Addiction is a response to pain and trauma. Reaching out and making yourself vulnerable is challenging when you’ve been traumatized. You may not trust people and you may not trust the process.
Worse, if you can’t heal from the trauma that resides within your body, you could be in long-term recovery and still be suffering from the symptoms.
So what needs to be done to discharge the trauma off your body and break free from the symptoms – addiction being one of them?
Integrative holistic recovery coach Mike Govoni specializes in healing not only addiction but trauma as well. Having had extensive experience in helping addicts overcome trauma and free themselves from addiction, a path that he has walked personally, he knows how trauma plays a major role in addiction recovery.
What is Trauma and Where Does It Come From?
Renowned psychotherapist Stanislav Grof talked about birth as the first real trauma where we, as humans, were aquatic beings first, in this beautiful liquid environment of our mother’s womb. Then all of a sudden, the contractions come and we’re being called and pushed through this birth canal. Now, we’re coming out breathing air which can be a real trauma too.
Additionally, trauma can be passed down generationally through epigenetics, gene expression, and so on.
Trauma may happen unconsciously as well.
Some of us have been frozen for so long and we don’t even know it. We can still be suffering from all these symptoms of the trauma stored in our bodies. We’re unconscious of it because that’s how we’ve been programmed for so long.
Many of us have traumas that we have suppressed and repressed so much that they’re below consciousness.
How Trauma is Related to Addiction
Trauma resides in the soma found in the tissue of the body. When we relate it to addiction, we’re putting something from the external world inside our body to make us feel a certain way.
Whatever the addiction does for you, it’s an attempt to regulate this nervous system so you feel comfortable in your own skin.
Now, that may be unconscious to you.
You might just be having a good time early on in your teenage years and then it just develops into a full-blown habit, whatever the case may be. But the trauma resides in the tissues in the body. Therefore, you can be in long-term recovery and still suffer from the symptoms of trauma.
If you don’t discharge the energy tied to the story of the traumatic events you lived through and are running from in the case of addiction, then you still may be suffering from the symptoms.
If you want to learn more about healing beyond recovery, check out Episode 127: Healing Beyond Recovery with Mike Govoni.