How does someone heal from Reactive Attachment Disorder?
What does healing look like?
Are there different stages in healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder?
I am thrilled to share the 7 Stages of Healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder that we have identified and experienced in our home.
My oldest adopted daughter has suffered from Reactive Attachment Disorder her entire life.
Her story is one of bravery, healing, and hard work.
She has been so kind to share her experiences in hopes that she can help others.
Through her own healing process, she has been able to identify the 7 stages of healing she has gone through and continues to work through.
We have seen these exact same stages of healing occur with her younger sister (also adopted with RAD) in residential treatment.
Before we begin discussing the 7 Stages of Healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder, I want to remind everyone that healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder is a choice.
It is a choice that can only be made by the person with Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Healing can not be forced by caregivers and professionals.
Once the choice to heal is made, so much hard work goes into rewiring the brain at each and every stage of the process.
Waiting for child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder to decide to heal or progress with healing can be extremely frustrating.
You can read more about that in the resource below.
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The Most Frustrating Aspect of Reactive Attachment Disorder
Please know there is no cure for Reactive Attachment Disorder.
The healing process helps the individual with Reactive Attachment Disorder form attachments and healthy relationships, but it doesn't remove the process of having to work through triggers on a regular basis.
There is no perfect treatment for Reactive Attachment Disorder outside of the home that will fix everything.
For more information regarding treatment options, be sure to check out the resource below.
RAD Treatment for Kids
Now that the concepts of healing and treatment are understood, let's move forward with the stages of healing.
7 Stages of Healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder
1. Safety in the Home with Family
In order for a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder to begin the healing process, she must decide she wants to feel safe in the home with a family.
A family can provide the safest environment imaginable for a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, but that doesn't mean SHE feels safe there.
Safety may mean something completely different to the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder than it does to the caregiver.
Below is a post I wrote when Princess was eight years old.
It documents the process of Princess showing a desire to be safe in the home with family, and what safety meant to her at the time.
I Just Want to Feel Safe
Having a desire to feel safe does NOT mean that a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder is capable of being safe with others, herself, or things.
The desire to feel safe means that the child or teen's RAD brain doesn't want to keep feeling the same way it did during past trauma.
The body wants to avoid the fight, flight, freeze or fawn response it's so used to.
A child or teen's desire to feel safe may be related to a specific incident that has occurred that left an impact.
The desire to feel safe may also come with age and brain development.
There is no specific time that this stage occurs in everyone.
It is different in every case.
Some children and teens never feel the desire to be safe.
Even when your child or teen has a desire to be safe in the home with family, it is still very important to use safety resources in the home.
Must Have Safety Resources When Parenting a Child with Reactive Attachment Disorder
It will be a very long time before it's possible to remove safety resources.
2. Remorse for Hurting Family Members
Once a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder has made the choice to feel safe, the next stage in healing is feeling remorse for hurting loved ones.
A child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder does not feel empathy or remorse towards others until the brain heals enough to be able to do so, and the child or teen allows those feelings.
Until remorse is felt, the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder feels indifferent towards or enjoys the process of hurting others.
The inability to feel remorse or empathy is not the child or teen's fault. It's due to how the brain is currently wired.
In our home we practiced the steps of apologizing to help our adopted daughters with Reactive Attachment Disorder understand the process, until they felt the desire to complete the process.
How to Make an Apology for Kids with Visuals
Please understand that when a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder feels remorse, it does not mean that unsafe behaviors towards others stops.
The child or teen with RAD may not be at a point where she can stop these behaviors.
Feeling remorse just means that she feels the weight of what she's done.
This weight can lead to self-harming behaviors, so definitely look out for this.
My Child Wants to Kill Herself! Now What?
If a child or teen is not emotionally ready to feel the weight of their choices, BIG emotions can lead to BIG behaviors.
3. Desire to Repair Family Relationships
The third stage of healing leads to the child or teen showing a desire to repair relationships.
This is HUGE!
It's one thing to feel remorse, but to want to make a sincere amends is a completely different story.
A desire to repair relationships does not mean that the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder will stop having unsafe behaviors towards others.
The child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder WILL have behaviors, feel remorse, and then want to make things better.
This can be a tricky business.
Family may not be open to repairing relationships.
Too much damage may have already been done.
Family members may not be willing to give a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder countless chances to try again.
Due to the severity of behaviors, this stage of healing may take place outside of the home in a residential or group home placement.
When Do I Consider Residential Treatment for My Child?
Every situation is different.
In our family, we forgive and continue to nurture loving relationships with safe boundaries.
When repairing relationships is possible, it allows for the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder to continue with her healing.
We always want to support healing.
4. Acceptance of Being a Member of a Family
A child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder must decide to accept being a member of a family in order to continue with healing.
This is no easy task.
It is so much easier for the RAD brain to run away, push away, and act out towards family members who try to get close.
Acceptance of being a family member does not mean that there is love, trust, or attachment.
It doesn't mean that unsafe behaviors stop, though they may lessen in severity or frequency.
