“Anything will give up its secrets
if you love it enough.”
—George Washington Carver
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Trauma is a big word! I invite you to join me on a journey to explore what trauma is, how it manifests in individuals, and what makes excellent trauma treatment. Learn about trauma from the trenches as I draw from personal and professional experiences working with some of the most courageous and resilient clients and families, who have struggled with addictions, mental health and behavioral issues, and life in general due to a history of trauma or painful life events. Families who seek help for the “identified problem child” of the family are often shocked and amazed to discover that the whole family experiences the signs and symptoms of intergenerational trauma. Although trauma has reared its ugly head in this generation, in this branch of the family, it has been impacting everyone in a myriad of ways.
Sad, painful trauma stories are the beginning of a much bigger story that allows us to share our triumph, compassion, and joy, and by doing so, create a life of purpose. This journey of triumph takes time, and the love, empathy, and talent of clinicians and staff who reach outside of the box to create a healing environment for clients and their families.
I want to emphasize that although we will be talking about addiction and trauma, we’ll also discuss the ways that trauma impacts mental health issues such as mood disorders, depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), hoarding, compulsive shopping, addiction to social media, gaming, pornography, and many other behavioral issues.
This is about trauma, the life events that impact us in a negative way, and what we believe about ourselves and our place in the world as a result. Let’s be clear that positive events also impact our vision of ourselves and our place in the world. We’ll see how all of those events mold who we have become, and how we can re-mold the who, what, and why of the spirit we choose to be.
My goal is to present a picture of Trauma with a capital T (major trauma), layers of trauma, and trauma (usually a single incident or less emotionally intrusive trauma). More importantly, what are the signs that trauma may be an issue in your life, your family’s life, the life of someone you love, or someone you know? Trauma responses affect every aspect of our lives: social, workplace, school, and relationships. These triggered responses are often misread by others, and misdiagnosed by well-meaning caregivers and professionals. I hope everyone who reads these pages understands that when you unravel the trauma story you understand the addiction or behavioral story, and then you can create the recovery story.
You Have the Power
My fear is that you will see the word addiction and assume it doesn’t apply. That is often a reaction that emanates from fear, embarrassment, denial, and other emotional responses.
Please move beyond that because we are talking about behaviors, i.e., coping skills that are created by our trauma story in order to survive. We are talking about the essence of you. And you have the power to change or enhance that story.
I’m honored to share with you stories of people I’ve worked with. I believe that you’ll relate over and over again to these amazing, courageous people; you may even see your story written in these pages. I’ll present to you extraordinary clinicians and other passionate people who are part of a team committed to the journey of survivors. This process may become transformative for you or someone in your life, or perhaps your relationship, your family, or your community.
If you are looking for answers for someone else, I invite you to also keep your heart open to looking inward. Every human being is impacted by the events and story of their life, each little piece makes us who we are today: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Please hear me when I say there is no good or bad, no right or wrong. We withhold judgment while we unravel the story. Remember, we’re not bad people trying to get good; we are wounded people trying to heal.
Many people that we’ve worked with for over twenty-five years have contributed to this book. They bring the hearts and souls of alumni, their families, and the staff that served them by walking in partnership on their journey. I want to celebrate and lift up these folks who go so deeply to their core to change their lives and the lives of everyone they touch. Once you have entered the journey just by being, you carry the message; your life is the message. We can change the world, synergistically: one person, one family, one neighborhood, one city, one state, one country, and one world.
I hope you will laugh and cry, applaud and denounce, join the fight for a more authentic life, and then celebrate with me the possibilities.
Trauma:
A Portrait
I want to share a story about an angry young man in his early thirties, extremely bright and educated, with a history of chronic relapse, legal problems, alienation from family and friends, and extreme loneliness. His drugs of choice included meth, cocaine, and Adderall—which had been prescribed to him when he was seven years old. We were titrating the Adderall (that is, lowering the dose over time); he was not happy. I asked him what was going on at seven years old that he had to see a physician who prescribed Adderall.
“I was angry, acting out, couldn’t focus, and was hyper. My parents didn’t know what to do.”
This man/boy had been to treatment five times but no one had ever asked the really important questions. This young man’s history from seven years onward becomes a map for the astute and well-trained, compassionate, intuitive, insightful, well-trained trauma therapist. The map describes bullying, broken or nonexistent relationships, family discord, self-hatred, employment difficulties, domestic violence, and jail.
We’ve heard this story over and over again with minor variations. The variations may be the gender of the client, life circumstances and other things, but the essence is there. Many of the wounded come to us sharing for the first time their trauma events simply because the questions have never been asked: “What happened to you at seven years old?”
