Answer Addiction

Tag: emotional abuse

  • Addressing Emotional Abuse in Addiction Recovery

    Addressing Emotional Abuse in Addiction Recovery

    ARTICLE OVERVIEW: There are people who try to control other people’s actions by behaving in an abusive way. Often, the abuse manifests through humiliation, fear, guilt, or feelings of embarrassment. So, how can we deal with current or past emotional abuse in recovery? We explore the issue here. Then, we invite your questions or feedback at the end.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS:

    What is emotional abuse, exactly?

    Emotional abuse is defined as is the ongoing emotional maltreatment or emotional neglect of a child or person. It is mostly expressed verbally by:

    • Criticizing
    • Disapproval of another person’s action(s), or
    • Constant expression of dissatisfaction

    This type of behavior, especially when it appears in primary relationships with loved ones, can destabilize self-confidence and sense of self-worth. Emotionally abused individuals see no way out, experience a growing fear of being alone, and usually tend to accept the abusive situations and behaviors as normal.

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    So, how can you recognize if emotional abuse runs in your family? Can emotional abuse patterns affect your addiction recovery?

    Signs of emotional abuse in family

    Physical symptoms of emotional abuse are not quite obvious, so the signs of this type of abuse can be seen in a person’s emotions and actions. Recognizing the signs of emotional abuse in children is even harder, because changes in their mood and character are a part of growing up. However, you can recognize an emotionally abused person if they express some of the following signs:

    • Avoiding closeness with people that they love or like
    • Avoiding a love life
    • Becoming withdrawn from communication with parents (for children)
    • Being unable to control strong emotions
    • Expressing emotions aggressively
    • Losing interest for social activities
    • Losing self-confidence by becoming too cautious or fearful
    • Showing aggression to other people and/or animals

    Effects of emotional abuse on you and your family

    Emotional abuse can make people feel anxious, depressed, easily afraid, and reliant on other people’s authority. It is typically seen as a “less serious” form of abuse because there is no direct physical effects on the person. However, emotional abuse can have severe effects on everyone in the family. These effects of emotional abuse include:

    1. Many children engage in deviant behaviors such as stealing, bullying, using substances, and running away.

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    2. Emotional abuse increases the risk of eating disorders, other mental health problems, or leads to self-harm.

    3. Emotional abuse can affect emotional development, including the ability to fully express the emotions that arises appropriately.

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    4. Children who grow up in homes where they are constantly criticized and understatement may experience lack of self-confidence and anger management issues.

    5. It can be hard for children to develop healthy relationships when their parents are not giving them love and care as they need it.

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    6. Emotional abuse can lead people to depression, lack of happiness and satisfaction with their life, while affecting their physical health in the adult years.

    7. Emotional abuse can affect children’s behavior by creating anger. This manifests in how they treat their peers or other people, a condition also known as negative impulse behavior.

    8. Self-isolating behavior may also appear, which further distances you from others, as a difficult personality.

    How to deal with emotional abuse in addiction recovery

    You’ll have to take some steps in the healing process in order to deal with emotional abuse different from the patterns you’ve learned before. Here we present you 3 actions that will help you empower the change:

    1. Become aware of the cause.

    Even though there is no rule that insight into a problem leads to change, it is always better to be aware of the problem instead of letting it give you the lesson on the hard way. You need to be conscious when feelings of anxiety, fear or depression appear and understand how impulsively you react on them. Why do you address the problem in such response? Is your reaction solving or helping you express those feelings properly? Do you hurt yourself or someone else with your reactions? Acknowledging these questions, can help you improve the way you’re dealing with emotional issues. So, identifying patterns is STEP 1.

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    2. Take responsibility.

    Life can put you in many a difficult place. With life, comes many traumas that can be quite a challenge for any of us. However, at a certain point you need to take their healing into your own hands. The process of restoring an authentic “self” from the inside begins when you make a conscious decision to cope with and own your own negative emotions.

