Margaret Blaustein – 2-Day Course: ARC Trauma Treatment For Children and Adolescents

Outline

THE ARC TREATMENT FRAMEWORK
Build a Foundation for Treatment

• Tune into engagement
  • Factors that affect engagement in trauma treatment
  • Strategies to support child, caregiver, and provider engagement
• The role of education
  • Tune in to the role of education in thoughtful trauma intervention
• Use of routines and rhythms to build safety and support goals
  • Strategies to increase felt safety through predictability
  • Build self-regulation with daily routines
  • Use of structures to support treatment goals

How to Foster Attachment: Work with the Caregiver System to Build a Safe-Enough Container

• Manage caregiver responses to trauma reactions
  • The cycle of dysregulation between child and caregiver
  • Tools to help caregivers to recognize their own emotions
  • Address feelings of helplessness, inadequacy and rejection
  • Approaches and techniques to teach caregivers to:
    • Identify their triggers
    • Depersonalize trauma driven behaviors
    • Cognitively reframe responses to trauma reactions
    • Use self-talk to counter self-blame
    • Handle “button-pushing” behavior
• Attunement strategies for positive attachment
  • Learn the emotional language of kids who have experienced trauma
  • Become a “Feeling Detective” to read emotional cues
  • Identify child’s trauma triggers and responses
  • 5 steps to master reflective listening – help kids feel heard
• The power of building effective responses in establishing secure attachment
  • Use attunement skills to understand behaviors
  • Identify the “go-to’s” of behavior response
  • Experiment purposefully with other strategies

Regulation: Manage Out of Control Emotions and Reduce Difficult Behaviors

• Identify triggers and emotional responses
• Use labeling to raise awareness of feelings
• How feelings show up in thoughts, behaviors and the body
• Where feelings and body states come from
• Modulate emotion and the body’s alarm system
• ”Feelings Toolkit” for emotional experience tolerance
• Teach kids to understand degrees of feeling
• Connect children to their bodies
• Understand and regulate the arousal response

Competency: Build Resilience and Establish Identity and Sense of Self

• Explore relationships and build connections
  • Help children understand the role of relationships
  • Identify safe resources and healthy relationships
  • Approaches to develop effective communication skills
• Strengthening executive functions
  • Ways to build problem solving and negotiation skills
  • Impulse control exercises
• Self-identity developments
  • How to explore individuality
  • Techniques to establish positive self-recognition
  • Contextual aspects of self and identity
  • Approaches to develop future orientation
• Trauma Experience Integration
  • Understand state-based treatment
  • The role of the core ARC targets in integrating traumatic experiences