Impact of Traumatic Events

Re-experiencing or ‘reliving’ horrific events often occurs in the form of vivid nightmares, or through flashbacks, memories and uncontrollable thoughts.

Re-experiences may be triggered by sights, sounds, smells, people, and places that remind students of traumatic events.  In young children, intrusive thoughts can be reflected in repetitive play in which details of the traumatic event are acted out.

What you can do

• Remind students they are in a safe place now, and nurture their feelings of safety and control.
• Provide a predictable environment and routine.
• Provide a quiet place as an alternative to the playground/schoolyard.
• Provide a time-out/quiet corner within the classroom.
• In a safe setting, share with the student what you have noticed about them.
• Ask your student if they know why it is happening.
• Indicate that it is okay if they do not want to talk about it.
• Listen and show acknowledgement when experiences are disclosed.
• Share your observations and concerns with school wellbeing staff.
• Offer more support, such as referral to Foundation House.

To cope with anxiety and fear, students may seek to avoid whatever triggers it. They may attempt to shut down by numbing their feelings, and restricting the amount of information they take in.

In the classroom, shutting down can manifest as social withdrawal, avoiding stimulation, looking blank, or unable to be imaginative. Fluctuations in emotions and behaviours are common, reflecting periods of intense anxiety that alternate with periods of withdrawal and emotional numbing.

What you can do

• Get to know your students and what may trigger these behaviours.
• Explicitly acknowledge appropriate behaviour.
• Use a calm voice and validating language.
• When appropriate, in a safe setting, share with students what you have noticed about their behaviour.
• Ask them if they know why it is happening.
• If a problem is disclosed, determine whether it can be addressed within the school setting.
• Share your observations and concerns with school wellbeing staff.

Long after surviving life-threatening danger, children and young people remain highly sensitive to potential threats.

A child may be jumpy, nervous, and, when threat is sensed, quickly retreat to defensive survival strategies. This is termed ‘hypervigilance’, which is characterised by an exaggerated startle response (especially in relation to noise and touch).

With the pressure of intense anxiety, which the student cannot manage, they may become highly irritable, unable to tolerate frustration of any kind, and show reduced control over impulsive and aggressive behaviour.

What you can do

• Provide a predictable environment and routine.
• Explain any changes to the usual routine and environment.
• Explain the purpose of activities.
• Provide a quiet place as an alternative to the playground/schoolyard.
• Provide a time-out/quiet corner within the classroom.

Students’ capacities to make new connections and form attachments with others at school may be impacted by their loss of important people, such as parents, siblings and friends. Manifestations of altered attachment behaviour include:

• Increased dependency, clinging behaviour.
• Fierce self-sufficiency.
• Compulsive care-giving and responsibility for others.
• Social withdrawal.

What you can do

• Ensure that your school provides peer-led orientation and transition programs.
• Equip teachers to provide EAL support in mainstream classrooms.
• Provide early opportunities for parents/carers to meet with teachers.
• Use social circle and pair/group activities to help students make connections with other class members.
• Assist students to form appropriate supportive attachments with teachers.

You can anticipate that students will be dealing with the effects of ongoing grief.

The length of the grieving process depends on a number of factors, including:

• Whether the death was anticipated or not.
• The degree of violence associated with the death.
• The availability of community support.
• The quality of relationships with surviving family members or caregivers.
• The extent of other associated losses.

Manifestations of grief include:

• Numbness or denial.
• Pining and yearning.
• Preoccupation with lost person.
• Anxiety.
• Emptiness and apathy.

When grief is prolonged, students may present the following patterns of attachment behaviour:

• Anxious attachment: they may be constantly fearful of losing attachment figures.
• Compulsive self-reliance: they may have lost hope in finding new attachments, avoid close relationships, and become overly self-sufficient.
• Compulsive care-giving: their personal needs are denied and relationships are sustained by doing things for others.

What you can do

• Support students to form trusting connections with caring teachers.
• Provide opportunities for group participation to reduce social isolation.
• Link students with supportive groups, agencies and programs.
• Provide opportunities for students to participate in student voice, agency and leadership activities that provide a valued purpose.

Depression is more evident in students who have been exposed to multiple traumatic events (e.g. bombing, combat, and witnessing killings), and those who are bereaved.

The features of depression include:

• Pessimistic mood.
• Loss of interest in things that would previously have been pleasurable.
• Sleep disturbances.
• Appetite disturbances.
• Poor concentration.
• Difficulty making decisions.
• Feelings of worthlessness.
• Feelings hopelessness.
• Suicidal thoughts, plans or actions.

Feelings are not usually expressed directly and can be masked by:

• Misbehaviour.
• Poor learning ability.
• Drug and alcohol abuse.
• Precocious sexual activity.
• Rebelliousness.
• Bullying.
• Risk-taking behaviour.

What you can do

• Provide opportunities for group participation to reduce social isolation.
• Link students with supportive groups, agencies and programs.
• Provide opportunities for students to participate in activities that provide a valued purpose.
• Conduct mental health promotion programs.
• Engage parents and carers.

