Working with Children to Heal Interpersonal Trauma


Book Description

Featuring in-depth case presentations from master clinicians, this volume highlights the remarkable capacity of traumatized children to guide their own healing process. The book describes what posttraumatic play looks like and how it can foster resilience and coping. Demonstrated are applications of play, art, and other expressive therapies with children who have faced such overwhelming experiences as sexual abuse or chronic neglect. The contributors discuss ways to facilitate forms of expression that promote mastery and growth, as well as how to intervene when play becomes stuck in destructive patterns. They share effective strategies for engaging hard-to-reach children and building trusting therapeutic relationships. This book will be invaluable to mental health professionals working with children, including child psychologists, social workers, play and art therapists, counselors, family therapists, and psychiatrists. It will also˜serve as a supplemental text in clinically oriented graduate-level courses.




Healing the Child Within


Book Description

Dr. Whitfield provides a clear and effective introduction to the basic principles of recovery. This book is a modern classic, as fresh and useful today as it was more than a decade ago when first published. Here, frontline physician and therapist Charles Whitfield describes the process of wounding that the Child Within (True Self) experiences and shows how to differentiate the True Self from the false self. He also describes the core issues of recovery and more. Other writings on this topic have come and gone, while Healing the Child Within has remained a strong introduction to recognizing and healing from the painful effects of childhood trauma. Highly recommended by therapists and survivors of trauma.




No Time for Tears


Book Description

Facing the loss of a loved one in a death-avoidant culture can be excruciating. Grievers may be expected to put on a brave face, to "move on" quickly, and to seek medication if they are still grief-stricken after an "acceptable" amount of time. Psycho­therapist Judy Heath draws on extensive experience as a grief specialist in private practice to help those struggling with the anguish of loss. Addressing the myths and misinformation about mourning that still abound today, Heath gently coaches readers to understand that coping with loss is a natural process that our society tends to avoid and hurry people through, often leading to unresolved, lasting grief. No Time for Tears offers practical advice for both short- and long-term recovery, including how to manage rarely discussed physical and emotional changes: feelings of "going crazy" and inability to focus; feeling out of sync with the world, exhausted and chilled, and crushingly lonely. This updated second edition includes new information about medication and discusses various types of loss including that of a parent, child, spouse, friend, or pet. Helpful not only to grievers but also to those who care about, counsel, or employ them, No Time for Tears is an essential resource for grief management and recovery.




Healing a Teen's Grieving Heart


Book Description

A compassionate resource for friends, parents, relatives, teachers, volunteers, and caregivers, this series offers suggestions to help the grieving cope with the loss of a loved one. Often people do not know what to say—or what not to say—to someone they know who is mourning; this series teaches that the most important thing a person can do is listen, have compassion, be there for support, and do something helpful. This volume addresses what to expect from grieving young people, and how to provide safe outlets for teens to express emotion. Included in each book are tested, sensitive ideas for “carpe diem” actions that people can take right this minute—while still remaining supportive and honoring the mourner’s loss.




Healing a Child's Grieving Heart


Book Description

A compassionate resource for friends, parents, relatives, teachers, volunteers, and caregivers, this series offers suggestions to help the grieving cope with the loss of a loved one. Often people do not know what to say—or what not to say—to someone they know who is mourning; this series teaches that the most important thing a person can do is listen, have compassion, be there for support, and do something helpful. This volume addresses what to expect from grieving young people, and how to provide safe outlets for children to express emotion. Included in each book are tested, sensitive ideas for “carpe diem” actions that people can take right this minute—while still remaining supportive and honoring the mourner’s loss.




Healing Your Grieving Heart for Kids


Book Description

With sensitivity and insight, this series offers suggestions for healing activities that can help survivors learn to express their grief and mourn naturally. Acknowledging that death is a painful, ongoing part of life, they explain how people need to slow down, turn inward, embrace their feelings of loss, and seek and accept support when a loved one dies. Each book, geared for mourning adults, teens, or children, provides ideas and action-oriented tips that teach the basic principles of grief and healing. These ideas and activities are aimed at reducing the confusion, anxiety, and huge personal void so that the living can begin their lives again. Included in the books for teens and kids are age-appropriate activities that teach younger people that their thoughts are not only normal but necessary.




Healing Your Traumatized Heart


Book Description

Dealing with grief in a practical manner, this guide offers compassionate tips for those affected by a traumatic death. Included are topics such as coping with family stress, expressing feelings of hurt and anger, dealing with hurtful comments, and exploring feelings of guilt. Each of the 100 suggestions is aimed at reducing the confusion, anxiety, and huge personal void in order to help survivors begin their lives again. Some of the tips include understanding the special characteristics of trauma grief, planting a tree in memory of the person who died, and making connections with others affected by a similar death.




Why Did You Die?


Book Description

When a loved one dies, children are faced with a kaleidoscope of feelings, thoughts, and questions. Struggling with these issues can be overwhelming without guidance, support, and creative forms of expression. This bereavement book contains simple, effective activities to help children and parents communicate about death and the grieving process. Through these activities, children will learn how to grow and thrive after the loss of a loved one.







Life Story Work with Children who are Fostered Or Adopted


Book Description

The number of traumatized children in foster care and adoptive families is on the rise every year. In times like these, social work practitioners rarely have sufficient time to plan out each of their sessions. This book makes it possible. Life Story Work with Children who are Fostered or Adopted: Creative Activites and Ideas is a brief and accessible resource guide to life story work. Focused on methods and activities that have been tried and tested by social workers and therapists, these are simple activities that require minimal resources that range from how to build the foundation to Life Story Work to boosting a child's self-esteem and identity. The chapters are categorized in a way that makes it easy for the practitioner to identify which method will be appropriate for the stage of the work they are undertaking. This book will be a vital resource for social workers, foster caregivers, students and any frontline practitioner involved in working with traumatized children.