Author: Rosa M Luna

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Trauma at 5

I remember being 5 years old, born a girl, born into a large family. I remember playing on a gravel road just outside of my house. I was pouring gravel on my puppy’s belly laughing along with him as I rubbed his belly with it and his leg wiggling along with his tail. I was enjoying this little game we’d play often on this beautiful sunny day.

My mother always had a lot of people over on Sundays after church. I could smell the food from where I was, especially the freshly made flour tortillas, hmm, soon it will be our turn to eat and I was hungry. Men get fed first. They are some special “mother fu*kers” in our culture.

After they are done eating and drinking, taking their time of course, then “let’s feed the children!”  So meanwhile, we are playing outside. Running, laughing, playing games, having fun with other kids and my brothers and sisters.

 

I decided to play with my puppy on the outside of the rose bushes that my mom planted, forming a line, acting as a fence, just off the driveway, pouring gravel on my dogs’ belly.

When my Tio (uncle) Lucio drove up in his greyish old pickup truck and he swung open the door and asked if I would like to go and play at the park (it was close by my house) he would take me. I yelled “Yeah!” I sprung on my feet and shaking the dirt off my Sunday dress, I said, “I am going to call my Brothers and Sisters to joins us!”

He quickly said, “No. Just you,” grasping my arm and picking me up like a rag doll, putting me in his truck setting me beside him “Because you are special to me. I will also buy you an ice cream cone. Would like that?”

“OK”

“Ice Cream cone! I love Ice cream cones!”

As we drove off, I decided to stand myself up holding on to his shoulder and I said “I can’t see, where we are going? Where are we going to first?” He said, “To the park”.

I loved going to the park. My puppy and I would walk by ourselves sometimes and play on the merry-go-round.

I remember it was made of iron and it was cold when we would sit on it and hold on to the bars for dear life. I loved going around and around as someone pushed it going faster and faster until we’d fall out rolling in the soft and safe grass, laughing thinking, how fun!

As we tried getting up and walking or enjoy seeing others trying to walk feeling dizzy. Remember playing on the teeter-totters? I loved playing on them too, placing my puppy on one side of it, but he was not heavy enough so I would pretend he was and push up with my legs and he would jump off. He was no fun.

Yay! We got to the park, but my Tio Lucio passed the merry-go-round and parked under some trees on the other side of the park, and I could not see anyone.

I remember I started crying, and I don’t know why. I think I started to get scared. Something was making me feel scared, bad, and wrong.

Then, my Tio Lucio started to yank my underwear off and threw them on the floor. He grabbed my legs and positioned them in a squatting manner, then started placing his fingers inside me.

Penetrating me with his fingers, he spits on his fingers one at a time, as if washing them inside me. I remember his fingers would sting inside me and I would shout out in pain crying that it would hurt, “shhh, Mija. No te gusta?” (don’t you like this?)

(Stupid Fu*ker. Did I look like I was enjoying this?)

But why did I say, “Si?”

 

 

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How Do Teenagers Cope With Trauma?

Teenagers are very complex people. Sometimes, they are difficult to talk to. If you are the parent, they don’t believe anything you say, especially, if you have had times when you’ve made a mistake, or forgot something they told you, or as silly as it sounds, you didn’t read their mind. You have to be physic and a mind reader to understand what they are really feeling and trying to make you understand.

Teenagers are going through a hormonal change during their teen years. Their emotions are everywhere because of it. The effect of hormonal moods, emotions, and impulses as well as their body. The mood swings that teens experience are caused by fluctuations in estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone-the sex hormones.

These same teen hormones will also affect the way they think, feel, and react to certain situations. I used to work with teens who had been sexually molested. I had this 17-year-old client. A very angry, untrusting, at times violent young lady. She also was suffering from depression. I had a hard time getting her to open up.

One day she lighted up her cigarette in front of me, the smell of the cigarette made me sick to the point of wanting to throw up. I asked her as kindly as I could, to please turn her cigarette off, she asked me” why, what is it to you.?”

I told her the truth;” the man who raped me smoked those kinds of cigarette your smoking now.” She instantly turned the cigarette off. (to my surprise). She said she was sorry, something like this happened to you? I told her my story. She apologized for how she was acting towards me and said she felt like I was just pretending to care for the money and I really did not give a shit about her. She told me her story and was very positively different and more open. Now she too is helping others to turn things around.

