attention is paid to nonverbal than verbal cues (Perry et al., 1995). Traumatized children actually become fixated on nonverbal cues that may aid in their survival, even when no real threat in the present moment exists. Remember, traumatized children live in a state of low-level fear most of the time, readying themselves for the next threat, whether real or perceived. Their brain’s first and only concern when feeling threatened is survival, not reading, writing, or arithmetic. The curriculum and other classroom demands are ignored when the focus of the brain is survival.

By extension of their difficulty processing verbal information, traumatized children also have great difficulty following directions, recalling what was heard, and making sense out of what was just said (Steele & Raider, 2001). Focusing, attending, retaining and recalling verbal information are all difficult tasks for the traumatized child, as is problem-solving (Yang & Clum, 2000).

Finally, the chronic high state of arousal that traumatized children live in interferes with learning by interfering with the functioning of the hippocampus, that part of the brain that is responsible for memory. One study found that traumatized children have lower memory volume in their left-brain hippocampal areas (Bremmer, Krystal, Charnez, & Southwick, 1996) while another study found that the stress involved in trauma caused the release of hormones that damaged the left hippocampal area thereby increasing memory deficit. REM sleep, a critical agent in the consolidation of memory, is disturbed in those with unresolved trauma (Siegel, 2003).

It is nearly impossible for children to consolidate memories – working memory into short-term memory and short-term memory into long-term memory – when they cannot concentrate. Children are less capable of concentrating when they are in a chronic state of high arousal or anxiety. Both short-term (Starknum, Gebarski, Berent, & Schterngart, 1992) and verbal or explicit memory (Bremmer et al., 1996) suffer when people are in this state.

TRAUMA CAN BE HEALED

Yet so many continue to suffer for years, even decades – regardless of various forms of therapy. This is because most forms of therapy involve the so-called “talking cure” which engages the part of the brain least involved in the experience of trauma.

When we are impacted by a traumatic event, we become overwhelmed – not just psychologically, or in our mind – but physiologically as well, in our body. During overwhelm, we become governed by the oldest part of our brain that overrides our newer, more rational, cognitive brain to focus exclusively on survival. It is this part of the brain, our old brain that needs to be more engaged in the therapeutic process in order for therapy to work in the long-term.

Through the language of sensations – not thoughts or feelings, but sensations -it becomes possible to engage our old brain. When we incorporate the body and its physical sensations into therapy, trauma can be healed.

The pervasive view as a result of the commonly used medical model is that symptoms of post-traumatic stress constitute a lifelong disorder that can only be managed with medication and therapy. This is not the case. I have seen firsthand how these natural yet persistent responses to a traumatic event can be healed when the body and its sensations are integrated into treatment.

HOW YOU CAN HELP YOUR CHILD

The following list details the many things we can do to help heal our child’s post-traumatic stress:

1. First recognize that your internal state completely affects your child’s internal state. Children absorb the energy, calm or anxious, of their parents and other adults like a sponge absorbs water. Recognize that your own unresolved trauma may get triggered by your child’s experience and cause you to have an anxious internal state that will interfere with your child’s ability to heal. Get the help you need through the support of family and friends, or a professional, if need be, so you can be calm and well-resourced for your child.

2. Surround your child with affectionate loved ones who will act as a healing community for him or her. Do not allow your child to isolate. Healing takes place in communion with other people who remind us that we are not alone and that together we can get through anything.

3. Help orient your child to the world around him or her. Traumatized people tend to go into dark, internal places that only reinforce their suffering. Although being outdoors in nature can be very resourceful, whether inside or outside, have your child look around and notice whatever is around him or her. Play a simple game called, “I See, I Hear, I Sense,” during which you take turns naming something you see, something you hear, and something you sense inside your body. Take turns reporting a physical sensation you notice in your body, such as warm, cold, jumpy, calm, tight, tense, relaxed, strong, weak, solid, mushy, etc.

After your child reports a sensation, especially an unpleasant one, encourage him or her to focus on the sensation until it changes. It always does without having to make it happen. If the unpleasant sensation lasts more than a minute or two without shifting, simply have your child orient to the world around him or her again and the sensation will change (for more details about this important healing process, please read, “Why Students Underachieve: What Educators and Parents Can Do about It,” pages 123, 124).

4. In trauma, people lose their ground – their sense of connectedness to themselves, to the earth, to nature, and to other people. Help your child re-establish a sense of ground by having him or her sit in a chair with his or her feet firmly planted on the floor. Have your child notice how he or she is being supported by the chair and the floor. Have them locate their center of gravity in the abdomen area by having them place their hands on their belly and focus on their breathing. Encourage your child to fill his or her belly with air as he or she takes a deep breath in through the nose. Trauma often restricts breathing patterns to the chest area, keeping oxygen from the rest of the body. Having your child experience a fuller, deeper breath that nourishes a larger region of the body is a helpful intervention. Breathing in through the nose engages the part of the nervous system that helps calm and relax, whereas breathing in through the mouth engages the part of the nervous system responsible for accelerated heart rate and blood pressure. You can redirect your child’s breathing very simply so they experience a greater sense of ease.