We asked that question. For the first time, at thirty, he answered.
“I was sexually abused at seven by a camp counselor and I never told anyone.” He was shocked that we asked the question and more shocked that the puzzle pieces were falling into place. He had PTSD, not ADHD. Of course he was angry, acting out, out of control! He was seven and he wasn’t safe or protected. He held the secret because he had been threatened. He was hypervigilant, untrusting, unable to focus, and filled with fear for the next onslaught. Meanwhile his family was terrified that they were not able to soothe his hyperactivity.
They didn’t know his secret, nor did they ask, “Sweetheart, what’s going on? What happened to change my sweet boy?”
The counselors, the teachers, the powers that be, all told the family that their child’s brain wiring was defective, not understanding that his soul had been wounded and he was responding from the visceral, sensory, cellular depths of his being.
Yes, the neurochemistry is affected and changed, but the soul wound must also be healed.
The variations of this story may be age, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic standing, but the vital variations are the events that create the trauma responses:
• Bullying.
• Physical and medical trauma.
• Holding a secret for a parent or family member, such as substance addiction or infidelity, or the pain of a sibling’s secret.
The soul of a child may begin to be tarnished very early in life and the fallout can last a lifetime.
As clinicians we can provide a safe, soothing, and healing environment for our clients to begin to unravel their trauma story. Our most important role as clinicians/healers is to hold space and witness while we provide an environment of trust and safety, that is rich in experiential, visceral, sensory, and cellular modalities. Also it’s vital that trauma therapists continue to do their own healing work, that is, “Practice what we preach.”
As a trauma survivor, have you received witnessing, safety, trust with warm, compassionate, and talented clinicians? If not, please make that part of your trauma resolution. Demand it! Don’t settle for less. Your life, your recovery, and your soul depend on this healing process. Unresolved or unexplored trauma is the number-one cause of relapse in all addictions and coping behaviors.
My journey to understanding trauma and PTSD came twenty-five years ago while working with two populations: male addicts who were frequent visitors to the criminal justice system, and women who were residents of an excellent long-term women’s program. The similarities were chronic relapse, relationship issues, hopelessness, despair, and trauma histories that had not been explored or identified, and certainly had not been healed. This is what invariably triggered relapse and additional trauma events. In the early 1990s, the signs and symptoms of PTSD were very evident but not well understood. I envision the world in big pictures, and I’ve found that I can put pieces together from this way of seeing the connections. I saw the connection between the pain of our history and the need for relief and soothing, and it made sense to me that addiction treatment alone would never be enough. The statistics in our field were dismal, with multiple treatment episodes the norm, not the exception. There were others who saw the world as I did and they became my teachers. So we looked at our clients for similarities. Many of these folks had been sober or abstinent for periods of time, but memories, flashbacks, and being uncomfortable in their own skin had sent them back to substance or process addictions, or other unhealthy behaviors.
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I believe that when trauma or PTSD creates the impetus for such despair, there are only three choices: relapse, “going crazy,” or suicide. Relapse is the healthiest choice and I believe this is where chronic relapse occurs. There is a fourth choice—trauma resolution, a painful but amazing journey of healing.
Last year I read a post on Facebook from someone who finds joy and motivation in the writings of Joel Osteen: “He [God] is called the ‘Great I Am,’ not the ‘Great I Was,’ or the ‘Great I Will Be.’ ” God is always in the present. I’m not espousing a religion or faith; I’m inviting the possibility that we can take heed of this message. So much of our lives and the lives of our clients are spent in preparation for the “perfect” future:
• When I find the time
• When I’m not depressed
• When I lose weight
• When I have the right job, situation, home, spouse . . .
When everything is perfect, then I will be “the great I am.” Then I will have my life. But so many of the moments of our lives have been given to pain, sorrow, hurt, sadness, fear, and regret. We turn around and it is a year later, or five years later, or twenty years later, and life is speeding by and moments have eluded us. So when will we do the deep work to heal? Now is a good time!
What Is Trauma?
With this in mind, let’s begin first with several of the most renowned trauma specialists’ own definitions of trauma. Dr. Gabor Maté, physician and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, looked at the epidemic of various addictions in our society and wrote:
If people who become severe addicts, as shown by all the studies, were for the most part abused children then we realize that the war on drugs is actually waged against people that were abused from the moment they were born or from an early age on. In other words, we are punishing people for having been abused. That’s the first point. The second point is that the research clearly shows that the biggest driver of addictive relapse and addictive behavior is actually stress.
I have great respect for Dr. Maté. He spent years serving addicts and HIV patients who had incredible stories of abuse. Not only is he a physician, he’s a clinician and researcher who has done his own emotional healing and continues in that vein.
