Important Topics

A Parallel Process for Treating Parent/Child PTSD

When an young adult experiences symptoms of post-traumatic stress, it’s not unusual for her parents to experience their own trauma-based reactions, including anxiety, confusion, and sometimes denial.  That’s because it’s deeply disturbing  for a parent to know that the child they love has been so deeply wounded.

It can be so difficult for a parent to process their child’s trauma that they may unwittingly minimize and deny the severity of the situation—it’s just too much to take in.  When this is the case, parents may miss the forest for the trees, i.e. they may unintentionally ignore the underlying trauma in favor of a myopic, but perhaps less disturbing, focus on acting out behaviors that are merely symptomatic of the trauma.  Their daughter’s distance, anger, anxiety, and situational avoidance may distract the parent from the painful cause of these symptoms.

In treatment, the key to moving through this denial and confusion is to provide a parallel process to both the young adult and her parents when trauma is suspected.   Working through the parents’ PTSD symptoms can, in turn, help them cope with their daughter’s trauma.   Once they understand that their daughter will be okay, the denial often breaks and real progress in family system can occur.