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Enhancing Emotion Regulation: The TARGET Approach to Therapy with Traumatized Young Mothers

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Motherhood in the Face of Trauma

Part of the book series: Integrating Psychiatry and Primary Care ((IPPC))

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Abstract

Mothers who have experienced traumatic events in their own childhoods, and at other times in their lives, are faced with multiple challenges as a parent that require the capacity to regulate their own emotions while they guide their children in developing core self-regulation capacities. A case vignette is presented to illustrate how a psychotherapeutic approach to recovery from trauma-related emotion dysregulation—Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET)—assisted a young mother with a complex trauma history to shift her view of herself and her approach to parenting her child from reactive and distancing to responsive and emotionally available. TARGET is designed to enable mothers to move beyond the stigma of viewing trauma-related reactivity as psychopathology and to recognize that symptoms are not deficits but actually are adaptive strengths that have been life saving for them —and ultimately to harness these strengths in the process of healing themselves and caring for their children.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, CT, USA

    Julian D. Ford

  2. Advanced Trauma Solutions, Inc., Farmington, CT, USA

    Judith G. Ford

Authors
  1. Julian D. Ford
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  2. Judith G. Ford
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Correspondence to Julian D. Ford .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Maria Muzik

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Katherine Lisa Rosenblum

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Ford, J.D., Ford, J.G. (2018). Enhancing Emotion Regulation: The TARGET Approach to Therapy with Traumatized Young Mothers. In: Muzik, M., Rosenblum, K. (eds) Motherhood in the Face of Trauma. Integrating Psychiatry and Primary Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65724-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65724-0_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65722-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65724-0

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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