For the last twenty years we have recognized this phenomenon of trauma, stress, and relapse. In treatment we expect those things to happen; those are juicy therapeutic opportunities for insight and healing.
An enormous percentage of our population has experienced abuse in all its many forms, including the abuse of abandonment and neglect, as well as other traumatic events, such as: growing up in a dysfunctional family, long-term family illnesses, disabilities in the family, deaths, suicides, financial deprivation or privilege, divorce, multiple marriages, multiple moves, adoption; the list goes on and on.
Dr. Maté speaks of stress as the biggest cause of relapse, however, let’s expand those relapses to include all types of addictive behaviors as well as relapses into mood disorders, anxiety, or depression. These relapses become a place of comfortable discomfort. The goal is relief, release, soothing, numbing.
Relapse becomes the sanest option because the alternative is insanity or suicide. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but there is a kind of relief in relapse. The true alternative is to unravel the trauma story.
Dr. Judith Herman has embraced the idea of addictions as coping mechanisms and states:
Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning. . . . Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary adaptations to life. . . . They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of the catastrophe.
And whether the trauma is a puppy kissing your face when you are three years old and it’s perceived as an attack and you fear death, or someone holds a gun to your head and you fear death, the body, the emotions, the senses respond in the same way. And that’s why it’s imperative to honor your feelings and your body’s responses, no matter what the event. It’s not the event, but how the residue of the event drives your life today—body, mind, and spirit.
We can find ourselves still operating in the world today driven by early trauma, the messages the trauma created, and the visceral, sensory, cellular memory that remains.
It’s also important for us to honor the feelings, the responses, and the perspective and the experiences of the people in our lives, to ask loving, compassionate questions, and give loving, compassionate, honoring responses. To create a safe environment to support one another. To create a safe environment to share family history, family secrets.
Everyone’s perspectives are different even when they’ve experienced the same events, and everyone’s resilience level is different depending on their life’s experiences.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD, the author of The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, tells us, “Trauma is not the story of something that happened back then—it’s the current imprint of that pain, horror, and fear living inside people.”
Author and recovery pioneer Pia Mellody states in her book Facing Codependence, “Abuse is anything less than nurturing. When we suffer from childhood trauma, nurturing is not a part of our life experience. We become accustomed to criticism, neglect, and poor or unrealistic limits. Self-worth is held hostage by serving the demands of others, hoping that in doing so we can forget our past. But the past haunts us in our dreams and memories, relentless in its chase. To cope, we develop habits that promote self-destruction. These habits become addictions or distractions, helping us avoid feeling reality.”
Believing abandonment and trauma are at the core of addictions, Dr. Patrick Carnes, a leading specialist in sex and love addiction, emphasizes how trauma affects the brain and how people are affected by trauma over time in eight ways. He calls these ways trauma reaction, trauma arousal, trauma blocking, trauma splitting, trauma abstinence, trauma shame, trauma repetition, and trauma bonds. As Dr. Carnes writes in The Betrayal Bond:
There are two essential factors in creating and understanding traumatic experiences: they are how far our systems are stretched and for how long. Some events happen only once or just a few times, but the impact is so great that trauma occurs. Trauma by accumulation sneaks up on its victims. They become acclimatized. Traumas that are horrendous and long lasting are the worst. Emotional scars can be so severe that generations descended from those surviving will react in ways that still reflect the original trauma. No amount of normalcy makes it safe. Patterns and attitudes evolve far beyond the individual and are incorporated into family and society.
According to psychologist and author of Waking the Tiger, Dr. Peter A. Levine, “Chronically traumatized individuals generally show no change or even a decrease in heart rate. These sufferers tend to be plagued with dissociative symptoms, including frequent spaciness, unreality, depersonalization, and various somatic and health complaints. Somatic symptoms include gastrointestinal problems, migraines, some forms of asthma, persistent pain, chronic fatigue, and general disengagement from life.”
A clinical explanation of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder was outlined in 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association, when they revised the PTSD diagnostic criteria in the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The DSM-5 introduced a preschool subtype of PTSD for children aged six and younger. Also, diagnostic criteria for PTSD includes a history of exposure to a traumatic event that meets specific stipulations and symptoms from each of four “symptom clusters”: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. The sixth criterion concerns duration of symptoms; the seventh assesses functioning; and the eighth criterion clarifies symptoms as not attributable to a substance or co-occurring medical condition.
Definition
I’m going to share with you a very simple definition of trauma, knowing that for some people trauma is a huge and frightening word. Very simply, “Trauma is any life event or series of life events or ongoing life events that create a negative impact on your life that changes or distorts your vision of yourself and your place in the world.”
