Every group participant in a trauma recovery group has a chance to talk about their experiences.
Often, a participant who has been silent for weeks will break the silence in a profound way.
Someone will talk, speak about what happened.
Perhaps they used one of their grounding techniques to help manage anxiety before they took a test, or maybe they were able to be assertive and set a limit with someone who kept crossing a boundary.
Maybe they stopped and actually recognized their feelings before they spiraled downward.
That moment when practice becomes real. That’s what these groups are built for.

Skills That Work Outside the Room

The purpose of group sessions is to learn techniques they can implement in real-time situations when emotional challenges arise.
The fundamentals that repeatedly demonstrate include:

• Recognizing the onset of stress before it escalates
• Understanding what the body is communicating when feeling overwhelmed with emotions
• Finding a personal system that works for you
• Understanding the feeling rather than just reacting to it

These concepts are not just ideas that are forgotten. These tools are invaluable when anxiety is upon you and when intrusive thoughts arise when you least expect them.

Noticing Triggers Before They Take Over

Students know that certain things can throw them off. It could be a smell, a place, a tone of voice, or any type of sensory input.
There are a number of impacts that a trigger can elicit, and sometimes people can be rethrown into an event that is post traumatic stress disorder-related.
Students can strive to regain a little bit of control, and working with our groups helps them map triggers they can control and create a step-by-step method for working through them.

Coping Strategies that Help

These strategies are not effective for people who are dealing with any type of trauma.
What is effective:

• Discovering various approaches that correspond with various scenarios and various feelings.
• Some days you need to move your body to release excess energy. Other days you need to stop completely and just take a breather for a moment.
• Sometimes you need to have a conversation and other times you just need to be quiet.

Groups allow students to experiment and discover what is best for them.
Students are given options to cope.

• Journaling
• Creating art
• Listening to music
• Moving their bodies
• Talking to a trusted adult, and so on

Students leave with a full menu of options, rather than being told there’s one right way to cope.

Understanding What Happened

Trauma messes with your brain’s processing. The order of the timeline gets disorganized. You take responsibility for things that weren’t your fault.
You can’t understand why the event’s aftereffects are still bothering you.
In the groups, students try to make sense of the experiences they have gone through, and are not “getting over it” or moving on as if nothing happened, but are working to understand in a way that leaves them not immobilized.
This is the psychoeducational part. Teaching students the impact of trauma on the brain helps to unclog that mental blockage in students.
Knowing the reasons for certain responses brings a sense of understanding and calms the fears.
As the participants reflect on their lived experiences, the feeling of shame is less prevalent.

The Group Dynamic Changes Everything

Both emotional and psychological recovery is difficult when tried alone. However, being surrounded by people who understand the journey is different.
Within our groups, students quickly learn that they are not alone in their struggles.
Participants in groups can feel that when people talk about their emotions and experiences, they are not alone.
When one person struggles with trauma and/or mental health, and one other person in a group talks about it, the others realize that it is okay to not be okay.
Group formation is important in the healing process.
Participants can:

• Boost each other’s morale
• Utilize positive self-encouragement
• Take turns to support one another
• Celebrate milestones

Setting Boundaries

Setting boundaries can be near impossible for students who have each experienced relational and interpersonal trauma.
Asking for what they need always feels like too much.
The practice that we do is necessary and important because it helps individuals understand what is appropriate emotionally and relationally.
Students are guided through what it sounds like, and they can recognize what they are emotionally cycling through.
They are able to articulate the types of boundaries that exist, and even practice appropriate boundary-setting.

The impact of this skill is omnipresent. It may be with family who do not comprehend the issue.
It may be with friends who are well-intentioned but pose questions that are too probing. It may be with romantic companions. It may even be with oneself.

Progress Looks Different for Everyone

Some participants exit these sessions with significant change. Others depart with minor transformations that may accumulate over the long run.
Both matter.
One participant may be able to sleep uninterrupted for the entire night. Another may manage to avoid bracing themselves when approached rapidly by someone.
Another may be able to finally articulate during teaching sessions for the first time after numerous months of silence. Another may feel slightly less isolated than before.
The objective is to provide them with the skills and support needed to make progress on their own.

What Happens Next

The work doesn’t stop when the group ends, but students leave knowing they don’t have to do it alone and they’re not starting from scratch anymore.

Higher Height provides trauma recovery psycho-educational groups created to address what students require to heal and progress.
Please contact us and we can discuss what that will look like for your school.