Emotional and psychological trauma can also be caused by ongoing stress such as dealing with sexual harassment, living in a crime-ridden neighborhood Breaking up with another boyfriend or girlfriend. Emotional feelings are more heighten when being traded by a friend, this triples the emotional feelings of being alone.

The following are signs and symptoms associated with emotional and psychological trauma:

  • Depression, unable to get out of bed.
  • Not wanting to visit friends or go out with them.
  • Having unexplained aches and body pain.
  • Always complaining about feeling tired.
  • Unable to sleep, having nightmares
  • Angary outburst, Irritability, and mood swings
  • Unable to remove feelings of guilt and shame.

Treatment for trauma takes time. It may take weeks or months before you start seeing improvement in your teenager’s mood and it is important to stay patient and to continue to offer support and encouragement throughout this process. Be prepared for setbacks and celebrate the milestones.

As parents, we know our teenagers are hard to talk to sometimes. We will need to try to be more patent, more compassionate. Try talking about expectations and what we do, is because we have their best interest at heart

” Because I love you, and want what is best for you, we can do this together and get your input on this, what do you think”. Ask them about their personal habits. Are you sleeping well? Practice empathy with one other, tell them they need to show their friends that this teenager cares about them, doesn’t that feel good to you when they ask how are you doing?

Ask teens about their own coping strategies, I am just curious, Mija, with the covid 19 virus How are you coping without your friends around? How are you coping with the school situation?

I enjoy talking to teenagers more now than before. When they tell me something that would concern me. I will confess to them that I would like to help. Or I will be a very good listener and thank them for trusting me enough to talk to me.

To all our Teenagers and those involved in helping them Many Blessings.

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Save the Children Change the World

IF you were to look at criminals in prison, you will find that most of the offenders have a history that includes being a victim of childhood abuse. In fact, 1 out of 20 children are victims of child abuse, and these innocent youths are likely to grow into adults suffering from addiction, mental health problems, and are more likely to end up swallowed up by the court system. Children are the future. Save the Children Change the World

Every state spends billions of dollars combatting the effects of childhood abuse in adults.

In my work with those with mental health issues, most of them started with trauma in childhood, mostly sexual in nature. These wounds run deep and prevent the victims from ever having a normal life without intervention.

Our crime statistics would reduce massively if we could just give our children the love and support that they need to have a healthy foundation for a better life.

ACEs are Adverse Childhood Experiences, and they are slowly killing our youth. They are 8 times more likely to commit suicide before coming to adulthood. These young brains and bodies need nurturing to release the proper hormones which are necessary for normal childhood development.

Trauma has many faces. Childhood trauma can be the result of not having enough food to eat, lack of adequate shelter, or domestic violence. The greater the exposure to ACEs, the more likely they are to become addicts, antisocial, mentally ill, or criminally minded.

Childhood trauma creates an incredible financial drain on the community as these children grow up and create problems in society as we try to address their needs. You can hardly fault them for something that happened to them as innocent children, and we are faced with the reality and cost later in life.

Children inherit their cycle of hardship from their parents, and they are likely to raise families that duplicate the generation of the problem after generation, unless we can start to do something about it at the earliest stage: These precious babies.

For communities without adequate resources, they are unlikely to affect making the situation any better because you cannot punish a broken person to wellness. There are not enough prisons in the world to deal with this issue of adults who are wounded and broken to no fault of their own.

Economically challenged neighborhoods are the worst breeding grounds for childhood victimization and abuse, which is passed on generationally.

Your Community Can Be the Difference

Life could be saved and changed. These victims could become active valuable members of our communities with the right kind of attention and programs.

Leading with compassion, some churches and community organizations have started to reach out to the victims, with supportive, non-judgmental home visits without strings attached. This has the most measurable impact on the youth being visited and supported.

These young victims need to have access to proper medical attention without having to burden that family with the expense of doing so. Churches or other non-profits can help to subsidize the medical attention needed.

“Normal” children have access to educational and social programs that may be out of reach of the economically challenged kids. A funded and empowered organization can help to bridge the gap and create opportunities for underprivileged children to participate in these programs. This helps to breed self-confidence and esteem in the young children who would otherwise fall victim to the cycle of hardship.