Acceptance of being a family member just means that the RAD brain is surrendering to the reality that family relationships exist.
In our family, we like to say this stage has been about our girls accepting that they are "stuck with us forever."
There is no way out of family relationships.
In order for this stage of healing to occur it takes hard work on the part of the caregiver and the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder.
In order to accept being a family member, a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder must feel wanted and loved, no matter the circumstance.
Love and acceptance of the child, does not mean over the top expressions of love or enabling of behavior.
Love and acceptance does includes setting safe boundaries.
Safe boundaries may include placement outside of the home.
When a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder feels that their status as a family member is not based on their behaviors, but based in unconditional love, the door opens for more healing.
Please note that caregivers and other family members can show unconditional love and safe boundaries for years without the child or teen and see no healing in this area.
The decision to accept being a member on the family is the decision of the child or teen with RAD.
Like every other stage of healing, this stage cannot be forced, only encouraged.
5. Learning to Love and Accept Love from Family
After there is an acceptance of family, next comes learning to love and accept love from family members.
I cannot express how important and incredible this stage of healing is.
The RAD disordered brain has changed enough, through the process of neuroplasticity, to have a desire to attach and form healthy relationships!
Once again, the decision to love and accept love from family is initiated by the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder, when the brain is ready.
Learning to love and accepting love from family does not mean that behaviors will stop.
At times they may lessen in frequency and severity, but it's important to understand that the RAD disordered brain is going to push back with each step of the healing process.
Learning to love and accept love is not natural for a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder.
It feels unsafe.
None of this is the child or teen's fault.
Unfortunately, this is the reality of Reactive Attachment Disorder.
At the same time, the more practice a child or teen has with learning to love and accepting love from family, the more automatic it will become.
This process is like learning to play a new piece on the piano. The more one practices, the easier it is for the fingers to know what notes to play and move up and down the keyboard with ease.
There comes a point when the fingers know where to go without prompting from the sheet music.
Learning to love and accept love may take years, and even decades. It is not something that happens quickly.
Caregivers will notice this is happening when the child or teen with RAD is expressing love and adoration for family members without expecting anything in return.
Please keep in mind a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder may show love differently based on past trauma.
Be open to different ways of expressing love.
Physical Boundaries and Consent Activities for Kids
In our home, we used the resources above to help everyone in the family understand which ways others preferred to express love.
They worked very well. We hope they can help you as well.
6. Desire to Change Because of Love
After a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder is able to love and accept love, the desire to change because of love can occur.
This is such a HUGE and INCREDIBLE stage in the healing process to witness and be a part of as a caregiver!
Behaviors consistently lessen in intensity and frequency.
Mind you, they do not disappear completely.
It's important to remember that healing is possible, but a cure does not exist.
Reactive Attachment Disorder will not completely disappear.
A desire to change because of love leads to so much hard work for the child or teen with RAD.
When the child or teen decides to put in the effort, the results seem miraculous.
The child or teen recognizes that the RAD disordered brain, without censor and change, can hurt those that the child or teen loves.
When this stage in healing occurs, the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder no longer wants to hurt those she loves.
7. Convincing One's Self that Change is Worth the Risk of Losing Relationships with People and Being Hurt Again
The desire to no longer hurt loved ones, and convincing one's self that change is worth the risk of losing relationships with people or getting hurt again are two VERY different things.
A child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder chooses not to attach because they believe the relationship will inevitably be lost or that they will be hurt.
To accept that change is worth loving and possibly losing love is an enormous feat and the final stage of the healing process.
Just like all other stages of healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder, the process can't be forced.
The decision to heal must be the choice of the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Even though so much healing has already occurred, the final stage definitely challenges the RAD brain the most, which can lead to push back.
A caregiver may feel that this phase takes an extra long time because of the push back and the fear of loss or being hurt.
Be patient.
Conclusion
Healing from trauma takes years, decades, and sometimes an entire lifetime.
In our experience, once a child or teen goes through the seven stages of healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder with family, the seven phases repeat with relationships outside of the family.
A therapist who specialized in attachment disorders once told me that I'd know I was successful as a parent of a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder, when she developed one healthy relationship in her life.
The seven stages of healing from Reactive Attachment Disorder require so much hard work.
It makes sense that one healthy relationship is considered success.
But, if a child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder can work through all stages of healing with family, they are capable of working through those phases with others as well.
Please be aware that Reactive Attachment Disorder is a spectrum disorder.
Cases range in severity.
There may be some children and teens who are not capable of healing, or may take a lifetime to do so.
In these cases, the lack of capability is not the caregiver's fault.
Success may be setting safe boundaries and everyone being safe.
Please also be aware that healing is extremely difficult and at times impossible when the child or teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder is still experiencing trauma.
In our home, my oldest adopted daughter, Princess, is working on the last stage of healing.
My younger adopted daughter, Sunshine, has spent several years in and out of residential treatment centers due to safety, and is still learning to love and accept love from family.
Every child and teen with Reactive Attachment Disorder is different.
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like the resources below.
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