The Therapeutic Treasure Box: Insights from Dr. Karen Treisman

Understanding Trauma in Children: Insights from Dr. Karen Treisman | Pondering Play and Therapy

Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with Philippa, featuring Dr. Karen Treisman, a clinical psychologist, author, and MBE award recipient. Dive deep into the world of trauma as Dr. Treisman elaborates on different types of trauma—cultural, intergenerational, and more—while highlighting the significance of trauma-informed approaches. Discover how trauma impacts children and families, and explore the nuances between being trauma-aware and trauma-informed. Dr. Treisman also discusses her extensive work, including her renowned books and practical resources designed to support children and families through their trauma recovery journey. Whether you're a parent, educator, or professional, this episode offers valuable insights and tools for fostering healing and resilience.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:47 Understanding Trauma: Definitions and Impacts
27:09 Creative Ways to Engage with Children
29:27 The Importance of Relational Health

Website: https://safehandsthinkingminds.co.uk/

Pondering Play and Therapy | Instagram, Facebook, | Linktree

Transcript

Empowering Young Minds: Play and Therapy for Resilience with Karen Treisman

[00:00:00] 

Philippa: Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with me Philippa. And this week my guest is Dr. Karen Treisman, and she is a clinical psychologist, an author of one of my favorite books, which is The Therapeutic Treasure Box. She's a trainer. And she was awarded an MBE for outstanding services to children in the Queen's 2020 honors list.

So thank you so much for being here. Karen, it's a real pleasure to have you. 

Karen: Oh, thank you. It's so nice to be with you. And also thank you for what you said about the therapeutic treasure box. That means a lot and is very appreciated. So thank you for having me. 

Philippa: Absolutely. 

So we are gonna talk about trauma and working with families and children who have experienced trauma.

And the resources and [00:01:00] why we're, why we maybe work differently with, children, families, young people who had maybe adverse experiences. But I suppose I was wondering if we could start with kind of the question of what is trauma? And I know that's huge. 

Karen: It is. It's such a huge, it's such a huge thing.

'cause I think trauma is such a sort of umbrella term and there's loads of bits that come under that. So for example, there's cultural trauma or intergenerational trauma. School-based trauma his historical trauma system, trauma, developmental and relational trauma. So each one has its different explanations and definitions and even the word trauma itself.

I think we are in a bit of a strange place in society that what's really nice is that more people are. Talking about trauma, but there's the other side where I'm traumatized [00:02:00] 'cause I miss the bus. I'm traumatized 'cause of love island. As opposed to I'm a bit annoyed or I'm a bit irritated or a bit frustrated.

So I guess. One important thing to say about the word trauma is it's not the event itself. Often it's the meaning making and the sense making and our kind of perceptions around what that might look. Or feel but often it's that sense around feeling powerless, feeling helpless, feeling in terror, feeling overwhelmed, having an activated nervous system.

There's so many different components that might come out differently in different ways. But I think as we know, different people will use the word or view it in a different way. In essence very much thinking around things that have overwhelmed [00:03:00] our nervous systems that have made the fear visit where we often have felt threatened, unsafe, in danger and how our bodies, our brains, our nervous systems might respond to something that has.

Kind of overwhelmed our systems in, in, in a very diluted water down version of that, 

Philippa: and is that then stored in our body and pops up at other points because I guess. We can have an event, can't we? So we can have a car crash. Yeah. And there's a period where you would expect to still live with those feelings.

You would still be sad and scared and worried as you process it. So any MDR, they call that adaptive information processing. It's a natural way that our body make [00:04:00] sense of, and it's often alongside telling our story and with other people. Yeah. Whereas trauma might be different 

Karen: Hugely. So I think absolutely it we will often have different responses to something scary that's happened, and that's completely understandable, but absolutely what we know is trauma.

Often it's a bit like a tuning fork. It can vibrate long after what's happened. And of course that's different if it's occurred during childhood or if it's being cumulative or what. That's the frequency and the impact and various other bits. But what they often say is unprocessed trauma doesn't have a timestamp.

So it might have happened a period ago, but it might, our body can be like our autobiography or a living archive. Bezel, Vanko says the body holds the score or the body remembers so, so often, yeah. It's, it can be [00:05:00] encoded or imprinted in. Different sensations and smells and sounds and feelings, and we might experience something in the here and now, but it might send us down a chain of pain or down a memory time hole to the there and then.