Some of those events or situations might include:
• Abandonment and neglect (most common and devastating)
• Emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual abuse
• Accidents, fires, natural disasters, random acts of violence, financial concerns; events that can involve too much, too little, or sudden loss
• Terrorism, constant and repetitive viewing of terror events on TV and social media.
• Divorce, adoption, bullying, domestic violence, multiple moves, death, or loss of pets
• Childhood medical or mental health issues
• Medical or mental health issues of adults or people close to you.
• Death or suicide of family members
• Grief issues
• Veterans, war, or having a loved one experience war or combat
• Intergenerational trauma
• In utero trauma
This list is extensive but by no means exhaustive; you may have a few events to add to the list.
Be thoughtful about what you have read in our list. If so moved, make your list. No emotion attached and no judgments. Just make the list. You may feel emotion so just breathe through the emotion and allow yourself to make the list. You may be making the list for someone else. Please know that this is just a blueprint, a beginning.
If your list has more than two or three events, chances are you have experienced PTSD at some time. This means that layers of trauma have impacted your vision of yourself and your place in the world.
Consider carefully if you or any of your loved ones experienced any of these events or situations whether it was at a low level or greater level of intensity or duration. Trauma is trauma and cannot be measured or defined by another individual’s experience. Your trauma is your trauma and it is imperative that you own what has affected you so deeply. Don’t disparage your experience by saying, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad, so many others have such terrible trauma; mine is nothing.” Wrong! If it makes you more comfortable, describe these experiences as life events.
It’s important to understand that all life events impact the way we see ourselves and our place in the world. This is true on so many levels. Those extremely positive, nurturing, or life-enhancing events provide the path for resilience, and oftentimes so do traumatic events.
After trauma, some people become more resilient, more committed to their lives, and more driven to overcome the path that brought them there. We call this the “blessings of trauma.” The triumph of the spirit is the nature of the spirit for most trauma survivors. We just have to help survivors take the risk to have another perception. When we can see the power of triumphing over our past we can do or be anything because we survived. And when we can work with the whole family the successes are multiplied exponentially to present and succeeding generations. So just as Zac on Suicide/Banzai Cliff in Saipan was able to turn around and see the beauty of life surrounding him, the story is rewritten. It’s a good day to live!
Everyone has a story. I’ve been privileged and honored to be a witness for the healing of some of the most courageous spirits in the universe. The stories, the lives of these extraordinary survivors are often difficult to hear, and many can’t or won’t hear them. So I want to share the experience of being invited on this journey with the survivors, their families, their perpetrators, and also the healers.
It takes a very special person to be invited along; trust is a gift that is given very slowly. Often our survivors begin to tell their story only to hear:
• “That’s not true.”
• “Didn’t happen.”
• “Shhh! Don’t tell; not yet, not me, I’m not prepared to hear this.”
• “Don’t do this work until you are five years sober.”
They may also hear threats of harm or worse, and see the horror in the eyes of the listeners that says they can’t bear hearing the story, or the subtle flinch in the face or body that says, “I’m not supposed to hear this.” The truth is few are prepared and so the story stays an untold secret and the survivor bears the pain alone. But they can’t stay sober or abstinent in their addictions because those are the behaviors that saved them from the pain early on. All they ask, all they need, is for someone to witness, someone to shed the tears and demand, “How could someone do this to another?” and in doing so, validate the horror that the survivor has carried. To say, “How miraculous that you survived all that happened to you!” and validate their commitment to healing.
To witness is to begin. Slowly, so slowly the witness will be tested. “Can you bear to hear this? How about this? No, you haven’t deserted me yet. Wait, this is worse, can you bear this and stand with me?”
Often when the secrets are finally told, the pieces to a puzzle fall into place. Many times the acknowledgement of the secrets is followed by a huge cleansing breath—it finally makes sense. The body relaxes and changes. After sharing long-held secrets there is very often a physical transformation, the face seems younger, we walk taller, voices become stronger, eyes brighter, breathing more relaxed, and smiles and laughter more spontaneous. I have seen these changes many, many times over the years. Other clients remark on the changes. People who have come to trauma work with childlike voices come into their mature adult voices as they learn to speak and stand up for themselves, no longer stuck in that childhood event or events.
However, too often the level of loss and despair in living in this pain trumps the secrets—yes, secrets. Many, many people have kept secrets from very early childhood and yes, secrets keep us sick. Secrets are kept for many reasons:
• We don’t air the family’s dirty laundry.
• It would only hurt them to know.
• It can’t be true, don’t ever say it again.
