How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

Carrión frames stress as an inverted U‑shaped curve: modest stress improves performance, learning, coping skills, and problem‑solving, while too little stress leads to disengagement and too much leads to allostatic load (physiological cost to the body). Overprotecting children from any stress deprives them of the experiences that build coping mechanisms and resilience. The goal is not to eliminate stress but to return to the optimal mid‑zone on the curve.

PTSD symptoms in kids commonly arise from an accumulation of stressors (violence, poverty, instability) rather than a single event. Many children have functionally impairing post‑traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) without meeting full diagnostic criteria, and they can be mislabeled as having ADHD: hypervigilance looks like hyperactivity and dissociation looks like inattention. First‑line treatment for PTSD is psychosocial, not stimulant medication.

Carrión’s team uses the phrase “PTSD feeds on avoidance”: denying events, avoiding treatment, or pretending symptoms will disappear allows the condition to worsen and invites complications like substance use or self‑harm. At the same time, being alone with repetitive, unstructured ‘traumatic play’ or rumination typically does not resolve trauma and often focuses on the wrong element (e.g., a lifetime of adversity rather than one earthquake), so structured, supportive processing is crucial.

Children with PTSD symptoms retain a normal circadian cortisol rhythm overall, but their pre‑bedtime cortisol remains abnormally high. This correlates with nighttime symptoms such as nightmares, bedwetting, shallow sleep, and fear. Research inspired by Sapolsky and McEwen shows chronic glucocorticoid exposure can be neurotoxic to hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, areas rich in glucocorticoid receptors and central to memory, context‑processing, and emotional regulation.

Cue‑centered therapy targets neutral sensory cues (colors, weather, sounds, timbres of voices) that became linked to trauma via classical conditioning. Children learn psychoeducation on stress, identify their own cues, and then build a ‘toolbox’ of coping tools they choose themselves (e.g., breathing techniques, mindfulness, self‑talk, sports, music, even idiosyncratic tools like drinking orange juice). Empowering kids to decide which tools work strengthens self‑efficacy and treatment adherence.