The Body Keeps the Score - Excerpts and Thoughts on Obsession and Addiction
Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge?
I never thought that's what I was doing, but it seems so obvious when I read it.
They may compulsively go to the gym to pump iron (but finding that they are never strong enough), numb themselves with drugs, or try to cultivate an illusory sense of control in highly dangerous situations (like motorcycle racing, bungee jumping, or working as an ambulance driver). Constantly fighting unseen dangers is exhausting and leaves them fatigued, depressed, and weary.
People with PTSD have their floodgates wide open. Lacking a filter, they are on constant sensory overload. In order to cope, they try to shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyperfocus. If they can't shut down naturally, they may enlist drugs or alcohol to block out the world. The tragedy is that the price of closing down includes filtering out sources of pleasure and joy, as well.
I've spent so many years feeling so blank about all the things I used to love. A horrible price to pay.
How many mental health problems, from drug addiction to self-injurious behavior, start as attempts to cope with the unbearable physical pain of our emotions?
My notes in the book at this point:
Death of dad in 2003 was when I started drinking heavily. After Andy in 2019 was when I started heavy drinking and smoking and doing drugs again. It took a little longer for it to hurt that time because I was already so entrenched in positive habits it took a while to break those and become more self destructive.
I can also go back to the trauma from when I was 12-13 and say that I also turned to self destructive behavior. Smoking, but more importantly, compulsive sexual behavior in my teens. Whoa.
Although widely understood to be harmful to health, each adaptation (such as smoking, drinking, drugs, obesity) is notably difficult to give up. Little consideration is given to the possibility that many long-term health risks might also be personally beneficial in the short term.
Every addiction for me is something to "lean on" because it's so hard for me to just BE.
Even though the trauma is a thing of the past, the emotional brain keeps generating sensations that make the sufferer feel scared and helpless. It's not surprising that so many trauma survivors are compulsive eaters and drinkers, fear making love, and avoid many social activities: Their sensory world is largely off limits.
We do not truly know ourselves unless we can feel and interpret our physical sensations; we need to register and act on these sensations to navigate safely through life. 1While numbing (or compensatory sensation seeking) may make life tolerable, the price you pay is that you lose awareness of what is going on inside your body and, with that, the sense of being fully, sensually alive.
This is the result of numbing, which keeps them from anticipating and responding to the ordinary demands of their bodies in quiet, mindful ways. At the same time, it muffles the everyday sensory delights of experiences like music, touch, and light, which imbue life with value.
If you are not aware of what your body needs, you can't take care of it. If you are not aware of what your body needs, you can't take care of it. If you don't feel hunger, you can't nourish yourself. If you mistake anxiety for hunger, you may eat too much. And if you can't feel when you're satiated, you'll keep eating. This is why cultivating sensory awareness is such a critical aspect of trauma recovery.
It's been an eye-opening realization that I have numbed myself for so long so much that I am really out of touch with my body - what I really feel, what I need. Where my pains and discomforts come from. All I've done to my body for years is punish and damage it. I have been and still am very out of touch with my physical self. Time to change that.
Anyone who deals with survivors will encounter those "firefighters." I've met firefighters who shop, drink, play computer games addictively, have impulsive affairs, or exercise compulsively. A sordid encounter can blunt the abused child's horror and shame, if only for a couple of hours. It is critical to remember that, at their core, firefighters are also desperately trying to protect the system. Unlike managers, who are usually superficially cooperative during therapy, firefighters don't hold back: They hurl insults and storm out of the room. Firefighters are frantic, and if you ask them what would happen if they stopped doing their job, you discover that they believe the exiled feelings would crash the entire self-system.
They are also oblivious to the idea that there are better ways to guarantee physical and emotional safety, and even if behaviors like bingeing or cutting stop, firefighters often find other methods of self-harm. These cycles will come to an end only when the Self is able to take charge and the system feels safe.
Me with running, me with my job stresses, my impatient and emotional outbursts, and all the CONTROL I think I need to have. A lot to think about here.
Approximately one-third to one-half of severely traumatized people develop substance abuse problems.
Final thoughts: I feel like I knew all the reasons I drank, smoked, did drugs, ran myself into the ground (literally, with running, and figuratively, with work). The excerpts here are just a handful of light bulb moments for me from this book as to why I have done all these self-destructive things for so many years.
There's a part of me that is really sad that it took so long to get to this learning phase. But better to be learning and changing it now than not at all.