• If you tell I will hurt you or your family.
• They won’t believe you, they will blame you.
• It’s your fault anyway.
I suspect that many of you are surprised at the events that are considered trauma, however, pay attention to the memories that have been evoked for you while reading these pages. The people who set out on this journey are afraid, yes, but courageously they move one step at a time toward freedom from pain.
“Secret keepers” are often children who may be abused or bullied, or who carry a secret for a parent like infidelity, substance abuse, or pornography; they somehow feel responsible so shame and guilt preclude them from telling their secrets. Children are very intuitive and can feel the energy in the home and their surroundings. They know when there is tension, anger or rage, sexual energy, or sadness. When they ask, “What’s wrong?” adults often say “Nothing, everything is fine.” This is why children begin to believe they can’t trust their feelings or trust that their caretakers will tell the truth. Have you been holding a secret for a parent or for the family? Have you been held hostage by the secret?
As a relatively new therapist in a small women’s program, I was having some personal family pain. A client asked me what was wrong and I responded, “Everything’s fine.” I was pulled aside by a wonderful veteran therapist who chastised, “Don’t ever do that again. You’re reinforcing an old family message that says they can’t trust their own intuition and senses.” And she was so correct.
I went back to that client and said, “I have some family pain, I’m sad but I will be okay, I just need to honor being sad.” And that was a corrective moment in our relationship, therapist to client. Telling the truth can be that way for any relationship. That correction or amends takes the relationship to a more intimate and trusting level, and honors the “gut” of the other person.
When I relayed this story in one of my intensives (an intensive is five days of intense trauma work in a group setting), one of the women, Stacy, spoke up and said she so resonated with this. She conveyed that when she was young her family never talked about negative feelings or what was wrong, however, she knew things were wrong when she was growing up but felt so confused and alone because she thought she was the only one who felt that way. Because her parents didn’t have age-appropriate conversations with her when she asked what was wrong, Stacy stopped asking. She took it upon herself to figure out if something was wrong, to take in the atmospherics of a room, and then conform to those atmospherics. If her mom was depressed she remained quiet; if her mom was angry and giving her the silent treatment, she tried to be so good so that her mom would talk to her again. Stacy learned to say “Everything’s fine,” and “Nothing is wrong” from her upbringing. When she had a daughter she was the same way with her because she didn’t know any different. What this did to both Stacy and to her daughter is silence them when they were feeling sad, angry, scared, overwhelmed, or alone. This meant they had to bear those feelings alone and couldn’t ask for help.
Stacy and her daughter have done tremendous work through my programs and now have tools to talk about their feelings, whether they are happy or sad, and they’ve learned to honor those feelings. Kenzie, Stacy’s daughter, wrote the poem that follows. Kenzie was raped when she was eight years old by the father of her stepmother. She held this secret for a long, long time for fear it would tear her family apart and she would lose the tenuous relationship she had with her father. Then her father abandoned Kenzie. When the pain of the sexual abuse, the secret-keeping, and the abandonment became too much, Kenzie started cutting and later used drugs to numb the pain she didn’t want to feel.
Kenzie’s Poem
what’s it gunna take
when ya gunna break?
you know i’ll be your demise
i can see it in your eyes
you won’t make it out alive
you can’t get enough of me
the death of you i’ll be
just when you think you got this
i remind you, you don’t got shit
you’re weak, i own your soul
i haven’t even begun to take my toll
give up, stop trying so hard
you never make it very far
maybe to step 3 or 4
then you’re knocking at my door
you’re a worthless junkie, nothing more
a prostitute, a dirty whore
i’ll beat you up, break you down
leave you 6ft underground
forever alone, except for me
through good & bad i’m all you need
family & friends only get in the way
they hate when I come out to play
“i’m done. i’m gunna stay clean this time.”
the same story of lies
a few weeks go by . . .
relapse
stick a needle in your arm,
cross your heart,
hope you die
flatline
was it an accidental overdose or suicide?
every morning waking up sick
clogged my work, i need a new rig
go to the pharmacy down the street
let me get a 10-pack, 31-gauge, 100cc
a bag of dope, a couple rocks
loading up another shot
a broken heart, a jaded soul
homeless, street kid, sleeping in the cold
“you party girl?” “you wanna work?”