Seeing that our children, all of our children in our communities have adequate food, shelter and clothing is a key to the gateway of breaking the cycle.

Want to change the world?

Help a child break free from the cycle of hardship.

Many blessings to you.

 

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Coming Back from Trauma

Phases of Recovery

What are the different phases you go through when coming back from trauma? Psychological trauma occurs as a result of some stressful events in life. It destroys your sense of safety and security and involves a basic threat to life, lack of trust.

Traumatic experiences can be coping, but it takes some time and your ability to blend emotions involved with the experience.

Psychological trauma usually makes a person hopeless and leaves a person struggling with their emotions.

When bad events happen, it can take time to get over the pain and sense of safety and security again.

Whether the trauma happened in past years or yesterday, you can heal from it and can move further into your happy life.

Any instance that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and frightened can be traumatic.

It’s not the purpose that determines whether an event is traumatic but preferably your subjective emotional experience of the event.

Healing from trauma is a personal process, and it looks different for different people.

Your distinctive ability to heal from trauma depends on many things that include your beliefs and perceptions. Your level of coping, connection towards others, and even your psychological functioning before the event.

Overcoming your feelings

The first thing in healing from trauma includes reestablishing feelings of stability and security. Trauma victims have insecure feelings. Regaining a sense of protection involves creating a secure and predictable environment.

Remembrance

The second stage is about processing the trauma and naming it. Begin to use words and emotions to give a name to trauma and explain your situation to your friends or have counseling from a therapist to reduce your trauma and heal you. Give yourself time to grieve and express your feelings.

Reconnection

The third phase is about giving new hope for the coming future. Allowing redefine yourself in a healing process. Take some steps to reclaim your personal willpower. Add a Mindful element.

Meditation can also calm and help you as well. Mindfulness tells you to live in the present moment rather than thinking of the past.

Post-traumatic growth

The fourth phase is post-traumatic growth. In this phase, you may be changed by your experience of trauma. Post-traumatic growth is experienced when positive mental health experiences are experienced, which raises you to a higher level of functioning than you otherwise have achieved.

Recovery

By going through these phases successfully, it will help you to be free from the traumatized life and live a meaningful and rewarding life. Recovery from trauma gives a person new meaning to his life and the strength and secret of living a happier life. You must allow yourself the opportunity to heal.

What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. We are all responsible for everything in our life.  The best and the worse. Recovering from trauma gives us our control back. Don’t give away your power by blaming another person. We are the only ones thinking for ourselves. We can create peace and harmony and balance in our mind, then we can find it in our lives.

Many blessings to you.

 

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Children Living with Trauma

Children living with trauma are those who have experienced one or more traumas in life. Traumatic stress includes a variety of reactions that include intense and depressive symptoms. Without treatment, it can affect the child’s nervous system. These kinds of children are more vulnerable to serious health issues.

Risks:

The risk factors depend upon the severity of trauma in children. Protective measures can reduce the traumatic impact on children. Some factors to consider include:

The severity of the incident:

How severe was the event? How badly the child hurt from the incident? Did someone they love die? Were they mistreated, sexually molested, were they starved a punishment? These are the factors to consider while measuring distress among children.

Impact of untreated trauma:

In many cases, a child’s body and mind recover quickly from trauma. However, other childhood trauma can leave lasting and long-term effects. By this, the child can experience health and mental illness.

Factors of traumatic stress are:

ACE’s (adverse childhood experiences)

They used this new technique to check on the severity of the Child’s suffering. Utilizing this new tool, many care providers, doctors, therapists, and many others are working with children especially those with trauma. These tools assist with the levels in which the Childs need assistance to heal.

Younger children are more vulnerable to trauma that can negatively affect their well-being. This can lead to problems with Childs physical or mental health issues. ACES can give those involved with the care of children an idea of the pain and suffering going on with the child you are working with, also what steps to take.

Experiencing traumatic events multiple times is more harmful than a single event.

Healthy Relationships:

Children with support and healthy relationships are more likely to recover. Having regular family meals together, for example, having regular “no electronics” but time to talk, play, or reading together creates a healthy support system for the whole family.

Coping skills:

Intelligence, physical health, and self-confidence help children cope easily.

