A short YouTube talk by Dr. Carol (Karol) Darca, a psychologist and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment Center, explaining what addiction is, the many behavioral and substance forms it can take (e.g., gambling, sex/porn, love, electronics, food, shopping, relationships), and arguing that addiction commonly functions to escape unwanted feelings or memories—often rooted in childhood attachment trauma. She links trauma to disconnection (from body, feelings, others) and recommends treating trauma alongside stopping addictive behaviors to achieve reconnection and healing.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darca, author, psychologist, founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Addiction. How much do you know about what addiction is? And do you know the connection of addiction to trauma? What is addiction? An addiction is an urge to do something that is hard to control or stop. And I also want to tell you about general signs of addiction are lack of control, inability to stay away from a substance or from a behavior, decreased socialization, abandoning commitment or ignoring relationships, and ignoring the risk factors that go with the substance or the behavior. So when I say addiction, most people think addiction means drug use or alcohol use. But actually we have a huge list of different forms of addiction now. And they are gambling, a lot of people may not have realized. Sex porn, of course, we're talking about in the excessive way, right? Love addiction. So yes, a person can be addicted to feeling in love or being in love. Addiction to electronics, especially technology. Right. Constantly in front of a game or being on maybe even social media, non stop food addiction, shopping addiction, relationship addiction. So it could be you could be addicted to one single person in the relationship. Obviously some addictions are worse than others and have different consequences. But overall it's a behavior or a substance. It used to be thought as only as a substance, but it's also a behavior that, that's addicted. It's hard to stop. You have sort of the sense of urge that I have to do it, a sense of actually relief. When you do that, you feel better. And then maybe a promise that you will stop, but really inability to stop. So that's the definition of addiction. And it shows up in our lives in different ways. So you might be in fact experiencing some of these symptoms or examples that I share or someone that you know. So I don't want to talk about addiction in terms of what to do, but it's more about how it's connected to trauma. Because it's very easy to judge addiction as it's a bad behavior and it's something that just has to be caught. Some people believe it's genetics, which we do actually think it plays a huge role. And some people think of it as maybe almost sin or it's a weakness. If you are weak, then you have addictions and you can't control yourself type of thing. But I look at addiction mostly from a trauma perspective. I'm obviously a trauma psychologist, so I, I tend to see it from that way. And I have experienced over the 23 years, 50% or more of the clients that I worked with, they come with trauma, but they Also have a secondary addiction. And they don't understand why they are not able to give up on the substance or on the behavior that they find very damaging to themselves. So here's what I explained to them. Every addiction, again, behavior or substance has a purpose, has a function underneath. Just ask yourself if you have, if you're struggling with something when you do that, how do you feel? Is it a relief? Is it a happiness? Is it a sense of connection? And now imagine if you don't do that behavior or if you don't use that substance, what do you feel? It could be a sense of loneliness, sadness, anxiety, or maybe self hatred or really just being in your body, which you might not want to. So that's usually the purpose or the function of an addictive behavior. It, it masks something that you do not want to. It, it masks a feeling or a memory, sometimes even that you want to escape. So it's actually a form of escape. It's a form of feeling a void that you haven't found another way of feeling. When you start understanding that is if you're watching my other videos, you'll hear me say this all, all the time is you hopefully stop blaming yourself. The purpose of stopping blaming yourself is not so that you can continue with your addiction, but that you can treat it from the trauma perspective rather than seeing I just have to stop the behavior, I just have to stop smoking and that's it. Yes, but if you're smoking, it's giving you some sort of a relief when you don't smoke anymore. What will you be doing with those feelings that are, that are coming up to the surface? Because you are going to experience some feelings. It's not just a habit of doing this motion with your hand, but is there some feeling that you are trying to get rid of? And that's where the trauma comes in. So a lot of the times, especially with addiction, the correlation that they're finding is, is more related to childhood attachment trauma. What is attachment? Attachment is a form of bonding and forming a healthy relationship with, ideally with a