So we might feel. We are walking in secondary school in a corridor and it feels like a stampede of elephants. And in the here and now, we might feel overwhelmed or trapped or powerless, but that might send us down a chain of pain to other times in our life for there and there where we felt scared or powerless or trapped and oof.

That's a bit tender, and we might not even have a recollection of it, but as bezel, vanko often says, trauma comes back not only as a memory, but as a response or reaction. And, whew, it's like emotional dynamite. It's an emotional landmine. And how we might feel or how scary that might feel at the time [00:06:00] might be much more entangled and layered with those other experiences, 

Philippa: Yeah. So, I guess that's for organizations, for parents, for foster carers, for adopters. I think we've become. More aware of these things, haven't we? We've become more aware that trauma is a response to something that's happened at, some time in children's adults, anybody's life, really that comes back and that we often need to understand and work in a slightly different way.

So then we have lots of the buzzword are trauma-informed. So we are a trauma-informed school. We are a trauma-informed fostering agency. We are work in a trauma-informed way. And I suppose from my kind of work, I think there's probably a difference between being trauma aware. And [00:07:00] being trauma informed and, I know that there again is, I'm asking you to do five minutes on a massive topic, but just a little overview about that.

And I think you're right. I 

GMT20251120-170340_Recording_640x360: think 

Karen: we are definitely talking about trauma more. I think there's still lots of people who maybe think about it as a single event trauma or don't think about it in cumulative or how it might impact child development or the related areas around the grief and loss or shame or dignity.

So there's lots of, different layers to that. In terms of trauma informed, and obviously I've written lots of books and do endless training, I can, I actually do an over 10 day training on trauma informed. So it is, it's huge, but you are absolutely right. It's been over claimed and it's been diluted.

And if it's everything, then it's nothing. And it's not just sticking something on the tin if what people get in the [00:08:00] tin doesn't match up. To me, it's the equivalent of saying something is vegetarian. When it's not vegetarian or it's. Animal cruelty free, and then you find out it's tested on animals.

It comes from well-meaning intentions, but actually, yeah, there's a big difference between trauma sensitive, trauma aware, trauma informed, trauma responsive. There's a difference between trauma informed at a practice level versus system or an organizational level. So there's a lot of different layers.

To that. And I suppose what's also an important element is there's a difference between saying something, being well-meaning versus being well practicing. So we can talk the talk, but it's how we walk the walk. So it, it might be labeled a trauma informed school, but is that what people feel? Is that infused in the practices, in the policies, in the responses, and not just for the kids, but for the parents, the [00:09:00] carers and the staff.

But in essence, trauma informed, which by the way is not a new thing. It's, inception and genesis and evolution has been happening. So many years. And also there's been so much within indigenous knowledge, but really the trailblazers started in the sixties and I think a lot of people have lost the history and the roots and think it's this new sexy fad.

But in essence. It's using the core nine values of trauma informed, which need to be infused and marinated into what we do. It's using the four Rs and there's more Rs, but the four Rs realize, recognize, resist, and response, and it's using the knowledge of trauma to then be able to. Infuse that into how we do things.

So if you understand how trauma is a multisensory experience, how do you, how your environment's holding that into [00:10:00] consideration, how are your policies thinking about how they communicate? How do you integrate brain breaks? How do you understand that brains and pain might struggle to think? So it's having the knowledge of, oh.

Why might we be curious instead of furious or what might that behavior be telling us or why might doing something might be just shame inducing or punitive or shutting down. So it's using the knowledge to infuse that. And it looks different. A teacher that is gonna look very different to if it's a clinical psychologist, if it is a security guard in the airport.

But in essence it's how does that person within their role doesn't have to be a specialist in trauma, but use the lens and the knowledge and the values and the principles to then infuse that into how they carry out their role. Not just for the people they work with, but for themselves as well, in essence.[00:11:00] 

Philippa: So then that would lead us to, work slightly differently than the traditional way. Yeah. I was brought up with a very loving family, but was very traditional. There was rewards and consequences. There was very strict boundaries and it was a very traditional parenting.

And so from a trauma informed perspective, that work would be very different. 

Karen: Yeah. And again, there is a difference between how you might parent a child, for example, in foster care who has experienced and been marinated in relational and developmental trauma, who has had a galaxy of missed opportunities, who has been wounded and hurt and needs relational repair and needs developmental reparenting and healing infused parenting.