Understanding your child behavior:

When children experienced trauma multiple times, it leaves a negative impact on their brains. It might result in aggression, disobeying, and feeling disconnected. So in this situation, give your child time to act appropriately. Do not show any violence that will reduce more adverse to their health.

Trauma triggers:

When your child misbehaves, he or she may be experiencing a trauma trigger. A trauma trigger reminds the child of the original event. However, responses to triggers are un-planned. When children’s bodies are overwhelmed with stress, they lose their senses. They can also misbehave with you.

Helping your child:

Identify trauma triggers:

Something you did at your home can trigger your child without either of you realizing it. It is vital to keep an eye on your child’s behavior. Help your child overcome bad experiences.

 available to your children:

Provide encouragement, care, and comfort in ways that your child will accept. Spend some quality time with your child. Be patient if children seem needy. Many times a child just needs to feel loved, feel like they are in a secure home. Children need to be shown, love

Calmly respond, don’t react:

Your adverse treatment may trigger your child. When your child is sad, do what you can do to keep calm. Lower your voice; appreciate your child’s feelings.

 

Help your child:

Encourage your child to practice slow breathing, play outside, and listening calmly. Getting your child involved in sports, dancing, or other forms of regular exercise.

Encourage self-esteem:

Positive experiences help the child to recover from trauma quickly. Always encourage your child to achieve high goals and be positive with them.

Making a plan for what to do when your child is feeling stressed out, angry, or overwhelmed. Be there for children when they are feeling sad. Sometimes a hug is all they need. Showing you love them no matter what.

Trauma can affect a child’s behavior in many ways. It can harm their well-being. However, with proper care and understanding, all family members can heal from a traumatic event.

Trying to heal a child is not always easy, they will remember how you helped them in time of stress.; you are their example to remember in adulthood.

Many Blessings to you.

 

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Been Successful After Trauma

Been Successful After Trauma

People usually think that because of trauma, their life will be finish. But that is not true; with the help of strong will-power, and your strengths, you can be successful after traumatic stress. You will know how to be successful after trauma and achieve something bigger after trauma.

Education:

To move from the process of trauma to growth, one should first educate and learn about traumas effects. Let’s take an example, many of us believe that we are safe from endangering diseases; bad things only happened in other parts in the world, but cannot harm us in any way;

Unfortunately, none of that is true. Now, we must change our perceptions and figure out what to believe instead of false perceptions.

I wanted to give you a very encouraging quote by Johnnetta McSwain, who is also a very successful lady who suffered trauma since she was 4 years old and is now a very successful beautiful lady and she said in one of her statements, “We need to become self-aware  that we are women of strength, who stand for survival, empowerment, motherhood, leadership, love, nurturing, beauty, respect and courage to overcome anything!”

Emotional regulation:

We must our right frame of mind to do any learning. The first step is to start managing negative emotions such as anxiety, guilt, and anger, which can be done by shifting the kind of thinking that takes you to those feelings. Instead of focusing on your losses, failures, uncertainties, and worst scenario, try to think about your successes ,been able to have a roof over head, food on your table, the important thing is you have been able to provide,  the basics ,consider best-case possibilities, and reflect all those success factors on your company’s resources, and think carefully, what can you do for a big achievement.

 Treatment/or Therapy

This is the part of the ongoing process in which you talk about different scenarios of what has happened and is happening: its effects short- and long-term, personal, and professional. This kind of openness may help you make sense of the trauma and turn thoughts into productive reflections.

If you’re helping someone to talk about what it’s been like to experience this crisis, asking many questions can seem like you are more curious rather than concerned.

It’s best to focus on how you can make concerns known and what kinds of words are correct to use.

Narrative development:

It is the step in which you have to produce the narrative story about the trauma and the reflection of afterwards to accept the chapters already written and imagine crafting the next ones in a meaningful way. Giving you a different and positive feeling about your traumatic story and the stories of people you’re helping—can and should be about a traumatic past that leads to a better and bright future.

Service:

People do better after the process of trauma, if they find work that benefits others and helps people close to them or their broader community of victims with events similar to the ones they have endured. So, help others who are in trouble and face difficulty in overcoming trauma symptoms. This can give you a sense of growth and a peaceful life.

Be patient with this process. Those who are practicing in this field know that timing is important. Growth is a long procedure of process, and it takes time.

Manny Blessings to you.