    Although it’s easier said than done, the one true way out of reliving emotional abuse and coming into emotional freedom comes with the decision to ask for help-and there are plenty of professionals available to walk you through it. It may benefit you to reach out for professional help via:

    • Community Mental Health Clinic
    • Licensed Addiction Counselors
    • Licensed Clinical Social Workers
    • Psychotherapists or Licensed Clinical Therapists
    • Psychiatrists

    3. Seek specific therapies for emotional abuse.

    Before you address emotional abuse, you’ll have to tackle drug or alcohol addiction first. The influence of any psychoactive substance will make it harder to really start recovering. Once addiction recovery is stable you can seek out these specific, evidence-based therapies:

    Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Helps you deal with trauma by identifying thoughts and feelings about past experiences. The goal? To eliminate the negative attitude about that experiences and understand them with a positive mindset.

    Group therapy: A common treatment for survivors of emotional abuse. It helps you rebuild your self-confidence while sharing experiences with people that were facing similar life situations.

    Somatic Therapy: Helps you deal with the physiological effects of trauma especially in the nervous system. The goal? Recognize and release the repressed energy that has accumulated to feel physically freed.

    Family Therapy or Couples Therapy: This type of therapy is used when the abuser is prepared to admit that there is a problem in the way they behave or solve life situations. The abuser must be ready to work on his own behavior. Family therapists can help you understand everyones roles in the family, the responsibilities you have and to balance or establish a compromise within each relationship.

    Emotional Freedom Technique: An effective technique used by many therapists throughout the world. It helps you disassociate from unaccepted and unpleasant situations that made you feel bad by making connection with certain parts of your body while repeating a positive affirmation out loud.

    Questions about emotional abuse

    If you find yourself in any of the situations described above, maybe you should talk with a family counselor. Emotional abuse can be treated properly. So there is nothing to be ashamed of if you are ready for help.

    Please leave your questions and comments about getting help here. We are happy to help refer you to treatment services or answer your questions personally.

    Reference Sources:  EQI: Emotional Abuse
    NSPCC: Emotional abuse – Signs, symptoms and effects
    Reach Out: What is emotional abuse?
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    View the original article at addictionblog.org

  • Recovery Myths That Can Hurt You

    Recovery Myths That Can Hurt You

    I could be saying how well I was doing, while the psychic megaphone over my head screamed, “Can’t you see how lonely I am?” Not surprisingly, I wasn’t drawing healthy people into my world.

    When the words “feelings aren’t facts” first pierced my brain, I was hooked. My baseline was misery, so it was a huge relief to believe I was lying to myself. Over the years, I repeated this gospel, too. Until I saw it for what it was—a form of emotional abuse.

    I get it. Many of us have a tendency to dramatize that we’re unaware of, largely because our addiction made life a fuckshow. But our lives continue even after we put our substances down, and the show rolls on. When my sober boyfriend of five years died, I was 24. And five years clean. The tragedy was real.

    In truth, I’d barely learned to identify my feelings. My therapist had finally resorted to pulling out a chart with stick figure faces, each labeled with an emotion. “Pick one,” she encouraged. I needed that chart for a long time. When I tried to express myself in the real world, however, I had a very different experience. 

    “Don’t believe your feelings,” I was cheerily told as I moped around the rooms. But my emotions were the only thing that seemed solid. Even if I wasn’t great at describing them, I experienced the world through my senses. My mindscape was a constant stream of love and hate, desire and abstinence, hunger and disgust.

    I tried to act the part, fake it till I could make it past this sadness, but my actual sentiments came out despite these efforts. I sensed that I was making the people around me uncomfortable. Left alone, my mind went wild. This grieving is going on too long. He was only your boyfriend. No one will ever love you like that again.

    Trying to change my mind about how I felt wasn’t the same as changing my feelings. Yet ignoring my feelings and listening to my supposedly rational mind felt equally horrible. The only thing it did help me succeed at was questioning my every move. I must be doing this wrong, I’d think, vowing to hide better.

    The Psychic Megaphone

    There was just one problem with suppressing the truth—it didn’t work. I didn’t merely sense I was repelling people, I was. I could be saying how well I was doing, while the psychic megaphone over my head screamed, “Can’t you see how lonely I am?” Not surprisingly, I wasn’t drawing healthy people into my world. This had the added bonus of giving me something new and shiny to mull over. These people are messed up!

