Living with the kind of unpredictable and damaging behaviors that surround addiction, often challenges our sense of a normal and predictable world. It undermines our trust and faith in relationships and their ability to nurture and sustain us. It interferes with our ability to communicate our needs and have them heard or to listen to another person communicate theirs. It is in other words, traumatizing.
Over time this "cumulative" trauma can engender trauma related symptoms such as depression, anxiety, hypervigilance, low self worth and somatic disturbances (head and body aches, chronic tension and so forth). These symptoms, if they go untreated in family members, can become full blown PTSD. They can lead to all sorts of life, learning, health, psychological and relationship complications and yes, you guessed it, a desire to self-medicate.
This is how the insidious baton of addiction gets handed down through the generations. Addiction engenders trauma symptoms and trauma symptoms engender addiction. Even if family members do not become alcoholics or drug addictes themselves, they are at increased risk for other forms of self-medicating (food, sex or money, or hybrid combinations of two or three).
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The connection between Trauma and Addiction
In the context of addiction, trauma is an event that affects a person in a way that can been seen to have caused a substantial, long term, psychological disturbance. The key to this way of looking at trauma is its subjective nature.
Things like emotional/physical/sexual abuse, childhood neglect, divorce, bullying, rejection or physical injury can all be considered traumatic. Anything counts as long as it leaves a painful emotional mark.
While we're all pretty adept at covering up such trauma, the emotional pain often needs to be soothed and a good way to soothe it is with drugs that make it temporarily go away. The first drink of alcohol, or hit of some other drug, will often take care of that.
Some call the experience of covering up the pain of trauma with drugs "self-medication". Emotional pain can begin a search that often leads to risky behaviors and drugs. I think that self-medication can be an important factor in drug abuse and one that cannot be ignored. As the stigma of emotional pain, or emotional responding, is reduced, people's ability to deal with such pain in a healthy way should lead to a reduction in seemingly helpful, but ultimately self-destructive behaviors.
One of the most useful roles for psychotherapy for addicts is in dealing with the trauma in a healthy, constructive manner. This way the shame, guilt and other negative emotions associated with it stop guiding the person's behavior. While this is rarely enough to stop the need for self-medication by itself, it can be a very useful part of a comprehensive treatment plan. It's important to remember that once someone has entered the realm of chronic drug use, there are brain and body changes that can often trump whatever the reason for beginning drug use was.
The ignored reality about addiction is that it often has an origin in behavior and unfortunately, trauma is often that starting point.
Things like emotional/physical/sexual abuse, childhood neglect, divorce, bullying, rejection or physical injury can all be considered traumatic. Anything counts as long as it leaves a painful emotional mark.
While we're all pretty adept at covering up such trauma, the emotional pain often needs to be soothed and a good way to soothe it is with drugs that make it temporarily go away. The first drink of alcohol, or hit of some other drug, will often take care of that.
Some call the experience of covering up the pain of trauma with drugs "self-medication". Emotional pain can begin a search that often leads to risky behaviors and drugs. I think that self-medication can be an important factor in drug abuse and one that cannot be ignored. As the stigma of emotional pain, or emotional responding, is reduced, people's ability to deal with such pain in a healthy way should lead to a reduction in seemingly helpful, but ultimately self-destructive behaviors.
One of the most useful roles for psychotherapy for addicts is in dealing with the trauma in a healthy, constructive manner. This way the shame, guilt and other negative emotions associated with it stop guiding the person's behavior. While this is rarely enough to stop the need for self-medication by itself, it can be a very useful part of a comprehensive treatment plan. It's important to remember that once someone has entered the realm of chronic drug use, there are brain and body changes that can often trump whatever the reason for beginning drug use was.
The ignored reality about addiction is that it often has an origin in behavior and unfortunately, trauma is often that starting point.
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