So how [00:12:00] you might apply that. Within a context of a child, for example, who's been in foster care might be different to how you might take some of the values or principles into everyday parenting. So I think that's important to distinguish. But absolutely there are certain ways, and it's a balance and I think we're in a weird place in society of it's either gentle parenting or it's like super punitive parenting, or it's either we have to let.

Children just do whatever they want, or we really need to come down like a ton of bricks. And I think trauma informed is actually a lot about balance. It's a lot about how can we have compassion and curiosity and reflectiveness and understanding with having. Connection and boundaries and limit setting.

So I think it's the way of how can we find the both and, but certainly there are differences in terms of [00:13:00] how we might help create a enriched emotional vocabulary and emotional dictionary. How we support children to have choice and voice, how we support children to feel seen and that they matter how we support children to navigate.

Their world, how we are much more multisensory, how we are much more conscious in our parenting. How we certainly try to avoid being shame inducing or punitive or how we're able to be much more playful and relational. How we hold child development in mind, in how we parent, and that's not just their chronological agents.

Stage, but their social, emotional and developmental age stage. How we might scaffold how we might support not with toxic positivity of everything's gonna be amazing and wonderful but how we might support when there are things that feel upsetting or distressing, how we [00:14:00] might co-regulate and be those.

Anchors for our children to help them learn how to anchor their nervous systems or learn how to respond when things feel scary or overwhelming. So yeah, there absolutely are kind of principles and values that can be really supportive and helpful in parent parenting or caring, or as a manager or a leader, or in whichever role you might be in.

Philippa: And I suppose just listening to, you talk makes me think about actually. Having a structure, a boundary, yeah. Actually can be quite, containing and scaffolding for a child. Can't you? The thing of Oh we just have to sit and understand is, can be quite scary, especially if you've got a wobble or a trauma response coming up.

'cause it's I just don't know what to do with this. I need somebody [00:15:00] to, hold this for me. 

Karen: Completely. And it's really interesting you say that. 'cause one of the things I love, and I obviously I'm biased and I don't think trauma informed is perfect. It is flawed, it's imperfect.

There's many things that could be added to enrich and enhance it. But one of the things I love about it is to me. It gives a bit of structure and anchors. It's like a bit of guidance or a bit of a North star that actually absolutely can be quite liberating and can give a bit of oh, okay, this feels scary and overwhelming and unfamiliar.

But I've got some values or principles or a lens or some mantras. Be curious, instead of furious, see a child differently, you see a different child. How do I treat people? How I wanna teach them? How do I model the model? Am I co-regulating or COEs escalating? It gives things that we can sort. Onto, and I think that's the same for organizations like when [00:16:00] COVID happened, classic example.

And people are like, oh my God, we've never had a pandemic before. And what do we do? And this is unknown territory. People were saying to me, how did you manage to contain and hold so quickly when you were also going through? And I was like, because yes, it was new, but I knew the trauma informed principles or values and the lens.

So I was like, okay, this is a situation that might be activating people. This is a situation that might be scary. This, I've got some values and principles that I can use and then I can adapt and apply them to this situation. So I think there is safety sometimes in structure. And particularly in trauma.

Trauma very often violates. Boundaries and safety. So one of the ways that we can reclaim and give a different experience is by being clear and transparent and having boundaries. So yeah I very [00:17:00] much think it can give that North star or some anchors, which can be quite helpful when things feel quite a lot.

Philippa: Yeah. Yeah, and that really makes sense. I just have one, one more question. I was just thinking from a parent point of view, so we often think about trauma, like you say as the Big Ts. So the, ones that have come from childhood adversity or maybe. Being trafficked or refugees, which are absolutely traumas.

But there are small teas, aren't there traumas that happen sometimes for children and typically developing families where they also will experience some level of trauma response along the way. And I suppose when you're thinking about schools or clubs or stuff like that. Is the response gonna be different then is the because actually these kids have got big traumas and we need [00:18:00] to, manage these in this way.

This kid maybe had a car crash but it was eight months ago. We just gonna help her just get on with it. If we won't Molly coddle it. Is that right? Would you do a different approach to them or. 

Karen: Yeah, so again, I love the question and, again it's a big topic and of course that isn't a one size fits all 'cause every child is unique and will have a whole kaleidoscope of different threads and how they might respond and their buffering factors and all the rest.

