Book Review: Healing Relational Trauma  with Attachment-Focused Interventions

For a young child, traumatic experiences can lead to a pattern of mistrust, anticipation of further trauma, avoidance, and difficulty relating to others. Their development can be compromised. Their sense of self can become fractured, and their lives become merely an expression of their trauma. Helping children like this requires a deeply sensitive clinical approach that begins with the children’s relationships. “When children develop patterns of survival that involve them relying on themselves, not others, they do so out of a profound mistrust that others will meet their needs and will do what is best for them,” write Daniel A. Hughes, Kim Golding, and Julie Hudson. In their new book, Healing Relational Trauma With Attachment-Focused Interventions, the authors present Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) as a theory and use rich case studies to demonstrate how it can restore connection, trust, safety, and secure relationships where they have been most damaged. “Dyadic developmental psychotherapy was developed to provide therapeutic, healing relationships with children who do not trust their caregivers, teachers, therapists, and wider community. It relies on principles taken from our knowledge of attachment, developmental trauma, and the intersubjectivity to inform the development of the therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the child,” write the authors. Using their presence, empathic response, and acceptance, DDP therapists help children move b...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Abuse Book Reviews Caregivers Children and Teens Communication Disorders Domestic Violence Family General Memory and Perception Parenting Psychology Psychotherapy Relationships & Love Self-Esteem Trauma Treatment books ab Source Type: news