Addiction and Trauma in Addiction

Understanding Addiction and Trauma is the first step toward understanding your addiction

Trauma impacts everyone in different ways, whether it is a one-time, numerous, or repeated incident. While many trauma victims exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), others exhibit resilient responses that do not meet the diagnostic criteria of addiction and trauma. 

Addiction and Trauma


Image depicts How someone reacts to addiction and trauma events has less bearing on how they go on with their lives afterwards.

Whether it’s a one-time or recurring incident, trauma impacts everyone differently. You can find an appropriate organization dedicated to helping you go through your addiction and trauma at the same time by simply searching for drug rehab near me. The Houghton House Group of Treatment Centres is the ideal location for you to recover from your drug addiction and trauma.

While many trauma victims exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), others exhibit resilient responses that do not meet the diagnostic criteria. Trauma can have a variety of effects. It might be subtle, sneaky, or downright harmful. It’s crucial to remember that traumatic stress reactions are natural — they’re typical responses to extremely unusual events.


Reactions to addiction and trauma events

Image depictsReactions to addiction and trauma events Traumatic stress frequently elicits  emotional extremes

Traumatic stress frequently elicits two emotional extremes:

  1. Feeling overburdened (overwhelmed)
  2. Feeling under burdened (underwhelmed) (numb)

Trauma treatment can assist a patient in regaining control over their emotions and regulating uncomfortable and bothersome feelings and thoughts. As a result, the goal is to assist patients in regulating their emotions without the use of narcotics or any other form of risky or dangerous behaviour. Survivors’ first reactions to traumatic experiences are complex and vary depending on the person’s experience, support system, familial ties, coping skills, and social position.

  1. Exhaustion, and befuddlement are some of the first emotions.
  2. Numbness, detachment, and bewilderment 
  3. Sadness, worry, and agitation
  4. Physical arousal has a calming impact.

Even the most damaging behaviours are natural responses to manage your pain and trauma, regardless of how severe addiction and trauma events are. These include:

  1. Inability to sleep, persistent weariness 
  2. Sleep difficulties, nightmares, and other delayed responses to trauma
  3. Anxiety, flashbacks, and fear of repetition
  4. Depression, as well as an aversion to certain emotions, sensations, or activities
  5. Experiencing negative emotions such as rage, fear, sadness, or shame (emotional deregulation is common for trauma survivors)

Severe reactions to addiction and trauma include: 

  • Constant distress with no periods of calm or rest
  • Severe dissociation symptoms
  • Recollections that are intrusive and intense
  • Addiction Triggers

Some resilient responses/reactions:

Image depicts Understanding Addiction and Trauma is the first step toward understanding your addiction.

•Better bonding with family, friends, or community 

• Redefined sense of purpose or meaning 

• Commitment to a personal mission 

• Revised priorities are some of the resilient answers

• Increased philanthropic donations

In clinical words, how someone reacts to addiction and trauma events has less bearing on how they go on with their lives afterwards. Are you able to control your emotions? Maintain your sense of self-worth? How do you keep and appreciate personal relationships?

Some addiction and trauma events survivors have trouble controlling emotions like anger, anxiety, grief, and humiliation, especially if the experience happened while they were young. Individuals may have difficulty identifying and processing feelings for a variety of reasons, including a lack of emotional expression in their family, a belief that emotional expression is hazardous a fear of not being believed, or a sensation of being out of control. Traumatic experiences, on the other hand, can cause some people to fully dissociate from their sensations and reject that they have any feelings at all.


Adaptive (coping) mechanisms for addiction and trauma events

Many people feel that trauma survivors must express their emotions in order to be psychologically well. However, research has shown that survivors who do not process their addiction and trauma events properly can be just as psychologically healthy as those who do. As a result, it’s important to respect the way the victim chooses to cope with their trauma — what keeps them going. It’s not about favouring one type over another; it’s about making sure the patient has robust coping mechanisms. Action-oriented, contemplative, emotionally expressive, and reticent coping styles are all used to deal with trauma.

Trauma is often misunderstood

Surprisingly, there is little public education about what true trauma is. They might have preconceived assumptions about what trauma is, which are frequently based on the child or sexual abuse. As a result, many people fail to recognize the other characteristics of trauma. 99.9% of persons who come to our treatment centres with mood or anxiety disorders have had some type of developmental trauma, which is most typically the outcome of having inconsistent parenting as a child. We have a lot of addiction and trauma patients that have had a lot of one-of-a-kind and isolated traumatic incidents.

looking for a drug rehab

When looking for a drug rehab near me, you need to know that the organization you choose will prioritize you and comprehend the nature of the trauma you’ve experienced. Self-harm suicide ideation, and family problems have all been reported by some. Those seeking treatment frequently have multi-generational difficulties, indicating that trauma has occurred in the family and has been handed down the generations. Many people are unsure about the source of their anxiety. Many people describe their childhoods as “wonderful” or “happy,” but all they remember is dread. As a result, it becomes evident to us that there is something beneath it all. We then move on to a notion called the ‘Window of Tolerance,’ which is a definition of developmental trauma.

Addiction is frequently the result of trauma.

After a traumatic event, substance abuse is generally started or intensified. There is no link to specific medicines of choice because they are often chosen by the user for specific effects they desire to experience. Some individuals have had extremely complicated traumas as a result of sexual or physical abuse. Others, on the other hand, may have experienced family deaths or be suffering from generalized anxiety problems. One thing we’ve noticed is that people who can’t explain their anxiety have turned to medications like cannabis early on, and because it’s known to be relaxing, it’s demonstrated to the user that they may feel better using it.

Self-soothing, self-medicating, and avoiding emotions are all reasons for using drugs or alcohol.

Patients who have had traumatic experiences in the past also have a lot of physical discomfort in addition to emotional problems. Somatisation is a term used to describe patients who feel sick on a regular basis for no apparent reason. Patients self-medicate with medication, alcohol, or drugs to cope with their discomfort. However, doing so may lead them down the path of addiction and trauma. Those who have resorted to alcohol instead may have discovered that it has helped them disconnect from their daily lives.


Assessments of addiction and trauma events

We conduct numerous addiction and mental health assessments at Houghton House Group of Treatment Centres. There are anxiety assessments, for example, where we use the Hamilton Anxiety questionnaires.

• Identify triggers (reminders of the traumatic incident) and possible triggers

 • Make the link between emotional reactions and triggers

 • Develop coping techniques to deal with these situations

• Dealing with flashbacks, nightmares, and unwanted ideas

Patients who have undergone complex trauma, solitary trauma, or developmental addiction and trauma events can benefit from our therapeutic programmes


How we can help?

We at the Houghton House Group of Therapy Centres prioritise addiction treatment, but we are also a dual-diagnosis treatment facility. We address trauma as a comorbid issue, thus in order to receive treatment here, you would need to present and receive an addiction diagnosis first before receiving the addiction and trauma treatment. 

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