Childhood Trauma and the Wheel of Trauma and Addiction

Feelings happen in the body. That’s why when we’re stressed out psychologically we experience it physically. If we can’t acknowledge it and process our emotions consciously through crying, processing anger and so on, it comes out sideways. We get a back ache, a pain in the neck, a sick stomach. Some nerve center of our body like the lower back, the head or the gut has to do our feeling for us. This is more often then not the body trying to tell us to pay attention, to slow down, to stop, look and listen so that we can tune into what’s going on inside of us.

The Body/Mind Connection

The limbic system is the body/mind neural network that governs our emotions. Our moods, emotional tone, sleep and appetite cycles are some of the areas of functioning that fall under its jurisdiction. Emotions occur in the body as well as the mind. Our emotions circulate throughout our bodies as brain/body mood chemicals that impact how we feel. Our experience of fear and other emotions is physical.

Our bodies don’t really distinguish between physical danger and emotional stress. The natural fear response associated with our fight/flight apparatus will cause the body to react to physical or emotional crisis by pumping out sufficient quantities of what are known as “stress” chemicals, such as adrenaline, to get our hearts pumping, muscles tightening and breath shortening, in preparation for a fast exit, or a fight. But for those where the family itself has become the preverbal “saber-toothed tiger”, for whom escape is not really even possible, these chemicals boil up inside and can cause physical and emotional problems. And family members may find themselves in a confusing and painful bind, such as wanting to flee from or attack those very people who represent home and hearth.

When the family itself is causing the stress, our survival apparatus gets all mixed up, and our emotional systems may become deregulated. Fear and anxiety build until they become overwhelming and then the body, mind and emotions go numb: we shut down. When we live with addiction, we’re often too preoccupied with our problems to take the time to talk through these intense reactions so we can’t use the thinking, reasoning parts of our minds to regulate our overwhelming feelings. And to make matters even more complicated, our cortex, or the part of our brain where we do our thinking and reasoning, shuts down when we’re really scared. What keeps going are what psychologists refer to as the “survival” part of the brain where we scan for further danger or plan a quick exit or a confrontation.

When we sense danger, our bodies respond by pumping out the necessary stress chemicals to enable us to flee for safety or to stand and fight. In the case of childhood problems, that is where the family itself has become the feared object or source of stress, there may be no opportunity to fight or flee. Children and adults in these systems may find escape impossible. And so they do what they can. They freeze. They shut down their inner responses by numbing or fleeing on the inside through dissociating. Though this strategy may have helped them to get through a painful situation, perhaps for a period of many years, they suffered within.

The ability to escape or take one’s self out of harm’s way is central to whether or not one develops long-term trauma symptoms or PTSD (vander Kolk, 2004). If escape is not possible, the intense energy that has been revved up in their bodies to enable them to fight or flee, becomes thwarted or frozen (Levine, 1997). Years later these people may live as if the stressor is still present, as if a repeated rupture to their sense of self and their world lurks just around the corner, because their body/mind tells them it does.

This is known as a post-traumatic stress reaction. It is when the contents of repressed body/mind memories that stem from childhood emerge in adulthood because they never got processed when we were young. This is how early childhood trauma can have long-lasting effects. This sense of no escape can make the trauma survivor feel trapped inside his or her own internal black hole, so to speak. When triggered, the body reacts, maybe getting shaky or sweaty, heart pounding and so forth. These disturbing body sensations can trigger anxious thoughts and feelings related to feeling frozen and helpless as a kid and can make them want to lash out, withdraw, collapse or a combination of these. Then comes the urge to self-medicate, to get all of this disturbing inner combustion to stop. Drugs and alcohol are predictable and they work to quiet an inner storm. So can sex, food and frenetic, hyper-adrenalized activities. Though they cause long-term complications, they work in the short run to reduce pain, anxiety and fear. In this way we take our first step onto an endless wheel of trauma and addiction.

The Wheel of Trauma and Addiction

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Self Medicating the Natural Way

In recovery, we learn to manipulate our body chemistry as well. Part of feeling good and maintaining a good mood lies in intentional serotonin management. We need to actively adopt activities that stimulate serotonin, one of the body’s natural antidepressants or mood regulators. Comfortable exercise, sharing emotions, journaling, meditation, relaxation, guided imagery and a relationship network all stimulate serotonin to enter the blood stream.

Encourage clients to try it themselves. When they are feeling moody, ask them to take a walk with friends and share feelings or journal and then share or listen to a guided imagery and go into a relaxed and meditative state. Twelve-step programs are a godsend for recovering people who need to slowly internalize the feeling of a different kind of relating. In the rooms we can share what we’re really feeling without creating an explosion or dead silence. We can learn to develop the skills of emotional literacy by actually talking about feelings rather than shutting them down, and we can learn what it feels like to sit in a room of people, day after day after day, who can experience and model a calmer way of relating, principles above personalities. We need not – nor should not – exclusively depend on any one person, but we learn that there is a safe community of like-minded people we can rely on to be carrying on the beautiful traditions of the 12 steps.

References

Lavine, Peter, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma with Ann Frederick; North Atlantic Books

van der Kolk, B. A. 1987. Psychological Trauma. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

1994. “The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Post-Traumatic Stress.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry

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