But yeah, I think in society we often. Unhelpfully have a hierarchy and certain ones get more attention and more funding and more of a response, and they're more acknowledged. And there's other ones that sometimes go under the radar or are more subtle or are less understood or disenfranchised, which means socially invalidated or socially unacknowledged.

And I [00:19:00] think sometimes things absolutely are. Minimized. And actually if you take something like, I call it school-based abuse, but some people would call that bullying. You know what that's like for some kids and different kids will respond to go into a place where they feel. Unsafe, unsafe in danger, threatened, hypervigilant, excluded others, rejected, criticized, annihilated.

Humiliated, and have that on a chronic, ongoing, steady diet of fear. And yet, so often in society it's oh, everyone gets teased a little bit. So I think there are some that are big, like a car accident, which we know diff different people might respond to in different ways, but there's also the low.

The other levels of feeling unseen or feeling not valued or having something for example, people might pay more attention to the, death of a parent, but might not think as much [00:20:00] about the death of a pet. And so absolutely what I would say though is trauma informed is a universal approach.

So the idea is that we do things that. Support everyone so that we're being preventative and proactive, not reactive. 'cause it's easier to prevent fires than put them out. The time to teach someone to swim is not when they're drowning or not when they're in shark infested waters. So there's something about doing it for everyone.

'cause often we don't know what someone's experienced. So in a class we might know someone has. Being in foster care, but we don't know about the kid who might be really struggling for other reasons, or and often trauma is camouflaged or masked, or we don't know where. It's not disclosed.

However, might the intervention or the support look different. If there is a child, for example, who has [00:21:00] experienced years of sexual abuse compared to a child who might have had what you would refer to as a small t. Yes, the interventions or the therapeutic approaches might differ depending on the impact, the frequency and the severity, but the trauma-informed response, like a classroom, if you've got a trauma-informed classroom, it's likely.

To have benefits for so many kids and it's not gonna add layers of harm. And so if we can do something that's gonna benefit the masses surely that would be a helpful thing to do, rather than being crisis driven or just focusing on one or two children. 

Philippa: Absolutely. 'cause we don't know what people are experiencing at home, do we?

We don't know what they're experiencing in school sometimes. 'cause lots of children. So good at putting on that painted mask, aren't they? And just holding it all in and actually it's devastating inside for them or the [00:22:00] opposite way round. So when we think about that, what are, you've spent lots of time building resources.

Writing books to help I suppose people work in a way that's gonna be helpful, help to give a voice to children, to help them process and understand a little bit and their adults and their, safe people. To also help, I guess for us to understand. 'cause until you start to have that conversation.

You don't really know how a child or a young person is experiencing the moments, do you and some of your books and resources help us to have or at least for me, help, really help me have those conversations. So tell us a little bit more about those kind of resources and how you would use them in different settings and, why you did them Really what, why did you develop them?[00:23:00] 

Oh, 

Karen: lots. Lots of this there. So you are absolutely right. We don't have an emotional x-ray and we don't know. And what we know is actually a lot of the times it's really hard to talk about things. It's really hard, especially in the context of trauma, where children have often learnt they won't be heard or they'll be silenced, or they won't be believed, or they'll be blamed or something scary will happen, like the police being called or.

Being removed or all of those other things and have been marinated in discourse as blood is thicker than water or don't talk about what goes on behind closed doors and all of those scary bits, but also for many of those children actually talking about feelings hasn't been. Common or familiar and it often has been scary or has been surrounded in lots of tricky bits.

So I guess some of the motivations for writing the activity books and they really have been inspired over the years by the families and the children I've [00:24:00] worked with and the social workers I. Port and the teachers, and even today I've come up with a new idea just based on something that someone said to me this morning that I'm like, ah.

But in essence, I guess a few reasons. When I was training to be a clinical psychologist, we often would have lecturers come and teach us and they'd be like, so you need to work on improving a child's self-esteem, or you need to learn to teach skills to co-regulate. I was like I know that. How'd you do that?

But like how, like what different tools and activities we can do. So I really wanted resources that were very kind of step by step and accessible and inspiring and gave people ideas and that were. Practical. The other thing is I was really aware that not everyone needs therapy. And not everyone can access therapy.

