You may have learned about how traumatic experiences can wire our brains to be stuck in a toxic stress state.  Being in this state makes our brains and our bodies awash in cortisol and adrenaline, which are not supposed to be chronically produced by our bodies and pumped into our bodies.  What triggers this production is our emotions.  And what produces these emotions is our experiences in our environment.  Its a survival response to threats, real or perceived, in the present, based on what has happened in the past.  The emotions can be for many a crushing, tense, fear and hyperalertness, an inability to self-calm.  Being stuck in a traumatized state robs us of our ability to focus, to feel secure and safe, to trust ourselves, others and the world, and to have a relatively undistorted sense of order, rationality, and predictability about anything and everything.  It robs us of what is called the assumptive world, something those not struggling with trauma take for granted, but is something we could not function without.  We are able to function as well as we are, because we have a cohesive sense of self we build from an assumptive world.  But those who experience trauma can have their sense of self shattered, fragmented, and they desperately need to put those pieces back together.

This is why building a safe, predictable, warm and caring environment and trusting relationships is so critical for people who have had this experience of trauma.  It helps them put the pieces back together.  But there is something else going on that, if we act upon it deliberately, could powerfully enhance that healing process, and propel growth even further:  Happy hormones.  We can construct connecting experiences that initiate the production of our feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters, such as experiences of joy, laughter, awe, wonder, generosity, contribution, and inspiration.  These experiences power-up our happy hormone factories in our bodies that pump endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, melatonin, and oxytocin into our brains, giving us the capacity to feel good in healthy ways.  These factories can shut down due to lack of use from being in negative, fearful environments that rarely offered these kinds of experiences, often with children because the adults in their lives themselves are ruled by the toxic hormones, or have otherwise become depressed, have mental illness or disease like drug addiction or just high chronic stress, and so cannot create the experiences for their children that initiate happy hormone production in their bodies.

So if you work with children who may have experienced, and still be in, a toxic stress state, create experiences that help them build their capacity to pump happy hormones into their brains and bodies, which will have the effect of calming the self and beginning to restore a healthy balance of hormonal and neurotransmitter production.