🌱They’re not so random. 🌱Seek support. #traumainformed #addiction #pain #mentalhealth #roots

🌱In addiction, we often become expert compartmentalizers. 🌱Through inserting a substance into our bodies - or inducing our own hit of dopamine with compulsive s-x, relational patterns, working, gambling, eating patterns, or some combination - we “learn to hide from [ourselves].” Quote by: @bessel_van #trauma #development #escape #dopamine #emotionalhealth

🌱On the question of whether p-rn can be addictive - it usually comes down to semantics. 🌱The answer is yes.🙂‍↕️ #addiction #psychoeducation #neuroscience #mentalhealth #therapist

🌱We can learn a lot from what your (or your loved one’s) specific compulsive s-xual behaviours are, your arousal template, and pairing that with early life experiences. 🌱I get curious about what individuals are trying to numb, escape from, cope with, adapt to, stimulate, and/or control with the physiological response they get from s-x/p-rn. 🌱Nobody wakes up one day, and thinks, “today is the day I’m going to develop a s-x addiction.” It happens unconsciously. It typically starts as a coping mechanism. 🌱This doesn’t excuse the behaviour. It helps reveal the roots of the addiction, which is - at a point - crucial for recovery. #sexualhealth #emotionalhealth #traumarecovery #psychotherapist #healing

🌱In trauma therapy, as brutally painful as it often is, the therapist is required to pace the work. •The therapist might guide, in a sense, but the individual takes the lead. 🌱Oftentimes, and especially where there was emotional neglect, folks don’t realize they experienced trauma. •As humans, we’re often not aware that when we think or say things like, “it could have been worse,” this is an indication that we experienced some sort of adversity. It’s a coping mechanism we so adaptively - yet, often unconsciously - built. 🌱The trauma therapist needs to recognize that as we provide psychoeducation, and as we explore and process early life events with those we work with, we’re often pulling the rug out from beneath them. 🌱Trauma therapy is always going to involve grief therapy, and part of that is the therapist’s responsibility to move along at a pace that recognizes we’re often helping folks unveil hard things that reveal big losses. #traumarecovery #cptsd #grief #childhood #therapy

🌱Seeking support is a major part of breaking the pattern. 🌱We often think we can do it alone, but whether we can or we can’t isn’t the point. The point is that many of us have adaptively responded to adversity through fierce independence. Sometimes the fierce independence is a part of the pattern that needs to be broken. 🌱We can facilitate that through seeking support. #pattern #cyclebreakers #traumahealing #emotionalhealth #relationships

🌱We need to think broadly about what trauma is here. It’s not always - and often is not - the things many automatically think of when we hear the word “trauma.” •Sometimes it’s bullying. Sometimes it’s emotional neglect. Sometimes it’s never feeling seen. 🌱Exposure can be as simple as coming across a parent’s p-rn magazines as a child, or the increasing access to s-xualized content on digital media. #psychoeducation #sexualhealth #mentalhealth #addicted #therapistsofinstagram

🌱When SELF-regulation isn’t modeled, and when CO-regulation does not occur, children will adaptively (and often unconsciously) learn what and how substances and behaviours may do the regulation for us. #addiction #addictionrecovery #recovery #regulation #health

🌱In this way, the parent views the child as an extension of the parent. #enmeshment #childhood #familydynamics #development #mentalhealth

🌱The veiling is often unconscious (but sometimes intentional). 🌱These behaviours are initially so very adaptive. We can’t feel it ALL, all the time. 🌱We’ll have moments of it that feel they’ll last forever for sure. 🌱And to some extent that is true. We can’t replace what we have lost. We can only learn how to carry it. 🌱It’s at the very moment these adaptive patterns begin to impair critical aspects of our lives that maladaptive-ness occurs. 🌱Sometimes, for some people, that has to be part of the path. #grief #griefjourney #veil #therapistsofinstagram #patterns