Recovering from addiction and mental health issues is an involved and complicated process, and it can look different for everyone. No two addicts will experience addiction or recovery in the exact same ways. We all have differing causes, symptoms and manifestations of our illnesses. While there isn’t one cure for all of our addictions for every person, there is a fundamental solution to the issues causing our addictions, and when we explore it, it can help us heal our addictions holistically. This solution, which might be obvious but which can actually be quite elusive, is trauma healing. Healing from our trauma, our fears and our emotional wounds can create the energetic space we need for transformation and holistic healing, allowing us to recover from the inside out.
Addiction recovery centers around abstinence from the addictive substances and behaviors we’re dependent upon. While this is an important part of recovery, it alone won’t cure us of our addictions. We can stop using or engaging in our drugs of choice, but until we heal our unresolved issues, we’ll always be vulnerable to relapse. We’ll always find escapism and self-medicating tempting. We’ll always be driven to find relief and comfort in external sources outside of ourselves. We’ll have pain we haven’t addressed that continues to fuel our unhappiness and our unhealthy ways of coping.
Trauma healing looks different for everyone. Some people will benefit immensely from therapy, from support groups, or from recovery coaching. Other people will need medication to help them along in the process, to help them stabilize and cope. Some of us will explore alternative healing practices such as energy healing, meditation, yoga, tapping and reiki. These healing methodologies are so important, and they support the hard work of self-examination and processing our deeply rooted issues. As daunting and overwhelming as it can be, we have to push ourselves to look at the pain we’ve been avoiding and trying to escape, the pain that has been fueling our addictions and mental health issues all along.
One of the biggest emotional contributors to our addictions is the shame we carry from our traumatic experiences. We blame ourselves for the troublesome issues in our families and the events of our childhoods. We have a hard time forgiving ourselves for our mistakes and regrets. We feel the heavy, burdensome weight of shame and it permeates our self-perception, causing us to reject and hate ourselves. This self-hatred is a huge catalyst for our addictions, and can be a direct result of trauma. Healing from our shame, our self-hatred and our traumatic experiences is the gateway to our recovery and might be the closest thing we’ll get to a cure.
At Riverside Recovery, we believe in the importance of holistic healing and education, mindfulness and mind-body-spirit wellness. Trauma Resolution Therapies are an important part of our addiction recovery treatment programs. Call (800) 871-5440 for more information.