For parents and guardians, the long-term effects of teen trauma can be jarring to observe. Of course, they want to protect their teens from any harm and ensure both their happiness and safety. One way to do this is to get their teens assessed, diagnosed, and admitted into a trauma treatment program. When you see your teen suffering, it can hurt your soul. But there is healing when you help them find treatment. If you’re looking for professional help in the form of a trauma treatment program for teen boys in North Carolina, contact Foothills at Red Oak Recovery today. Call 866.300.5275 or reach out to our team online.

Signs of Teen Trauma

After a traumatic experience, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can develop. Learning the signs of trauma and the symptoms of PTSD is essential if parents and guardians want to figure out if their teens need professional intervention to heal. Teen trauma signs include the following:

• Anxiety and worry: Your teen may feel nervous and overwhelmed even if they’re dealing with everyday situations. PTSD symptoms and anxiety often come out of nowhere. This consistent worrying can paralyze a teen.
• Avoidance reaction: This can look like active avoidance of people, places, and situations associated with the traumatic experience your teen hasn’t processed yet.
• Disruption of normal sleeping habits: The effects of traumatic experiences can include disrupting sleep patterns in many ways. Nightmares could be common, and some teens may feel so much exhaustion that they want to sleep all the time. Others may have bouts of insomnia combined with extreme anxiety.
• Extended grief and bouts of depression: An extensive timeline of grief is common in teens suffering a traumatic loss. However, the death of a family member or the loss of a beloved pet can also trigger a bout of depression.
• Fear and trepidation: Your teen may constantly feel that something bad is going to happen again.
• Feeling nothing and numbing out: Your teen can numb out in response to emotional, physical, or mental trauma. Often, they will withdraw and isolate themselves. The pain they feel becomes too much to bear, so they would rather feel nothing at all.
• Overwhelming shame and guilt: Traumatized teens often blame themselves, which leads to shame and embarrassment.

The above symptoms of trauma are challenging to deal with, but the most frightening symptom of teen trauma is a panic attack. This could be the most challenging traumatic symptom that a parent or guardian observes.

When Professional Help for Teen Trauma Is Needed

The effects of trauma in teens can become chronic and negatively affect their daily lives. In cases like this, professional help for teen trauma is ideal.

Other signs that your teen needs professional help include the following:

• The teen doesn’t communicate how they feel or what they’re doing to you.
• Your teen seems to be persistently anxious or depressed.
• Your teen starts abusing addictive substances.
• Their behavior is dangerous, harmful, or reckless.
• Your teen’s behavior seems completely out of character.

What A Professional Trauma Therapist Can Do to Help

A professional trauma therapist can provide several different forms of therapeutic care that can foster sustainable healing, such as the following:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): This type of therapeutic care brings clarity and insight to your teen. It can help them process their trauma as it allows them to identify their negative emotions and self-defeating thoughts.
• Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT): DBT teaches specific skills to your teen, such as mindfulness and emotional regulation. These learnings can be used right away to deal with trauma.
• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): EMDR uses a set of specific eye movements coupled with a focus on your teen’s traumatic memories to catalyze changes in brain circuitry. These changes are similar to what happens in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and can help your teen effectively process their trauma.

Alternative therapies such as animal-assisted therapy, adventure therapy, art therapy, and yoga may also help your teen deal with trauma.

If you choose to get your teen boy admitted into a trauma therapy program, you can ensure that their treatment plan will be customized based on their needs, as long as they’re formally assessed and diagnosed.

Learn More About Foothills at Red Oak Recovery

Your teen’s trauma doesn’t have to define them if you help them find a teen boys trauma treatment program in North Carolina. Contact Foothills at Red Oak Recovery by calling 866.300.5275 or reaching out to our team online.