What I Wish I’d Known as a Teenager

It is of extreme importance that teenagers are educated in terms of mental and physical health. Many cases of sexual violence against teenagers can leave them to be suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance use disorder, and other trauma-related issues. They also need to be taught that it is good to be anxious but getting on the level of isolation due to this anxiety is not a healthy sign. Besides, your body has a relationship with the food you consume. Sometimes, out of stress teenagers end up binge-eating fast food which leads to a plethora of health problems. Also, not taking enough sleep is one cause behind depression and anxiety. As a parent, you must educate your children about sexual violence if ever taken place with them. There are many issues related to such sexual activities where the consent is missing.

Couples Begin the Journey to Emotional Reconnection after Sexual Addiction Recovery

Discovery to Recovery Part 2: Emotional Impact and Emotional Restitution

Couples who have struggled with the enormity of damage caused by sexual addiction often feel hopeless and helpless. When they think of the long road from discovery of the problem to recovery and reconnection, it can seem daunting and endless. However, many couples do find help and they find recovery and they reconnect in ways that are beyond what they ever allowed themselves to believe possible.

Disclosure is the first step to relationship repair, however, it often feels more damaging than reparative. The honesty involved in disclosure and the willingness to hear what will undoubtedly be hurtful information about betrayal are important parts of healing for most couples. What happens after disclosure is just as important, if not more so. Emotional impact and emotional restitution work are the next steps supported by experts in the sex addiction field.

Emotional impact provides a chance for the partner to express the impact that the addict’s behaviors have had on them. Partners often do not feel truly heard and do not feel as though their emotions have been a priority in the addict’s recovery. Emotional impact work is the chance for the partner to really be empowered in having time that is solely dedicated to their emotions being genuinely heard.

Emotional restitution work provides a chance for the addict to demonstrate that they have heard and fully understand the emotional wreckage their behaviors have caused. Addicts have a chance to show that they are able to respond to the emotional needs of their partner. This goes beyond the making of amends, to a deeper emotional comprehension and an honoring of the betrayed partner.

These important recovery tasks need to happen in an environment that is safe, and in a way where both parties feel supported. Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows, in collaboration with Dr. Ken Adams, has designed a workshop that accomplishes these tasks and more. The Discovery to Recovery Intensive Series for Couples Healing, Part 2 focuses on the necessary work of emotional impact and emotional restitution. Here are excerpts of feedback provided about the workshop from two recent partner participants:

“We were supported with the entire process of identifying how we felt, really felt, as a result of our experiences. We were helped in finding our words to express what we hold inside and made to feel safe in sharing. Our hurt, our pain, our betrayal, our vulnerability was all validated; we were allowed and encouraged to feel. We were guided in the process through dialogue, ‘lectures,’ tools, and strategies on how to construct our impact letters to convey and prepare to share the message we needed our partner to hear, to feel, and to process. We were supported and prepared in being able to receive the response and emotional restitution letters of our partners. Most importantly, we were able to see each other as people, and as the partners we once fell in love with and shared so much with, while still being allowed to hang on to and own our pain.”

“I want to express my gratitude for the Discovery to Healing workshop you created at The Meadows. I struggled with whether or not I should attend - concerned that I was either going to be met with more roadblocks to healing or, worse, be further traumatized. But, instead what I found was a sacred space, one in which I could feel protected and safe enough to show up, be seen and get beyond my “go to” responses/feelings of anger, betrayal, and grief. And what I also found that was completely unexpected was the path back to me - the person that I had lost somewhere between the confusion and pain of sex addiction.”

“The care, wisdom and enormous commitment that went into creating this experience is obvious. I will forever be grateful.”

“I would very highly recommend this program to any and every couple going through the traumas of sexual addiction. The experience is equally valuable and necessary for both the addict and for the partner. The experience of a week-long intensive workshop is probably equivalent to a year’s worth of one hour 1-1 therapy visits in that you discover, understand, and work on so much in a short, intensive period of time”

This work requires embarking on a journey that makes no promises and has no guaranteed outcome. It requires courage, willingness, trust in the process, and faith in yourself. If this sounds like the next step for you and your relationship, contact our intake department at 1-866-453-7374 or you can find more information about the Discovery to Recovery workshops here.

Content Source Couples Begin the Journey to Emotional Reconnection after Sexual Addiction Recovery

Dr. Shelley Uram Featured on The Dr. Drew Podcast

Dr. Shelley Uram, a triple board-certified psychiatrist and Senior Fellow at The Meadows, was recently a guest on The Dr. Drew podcast.

The podcast is hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist who is well known for his work both as a physician and as a TV and radio personality. On The Dr. Drew podcast, he takes listener calls and talks to experts on a variety of topics relating to health, relationships, sex, and addiction.

He and Dr. Uram had a fascinating and in-depth conversation about the ubiquity of relational trauma in today’s society, how trauma impacts the brain and body, and treatment modalities like mindfulness, yoga, EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing, and 12-step frameworks.
Here are a few highlights from the show:

On The Prevalence of Trauma in Our Culture

Dr. Drew: What are you seeing with trauma these days?

Dr. Uram: There’s a lot of stress and strain and what I call relational trauma that’s inherent to modern American culture... It often leads to addiction, trauma, and depression.

The ACEs study showed us that when we’re children and we’re exposed to the stresses and strains of family and psychological traumas— “soft” traumas that are really not soft—they go on to create all kinds of psychological problems, medical problems, heart problems, lower socioeconomic levels, and more. So, those traumas we are exposed to as children and may not even recognize as traumas can go on to wreak havoc in the body, the brain, and the mind… I see that a lot.

