Trauma therapy for children, adolescents, and young adults
A frightening or painful experience can stay with a young person long after it is over. Therapy offers a calm, predictable place to feel steady again.
Signs of trauma in children, adolescents, and young adults
Responses to a difficult experience look different at every stage, and they do not always appear right away. Many families reach out because something at home feels off, before they have a name for it. What follows is the range of what can show up, not a checklist to score at home. Guidance for parents describes those first conversations.
Children
A younger child rarely has words for what happened, so it surfaces in the body: new bedtime fears, broken sleep, unexplained stomachaches, clinginess at drop off, or outgrown habits returning. Play may circle one theme.
Adolescents
An adolescent is more likely to withdraw than explain. Grades slip, focus gets harder, and friendships narrow. Some grow irritable or startle easily; others feel numb. Sleep changes, and once ordinary places start to be avoided.
Young adults
For a young adult, the effects surface in daily functioning. Concentration takes effort, deadlines slide, and rest does not restore. Trust and closeness can feel complicated. Some stay busy on purpose, leaving little room to notice how they feel.
What looks like a problem is often protection
When something overwhelming happens, the mind and body do what they are built to do. They stay alert, steer away from what feels unsafe, and hold on to the lesson. Those responses made sense at the time. They simply keep running after the moment has passed.
Dr. Wald treats that as information, not as something broken. Sessions begin with safety, routine, and choice, and no young person is asked to describe an experience before they are ready. Nothing has to be explained over the phone to begin, and it is normal for the pace to move unevenly.
Care is available in person at the Coral Gables office and by telehealth throughout Florida, so a weekly session stays realistic for families across Miami.
What to expect from trauma therapy
Steady ground first
Before anything else, therapy becomes predictable. Dr. Wald explains how sessions work, offers real choices inside them, and builds a rhythm that feels the same each week. Consistency is the treatment at this stage, not a warm up to it.
Practical skills for hard moments
Next come tools that work in real time: settling the body, sleeping better, handling a reminder that arrives without warning, and telling a memory from present danger. Parents learn the same skills, so a hard evening at home has a plan behind it.
Understanding at a chosen pace
If and when a young person wants to make sense of what happened, Dr. Wald follows their lead. Parents are guided alongside, so support continues at home and, where it helps, at school. Some never give a detailed account, and the work still moves forward.
How Dr. Wald helps
Her approach is trauma informed and draws on the evidence-based methods used across the practice, matched to what a young person can carry now. This care often overlaps with anxiety treatment and behavioral concerns and parent training. See the full range of services.
CBT-informed treatment
Cognitive-behavioral work that loosens the beliefs a frightening experience leaves behind, like self blame or bracing for the worst.
Mindfulness and grounding
Skills that bring attention back to the present when the body reacts as though the past were happening again.
Motivational interviewing
For teens and young adults unsure about therapy, a respectful way to talk it through. The choice stays theirs.
Family systems
A hard experience reaches the whole household. Dr. Wald looks at those patterns so a family can steady together.
Parent guidance
Answers to the real questions: what to say, how to handle the nights, when to hold a routine steady. Parents are involved as much or as little as a young person needs.
Care that moves at a pace you set
A free 15 minute consultation is a conversation about what would help, with no details required. Dr. Wald sees children, adolescents, and young adults in Coral Gables and by telehealth across Florida, Maryland, and PSYPACT states.