his hands are going up my shirt
“get off me! stop!” i beg & plead
i have no voice. they’re silent screams
he drops me off like it was nothing
i climb into my heroin laced coffin
the pain i endure mostly self-inflicted
anything for dope, i can’t resist it
i never thought i’d end up like this
turning tricks for one more hit
25-year-old female found dead, just another statistic
rest in peace, no. rest in shit
dancing with death. a drawn-out suicide
empty, soulless, dead behind the eyes
jails, institution & death. i pray for the latter
bruised, broken, beaten, battered
i’m worthless, useless. if i’m gone it won’t matter
i don’t fear death. what i’m scared of is living
barely getting by. day to day. simply existing
the world i live in is hell on earth
miss misunderstood. a beautiful disaster. drowning in hurt
a lost cause. too far gone. terminally unique
everybody wants to help. can’t they see there no saving
went from smoking blunts to doing drugs iv
track marks. sunken face, infected with hep C
dirty needles. bent spoons with scorch marks
tourniquets. blood. the depiction of a broken heart
not even a mother’s tears can stop this madness
loved ones feel the wrath & are engulfed in sadness
consumed with pain, my soul physically aches
i wish i could start over. a new life. a clean slate
i can’t do it anymore, this isn’t me
heroin and i aren’t meant to be
i surrender. white flag. i wanna break free
so you go to your meetings & start reading your book
i pop into your head. a simple thought was all it took
“just one more” you said. instantly hooked
little did you know it would be your last
a blink of an eye it was over that fast
as i rush through your veins i whisper “where have you
been?”
i missed you
remember me?
your best friend
heroin
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This young woman is now sober and living a full, healthy life. Her mother was in the room when she read her poem. I later asked her what was happening to her during the reading. She said that it was the first time she understood that her daughter did not choose to live this way and that, by hearing this poem, she was able to drop the negative feelings she had toward her daughter. Her mother saw that Kenzie was mortally wounded and just fighting to stay alive.
Grownups often struggle with telling children what’s going on in the family. My experience is that most children come to treatment many years later, sharing how they knew about domestic violence, kept secrets of infidelity, thought they were responsible for divorce because it was never discussed openly, knew that there was pornography in the house and had found it on the computer, that addiction was in the home and hidden in secret.
There are so many other scenarios of secret keeping. I remember being told, “Don’t tell Daddy or grandparents” just so there would be no conflict. So I did the same thing in my life for a long time just to avoid conflict.
Please remember, we teach other people how to treat us by what we accept, and we teach our children how to be men and women by how we behave in relationships and what we accept. We accept behaviors or behave in ways that we would never want for our children, but they learn from our actions not our words. They learn what it means to be a man or woman from our behaviors.
Secrets keep us sick and, more importantly, we can’t have integrity, or be authentically ourselves if we are holding secrets. As we move along, you’ll see the freedom that our clients have experienced by telling their truth, and changing their path with healthier choices.
Someone asked me once, “What’s the message that drives you?” I ask this question of people all the time in my work. I help people to find that answer in order to help them change the direction of their lives by finding the “lie” in the message they’ve been given that brought them to their current situation.
I’ve often said that my message was, “You will never be good enough,” which is a message or driving force for many people. However, after reflection, I realized that no, the real message was:
“You will never be good enough,” followed by “Who do you think you are?”
That was the real message, because I always tried to be “good enough,” and when I succeeded, which I often did, the real message was, “Who do you think you are?!”
Now, logically, I understand my mother was raised that way with that same message. Seeing her at ninety, I can see how much of her life and dreams she gave up or diminished in service to that message—a message delivered over generations by well-meaning, fearful people.
My father would tell me, “You can do anything you want, even things that boys can do that girls are not allowed to.” This was the 1950–1960s. We were four sisters. I was the oldest and he offered me that gift of confidence and hope. However, he only embraced that message for himself in his dreams. Though he had plenty of dreams, he was unable to translate them into his living, breathing life, and it showed in his actions.
So, maybe because of that, when I succeeded my father’s message became, “Who do you think you are?” My parents further reproached me with, “How dare you reach for the stars!” That came from a place of love and fear; if you settle for less, you may not be hurt so deeply. It was watching my mother and father fall so far from their potential that was confusing. They lived in fear of their darkness and in their own way tried to protect me from my “light.”
Those memories make me sad because so many of us have operated in life as if someone was standing over us with that shaming, pointing finger: ”Shame on you!” And our shininess begins to tarnish.
Mixed Messages
Those incongruent messages have played tug of war with my spirit for many years, and the events of my life continued to support the push-pull of the messages. I know I’m not alone in this place. These are typical push-pull messages you may have grown up with:
victim ↔ victor
brilliant ↔ impaired
caretaker ↔ selfish
plain ↔ ordinary
beautiful ↔ ugly
spectacular ↔ embarrassing
graceful ↔ clumsy
mature ↔ immature
good ↔ bad
Growing up hearing these conflicting messages is enough to make any child confused and unsettled. What is the truth, and whom do I trust to tell me the truth? Well, I hope that as we move along together on this journey that we can become a community for each other, a tribe of healing.