And there's so much that we can do within our communities and within schools and within [00:25:00] parents who wanna consciously parent or foster carers who are therapeutically reparenting. And so I wanted resources that actually it's not doing therapy. People still will need extra layers. But that it gives ideas and strategies and tools to support that process to be done in as relational and meaningful and fun and creative way, including in different countries and in lots of those different spaces.

So I guess that was some of the. Inspiration. And I often would have social workers coming to me and be like, can you go through how I might work with the child who's struggling to name their feelings or, and I found myself repeating the same thing over and over again and I was like, oh, I can actually put this in a resource or put this in a book or in cards because I've got five sets soon to be six sets of cards.

Those 

Philippa: cards are again, and the kids like even little ones, love them. I. [00:26:00] Do them the sentence ones and I will put a link at the end. But the, you have sent sentence completion cards, don't you? And I've got a 6-year-old, I don't use all of them. I pick the ones that are appropriate, but actually she really enjoys and we take it in turns and answer them and, she really enjoys and it's a way that I find gives.

Gives her some control over what she's gonna answer and what we're gonna do. 'cause they're not all oh what's your worst day? Some of them are, if you've got three wishes, what makes you happy? And so they're really, I think it's a really nice way to start a conversation. 

Karen: No thank you. And I think that's what it is.

It's to create a bit of a springboard, a bit of a launch pad, so that they're not supposed to be restrictive or exhaustive or prescriptive. They're an invitation, not an instruction. And I often say I [00:27:00] love it when a kid is don't like that, because I'm like, cool, okay. What could we do instead? Or that's why.

All of my worksheets have. What else in them? 

Because it's here's some ideas. What am I missing? What would you add? If you were gonna design a card, what would it be? And it's what we can do to enrich it. So I might do a card, as you said. What would be your three wishes? But equally, we could do a collage of their three wishes.

We could do a sculpt of their three wishes. We could do it in sand tray. We could write a poem or a story. We could do three wishes for me, three wishes for my mom. How have they changed? What do they look like? There's so many ways we could use a genie. We could use dreaming dust, we could use a wishing wand.

So I think they really are. And the other thing I'm aware is there's some people who. We are working in really busy overstretched environments where either people say to me, I'm not arty and I'm not creative, and I can think like that. Or people are just [00:28:00] like, we're so busy. So I think having resources that people can use as an inspiration or for ideas.

Or photocopy and save a little bit of time makes such a difference. And then to try and encourage people, it's not transactional. I did not write my workbooks to be transactional and just, here you go, do the worksheet. They're designed to be relational. They're designed to be about connection and fun and play, and deeply exploring and discovering and going into all those.

Layers. So yeah and there's obviously different ones in different things. I've got ones in bereavement and grief. I've got ones on those children who externalize. I've got one coming out on those who internalize. I've got emotional regulation, but they really and, the cards are used a lot with adults as much as they are with children.

So it. If we know that trauma and [00:29:00] feelings are often multisensory and go in lots of different parts of our nervous systems, then having strategies and tools that are multi-model, that are creative, that integrate movement that try to support a rich emotional dictionary it's really to try and make interactions more fun, more playful, less threatening.

Yeah, I guess 

Philippa: you, you mentioned that the two things really, you've mentioned it a few times, is relational. 

Karen: Yeah. 

Philippa: And co-regulation. Why are those important? Oh, huge. Roger, you're coming out with the big questions. 

I'm so sorry. 

Karen: There's different answers depending on the context, but I'll say it from a trauma context.

First, so many of our kids have. Experience, relational poverty, relational starvation, being in a [00:30:00] relationship desert. They have had low relational fuel. They've had a galaxy of missed relational experiences, and they've learnt. Relationships might be scary or painful or rejecting or all the other things, and often that's impacted how they might do relationships, how they might feel about relationships, what they might expect from relationships.

And so if relationships have harmed, relationships need to heal. If relationships have hurt, relationships need to be the thing that heals and repairs. And we need to give our children a different experience of what relationships can be. And the. Actually, we know that relational health and social connectedness and feeling you matter.

I hear you. I see you. You are important. And doing that within relationships is [00:31:00] crucial and reparative and given those, enriched experiences with them. So I guess that's why I often talk about relationships. There's something very different about filling in a worksheet and just like ticking a box as opposed to having you then with them being deeply interested and curious and playful and helping them to.