Children and young people of refugee backgrounds may feel a loss of trust in adults’ ability to be protectors.

There may be an intense sense of betrayal alongside persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world:

‘I am bad.’

‘No one can be trusted.’

‘The world is completely dangerous.’

The sense of distrust of others can be directly conveyed to children by older family members who may teach them not to trust anyone (e.g. parents/carers who are recovering from their own refugee experiences). Learn more about families and intergenerational effects  here.

The quality of relationship between teachers and students is important in restoring trust.

What you can do

You can support students and their families to rebuild a sense of safety and develop their capacity to trust.

• Provide students with opportunities to take risks and grow their capacity to trust.
• Provide continuity of teaching staff.
• Do not press student to participate.
• Allow for student withdrawal and time out.
• Build partnerships with parents and carers.

Traumatic refugee experiences combined with settlement challenges profoundly impact children’s and young people’s perceptions of the world and their place in it.

Young people question why violence and other threats occurred to them, and experience the sense of injustice that accompanies it.

‘Why me? Why my family? Why my community? Why my country? Why my race? Why my religion?’

Whereas parents might shield younger children from some of these questions, it’s not possible to do that with older children and young people, who will try to make some meaning of what has happened. They may end up wanting to retaliate, or they may feel they have got to make reparation for what has happened.

In a supportive school setting, this may produce moral development and social justice activism, and in other settings it is grounds for the development of extremist activity.

What you can do

• Promote connections with peers through a range of activities.
• With the appropriate curriculum, assist students to develop their understanding of the political background of violence and human rights violations.
• Consider how students might find meaning through their participation in group advocacy activities in the school setting and beyond.
• Provide opportunities for students to participate in student voice, agency and leadership activities that provide a valued purpose.
• Engage parents and carers with students’ learning.
• Engage students with positive role models.

Children and young people of refugee backgrounds are very sensitive to injustice and may be preoccupied with scrutinising teachers in relation to their fairness and impartiality.

Sensitivity to injustice relates directly to their families’ prior experiences of persecution, and is compounded by experiences of discrimination as they settle in Australia. Pursuit of justice is an important means of trauma recovery  – but where it is associated with a lack of tolerance for any incursion on fairness, everyday life can become a constant source of provocation to anger.

What you can do

• Make the promotion of human rights and social justice an integral part of everyday school life.
• Provide ways for students to participate and experience empowerment and agency through student voice, agency and leadership
• Implement restorative approaches to addressing challenging student behaviour.
• In the classroom, apply DET’s High Impact Teaching Strategies, which can help students build confidence in themselves as learners and increase their motivation and engagement.
• Build partnerships between teachers and students by giving regular feedback to students and providing opportunities to seek their feedback.

Children and young people can believe they cause bad things to happen.

Feelings of guilt and shame may be compounded in Australia when children encounter discrimination and negative stereotypes about refugees. It is usual for people who have experienced or witnessed violence to blame themselves for a part of what happened, or for having failed to do something that would have prevented harm coming to others.

Manifestations of guilt and shame may include:

• revenge fantasies to repair damage done during traumatic events
• self-destructive behaviour
• avoidance of others due to shame
• inability to participate in pleasurable activities
• aggressive feelings towards oneself.

Children frequently re-enact trauma in their play and art by imagining different endings where they are able to destroy the perpetrator.  Young people entertain revenge fantasies as a way of reducing both helplessness and guilt. Such fantasies should be treated as a matter of concern when there is evidence of acting out.

What you can do

• Promote experiences of social inclusion at school.
• Should feelings of guilt be expressed by a student or parent/carer, validation of the emotion is suggested.
• Identify and confidently address racism, stereotyping and other forms of prejudice.
• Encourage students and staff to own multicultural principles and take responsibility for demonstrating them.
• Consider establishing programs that include discussion of causes of violence.

Children and young people of refugee backgrounds often struggle to arrive at a reasonable assessment of their conduct, and may swing between unrealistic guilt and denial of all responsibility.

Excessive blaming of others can be a way of managing unrealistic guilt associated with past traumatic events, e.g. making ‘impossible choices’ that resulted in losing family members. The object of blame may be unclear or uncertain – directed at authorities generally, or particular groups, or an oppressive society.

In the aftermath of persecution, children may have been actively taught by older family members to blame, never forgive, and seek revenge upon perpetrators. This can result in a victim narrative, where it is ‘always everybody else’s fault’. Such ‘victimisation’ may be compounded through experiences of exclusion and discrimination in Australia.

It is common for children to blame people close to them for the traumatic event and its consequences. This indicates the desire to seek resolution around who is to blame and how to restore justice.

What you can do

• Make the promotion of human rights and social justice an integral part of everyday school life.
• Find ways for students to have meaningful input to aspects of the school.
• Integrate global perspectives into the curriculum, drawing on contemporary events.
• Encourage your school to actively engage with its local community around global issues.
• Develop school programs to support students’ understanding of the impact of inequality and discrimination upon citizenship.