5. Maintain a moderately quiet, safe place at home within which your child can live and work as peacefully as possible. Loud music or noises, especially yelling, can keep the arousal level of a traumatized child very high. Keep television news and other disturbing stories and images away from your child’s attention.

6. The high arousal levels of traumatized children require firm yet flexible limits and boundaries that allow them a certain amount of room to move. Although they will test these boundaries with various challenging behaviors, what they really crave is the containment that limits provide. Consistently apply the same consequence for the same behavior. The more traumatized children can predict exactly what will happen if they behave a certain way, the safer they will come to feel in their environment.

7. You cannot positively acknowledge your traumatized child too much. In order to develop a sense of competency, value, worth, pride, satisfaction, and strength, children need to earn positive recognition. Consistently reward your child for desirable behaviors, with a smile, a hug, and an encouraging word.

8. Use time-out intelligently, and ultimately, successfully by first teaching yourself and then your child to connect with bodily sensations in order to use them as signals. Bodily sensations of heat, rapid heart rate, tightness, or tension, for example, may signal the need for time away from others in a safe, non-punitive place. Having such a place to go to as a resource – without being banished there punitively – can help the nervous system do what it needs to do to calm and return to balance (this usually takes 20 minutes).

9. Help your child build and/or maintain and access resources, such as friends, loving family members, and activities they are good at that help them feel competent and successful, whether academic, athletic, artistic, or philanthropic/helpful to others. All children need to feel like they matter, that they are of value, and have an important contribution to make.

10. Offering quiet (very little talking) connection through gentle holding can help facilitate the release or letting go of stress and anxiety. When holding your child, you may notice your child trembling, shaking, giving off heat or sweating, even yawning excessively. These responses are not only normal but also healthy and should not be interrupted but simply watched and validated through brief statements like, “That’s it. That’s okay. Just let that happen. I am right here with you.” (More on this in “Why Students Underachieve: What Educators and Parents Can Do about It,” pages 62, 63.)

11. While it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to have your child talk about a traumatizing event(s), if your child continually brings it up and wants to talk about it, it is important to emphasize at different points throughout the story what your child’s resources were – who or what was helpful to them or what their strengths were that contributed to their survival.

12. Educate your child’s teachers and doctors about what your child has been through and what his or her particular needs are. Be cautious about accepting lifelong labels and prescriptions for medication. There are many alternative understandings and treatments that offer greater hope and have far fewer side effects.

For more ideas, and to understand why they are helpful, please read “Why Students Underachieve: What Educators and Parents Can Do about It.” Pages 143-148 highlight what is important not to do with your traumatized child (although this section is part of the chapter on emotionally disturbed (ED) students, the fact that traumatized children and ED students respond in similar ways some of the time does not mean that your child is ED).

CONCLUSION

I hope this guide has made it clear that if we want to heal trauma, the language of sensations cannot be ignored. Traumatic events are experienced and recalled not just by our cognitive mind but also by our brain and body. The longer we engage only the cognitive mind in the healing process, which is what we do when we send our traumatized child to an anger management group or to a traditional talk therapist, the longer healing does not take place – especially not in the long term. This can actually create more damage than we ever imagined. New insights without the body’s capacity to follow through can set up troubled children for feelings of greater failure, shame, and helplessness because they now know better but find that they still cannot do better. No matter what their cognitive mind thinks is possible, their body has not been engaged in the healing process and, therefore, cannot physically tolerate the feelings and sensations of pain and discomfort that their daily lives evoke.

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The post Not ADHD, Not Bipolar, Not Learning Disabilities – Trauma appeared first on Dr. Reggie Melrose.

My son is logging in right now to his online schedule of classes, for the first day of school, and we’re all a little tense around here.

Here is my introduction to a new guide I am launching today as a PDF to keep it easy. Just download and get started with over 50 simple do’s, don’ts, and practical seconds-long activities to get us all feeling better about how things are right now.

As educators today, more than ever, we need quick ways to get the brain ready for both teaching and learning. Whether we are homeschooling, teaching remotely or in person, we are all experiencing the effects of these stressful times. Some of us experience those effects directly, others of us indirectly through the experiences of others. Either way, we are absorbing stress and it changes the brain. It shifts the brain into anxiety, distraction and shut down, creating obstacles to learning that need to be overcome.

We can get ahead of this. Let’s no longer assume that everyone is ready for what we have to offer as teachers and parents. Let’s take the seconds, or in some instances, the few moments necessary to set the brain into effective action for all. The many activities of this guide are tried and true. They will help us to feel better as we meet the extraordinary demands of this time, making teaching and parenting more enjoyable, as well as learning more possible.

Get the Book!

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