caregiver. Right. With your parent. So when you don't have that, for whatever reason your parent might have been abusive physically, sexually, they might have been ignoring you and just like where you just really don't feel that connection. But we need love. We need that connection in order to survive. Yes, at first we need milk, water, food, shelter, but really as a secondary, we need love in order to survive. In terms of our emotional development, that is an absolute must or a food. So when you don't have that you are always staying with that yearning to feel connected to someone, to feel love. In fact, a lot of people who have addiction will tell you that maybe that was the first time they felt some sort of a connection. They might be even having an easier time to connect to others, right? If they're shy or they've been feeling lonely, or they've been feeling very judgmental of themselves. When they use a substance or when they do the behavior, they might all of a sudden feel sort of relaxed about it, A sense of connecting. And that's where the addiction comes in. So it really fulfills that purpose of the yearning. Which comes back to the statement I should have made earlier Is that trauma causes disconnect. I've talked a lot about this in my book, but it's something very, very important to mention again. My book, the trauma map, Talks a lot about how trauma causes a disconnect from yourself. Like disconnect from your body, from your feelings, and from others. And how a sense of reconnecting to yourself could be the healing. So this is the same thing with addiction. People who have addiction are usually feeling, walking around. Still very highly functioning people. By the way, don't think that if you have an alcohol problem, it means you have to be homeless and, you know, on the street, drinking all day. You could have an addiction and being highly functional, highly successful in life, but that you never get out of that sense of disconnect that you might have. So you're trying to constantly connect to something. And you're using a substance or someone else to connect. So if you find ways to connect to your emotions, which means accepting them, making peace with them, connecting to your body, which is absolutely crucial, you'll actually be able to overcome your addiction. So again, disconnection and addiction. Trauma and addiction very much go hand in hand. You might have heard of this fight flight, freeze response. If you haven't, I'll just give you a brief explanation of what that means. When a traumatic experience happens, we have a sort of animalistic brain that gets activated in that time. In fact, our. Our thinking brain shuts down completely. We're not rational people in that time because we're trying to survive, right? So the survival reaction is either fight. So we fight back the attacker flight. Which means we run away because we want to escape and protect ourselves. Or freeze. So we don't do anything, which is almost going through a shock. Those three are very organic, animalistic reactions that we have in front of a traumatic experience. So addiction, in fact, is formed from that, from the flight part. So the flight is the one that wants to run away, right? So when we have a traumatic experience or even stressful experience, we don't want to feel the pain, so we want to run away. And that's exactly how a person forms an addiction, by wanting to run away. So watch yourself throughout the day, your thoughts. When you're in front of a very stressful situation or even a boring class, is your mind constantly wanting to go somewhere else? Are you trying to run away from. From where you are today? Are you trying to run away from your past? Are you wanting to go away from your relationship that's maybe not satisfactory for you or your career or your boss that's treating you bad? And if you find yourself almost daydreaming, wanting to go away, you are more likely to. To have an addiction and, and probably use. Sometimes people say, I don't know why I'm an addict. I say to them, stop using the substance or stop doing the behavior. And you will know why you are using, because right away, all the feelings, everything that you did not want to face will come up to the surface. It's very easy to judge addicts, or it's very easy even to judge yourself if you're an addict yourself. And again, because there's a stigma with addiction, believing that it's. It's a sign of strength or weakness. My suggestion as a psychologist to you is do not judge addicts. Do not judge yourself. Really see this as a sign of a trauma. So it almost should go hand in hand. Addiction means I have trauma. If someone you love or yourself have addiction, treat first the trauma automatically. Just look for a trauma professional or educate yourself about trauma. Read books. I mean, of course you can treat your addiction, which means you have to stop the behavior. But hand in hand, you have to look at the root cause, the trauma that caused that. And then you can't forget to treat that. So judging is not going to help anyone. Obviously, we need a lot of compassion and understanding for anyone who's been in this situation. And remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected and overcome your trauma.