    My feelings, I now know, were never the issue. It was the stories I told about them that caused the problem, a habit that, like any addiction, got stronger every time I did it. I turned my unworthiness into legend.

    I was scared, too, that I’d be overwhelmed by my emotions. In some sense, I was right to be afraid. Overwhelm reeks of powerlessness, and when I’m powerless, I’m tempted to act out—smoke, spend, eat, fuck, drink.

    I had to learn to grant a healthy to respect my feelings, to pay attention to them without reacting. This is also known as self-soothing, which many people are taught, or learn. But I don’t know of any addicts who sober up with this ability intact. I didn’t get anywhere near it for a decade in sobriety. I’m slow.

    The light at the end of the tunnel is this: when we stop believing our feelings, they lose their power to stop us in our tracks.

    But How Is It Emotional Abuse?

    Telling a person not to believe their feelings is the same as saying they shouldn’t trust themselves. It’s a recipe for slavish dependence. Who are we suggesting that person trust? Why, God of course! And how do we connect with God? Through the steps. The steps lead toward accountability in our lives, and also, prayer and meditation. What happens when that reflection leads back to our emotional lives and we disbelieve ourselves? Some of us develop co-dependent relationships with sponsors, or take hostages in the form of sexual partners. In my case, I relapsed.

    I was desperate to be better already, but I was stuck in disavowing my sorrow. That loop gave me no way to address my grief. I had to believe in something, so I created stories that I could believe, stories that had little to do with the emotions that created them. When telling myself I was garbage got boring, I’d romanticize my addiction instead.

    Psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach says that when we disconnect from the entirety of our experience this way, we put ourselves into a trance that keeps us from living fully. This concept of an “unlived life” feels more relevant than the idea that I can’t know happiness if I don’t know sadness, because it points to a solution.

    Now, 22 years away from that relapse, I’d say that suggesting feelings aren’t facts is contrary to the core of 12-step recovery—the freedom to choose a Higher Power. The formula is spiritual. The steps are designed to awaken spirituality within us. If denouncing our needs and desires as liars is part of the program, then this places a condition on our spiritual awakening. And it’s not a condition I’m willing to accept. My spiritual life has to be big enough to encompass the full spectrum of who I am. I’m not interested in “growing up” to be without feelings, good or bad.

    I’ve spoken about this with friends in long-term recovery. “I don’t get it,” one woman said, unable to wrap her mind around the idea that her feelings were legitimate, even after more than 20 years of sobriety.

    I explained it was like being in traffic, and getting angry when someone cuts you off. “I want to run that car off the road!” I might think. It’s true, in the moment I was mad. But my thoughts told a lie. I have zero desire to use my car as a weapon. Am I hair-trigger rage-y in traffic? Maybe something else is going on. Or maybe I was just startled. Our minds exist to find danger, and so tend to be negative.

    The first thing I had to learn to do—rather than criticize myself for being angry, which leads to identifying with the idea that I’m an angry person—was to find comfort. In the car I can put my hand on my chest and remind myself everything is ok.

    Another person commented, “Facts don’t change. Feelings do!”

    I understood where she was coming from, that feelings are malleable. But that doesn’t mean I should deny their reality. Facts have been known to evolve, too. The surest way for an emotion to become fixed is by gaslighting myself. Then my thoughts get murky, and it’s hard not to identify with the thinking. Like with the car example, if I don’t allow myself to see my anger for what it is—mortal fear, or perhaps anger at my boss—I get trapped in, “There’s my anger. I am such an angry person.”

    In fact, I count on my changing emotions—it’s the exact freedom I was seeking in a bottle. By allowing my emotions to settle, I can master the thoughts that arise. If I don’t, who’s running the show? The boyfriend who rejected me? The kids who called me Stinky? My mom?

    When René Descartes made his famous declaration, he was looking for an irrefutable statement. He believed if he could doubt his existence, that was proof of it. But what’s doubt if not a feeling? My thoughts are another matter: my best thinking got me into rehab. I think, therefore I am a liar.

    View the original article at thefix.com