On Unhealthy Relationship Patterns

Dr. Drew: People with traumas often seem to be magically attracted to the kinds of people who have features or qualities similar to the perpetrators of those traumas. And, of course, if you are drawn to a perpetrator they will oblige you and re-perpetrate. Where is your sense of where that’s coming from?

Dr. Uram: There’s a part of the brain called the brain stem, which is located physically at the lowest level of the brain and is evolutionally hundreds of millions of years of years old. Since it’s so ancient it doesn’t have sophisticated wiring. In addition to homeostasis, procedural memory is one of its functions. Procedural memories are habits or patterns that get locked into our brains. Every single function of the brain stem, including procedural memories, is unconscious. So, when patterns get locked in there, we are no longer aware of them. It’s like learning to tie your shoes. At first, it took a lot of effort, but once you got it, you could do it without thinking. So, how to tie your shoes is a procedural memory.

Procedural memories are also made up of any types of patterns that we picked up from our formative years, mainly birth to age five. They can be simple motor activities, like tying your shoes, or they can be tied in with strong emotions, fears, and expectations. Once something gets registered as a procedural memory, we’re off to the races. We’re going to keep repeating procedures related to those early emotions and all we can do is notice it. We have little to no control.

Another rule of thumb with the ancient brain areas like the brain stem is that they like for us to stay in the zone of comfort. Even if we consciously hate the zone of comfort we end up staying with it. So, for a woman who has been abused as a child and ends up in abusive relationships as an adult over and over and over—She may hate that she does that, but to her ancient survival brain areas, that’s the zone of comfort. That’s what it knows. It knows abuse. It knows neglect. It knows perpetrators…

Dr. Drew: Some people can trust their so-called instincts, but if you’ve had trauma… No. Or if you find that you repeat behavior you don’t like, or repeating circumstances you don’t like or relationships you don’t like—that’s when you can’t trust your instincts.

Dr. Uram: The real wisdom that we all have deep inside of us tends to be a very quiet voice—most of us don’t hear it all. But the voice of addiction, the voice of trauma, and the Fight, Flight, Freeze voice screams at us… By the time most of are three months old, our thinking brain has started to come online and we have our first dawning sense of “Oh, there’s a me.” That triggers our flight, fight, freeze survival responses like crazy. Especially if we are exposed to trauma, the survival voices are screaming loud voices inside our heads. They make us forget entirely how to listen to the quiet voice inside of us that contains our sixth sense and our wisdom.

On The Essential Self

Dr. Uram: We all have a soul—an essential self that we are born with and die with. It gives us our inherent sense of worth, and our wisdom, and our sense of peace and happiness—real, deep happiness… By the time we are young adults, most of us have long forgotten who we really are, because layer upon layer of false beliefs, expectations, symptoms, and negative feelings have built around our essence. We have to learn how to reclaim the essential self—How to get back down to that essential self and connect with it.

Learn more about The Essential Self and Trauma

Listen to the entire, hour-long podcast for more of Dr. Uram’s conversation with Dr. Drew. They go into more depth about the essential self, building interpersonal relationships, and the implications of trauma and the ACEs study.
Dr. Uram’s book, Essential Living: A Guide to Having Happiness and Peace by Reclaiming Your Essential Self is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It will be available April 4 wherever books are sold.

Content Source

U.S. Surgeon General Issues a Call to Action on Addiction

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s release of Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health at yesterday’s Facing Addiction Summit was an unprecedented moment in our country’s fight against addiction and substance misuse. It is the first time in history that a U.S. surgeon general has issued a report focused on drug and alcohol addiction. The report comes at a time when more and more Americans are struggling with the effects of addiction to opioids and heroin.
One person dies every 19 minutes from an opioid or heroin overdose. And, the statistics related to other addictions are no less grim. One in seven people in the United States will face a substance misuse disorder, and only 10 percent will get the treatment they need to overcome it.

Shame and stigma are typically major factors in preventing people from reaching out for help and finding treatment. That’s why it was especially encouraging to see Surgeon General Murthy make it clear that addiction is a brain disease and not a sign of depravity:

“We have to recognize (addiction) isn't evidence of a character flaw or a moral failing,” Murthy told USA Today. “It’s a chronic disease of the brain that deserves the same compassion that any other chronic illness does, like diabetes or heart disease.”

Treating Addiction as a Brain Disease

At The Meadows, addressing the neurological aspects of addiction alongside the social and spiritual aspects has always been a top priority. The Meadows Senior Fellow Dr. Shelley Uram often says that our approach includes both “Bottom Up” and “Top Down” therapies. To put it in the simplest of terms, the way your brain has been primed to respond to emotional triggers through your childhood experiences has an impact on the development of addictions and other behavioral health disorders.

Automatic emotional responses (fear, anger, disgust, etc.,) are deeply embedded in your limbic brain—the “bottom” part of your brain—which operates subconsciously.

Your choices and your rationalizations for those choices are a function of the “top” part of your brain, the pre-frontal cortex, which is the conscious, “thinking” part of your brain.

The Meadows programs include therapies that are designed to help our clients improve their overall brain functioning at both the conscious and subconscious levels.

Talk therapies, or “top down” therapies, engage the conscious, prefrontal cortex. They help you to gain a greater understanding of why you respond to triggers in the way that you do, how you can make different choices, and allow you to learn more about who you really are. Examples of these types of therapies include individual counseling, group sessions, and 12-step work.

Even as you gain a greater understanding of yourself and your disorder through top down therapies, automatic emotional responses to triggers remain lodged in your subconscious mind. “Bottom-up” therapies like Yoga, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and Heart Rate Variability training help to dislodge the automatic responses from your limbic system, so that your responses to triggers are less intense. These types of therapies are crucial to helping clients prevent relapse. The therapeutic devices and techniques available in our Brain Center are designed to help our patients work at this deeper level.

Source