TBRI Tip #29: Trauma, Brain Changes, and Behavior

Early trauma causes the brain to be stuck in a state of constant anxiety and can easily lead to a triggered response. Small changes in plans or little disappointments can trigger huge emotional reactions such as anger, regression, shutdown, aggression or melt down. Kids react this way because they don’t know how else to respond. TBRI gives you the knowledge and the tools to help you look at behaviors with fresh eyes. What appear to be behaviors, are coping strategies learned before they were with you.

TBRI 6 Risk Factors for Trauma 

Difficult pregnancy 

Difficult birth 

Early hospitalization 

Abuse 

Neglect 

Trauma/witnessing an extreme event 

Apply Trauma, Brain changes and Behavior 

By understanding how harm damages development of a child, we can have eyes of compassion and let that guide our responses to behavior. Kids with any of the above traumas can have a stress system that stays on fight flight or freeze and quickly reacts emotionally and behaviorally. When they are most frightened, they’re most likely to do things that just seem bizarre. Their deep fear triggers a deep need for control. They use survival strategies that look like aggression or manipulation to get control because they don’t know anything different. Changing your response to behavior by saying, “Can you use your words to tell me what you need?” and then meet that need, will teach them they don’t need to use their survival strategies when they are frightened. Overtime, this will rewire their brain so they’re not in the constant state of anxiety and therefore decrease their behaviors.