When I was little, my refuge was a rock on the banks of Cooper River near my house in Camden, New Jersey. I had big dreams but life and circumstances took me down a different, much harder path. I was a child of the sixties: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the Vietnam War, civil rights, rebellion in the streets, feminism, bra burning, and Woodstock.
I was a young woman of great promise; an intelligent, active student with an excellent work ethic, funny, popular, with big dreams. However, a series of events and an innate feeling of being “less than” created the impetus that set me on a very different and painful course.
My primary purpose through the sixties, seventies, and eighties was my addiction. It consumed me. My husband was my partner in crime, dying of the disease of addiction at the age of thirty-three. I was a widow at twenty-seven, left to raise our three children. Still, I continued to use. I just could not beat it and because of my addiction, my children suffered. Still, I could not stop.
I used for another fifteen years and then after many, many consequences (spiritual, physical, emotional, and financial) and many, many detox experiences and two treatment visits, the miracle happened for me and my children. I was gifted with sobriety on August 4, 1987 and the pink cloud quickly enveloped me. (A pink cloud is a feeling that everything is great, happy. Some recovering addicts feel this during their first part of recovery.) Of course, after twenty-five years of drinking and drugging on a daily basis, the pink cloud probably had a lot to do with my brain and body being free of damaging chemicals for the first time in many years. I just felt so good! Every day got better and every moment became precious. Over the years I’ve paid attention to all the ways that life follows in divine order if I stay out of the way.
Sobriety found me at just the right time. My life has been incredible since then; not easy, not perfect, but incredible. And I have finally shared all the secrets that I held for so many years.
This story is not so much about me as it is the miracles that happen as a result of recovery. It’s about the amazing people that have been put in my life, who have shaped my soul, and helped to give me a life of purpose after living a life of destruction.
To give back, I volunteered to answer the phone for other drunks who needed an ear or some direction. There was karma in answering the phone because under the influence and in blackout, I used to call at all hours of the day and night, crying out for help. In my addiction, the next day I would not remember speaking to those patient people. I volunteered to drive one of those white vans to meetings for a women’s treatment center. I started a meeting at a women’s prison and really began to understand that my past had a purpose, because I had something special to share with those women: my experience, strength, and hope certainly, along with the fact that I also had been at a really low bottom; a mother who had been hurtful to her children, and a widow who had been a battered wife. The most amazing thing is that my story gave hope because if I could find recovery, these women recognized that they could, too. Telling my story and my secrets gives people freedom to tell their own. My secrets no longer keep me prisoner or define me. I have a new, honest vision of myself, as I hope you will. No one can ever again hurt me with my truth.
I realized at some point during my recovery that not only did I need the Twelve Steps, but I had to heal my lifetime of emotional traumas. I went back to school and started working in the addiction field. I earned my BA from Rutgers University while still in my addiction and made the Dean’s List—imagine that! I always had a handbag filled with a variety of addictive substances. I often wonder what I could have done had I been clean and sober. In recovery, I completed my master’s in mental health counseling summa cum laude from New York Institute of Technology, became licensed as a mental health therapist, certified as an addictions professional in Florida and internationally, certified as a sex addiction therapist, trained in hypnosis, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and became a specialist for healing trauma and PTSD.
In 1997, I started trauma work, asking each of my clients the same question, “What do you need?” I discovered most folks who chronically relapse are struggling with other issues, and usually those issues have to do with emotional traumas and PTSD. I realized that it was imperative to have trauma resolution to maintain healthy, long-term recovery. Too many dry drunks never get to do that work and have a miserable recovery life. Too many folks with multiple years of sobriety commit suicide because they have not addressed the trauma work. Too many folks resort to other addictions to fill the empty hole that trauma creates.
Those other addictions (eating disorders, sex and love addiction, gambling, and self-harm such as cutting or burning) can be as lethal as drugs and alcohol. We are looking for “relief” from what feels like unending emotional pain and suffering.
I have more than two decades of experience working in residential and outpatient settings. In 2003, I took my specialized training and distinctive insights on treating trauma and addiction to a forest—literally—and created a treatment center. Focused on trauma and a new wellness model that included a ninety-day treatment program (in contrast to normal twenty-eight or thirty-day programs) and many healing modalities, this model has grown to become one of the foremost in treating trauma/PTSD and addiction. We also have a brilliant team. Unfortunately, in the twenty-eight day model, clients are barely coming out of the fog. Extended treatment is preferable to multiple twenty-eight day treatments with chronic relapse. Extended treatment is more cost effective and trauma can heal.
