{"id":779,"date":"2019-06-29T20:26:24","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T20:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/butterflyeffectscounseling.com\/?p=779"},"modified":"2019-07-22T21:12:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T21:12:42","slug":"trauma-addiction-and-coming-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/butterflyeffectscounseling.com\/?p=779","title":{"rendered":"Trauma, addiction and coming home&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/875\/0*D8hLh26PY1t1J5bE\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Very early\nin my career, working in the field of addiction, I learned the true nature of\nthe disease I was treating was not simply substance use, but, in fact, trauma\nand early childhood adversity (ACES). Although addiction has a biological and\ngenetic component, certainly some people are more vulnerable and at risk, it is\nimportant not to underestimate how we use our addictions to modulate the\nnervous system. When we feel bad, they help us feel better, that\u2019s why we use them,\nand why they are so ubiquitous in our culture. We desperately want to numb out\nand feel something other than what feels uncomfortable and difficult in the\npresent moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I remember a\nvivid illustration of this, I was meeting with a young woman for a clinical\nassessment who was seeking help after losing custody of her daughter due to safety\nconcerns related to her substance use disorder and she desperately wanted to\nhave her back home. She was a IV heroin user who had numerous overdoses in the\nfew years prior to our meeting. On at least five occasions she required Narcan to\nsave her life and despite the numerous brushes with death, continued to engage\nin her destructive drug use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During our\ninitial meeting, I asked her some standard questions, gathering basic data\nwhich included who she would like to have as her emergency contact. She became\nquiet for a time and finally said she did not have an emergency contact. She proceeded\nto share with me that when she was eight years old her mother died of a drug\noverdose and a few years later her father took his own life. She had very\nlittle family and the family she did have did not want her. She moved\nfrequently and grew up without any secure attachments and no sense of\nbelonging. Heartbreakingly, she tearfully told me that the only time she ever\nfelt safe and like she was at <strong>\u201chome\u201d<\/strong> was when she used heroin. Her\nproblems began long before the drug use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Childhood\ntrauma rewires the brain and hijacks the system. Early, chronic activation of\nthe fight\/flight system or collapse\/freeze response create adaptive changes\nthat have a lifelong impact on our health and wellbeing. Our addictions are a\ntemporary solution to a complex problem. A desperate attempt to bring our\nbodies back into homeostasis and relieve our suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Addiction\nchanges brain function by providing a shortcut to the brains reward system by\nflooding the nucleus accumbens with dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter\nthat is involved in the experience of pleasure. This short cut allows us to\nbriefly circumvent the devastating effects trauma has left behind in our bodies.\nAddictions have a way of cutting us off from our felt experience, but there is\nno path to healing that does not include revisiting our wounded places and\nreclaiming our embodied selves. We must go through the body to heal trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Learning to softly\ndip into sensation and into our experience in the body can feel frightening and\noverwhelming. This is especially true when we have used our various addictions to\nescape and avoid the held material in the body. But when we close ourselves off\nto the emotional states we find challenging and difficult, then we inadvertently\nclose ourselves off from the rest of our human experience including joy and\nhappiness. Life is experienced through the body and the gifts of doing this important\nwork can lead to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose and rekindle a zest for\nlife that we may have lost somewhere along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gentleness\nand kindness should always be our compass by which we are guided on this\njourney. Giving ourselves permission to vacillate between those old neural\nnetworks and imprints of trauma left behind and coming into the softness and\nsafety we are learning to recreate inside ourselves in the present moment. The feelings\nof safety and connection we all seek can never been in found in the things we\nuse to numb, avoid or bury within. Instead, it is on this journey back into our\nheart and body that offers the surest hope of coming <strong>\u201chome\u201d<\/strong> again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Very early in my career, working in the field of addiction, I learned the true nature of the disease I was treating was not simply substance use, but, in fact, trauma and early childhood adversity (ACES). Although addiction has a biological and genetic component, certainly some people are more vulnerable and at risk, it is &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/butterflyeffectscounseling.com\/?p=779\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Trauma, addiction and coming home&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118,218,216,219],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-addiction","tag-somatic-therapy","tag-trauma","tag-working-wih-the-body"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Trauma, addiction and coming home... &#8902; Butterfly Effects Counseling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/butterflyeffectscounseling.com\/?p=779\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trauma, addiction and coming home... &#8902; Butterfly Effects Counseling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Very early in my career, working in the field of addiction, I learned the true nature of the disease I was treating was not simply substance use, but, in fact, trauma and early childhood adversity (ACES). 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