At Clearview Horizon Girls Academy, we emphasize trauma-informed care for teens. Instead of eliminating undesirable behaviors, we emphasize understanding the underlying reasons for those behaviors, which are usually related to previous traumas. By creating an environment based on connection, trust, and caring relationships, we enable our students to feel safe, heard, and able to heal fully.
The Importance of Trauma-Informed Care for Teens
Traditional school settings often rely on punishment and strict enforcement of rules. Suspensions, detentions, and other punitive measures are used as motivation for change. Though such strategies may halt unwanted behavior for a while, they do not address the original cause of the unsuitable behavior of the student. What’s more, consequences may be delivered without empathy or relatedness. However, empathy and relatedness have everything to do with encouraging successful and lasting changes. At Clearview Horizon Girls Academy, we know that connection can reveal the root of the trauma. This is why we use trauma-informed care for teens.
School-aged children who have faced trauma in their lives usually reenact the same trauma in their behavioral patterns at school as a coping mechanism. They might respond to teachers defiantly to release their anger from past abuses. Students can act out and push other people away to avoid being open to feelings of weakness. Adolescents’ brains essentially get stuck in a fight-or-flight mode because of past negative experiences.
When teens are in this mode, forceful punishment only produces a negative result. Punishment reinforces the idea that the world is a bad place that only offers pain, rejection, and lack of understanding. The student becomes increasingly distrustful of authority figures and emotionally closes down to avoid further negativity.
Building Trust as a Foundation for Change
This is where relationships can become a crucial aspect of trauma-informed care. At Clearview Horizon Girls Academy, we teach our faculty and staff to approach students with compassion. We strive to develop trust with our students and create an atmosphere where every person is seen, heard, and accepted for who they are without judgment.
How Trauma-Informed Care for Teens Builds Understanding and Promotes Healing
At Clearview Horizon Girls Academy, we try to understand each student’s story and what causes them to behave the way they do. Maybe a student is retreating and sulking because she has just experienced a terrible loss and is grieving. Perhaps another student’s rebellion is only hiding profound insecurity about her self-worth as a result of childhood abuse or negligence. Recognizing each student’s life filter enables us to act with sympathy rather than retribution.
With this understanding, we can have honest and open conversations to help students acknowledge their feelings and manage their emotions in healthy ways. We communicate that their feelings are real. Then, we help them understand some productive ways to channel their feelings. Practical, rather than punitive, is the purpose of Clearview Horizon Girls Academy.
How Clearview Creates a Healing Community
Most importantly, we want to create a community at Clearview where students know they have a support system. Victims of traumatic experiences often feel like they are the only ones suffering, which means that the presence of caring connections can be an extremely strong healer. Students are also encouraged to form relationships with each other through various group activities and discussions. Trusted teachers, counselors, and mentors offer emotional protection during trauma-informed teen care.
The importance of this relationship-oriented approach cannot be overemphasized. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) publication, Trauma-Informed Care: A Sociocultural Perspective, explains this approach. The authors explain that being understood, accepted, and supported gives people who have been through trauma the inner strength to heal past pain. With connection as a healing force, walls of anger and defiance are slowly dismantled. Old negative ways of coping disappear as new positive ones replace them.
How Our Students Benefit From Trauma-Informed Care
At our academy, we have witnessed first-hand how students flourish under this system of care. The withdrawn student gets lively, interacts with her classmates, and regains self-esteem. Rebellious students can become more mellow as they become convinced that their place is secure. Behavioral problems subside once the underlying causes of those behaviors are addressed.
No one can argue that working through trauma is indeed difficult work that requires patience and dedication. Healing of trauma wounds is a continuous process, and there will always be relapses and steps backward before progress is maintained. Still, we’ve seen how providing a solid base of connectivity, love, and faith nurtures growth.
Our learners have suffered enough in their young lives. They don’t need another cold authority figure who meets their pain with further rejection. Effective trauma-informed care involves the warm hug of connection. It happens in the moments when someone is finally greeted with the empathy they have been missing. At that point of total acceptance, the true healing journey unfolds.
Connection is a significant factor in trauma-informed care. As a parent, you can listen to your daughter’s needs, validate her experiences, and provide her with consistent support. We work to create an environment of empathy, understanding, and trust at our academy and want to help you do the same in your home environment. Let us join hands to create a healing and growth culture where your daughter will be able to prosper and blossom. At Clearview Horizon Girls Academy, we embrace the power of connection in helping our students to overcome their traumas. To learn more about the importance of connection in trauma-informed care, reach out to Clearview Horizon today at 866-584-4788.
