After prescribing medication to treat Trinity’s Graves’ disease, which was the first story her symptoms were telling me, I prescribed family therapy to treat the second story her symptoms were pointing to—underlying toxic stress. The purpose of family therapy was to teach Trinity and her aunt how to create an environment that would limit the reactivation of her SAM and HPA axes. The goal was to give them the tools to prevent scary or stressful situations and to manage them better when they came up, essentially reducing Trinity’s dose of adrenaline and cortisol.