 

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How does trauma affect babies?

Trauma can hurt babies and toddlers. Many people think that babies do not remember or notice traumatic events. But the truth is that anything that affects older and adults in the family can also affect a baby.

Trauma can disrupt many aspects of child development.  If the family member is affected with trauma the baby is probably also affected.

How trauma affects babies and toddlers?

Babies and toddlers are helpless. They depend on their families and parents for a sense of safety and security. They need emotional care through loving and reassuring interactions and coping in an ongoing and consistent way. That is the way babies and toddlers develop and grow.

During their early months and years, children are sensitive to:

  • Problems affecting the babies’ parents or caregivers, which may include fear and sadness.
  • Separation from their parent or caregiver, for instance, absence due to injury or other factors related to the trauma. That can have a double impact: distress of the separation itself and insecurity of managing without the safety, understanding, and nurturing of their caregiver provides. It can slow the recovery process.
  • What is happening in the environment , toddlers and babies are greatly impacted by distress, and the negative energy and noise. In those situation, they are not sure what is happening around them and can negatively impact babies’ growth.
  • Disruption in developing a bond with parents or lack of understanding, trauma can sometimes get worse and make the bond formation even more difficult. Thus, babies tend to have stress and trauma in this situation.

If any of these things are happening, it is crucial to think about the baby’s effect. If the family member or any caregiver is affected by any trauma, the baby is probably also affected.

Reactions of babies in trauma:

When babies have exposed to life-threatening incidents they become scared. Some most common reactions of babies include

  • High level of distress.
  • The child may give you a shock and serious look.
  • Giving the appearance of being numb or being cut-off from everything around.
  • Loss of happy, engaging smile.
  • Loss of eating habits
  • No eye contact
  • Slipping back on their physical skills.

How can you help your baby cope with trauma?

Love and care is a vital key to help a baby who has traumatized. There are some activities parents can do to help their baby to cope up with trauma:

  • Seek and accept the help you need to manage your shock and emotional response.
  • Reduce the initial stress by helping the child settle and to feel safe and loved.
  • Maintain the proper child’s routine of sleeping, playing, eating.
  • Offer a calm and peaceful environment.
  • Avoid unnecessary separations from caregivers.
  • Avoid expressing the child to reminders of the trauma.

 Traumatic events can affect how a baby’s mind development;

It can have lifelong consequences. There are  different ways to help your baby cope with trauma.

Many Blessings to you and our children. God Bless.

 

 

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Rosa M Luna

I would like to introduce myself. My name is Rosa M. Luna. I was born in Eagle Pass, Texas. In a store. according to my mother, She did not know how far along she was due to have me.

Back in the day, my mom and my dad would cross the border to go shopping.  She was shopping when her water bag broke, she went to the bathroom and someone called an ambulance, who took my mom to the hospital. My mom loved being in the hospital.

They left her there for 5 days. That how long Doctors would allow you to stay. They fed, her, took the baby to her baby to feed her. They took care of her and she enjoyed it. My mom had 7 more children, in hospitals.

We were migrant workers. I was working at age 9 in the beet fields when immigration, INS, now called ICE, came and forced my brother and me away from my parents and placed us in school and I felt fear for many hours because I did not speak English and no one tried to explain.. I  have written about my ordeal in my book of trauma-ties in another chapter. What I am trying to convey in my book, is how trauma affects your life if not dealt with.

I have written this book through my book, I may be able to help someone by maybe explaining my understanding of how trauma is tided to many of our decision makings, how it controls your anxieties, how to get help for depression, and many illnesses, that the traumas bring up during your life here on earth.

I made many erroneous decisions, due to my experience o horrific and domestic violence’s in my life, I married men like my father who was an alcoholic and a wife-beater, a child molester, a mean father. I could go on and on about him, but I won”t.

Did I survive why? To help others heal from all this and make better decisions,   I made lots of mistakes, bad decisions, marry the wrong men over and over again, 5 times to tell you the truth..

During which my children also suffered,  due to my wrong decision making. I pray that they will forgive me.

Children are very precious to me. because I have learned how it affected me,, when I was a child, affected my children, and all others who surrounded us.

I learned about addiction, illnesses, and how trauma actually affects your life, your behavior. I remember being very angry and it felt like it was never going to go away.

