Relationship Trauma Repair

Most of us would agree that living with addiction is a traumatizing experience for all concerned. But we are still wrapping our minds around why trauma in childhood can have such pervasive and long-term effects on our personalities and the way we live our lives.

Recent research in neuroscience is helping us to decode this mystery.

Trauma – whether it is a one-time catastrophic event, or the cumulative trauma that is part of most any alcoholic family – affects both the limbic and the nervous systems. The effects of living with intense fear, pain and resentment can seep into our brain and body, causing emotional deregulation. So when we experience childhood abuse, it can actually affect our hardwiring throughout life.

The limbic system is responsible for such wide-ranging functions as appetite and sleep cycles, mood and emotional tone. Problems in the limbic system can cause long-term effects in our ability to self-regulate and maintain emotional and psychological balance.

We arrive in life only partly hardwired by nature; nurture finishes the job. Each tiny interaction between parent/caretaker and child actually lays down the neural wiring that becomes part of our brain/body network. This is how our early experiences inscribe themselves onto our nervous systems. It is how our environment shapes our emotional being and our limbic system.

Early Attachment and Self-Regulation

Our nervous systems are not self-contained; they link with those of the people close to us in a silent rhythm that helps regulate our physiology. Children require ongoing neural synchrony from parents in order for their natural capacity for self-directedness to emerge. In other words, it is through successful relationships that we achieve a healthy sense of autonomy.

Thomas Lewis, author of A General Theory of Love, describes limbic or emotional regulation as a mutually synchronizing hormonal exchange between mother and child that serves to regulate vital rhythms. He explains that human physiology does not direct all of its own functions; it is interdependent. It must be steadied and stabilized by the physical presence of another to maintain both physical and emotional health. “Limbic regulation mandates interdependence for social mammals of all ages,” says Lewis. “But young mammals are in special need of its guidance: their neural systems are not only immature but also growing and changing. One of the physiologic processes that limbic regulation directs, in other words, is the development of the brain itself, and that means attachment determines the ultimate nature of a child’s mind.”
Children internalize the ability to self-regulate through being in relationship with a parent who slowly and over time teaches and models self-regulation.

The Link between the ACOA/Co-Dependent and Childhood Trauma

Alongside and intertwined with the ACOA movement is the co-dependency movement. Co-dependency was a term that emerged initially in twelve-step rooms. The co-dependent, or the co-addict, like the ACOA, was that person who got sick through living with the distorted, unregulated and out-of-balance thinking, feeling and behavior that surround addiction.
Fear is a driving factor in terms of survival. Human beings have built-in defensive strategies that are designed to keep us out of harm’s way, commonly known as fight-or-flight/freeze responses. When we’re frightened, stress chemicals — such as adrenaline — course through our bodies, so that we’ll have the energy necessary to flee for safety or stand and fight. These get mobilized when we sense any kind of danger, from a saber-toothed tiger to an oncoming truck or an irate parent.
But this isn’t all that happens. There are a few other interesting body/mind phenomena that occur when we’re feeling frozen with fear, that affect the way we make sense of and remember frightening events. For example, when the survival part of our brain, often referred to as the “animal brain”, becomes aroused, the language part of the brain partially shuts down (van der Kolk, 2006). Our cortex, the part of our brain responsible for logical thinking and long-range planning, freezes up when we’re in fight-or-flight mode. We lose some of our left-brain functioning, or the ability to organize our thoughts, integrate them into a coherent context and communicate them to others.

What doesn’t freeze up, however, is the emotional scanning system in our right brains. This means that even when frightened, we retain our ability to scan our environment and those in it for signs of threat or danger (van der Kolk, 2006). In alcoholic homes, this may consist of attempting to read the emotions and divine the intentions of those around us. Both ACOAs and co-dependents may learn a lesson that can lead to problems later in life: that they can fend off trouble by remaining hypervigilant, reading the moods of those around them.

Family Dynamics that Can Lead to Emotional Deregulation

Alcoholic homes are often unpredictable, characterized by broad swings from one extreme to the other. This lack of balance becomes, over time, highly stressful to the brain/body. The kind of trauma we experience within the alcoholic family occurs slowly and over time; it is cumulative. For this reason, it affects emotional and psychological development.

Repair is an important deterrent to relationships problems, having lasting and repeating effects. But repair in alcoholic systems is not necessarily forthcoming, and if there is repair, it does not always last. Repair allows our shame/pain response, for example, to become part of personal growth. We see that something went wrong and we learn ways of setting it right, of mending what was broken or restoring a lost sense of connection. This process, that occurs in the context of a relationship, actually creates new learning, hence new neural wiring in the child. When we cannot make repairs, our feelings of shame, pain, fear and confusion go underground and can affect the way in which we function in intimate relationships.

The ability to escape perceived or real danger is one of the factors that determines whether or not a person develops PTSD. For the child in an alcoholic home, escape is often not possible. For this reason, ACOA issues often surface in adulthood as a post traumatic stress reaction. That is, the symptoms that stem from childhood pain and abuse, surface after the fact in adulthood. When ACOAs attempt to have their own families, the intensity and vulnerability of intimacy may trigger unresolved, childhood pain.

Recovery

I am constantly hearing clients say things such as, “Why isn’t this over yet?” or “I know I should be past this.” But we don’t leave our bodies behind when we grow up. We bring them right with us into adulthood. We live in them, sleep in them, eat in them and love in them. Our bodies contain a sort of neurological map that informs and guides us, a flesh-and-bones root system from which we flower into life. Changing neural wiring that has been laid down over a period of years doesn’t happen overnight.

I have created Relationship Trauma Repair (RTR) to help therapists to learn to treat the kinds of emotional deregulation that is the direct result of living with the kind of trauma that interferes with adult intimacy and can lead to self medication. RTR is a resource designed to be used in any treatment facility or clinic. It includes DVDs, a Therapist’s Guide, a Personal Journal and guided imageries to learn the skill of emotional processing and self-regulation. To learn more, go to www.relationshiptraumarepair.com.

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