YouTube talk by Amber Hollingsworth outlining three strong links between trauma and addiction: (1) prior trauma increases risk of developing addiction via dysregulated alarm systems and self-medication; (2) developing an addiction often creates new trauma for the person because addiction leads to risky, compromising behaviors; and (3) people with addictions can cause trauma to family and others, producing complex trauma in loved ones. The presenter emphasizes balancing empathy with accountability and directs viewers to recovery resources and related videos.
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So pretty much everyone knows there's a strong link between trauma and addiction. But did you know there's actually three very strong links between trauma and addiction? In this video, we're going to explore exactly what they are. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction to from every angle so that you can get your life and your family back on track and get back out there and live the life that you want to live. But before we get into our topic, I want to let you know that as always, there are links to tons of free addiction recovery resources right in the description. So don't forget to check those out. Okay, back to our topic. So the first link between trauma and addiction is probably the one that people are most aware of, and that is the idea that people with trauma are way more likely to addiction issues. And to be honest, it doesn't take a psychologist or a research scientist to figure out why that is. When you have trauma, you actually dysregulate the alarm systems in your brain. Sometimes that dysregulation is permanent, and it comes in the forms of lots of different kinds of anxiety, lots of different very uncomfortable symptoms. So it doesn't really take a genius to figure out that if you're uncomfortable all the time, you're going to be looking for some sort of solution. And sometimes people think they have found their solution in drugs, alcohol, or other types of behavioral addictions. Unfortunately, they're just not very good solutions because they tend to help a little bit short term, but they tend to make the problem way, way worse long term, for many reasons, because it disrupts your relationships, because it starts to consume your life, because it changes your brain chemistry, and you start to have the rebound effects from the substances or the addiction, which makes you have further anxiety, depress, and all kinds of other uncomfortable symptoms. I will say there are definitely some better solutions out there for you if this is your situation. In fact, I made a video recently about a really cool new PTSD treatment, and I'll put a link to that at the end of this video. Now, the second really strong link between trauma and addiction is the fact that if you didn't have trauma to begin with, but then you develop an addiction, you're really likely to get traumatized as a result of all the things that come along with addiction. Unfortunately, addiction will cause you to behave in ways you wouldn't normally behave. It will cause you to put yourself in situations you wouldn't normally put yourself in. It really compromises you to be honest. And you are so much more vulnerable for bad things happening. So people with trauma have a higher chance of developing an addiction and people with addiction have a higher chance of developing trauma. And this third way that trauma is strongly connected to addiction is probably the least talked about. And that is the fact that people that are struggling with addictions are so much more likely to be causing trauma to the people around them. Now I know that's an uncomfortable thing to hear and maybe even not very PC thing to say these days, but let's be honest about it. If you've had trauma in your life before, maybe in your childhood, there's a pretty high chance that the person involved with maybe triggering or causing some of that trauma had an addiction. Because when you have an addiction, you don't relate to people the same way. You get into such a self preservation mode that you make decisions differently, you see the world differently, your mood is up and down, you're unpredictable, Sometimes you're not even in control of the things you're saying and doing. And the uncomfortable truth is that is very, very traumatic to the people around you. Now, one of the reasons why I actually wanted to talk about this is because recently there was a comment left on one of my videos and I don't, you know how it's hard to tell with comments and maybe it just came across differently than the person meant it. But I see things like this a lot and I have for sure heard things like this a lot. But the commenter said something that was kind of along the lines of, you know, you just don't understand, you need to leave addicts al because they can't help it, they have trauma, you don't know what it's like. And I kind of had a little reaction in my head to that comment because you see, I do know that people struggling with an addiction have trauma and I have tons of empathy for it. However, sometimes I see that being used as a reason or an excuse to not deal with an addiction. I'm going to give you a little piece of tough love right here. Just because you have trauma doesn't make it okay for you to make decisions that negatively impact, impact, or maybe even traumatize the people around you. Now that trauma can come in many types of forms and you may be thinking, well, I don't abuse my kids or I don't abuse my spouse, I'm not causing them trauma. But it's a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of other ways that living with someone who has an addiction is very traumatic. In fact, a lot of family members or people living with someone with an addiction, they develop a disorder that's somewhere in between post traumatic stress disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. They're living in fear constantly. They're walking on eggshells. They're worried something's bad is going to happen to you or your behaviors are going to result in something bad to happen to someone else. They're worried it's going to cause the family to fall apart. And ultimately this creates something called complex trauma. But I do have a video on that and I'll try to remember to link that up for you here at the end as well. You know, the other day I was actually listening to one of my true crime videos. Some of you know, I really like that. Anyways, I was listening to a video that was all it was very sad story. It all about a mom who had a drug problem who was very abusive to her five year old son and ultimately killed her five year old son. Probably not intentionally, but the abuse was so severe it resulted in his death. The reason I'm telling you this story is because the part that stands out to me is when this woman was on trial, she was found guilty. And I was actually listening to the part where the judge was sentencing this person and the judge was talking about why they were making the sentence recommendation the way that they were. And the judge was talking about how this person had a history of trauma, how when this woman was younger, her brother committed suicide and how she had developed an addiction issue off and on and had struggled and how the judge was really sure that the addiction had contributed to the abuse and the things that happened. And I'm 100% sure that that judge was correct. But it just struck a little bit of a nerve with me because at some point the trauma and the abuse has to stop. We can't continue to accept bad behavior from ourselves or from other people because we have empathy for them. It's okay to have empathy for someone and to understand why they're struggling and maybe even to understand how they developed and have an addiction, have some empathy for that. But a reason is not an excuse. And allowing substance abuse to continue for yourself or for a loved one isn't helping with the trauma anyway. I promise you. Just like we said in number two, continuing to abuse substances is most likely to result in more trauma, even to the person themselves. So you're not doing yourself any favor or your loved one any favors by having so much empathy, care, and concern that you're just excusing away this behavior by just excusing away the addiction. Ultimately. Ultimately, we're going to have to balance empathy with reality. And I realize that can be a little bit of a hard pill to swallow. But if you're ready to hear that information, I want you to watch these videos next. It's more about the links between trauma and addiction and how we can intervene and get that cycle to stop.
