Addictive behaviors develop for various reasons, including a desire to cope with difficult feelings, curiosity, to escape stress, and more. However, one instigator of addiction that few people talk about is relationship trauma. Any traumatic incident or pattern can spur an individual to seek ways to cope, and relationship trauma is one of the most common types that the average person may face. When paired with addiction recovery, individual therapy can make a significant difference in long-term outcomes.
High-quality inpatient and outpatient treatment programs should include individual and cognitive behavioral therapy options to assist participants in developing the long-term skills necessary to avoid relapse. Individuals can increase their odds of success by learning how trauma relates to addiction and applying effective coping strategies and mental frameworks.
The Connection Between Relationship Trauma and Addiction
Should patients who face challenges with addiction prioritize overcoming that addiction (which poses an immediate threat to health) over addressing emotional trauma? Studies indicate this may not be the right approach; in fact, those who attended therapy alongside substance use treatment did better in both arenas than those who targeted the issues separately (or ignored therapy completely).
The primary reason for this result is the connection between a person’s mental and emotional well-being and their tendency toward unproductive coping behaviors. When an individual is placed under long-term emotional stress, such as feelings of inadequacy, flashbacks of physical abuse, or depression, they may seek to manage that emotional stress with substance use.
How Individual Therapy Helps
Individual therapy is essential in overcoming relationship trauma, which contributes on its own to addiction recovery. Removing the drivers behind unhealthy coping mechanisms sets individuals up for success and decreases the need to continue to use. Here are some ways individual therapy helps:
Identifying and overcoming triggers
Triggers, or sudden and powerful negative experiences that cause an unwanted reaction, can be a common source of compulsion toward substance use. For instance, a person who has been physically abused by a partner in the past may be triggered by someone touching their shoulders or hips. This sudden, emotionally charged moment may be difficult for them to cope with, driving them to ease the discomfort with a return to substance use.
Individual therapy can help a person identify their triggers and mitigate their reactions to them. When a person understands what makes them upset, why, and what to do about it, they have a plan of action that circumvents the need to use, instead replacing it with something productive that serves a positive end.
Building a positive self-image
Relationship trauma frequently involves tearing a person down so they become beholden to their partner or reliant on their affirmations. Individual therapy seeks to build a positive self-image, inspiring individuals to understand their own inherent value.
This process can help them notice the correlation between the destruction of self (something they value) and the use of substances (which can harm them). A fundamental change in one’s view of oneself can also change how that person treats their own body.
Rewiring the brain
Research shows that substance use legitimately alters the way that the brain functions on a physical level. Individual therapy gradually reworks the neural pathways, making them more responsive to other forms of gratification. By restabilizing the brain’s response to normal phenomena and behaviors, a person can gradually come to rely less on a substance’s impacts.
In many cases, the first step is identifying how negative thought patterns first began during the traumatic relationship. Then, therapy can work to alter those thought patterns and replace them with something productive.
Practicing coping skills
Long-term coping skills are a significant influence on a person’s odds of relapse. After relationship trauma, a person may develop unhealthy coping skills (e.g., substance use), but therapy can help patients replace these behaviors with others that are constructive and beneficial.
For example, individual therapy may identify that a patient is coping with feelings of abandonment from a previous relationship by getting drunk with friends and instead help the patient locate another way of being social that precludes contact with alcohol (such as volunteering at a school, where alcohol is not allowed).
Get Individual Therapy to Overcome Trauma-Related Addiction
Healing relationship trauma is one of the most important steps a patient can take when seeking to overcome their addiction, and individual therapy can help. Contact Aquila Recovery Clinic to set up individual therapy sessions and make progress on your road to addiction recovery.