Trauma and Addiction Quotes

“Nothing is better, no reward greater than our true connection with ourselves, and through that we can reach out and really touch another. Working through trauma pulls us from the surface of life into the wellspring from which we learn who we really are.”
― Tian Dayton, Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain Through Emotional Literacy

“Confrontation reduces the effects of inhibition,” reversing the detrimental physiological problems that result from inhibition. When we make a lifestyle of openly confronting painful feelings and we “resolve the trauma, there will be a lowering of the overall stress on the body.” Confrontation “forces a rethinking of events. Confronting a trauma helps people understand and, ultimately, assimilate the event.”
― Tian Dayton, Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain Through Emotional Literacy

“A person who is abused or traumatized may develop dysfunctional defensive strategies or behaviors designed to ward off emotional and psychological pain. These might include self-medicating with chemicals (drugs or alcohol), as well as behavioral addictions that affect their brain chemistry (bingeing, purging or withholding food), or engaging in high-risk or high-intensity activities such as excessive work behaviors, risky sex or gambling). These behaviors affect the pleasure centers of the brain, enhancing “feel-good” chemicals, thus minimizing pain. This means of handling trauma can lead to the disease of addiction.”
― Tian Dayton, Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain Through Emotional Literacy

“Giving words to trauma begins to heal it. Hiding it or pretending it isn’t there creates a cauldron of pain that eventually boils over. That’s where addiction comes in: In the absence of sharing and receiving support, pain feels overwhelming. The person in pain reaches not toward people, whom he or she has learned to distrust, but toward a substance that he or she has learned can be counted on to kill the pain, to numb the hurt. Such actions are attempts to self-medicate, to manage emotional pain, but the relief is temporary and had at a huge price. Addicts may initially feel they have found a solution, but the solution becomes a primary problem: addiction. The longer traumatized people rely on external substances to regulate their internal worlds, the weaker those inner worlds become and, consequently, the fewer their available personal resources. Addicts become out of practice for living. Emotional muscles atrophy from lack of healthy exercise.”
― Tian Dayton, Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain Through Emotional Literacy