ABSTRACT
The ABCs of Trauma are introduced to integrate the child’s understanding of how trauma affects thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, building on the introduction to traumatic stress in Chapters 2 and 25. This activity helps children understand how trauma can lead to “catastrophic thinking” and failures. Conversely, children learn and practice how they can utilize an understanding of the ABCs to increase the power of their thinking skills and switch to “courageous thinking” to avoid being TRAPPED (Ford & Russo, 2006) in a state of alarm. Children are encouraged to use their full brain instead of just their self-defense reactions as a means of pulling themselves out of trauma reactions and winning their FREEDOM (Ford & Russo, 2006).