We founded our treatment center to begin where many other treatment modalities end. Rebuilding emotional trust and regaining one’s resiliency takes time, encouragement, and vigilant therapeutic support. My treatment philosophy and practice has been to establish a protected environment and safe milieu to allow the clients to explore the intensity of their fear and the strength of their resources. Specifically focused on trauma resolution, my perception of healing comes from the client being able to re-establish a profound trust between the clinician and the healing process.
Thanks to hard work, and a series of extraordinary events, the healing place we created in a forest has been successful for ten years. From clinicians to kitchen and maintenance staff to house managers, we taught the team how to love and nurture our clients, and sometimes lovingly kick their asses. Our clients worked so hard, they went into the black hole and with our help came out the other side, into the light and their rewritten story.
After ten years of running this treatment center, I was ready to begin work on my next project: Spirit2Spirit. We now teach a course for clinicians on how to work with trauma survivors where they can earn a certified trauma therapist (CTT) certificate.
The Heart of Trauma, a painting created by one of our clients.
The heart of trauma as beautifully portrayed as a painted black-and-red heart is the healing work of an incredibly talented young lady who has overcome enormous trauma and become a shining star, a woman of substance and purpose. Her story is riveting: she awoke one morning and found her fiancé overdosed in her bed. She was unaware of his heroin addiction; it was a secret. The enormity of this secret-keeping overwhelmed her ability to cope in the here and now. Her recourse was overwhelming depression and dissociation. For about a year and a half her substance use became unmanageable, and she cut or burned herself every day. Distraught and in pain, she went into treatment, where she continued to self-harm. Ultimately, she joined us at our treatment center. The behaviors continued even as she bonded with peers and staff, doing some deep work. When confronted with the possibility of having to discharge to a higher level of care, this very gutsy lady decided that she would fight for her bed, and paint in black and red rather than self-harm. And paint she did! Dozens of paintings, all emblematic of a specific feeling that drove the desire to self-harm. She painted her way through trauma resolution. It is vital to understand that self-harming behaviors are not a prelude to suicide but an attempt to “feel” or “numb” emotions. In addition the brain releases neurotransmitters which create an addictive cycle to self-harm, so soothing behaviors can become addictive.
This was a decision to heal and to enter into the painful emotions and allow the grief process to proceed. Today, ten years later, this courageous woman is sober and free of all self-harming behaviors and process addictions. (A process addiction is an addiction to food, gambling, sex, working out—addiction to the process. They are powerful coping mechanisms that help trauma survivors to dissociate from trauma pain.) She sponsors other women and recently married a remarkable young man. She never expected that she would trust her heart again, yet life is good and became truly blessed for this very special couple when they were gifted with a beautiful baby girl.
The symbol of the heart of trauma is significant because we enter into the pain and experience it to completion in order to heal our heart, mind, body, and spirit.
This brave young woman painted through the pain and darkness to the bright life-affirming painting that followed it. The “Heart of Trauma” painting, along with the cutting paintings, and then the “Puzzle Heart” are elegant depictions of the journey of trauma resolution; telling the trauma story, feeling the trauma story, and having the puzzle pieces begin to re-write the healing, recovery story.
At the time I had twenty therapists who, in one way or another, interacted with all of our clients—a real team. And so our young miss painted twenty trauma hearts on canvas for each therapist. In addition, she created a memorial to her fiancé on our Memorial Trail, in a very cleansing and self-forgiving honoring ceremony.
In the first two to three years post treatment, she had a couple of self-harming episodes. When those occurred she called and reported, without shame, what triggered the event, what she felt, and what she did to acknowledge the feelings and accept them.
In this book, we’ll look at all the variables of trauma events and patterns, the correlations between addictions and coping behaviors, and a myriad of current issues related to working with trauma. Together we’ll explore multiple areas, and identify important skillsets and cutting-edge information vital to trauma survivors and clinicians working with them. Reflective questions at the end of each chapter are provided as an opportunity to see where you or a loved one fits into this wellness model.
Reflective Sketches
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1) Do you have secrets that you’re keeping?
2) Are they your secrets or someone else’s?
3) Why are you keeping these secrets?
4) How is keeping this secret impacting your life and your vision of yourself?
5) What are the emotions around this secret: shame, guilt, remorse, confusion, sadness, pain, or something else?
6) What is the “payoff” for keeping the secret?
7) Imagine the best/worst things that can come out of keeping the secret.
8) What is the best/worst thing that can come out of telling the secret?
9) Write the secret down in a letter and mail it to yourself. How did you feel when you received it and opened it?