Getting Creative to Combat Medical Trauma

A number of years ago, I worked with a young teenager—we'll call her Emma*—who had been diagnosed with a very treatable cancer. Treatable, yes, but the treatment was intense. Emma’s body’s response to treatment landed her in the hospital for weeks at a time. The medication that was supposed to save her life made her feel perpetually sick.

Emma started having anxiety around every medical appointment and every time she had to talk to her doctor. She tried to sleep through entire hospitalizations and got angry when her nurses woke her up to take medications. She tried to avoid thinking about cancer. She felt that everything was completely out of control.

A few months into treatment, Emma was done. She didn’t think she could keep taking all the medications and spending her life in the hospital. But the problem was that her treatment wasn’t done. Without continuing to take her medications, it was very likely that her cancer would come back.

Unfortunately, Emma’s story isn’t uncommon. Kids and teens with all kinds of medical conditions want to “live a normal life” and get tired of taking medications or engaging in other treatments. Medical conditions and treatment can take a toll on emotional health. Approximately one out of every three kids with a medical condition goes on to develop significant medical trauma reactions (Price et al., 2016). Briefly, medical trauma is the emotional response to medical diagnoses or medical treatments. This emotional response can include bodily responses, such as sweating, feeling nauseous, a racing heart, or increased blood pressure. Symptoms of medical trauma can make it even harder to continue with medical treatments. (For more on the signs and symptoms of medical trauma, read this post.)

Thinking about what is in your or your child’s control and coming up with creative solutions can help.

What Can I Control?

Many times, we tend to focus on what’s out of our control and what’s going wrong. It can feel like a tornado whirling around you, especially when you are facing a lot of medical treatment or dealing with a chronic medical condition. Taking a minute to sort the uncontrollable from the controllable can be powerful. There is always something that you can control.

For Emma, sorting out the controllable from the uncontrollable looked a bit like this:

Emma's Controllable Vs Uncontrollable Brainstorming

Source: Meghan Marsac

How Can I Come Up with a Creative Solution?

Pick one challenge that is either controllable or maybe controllable and start there. Talk with your medical team and see if they have ideas—many medical teams have learned from other families over time.

In Emma’s case, she was starting to refuse to take her medication as it all just felt too much to handle. Talking with her medical team, she learned that she could take it three hours later in the morning, allowing her to get more sleep, and that the nurses were able to bring her favorite drink to wash it down. Once they added a daily blue slushy to her treatment plan and brought her medications later in the day, she was able to get herself to stop fighting it and to get back on track with her treatment and other life goals. She still was often stuck in the hospital but felt better about the plan that she had worked out with her doctors and nurses. While this may seem like a small change, for Emma, it helped her gain back some of the control in her life and participate in her medical care.

A few other ways to get creative:

• Create a story with real pictures about common procedures that your child has to have (e.g., a social story) and read it at home together so they get used to it.
• Ask your team for medical supplies so your child can try medical play with their stuffed animals at home.
• Engage social support by connecting your child with their friends through texting, video calls, or online gaming platforms (that you have vetted and feel comfortable monitoring).
• Create a book with your child about their medical condition and treatment.
• Get a journal that your child can use to send messages back and forth to a friend or someone at home.
• Check out other resources such as Coping Space, the Cellie Coping Kit, and Afraid of the Doctor: Every Parent’s Guide to Preventing and Managing Medical Trauma.

*Name and details have been changed to protect patient identity

The ideas in this blog and resources are not a replacement for mental health care. If you are worried about your own or your child’s behaviors or emotions, reach out to your doctor for help.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.