TRAUMA AND ADDICTION

TRAUMA AND ADDICTION

By Maria Pau

Trauma, by its very nature, renders a person emotionally illiterate. What happens feels out of the norm, hard to pin down, elusive and strange, so we don't integrate it into our context of normal living. The brain, like any good computer, categorises information by type. For example, traumas

such as the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, or a devastating hurricane or being raped are not part of our daily routines, so we don't have well-developed mental categories for organising our impressions of them.

They seem unreal, out of the ordinary, and they need to be talked through to make them feel real. Talking about trauma, going over what happened, contextualises it so we can integrate it. 

Complications due to Trauma

If we do not process trauma, the result can be serious and ongoing life complications such as

depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, anger, feelings of betrayal, and trouble trusting and connecting in relationships. Such are the symptoms that, when unresolved, lead people to seek pleasure or self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, food, sex, spending and other addictions.

Because of the unpredictable, uncontrollable and traumatic nature of substance abuse and addiction, people who are chemically dependent, or those in an addict's family system such as spouses, children and siblings, usually experience some form of psychological damage. Family members as well as many addicts present disorders that extend across a range of clinical syndromes, such as anxiety disorders, reactive and endogenous depression, psychosomatic symptoms, psychotic episodes, eating disorders and substance abuse, as well as developmental deficits, distortions in self-image, confused inner world with disorganised internal dynamics, and co-dependence.

Chronic tension, confusion and unpredictable behaviour, as well as physical and sexual abuse, are typical of addictive environments and create trauma symptoms. Individuals in addictive systems behave in ways consistent with the behaviours of victims of other psychological traumas. For example, trauma victims often develop "learned helplessness' - a condition in which they lose the capacity to appreciate the connection between their actions and their ability to influence their lives (Seligman 1975) as do individuals inaddictive systems.

"Persons are traumatised when they face uncontrollable life events and are helpless to affect the outcome of those events." (Lindemann 1944).  Many people suffer deep emotional and psychological pain and are systematically traumatised from living with addicts. After repeated failures and disappointments while trying to gain some semblance of control, feelings of fear, frustration, shame, inadequacy, guilt, resentment, self-pity and anger mount, as do rigid defines systems. 

Dysfuntional Defensive Strategies

A person who is abused or traumatised may develop dysfunctional defensive strategies or

behaviours designed to ward off emotional and psychological pain.   These might include self-medicating with chemicals (drugs or alcohol) as well as behavioural addictions that affect their brain chemistry by bingeing, purging or withholding food, or engaging in activities such as excessive work or high-risk behaviours such as risky sex or gambling. 

These behaviours affect the pleasure centers of the brain, enhancing "feel-good" chemicals and

minimizing pain. This means of handling trauma leads to the disease of

addiction.

Cellullar Memory

Scientific research, mainly in neurobiology, has produced significant studies of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The findings through brain imaging demonstrate that trauma can affect the body and brain much more than had previously been understood (Van der Kolk 1996). Traumatic memories are stored not only in the mind but throughout the body as what scientists call cellular memory. 

Psychodrama, because it is a role-playing method that includes the use of normal movement, provides a natural and immediate access to those memories. Long before the scientific research had yielded these conclusions, J. L. Moreno was developing his psychodramatic method, one of the earliest methods of body psychotherapy. Moreno taught that the body remembers what the mind forgets (J. Moreno 1964).

Based on observations of role-play, Moreno saw the importance of involving the body in remembering. He hypothesized two types of memory: content (mind) and action (Goody). 

Content memory is stored as thoughts, recollections, feelings and facts. Action memory is stored in the brain but also in the musculature as tension, holding, tingling, warmth, incipient movement, and the like. The best route to recapturing action memory, according to Zerka Moreno, his wife and co-developer of the field of psychodrama, is through expressive methods that use the whole person

(mind and body) in action. When we act out rather than talk out situations from our lives, the recollection of memories occurs more completely. The action itself stimulates memory, much in the same way an old song or a familiar smell is followed by a flood of associations.

"People have been aware of a close association between trauma and somatisation since the dawn of contemporary psychiatry" (Van der Kollt 1996). The link between mind and body (psyche and soma) is again supported by the current research of neuroscientist Candace Pert: "intelligence is located not only in the brain, but in cells that are distributed throughout the body… The memory of the trauma is stored by changes at the level of the neuropeptide receptor… This is taking place bodyside."  (Pert, 1998).

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