Be like, oh, it's okay to have the thorny or the prickly bits, or, oh, I can talk about difficult feelings and this person is gonna be alongside me and support me or be with, or bear witness or empathize or not tell me to not feel that and that this person is gonna be. Deeply interested and invested, and I'm not alone as many kids felt in trauma.

I'm alone, or the person with me might be adding layers of hurt or harm. I can feel these big feelings and I can feel them [00:32:00] with someone who can be a relational. Regulator who can be limb whisperer. So that's in essence, yeah. 

Philippa: So, you are the work boots, the cards, the stories.

They help their parents, their foster carer, their school teacher, youth worker, whoever it is. Get alongside that and, sit with sometimes things that are a little bit scary to come out. Maybe when they've been sad before they've been told to man up or to stop crying and now they've got this little space that, that somebody's saying.

It's okay to put sad on there. And I wonder also if having the worksheet, the card acts as the third thing that it's not sitting face to face looking at one another and say, so Karen, tell me all your deepest thoughts. It's let's fill this treasure chest in and tell me what what would be the most special [00:33:00] things that you'd put in that treasure chest?

And it you are in relationship, but in a way that's alongside and not. 

Karen: Yeah, massively. And I think, and I do so many trainings about this and I've got so many sections in all the books, but actually in the tear, the torts I've got the most is exactly as you said. We know kids do not work best.

Sitting down on a chair having an intent. Eye contact conversation. When do we have the best conversations with kids? When we're in the car, when we're playing pool, when we're going for a walk, when we're doing the washing up, when we're playing a game, when we're kicking a football back and forward.

So absolutely it's how are we having these conversations in a way that they can land, in a way that it doesn't feel. Gary in a way that we can integrate movement and regulation and Absolutely. Sometimes having a card or a worksheet that you can color it in, you can do stickers, you can add [00:34:00] materials, you can have something to focus on.

It externalizes it. It has something that you can map the journey. 'cause if you're doing it. You might look at the worksheets over time, or let's say they're doing a patchwork of feelings. Next time you might do a patchwork of hopes, or you might do a patchwork of feelings before the presentation at school and a patchwork after, and a patchwork of feelings about what it's like to see Philippa and then a patchwork of questions and then they might wanna add something else to it.

So it absolutely allows a space to talk about some of those things, but also. Not just the scary, painful bits, but the joy, the pride, the excitement. It allows a space for the whole repertoire of those things in a way that yeah, doesn't feel so formal of. Let's sit and talk about your feelings. And I often say to the adults who use my books, you don't need to feel restricted.

That oh, Karen did this worksheet [00:35:00] about a football, so I need to do a football. It's to give an idea if you've got a kid who wants to do it with Minecraft or Harry Potter, or you might just use the language and subtly drip, It hopefully gives the adults some ideas, some confidence, some skills, and then they know the kid the best and they can adapt and tailor and infuse it in whichever way they think it might land.

Philippa: Yeah. Yeah. And that, I think that's so helpful. Because sometimes as a practitioner, and I guess as a parent, as a foster care, as anybody, you can be a little bit overwhelmed of, okay, I know that I need to help them think about their feelings or help them. But I just, how, where do I start?

What do I do? Where do I go? And something like those resources can just be the starting point. Can't they? Are. Okay. Yeah, those are really great ideas. Maybe they don't want the treasure box, but they might want an island or a and you [00:36:00] just gives you that a bit of inspiration to, to go 

Karen: forward with completely.

And I think I often say it's that every interaction is an intervention. Like we can't do everything, but we can do something. So it helps people to have. My treasure box as an example, you are never gonna do all of those ideas. It would be overwhelming. It'd be way too much, but it is what it says on the tin.

I wanted to give a treasure trove of ideas and then for the person to be like, okay, narrow down. Narrow down. That might work. And if that doesn't work, okay, I'll try something else. But absolutely to support people, to think, oh, where can I start? And I think people are often worried about, I might. Do harm or I might make things worse.

And so in the adult guides, I really try and answer some of those bits of okay, so here's something you might be mindful of, or Here's a top tip about what words you might wanna use, or here's some things that you might wanna do to make the environment feel more [00:37:00] comforting so that it's walking alongside people and trying to give people confidence to also feel like.

You are the strategy, but so how can we fill and support you? 

Philippa: You. And then you've got books that are more specific to specific topics, and you've got, as we are recording this, the one is being released tomorrow. By the time people are listening to it, it probably will have been out for a month.