We can choose to be a victim or a survivor.  I chose to be a survivor. I could have felt sorry for myself and abuse more drugs than I needed… It was not easy by any means.

I have a purpose now.  I want to help people heal. Loving myself, helped me love my fellow man/woman.

I have encountered many individuals who have risen above their pain and suffering. Gave themselves a purpose and using their belief in a higher power.

Having a purpose and a strong belief that there are other positive forces out there,  like your spirit guides, Angels. our Creator that has our greater good in his hands.

I encourage you to read my book and see for yourself, that we are not alone in this. Together we can heal ourselves and others from this affliction.

You are all in my prayers. Many Blessing to you.

 

 

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Symptoms of Trauma:

What is trauma? American Psychological Association provides another definition of trauma. They said ” An emotional response of someone against the especial negative instance.” Adverse events such as significant injury by accident, violent attack, bullying, domestic violence, childhood neglect, etc.

Trauma can be a normal reaction to any horrifying instances; its effects can be so severe that they can negatively affect one’s ability to live everyday life and the function needed to survive even a day.

In such cases, a trauma patient needed special attention and treatment of that stress and dysfunction by such events. That needed help to restore the emotional well-being that leads to everyday life.

Leading Causes of Trauma:

One can face a trauma problem by severe negative instances that leave a lasting impact on our memory.

This event severely affects emotional and mental stability. There are many violent physical reasons for trauma, to lead one towards a trauma disease.

Causes of trauma can be one-time events, ongoing events, and ordinary events that may be overlooked. One-time causes can be an unexpected violent attack, especially in childhood, an accident or injury, incest, beating, many traumatic events that could shake our world.

On-going events in life can be a  continuous life threat,  for example, crime in your neighborhood, surgery, death of your loved ones, disappointing experience, humiliation, etc.

Trauma is not only associated with the presence of anyone at the place of the event. It is also possible to be in trauma if anyone experiences seeing an event from a distance. kids and those of young age children need proper examination after seeing or facing a traumatic event.  It is essential to ensure their emotional well-being.

Symptoms of Trauma:

There are various trauma symptoms, and some of them are basic in nature, and you may look out for them. People that endured traumatic events may show some symptoms such as not responding to a conversation, shaken, and disoriented, nonresponsive to some stimuli.

We can separate them mainly into two types that are emotional symptoms and physical symptoms.

Emotional Symptoms:

One of the simple ways of determining trauma is the display of the emotional behavior of any person. Some emotional symptoms, such as anger, sadness, denial, and emotional outbursts, are common among trauma patients. It is difficult for friends and family members to face emotional direst and unexpected changes in a beloved friend or love member of the family.

It may be hard for you to help a loved one who keeps pushing you away. Sometimes it is hard for others to understand that emotional symptoms are due to a traumatic event and need your help to recover.

Physical Symptoms:

Some physical symptoms of trauma include lethargy, fatigue, fast heartbeat, low concentration, and paleness. A trauma victim may face panic attacks and anxiety and unable to control some circumstances.

Physical symptoms of trauma are severe as a physical injury or unexplained illness and are alarming.

With the help of a trauma caregiver or professional help can a trauma victim start to manage their symptomatic stress levels.

Trauma is an emotional response of someone against unexpected adverse events. Some events such as accident, injury, death of your loved one, rape in childhood, and any severe disease can be the reason for trauma.

Without proper help and relief of the trauma symptoms, a person can develop frequent physical symptoms and you will not be able to understand why. All this time it was is due to the trauma you suffered. It is so confusing to me the physical symptoms that can be created in our bodies.

 

 

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Why Does Trauma Cause Addiction?

Why are we all in some kind of pain or suffering? Those of us that could catch on sooner, will figure it out and try to understand our suffering and our pain. Our pain of what?

I thought I was born with some kind of learning disability. I felt like maybe my mom dropped me on my head.

When I was in school, things that the teacher was trying to teach, was way over my head. That’s after I learned to speak and read English.

I learned how to read and speak English, thanks to my 4th-grade teacher who took “my time” after school to mentor me.  I thought she was punishing me for stabbing the other kids with my pin.

I used to carry a long hatpin in my braided hair to defend myself during recess or sometimes after school. I had to fight off some of the kids that wanted to beat me up. Why I don’t know!

