hey there everybody and welcome back to the addiction and co-occurring Disorders Treatment
manual unit 1 part 7 an introduction to trauma I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes
in this part we're going to Define trauma and explore how it might
interact with mood and addiction issues as well as potentially physical health issues
trauma is experiencing something that overwhelms your ability to cope not all trauma
results in PTSD or cptsd complex post-traumatic stress disorder
trauma if you have adequate resources and you were not already struggling
with addiction or mental health issues can often be resolved without injury
however if it's not resolved it leads to what I call traumatic injury which is PTSD or cptsd
people with PTSD or cptsd often experience re-experiencing they may have flashbacks or
nightmares about the event they often experience hyper vigilance one of the core features of
trauma is during that event you felt unsafe and disempowered you felt like you didn't have any
power and maybe not the ability to escape from it therefore after that point if you haven't resolved
it if you haven't developed a sense of safety and personal power again then you may be what we call
hyper Vigilant you're constantly on guard you're constantly scanning because you don't feel safe
people with post-traumatic stress often avoid reminders of the event well that makes sense that
you wouldn't want to be reminded of that event but people with post-traumatic stress or complex
post-traumatic stress go to Great Lengths to avoid those reminders because when they ex encounter
those reminders it triggers their other symptoms and that is just so painful and overwhelming
yeah people with post-traumatic stress often have what we call emotional dysregulation
because they don't feel safe they and they're hyper Vigilant that stress response system
is frequently or constantly on and when that happens the body
in order to protect itself turns down your stress sense stress response so you're not going to
notice or respond to things that probably would have irritated you before your body says you know
what we ain't got the energy to focus on that right now so just ignore it let it go you just
you don't have the energy so the person most of the time instead of having bouts of feeling
happy or irritable or a little bit anxious they're just kind of flat kind of like Eeyore from Winnie
the Pooh but when they do get triggered their body just sent a tsunami of stress hormones so
they go from feeling flat to frantic or flat to Furious like that and that's what we call
emotional dysregulation they don't have any middle Zone they don't have moderately irritated they
are either flat or they're enraged they're either flat or they're absolutely petrified
and many people with post-traumatic stress also struggle with feelings of guilt and shame about
what happened about their memories about not being able to move on about a whole bunch of things
many people and I dare say most people
that are struggling with addictions and anxiety and mental health issues have a history of trauma
somewhere that whether it's attachment Trauma from childhood or traumatic events
from when they were growing up or from the past you know five years I don't know but
the majority of people that I have worked with
have a history of unresolved trauma somewhere so it is important to think about
whether you've experienced traumas whether some of those traumas are unresolved and
how they may be triggering addictive behavior depression anxiety anger guilt grief and jealousy
and identify three healthy ways of dealing with each symptom so when you are re-experiencing when
you're having a flashback what are three ways you can cope with that how can you help yourself get
grounded and feel safe until that flashback is over hyper vigilance what are three ways
that you can help yourself feel safer and actually relax now you may not be able to relax when you're
in the middle of a whole crowd of people like at the mall you know that's that's a huge step
but three healthy ways of dealing with this when you're for example at home or in your
office at work when you're at places where you spend a lot of time what are three healthy ways
that you can think of that can help you feel safer and less vulnerable less hyper vigilant