The commercial website DefiningWellness.com has some interesting information on trauma-based therapy. Check it out. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Trauma-Based Therapy Focus
Addiction is 100% trauma-based. Substance use disorder is traumatic to the body and mind, and the emotional impacts are lasting. Various forms of therapy are essential to the recovery process and are provided in our inpatient dual diagnosis treatment program. Addressing deeply seated traumas, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and grief, allows for emotional healing to begin. People in early recovery can start to move forward to process their trauma, their addiction, and the aftermath. When the substance-induced fog begins to lift, thoughts and emotions that were shut down by drug and alcohol use will begin to rapidly rise to the surface. Shame, guilt, anger, fear, hope, and may other emotions and feelings will appear and can be overwhelming. Our experiential therapy program helps each client to move from fight or flight mode to a place where they can begin processing and healing.
Dealing with emotions isn’t something that a person in active addiction often has to do. Addiction quiets racing thoughts, quells fears, numbs pain and grief, and becomes the coping mechanism of choice as a result. When use stops, the impact of experiences and events that one was coping with through substance use, or things that happened while one was active in their addiction, are once again felt.
What is Experiential Therapy?
Our progressive team recognizes and embraces the benefit of evidence-based and experiential therapeutic modalities, such as Psychodrama, Eye Movement Desensitization, and Reprocessing (EMDR), Equine Therapy, Art, Music, and Play Therapy. Experiential therapy is a therapeutic technique that uses expressive tools and activities, such as role-playing or acting, props, arts and crafts, music, animal care, guided imagery, or various forms of recreation to re-enact and re-experience emotional situations from past and recent relationships.
