When people experience traumatic events, it challenges them as individuals. The brain has self-defense mechanisms to help it handle and deal with trauma. However, what happens when these mechanisms fail? Trauma-informed care when it comes to addiction treatment can help people deal with the effects.
What Is Trauma-Informed Care?
Trauma is a part of ordinary life. At some point, everyone experiences trauma to some degree. In its most basic form, trauma is something that the brain can deal with and process normally.
However, extreme trauma can leave the brain vulnerable to psychological disorders. To make matters worse, everyone experiences trauma differently. There’s no telling which event is too much for them to handle.
Where does trauma-informed care come into play? It recognizes the link between addiction and trauma. A trauma-informed approach uses this knowledge or recognition as a way to stimulate the healing process. It helps whether the trauma occurs before or after an addiction develops.
However, the American Psychological Association says that trauma-informed care has certain elements. While every rehab center takes its own approach, these elements make up our trauma-informed care, including:
- An understanding of the impact that trauma has on people and their paths to recovery
- The ability to recognize signs of trauma
- A knowledge that trauma can come from anywhere, including friends and family
- Education about trauma for clients
- Services that help people resist re-traumatization
Why Does Trauma Play Such a Big Role in the Development of Addiction?
Trauma doesn’t just a play a big role in the development of addiction. It plays a huge role in nearly every aspect of people’s lives. Our Pennsylvania addiction treatment center uses a trauma-informed approach because trauma affects people on physical, mental and spiritual levels. It also changes their behaviors and social interactions.
What’s worse is that most people never seek professional help when they suffer from trauma. Men, for example, typically view asking for help to process trauma as a sign of weakness.
Instead, those who don’t get help self-medicate. Abusing alcohol and other drugs covers up the feelings that the trauma stirs up. Of course, the drugs don’t last forever and wear off. As a result, they keep abusing drugs to feel normal.
Abusing drugs for too long leads to addiction. Then, people have to seek addiction therapy programs to overcome the disease. Failure to deal with addiction healthily can lead to other problems, including fatal overdose.
Do People Have to Deal With Trauma to Overcome Addiction?
To start with, no. People can visit a rehab center and have some success overcoming addiction. At some point, however, the trauma will come back because they never dealt with it. That triggers a domino effect that leads them to use drugs again to deal with the pain. The cycle continues if they fail to address the root of the problem.
Steps to Recovery Offers Trauma-Informed Care to Help You Overcome Addiction
At Steps to Recovery, we value trauma-informed care in addiction treatment. In fact, we provide trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It can help you deal with the negative emotions, behaviors, and thoughts that cause addiction. CBT also brings to light the cause of these negative elements.
Steps to Recovery strongly believes that a rehab center is only as good as the people who work for it. Our staff members work hard to help you get the most out of our programs. Some of the programs that we offer include:
- Individual counseling and group therapy
- Intensive outpatient program
- Family therapy
- Mens rehab program
- Womens rehab program
Don’t let past trauma shape how you live the rest of your life. Learn more about our trauma-informed care. Contact Steps to Recovery us at 267.719.8528 to see how we can assist you.