Just tell us about. Those topics and what they are for. And so this is the 

Karen: one te the torts, look how huge she is. And I don't think people can possibly understand the level of richness in this book. It is the biggest of all of the ones I've done. I'll say a little bit about this one. Yeah, sure. So I'm excited about it.

I've literally wanted to write this book for 10 years and it's been quite a struggle to get it to be published, and I think that's reflective of the topic because it is for those [00:38:00] children. Who have experienced trauma, abuse, loss, hardship, suffering, whatever word people might use, but who have had to survive, cope, adapt, protect by making themselves smaller, by shrinking, by going inward, by clamming up, by bottling up.

Those who society often misses. Who fall through the gap, who go under the radar, who are described as, oh, don't, they don't make a fuss or they're good as gold, or they're so resilient, or they're so compliant. Those kids who often I'm fine and everything's okay. And I think as a society we pay a lot more attention to the kids who are screaming or shouting or punching or kicking.

And actually these are the kids I sometimes worry the most about and who gets sidelined and, voiceless and silenced. So that's what this book is about. It's about dissociation, it's about avoidance, withdrawal, therapeutic re-parenting. [00:39:00] How can we connect with children who sometimes have disconnected?

And I'm, yeah, super, super excited for the fact that it's taken this long to come out, I think says something about the topic. 

Philippa: So in that book, there are. The same worksheets, the same tips, the same ideas to help you think about with the child who sits in class with the smile plastered on the face.

And they're almost like the swan, where they're underneath is this kind of real big turmoil, worry, anxiety, whatever going on, but they never say word. They're there. Kids that help you tidy up at the end of class. They're the kids that help parents what wipe and put the dishes away. But actually there's a lot of sadness, a lot of checking out, maybe just not being there.

Karen: Completely those kids who might zone out, those kids who people might describe as hollow or empty or [00:40:00] blank. Those kids who constantly are smiling but underneath that they've experienced huge amounts of hurt or pain. Those kids who sometimes don't react. And that doesn't mean we need all children to react or respond, but I think people will identify with foster carers have been saying for years.

These are the children I'm so worried about who I just am often what's going on for you? Or How can I support you? Or that they've just learn to shrink from the world or to, to detach or go inward or being present has been so painful or intolerable. So sometimes they are not present or they've retreated into that tortoise shell.

Philippa: And those children can be very difficult to support, can't they? Because you can't see the communication when you've got big behaviors, when you've got shouting or temper tantrums or crying or no. Yes, it's difficult, but. It's a [00:41:00] communication of saying this, there's something going on for me. And so you can start to work with that, can't you?

Even however hard it is. Yeah. When you've just got the kid who just does everything and where do you 

Karen: start completely And the other side, whether your parenting or caring or professional, when you've just got kid who's dunno. Not sure. Fine. So equally, it's the kid who just smiles and everything's okay.

But there's the other side of I'm like working really hard and I'm just getting, I'm fine, or I'm not sure, or I don't know. Or shrugging or the a foster care, I might say, I'm just not getting much joy or I don't know if I'm meeting the mark or if I, don't know if they're hearing what I'm saying.

Yeah it's, that. Is the activity book to really support lots of those kids around and understand why they might have coped responded in that way so that we can be curious instead of furious, and that we can [00:42:00] start to honor and respect how they've had to cope and survive and adapt. So yeah.

Super. That will be a 

Philippa: super resource. Absolutely. And what are your what? What other ones have you got? You said grief and loss. 

Karen: Yes. So I've got my now I need to remember them. I'm, I've got my Ollie the Octopus, which is for children although many adults use it as well, who have experienced bereavement particularly a parent who has died, but any form of bereavement and loss.

I've got Benny, the baboon that my mom is Benny. All the characters that are named after important people in my life. And that's on anxiety, fear, and worries. I've got Presley, the pug that is very much around sort of emotional regulation and emotional literacy. I've got Jill, the giraffe that is around self-esteem and strengths.

I've got Cleo. The crock that is the opposite of tear the Tor us. So it's kids who have experienced [00:43:00] trauma predominantly those in foster care, kinship care, adoption, children's homes who externalize, who learn better attack than be attacked, better hurt than be hurt. Who externalize more? Who am I? Oh, and I've got ne on the Ninja, which is for children around nightmares and sleep difficulties.