Sometimes, there were like 12 kids and just me. NAWW… there were only two and/or three. But it felt like a lot of them to fight off.

This story has nothing to do with becoming addicted to drugs, Nothing, but it was a good story, and it’s true too.

Sometimes, I like to break the monotony. Part of my ADHD, maybe.

Why do some of us get addicted to alcohol and drugs? We all can agree that addiction is a chemical reaction in the brain. This can be caused by ingesting a substance that triggers addictive brain synapses, or your brain – without any other exterior substance – can fire off the same addictive response, even though no drug or substance was ingested. Trauma is such a trigger device.

In terms of trauma, in the beginning, people who go through a traumatic event turn to alcohol and other pain-relieving measures to forget about what occurred and to escape from the horrible memories of their traumatic experience.

An early stressful event can also grow the risk of substance abuse issues, due to attempts to self-medicate or hose-down mood signs associated with a deregulated organic pressure of reacting to pain and suffering.

How do you explain trauma-informed care?

Trauma-informed care is a strength-based total framework that is grounded in the information and responsiveness to, the effect of the trauma, that emphasizes bodily, psychological, and emotional protection for survivors. This creates opportunities for survivors to rebuild and have a sense of control.

 How does trauma affect the mind?

In the patient’s response to traumatic events, a secondary stress hormone known as adrenalin gets launched into the bloodstream, in an area of the mind referred to as the amygdala and sends it into overdrive. The amygdala is responsible for triggering flashbacks and is critical in detecting emotions consisting of fear.

How do you know if you need help?

Symptoms

  1. Lose track of time.
  2. Chronic headache or headaches that linger or get worse.
  3. Convulsions or seizures.
  4. Vomiting or nausea.
  5. Dilation of one or each pupil of the eyes
  6. Clean fluids draining from the nose or ears.
  7. Unable to wake up from sleep.

The link between childhood trauma and addictions

The human mind is one of the most amazingly adaptive things on earth, the brain can react and adapt to whatever you go through in your existence. It is amazingly made.

This potentially plays into every available part of your presence, allowing you to analyze new abilities and make memories as you move throughout the stage where life plays out.

How does plasticity help in adulthood?

Plasticity is also why the things you enjoy in your youth are congruent with you into your formative years and maturity. Plasticity is a series of neurological systems that fire in succession based on your experience, how you react, behave, and understand the human nature of situations.

Your brain’s neurons change with the experiences that affect your life. It continues as you mature into adulthood.

There is a clear connection between early life trauma and alcoholism and other addictions. This connection between child abuse and adulthood trauma occurs because adolescent trauma and maltreatment may be the motive behind abnormalities inside the brain structure.

Those abnormalities can cause various problems with cognition and behavior. Excessive degrees of cortisol and other stress hormone compounds from neurological systems based on years of trauma, and these systems have a hugely negative effect on normal brain function and development.

Treatment:

Trauma can create a series of long-term intellectual fitness problems, including PTSD. As many as one-third of all individuals with addictions experienced some form of trauma in the course of their formative years.

Those individuals might also model their substance abuse and self-medication on behaviors they observed from a loved one while developing, a “learned behavior”.

This self-medication is the foundation for linking trauma and substance abuse.

Treating dependency and alcoholism resulting from trauma includes addiction therapy which starts evolving together with detoxing to wean your body off drugs or alcoholism, with medically supervised environmental dependency specialists, leading to understanding and formulating a highly customized approach to behavioral rehabilitation.

In the end, you may be able to supersede your past substance use and trauma by accepting your true faith and collaboration. As you analyze coping mechanisms apart from self-medicating, you’ll begin to feel empowered and strong again.

Aren’t you sick and tired of being sick and tired?

Here’s another way to heal.

Being addicted to drugs, alcohol, or any other substance is not easy to overcome, because it takes a source stronger than you or me to assist us with this problem. Addiction hurts us to the core.

A higher power, having a purpose in our lives, having faith in something far superior to anything we could otherwise imagine, some of us are “put off” hearing it, but it takes God.

Spirituality is important to recovery. Alcohol and drugs make us feel like we are alone. They make us feel like there is no reason to live. “I am too weak” “I am not strong enough to get off drugs” Are you willing to try?

You are not alone.  Please get help.

Many Blessings to you.