Symptom + Treatment Approach

Clinical Symptoms are negative symptoms that interfere in a child’s life negatively in a persistent way, lowering their level of functioning and impacting healthy development. This is typically why children are brought into therapy.

"Enter into children's play and you will find the place where their minds, hearts and souls meet."

- Virginia Axline

Clinical Symptoms

Typically children are brought into therapy because they are exhibiting symptoms that are negatively interfering with their life, lowering their level of functioning and impacting healthy development.

These Symptoms May Include:

Difficulty sleeping, recurrent nightmares and chronic bed-wetting
Problems with eating (loss of appetite or binging), elimination, toileting
Excessive worry, sadness, anger or fear
General anxiety separation anxiety, persistent fears, panic, phobias (hyper-arousal)
Excessive shyness, social withdrawal, isolation
Behavioural/developmental regression
Adjustment problems
Aggressive behaviour, rage (hurting self or others)
Pre-occupation with sexual behaviour
Compulsive behaviour
Depression and extreme fatigue (hypo-arousal)
Self-harm, suicidal ideation
Drug and alcohol use
Risk-taking behaviours
Defiance to authority figures and mistrust in adults
Tummy and head aches
Persistent lying
Zoned out most of the time (freeze mode)
Chronic low self-confidence/self-esteem
Always in fight or flight mode
Diagnosis of behavioural, emotional, or developmental disorder
Social and relational challenges, withdrawal from normal play
Self-regulation challenges, low affect tolerance
School challenges: confusion, trouble concentrating, decline in academic functioning
Attachment challenges with important people

Experiences That May Lead to Clinical Symptoms:

Parental conflict, separation, or divorce: perceived loss of family unit, caught in the middle, experiencing hostility, moving from one place to another, getting to know new family, new roles, parent instability etc
Living in a pandemic
General loss: relationship, hope, core beliefs etc
Adjustment to adoption, or foster care
Illness or hospitalization of self, loved one, or pet
Experiencing a car accident, getting in an accident in which they were really hurt
Witnessing something scary
Certain aspects of cultural and or negative community-based experience
Abuse (Sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual and neglect)
Natural disasters: war, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami, avalanche, fires etc
Relational trauma: bullying, peer rejection, physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual abuse and/or neglect and abandonment, racism, sexism, homophobia, witnessing domestic violence, persistent abuse of power by adults
Death & Loss: death of a loved one or pet, witnessing death
Miscellaneous traumas: a single scary incident, accident, personal failures, social problems, animal nips, and nightmares etc
Medical/Dental: waking up during surgery with out parents, ongoing medical problems, frightening experience in general
Transitions: moving into a new grade, moving from childhood to adolescence, moving homes, living in new neighbourhood, getting to know a new family, new immigrants or refugees (Eg: culture shock, fleeing war or unpleasant circumstance in home country), new sibling
Discrimination, racism, hate crime

A Note On Ongoing Distress:

Children and youth who are in environments that contribute to clinical symptoms and unhealthy development are likely in an active state of fight, flight, freeze or shut down. These children will be treated to manage symptoms but cannot be expected to recover from trauma and ongoing challenges because they are not experiences in the past and therefore able to be resolved. Parents/guardians must manage therapeutic expectations in these cases and must be prepared to make interventions in the contexts of the environments which are contributing to the child’s clinical symptoms.

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