I think that's the children's, but there's seven. Might have forgotten someone, but I think that's it. And then I've got my five sets of cards, which is the trauma deck of cards which are one of my faves. I've got an online module to support people if they want more support, how to use that. My parenting patchwork, which is very much looking at your own.

Parenting attachment experiences and how you parent and attach, but also looking at for children, for example, who experience relational and developmental trauma how we might therapeutically reparent them or [00:44:00] how that might come out in how they might present. I've got my self-esteem and strengths cards, my feelings and sentence completion cards, which you were talking there.

And then some grounding regulating cards. And then what else? I've got my therapeutic treasure box that you mentioned that's a bit of a oh, it's done a long time ago now. 2017. It's like a compendium, a treasure box of lots of those little bits put together with lots of tools and strategies on lots of different topics anxiety, transitions outbursts, relationships, all sorts. And then I've got three organizational books about trauma informed system change and organizational change, and a book about understanding trauma. I'm sure I'm forgetting it, but that's the, that I don't think I've ever actually said them all like that.

No, that's, oh goodness. I need to sleep. But yeah. Yeah 

Philippa: [00:45:00] That's, those are excellent. So those are all available from your website, which I will put in the end. And so could parents use, so we've talked about professionals, but they parents code pop in and, use them. The cards and those sorts of things might help with with conversations with the teenagers, just putting them in the middle of the dining room table and saying, let's pick a card and have a conversation.

They're not just for clinical psychologists or things like that, that they're, usable for anybody. 

Karen: Absolutely. What I would say to that is a hundred percent parents, carers, teachers, non therapists, use my resources. All the time. I made them to be as community based and accessible as possible.

Of course, there are some that are more catered for professionals, and that's quite clear in the descriptions and those bits, but the children's workbooks and some of the sets of cards, [00:46:00] particularly the feelings and sentence completion ones, the strengths ones, and the regulating ones. What I would say is if you want a bit of extra support around them, because of course we can use them, but we can also use them in really enriched, enhanced ways.

I do deliver training. I do have online modules that people can do and if a clinical psychologist takes one of the worksheets, the likely it is that they're probably gonna be integrating it into different therapeutic models and approaches, and they will use their therapeutics. Skills to enrich and enhance it in a different way, but absolutely parents and carers.

But what I would say is to practice and to just choose consciously and intentionally about oh, which ones do I want to use and why? But things like the sentence completion cards. Absolutely. Like they can be used as a game they can use. Treasure hunt and hiding them around the house, they can be used as a form of communication.

They [00:47:00] could be at the dinner table they could be popped under doors. Yeah, 

Philippa: absolutely. Yeah. And the, you've mentioned kind of the webinars that are available again, are they available for parents or are they only available for professionals? 

Karen: When I do public events, anyone can on to those.

I am, they usually are aimed more at professionals, but I try and make things really accessible. So people are very, welcome. I do sometimes do one specifically for parents. Okay. Or for foster carers or adopters, which of course. Is very much catered. But no, when I do public events, unless it specifically states this is on EMDR or this is on story stem, that wouldn't be appropriate for people who are not therapeutically trained.

There's loads of resources like that you know, parents and carers are very welcome to, 

Philippa: and you've got a Facebook page. 

Karen: Yep. I've got a Facebook page, which is not my [00:48:00] name. It's Safe Hands and Thinking Minds. I'll put a link 

Philippa: to that there in, in the description? 

Karen: Yeah. And that I update, I'm on Facebook linked in Blue Sky.

Twitter x, Twitter and a bit Instagram, but not too much. And basically every day I put stuff on there. Whether it's articles, papers stories, videos. I interact quite a lot on there and when there's events I put there and I've got a newsletter on my website, which isn't a bombarding one, it's four times a year, so it sends out a video of the newsletter, a quote of the newsletter a free resource and what upcoming events or modules or books are coming out pretty much.

Philippa: Okay, 

so I will put a link to those pages on there. On the description of this. So thank you [00:49:00] so much, Karen, for your time, and I'm sure our listeners are gonna get a huge amount from, this episode. So thank you and good luck. 

Karen: Thank you for inviting me, thanks for asking fab questions, and thanks for facilitating the space, and thank you for everyone who's listening.

I really appreciate it and it's tricky the work that we do. Parenting, caring, there's just a lot. So really thank you back to everyone. 

GMT20251120-170340_Recording_640x360: I.