Emotional Development

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

We’ll begin this section on Emotional Development discussing normal or typical emotional development from the early teen years thru young adulthood.  This is a period of enormous emotional growth and change as teens develop into mature young adults.  Various systems are involved in emotional development, including the brain, cognitive development, physicality, and maturity. It’s a period of increasing independence and identity formation as teens establish a coherent sense of self in the context of relating to others and learning to cope with stress and manage emotions.  We’ll then move on to the effects of trauma on emotional development and the resulting impact on relationships and social behavior.  We will follow these introductory sections with a discussion about ways to provide relationship based-practices for trauma- informed care to address the effects of trauma as teens develop and mature.