Comment by VladVladikoff
1 day ago
I’ve heard this take a lot in my life. And I definitely struggle with substance abuse addiction. However I’ve looked inside myself many times to find said trauma or suffering and I just don’t really see anything of note. Perhaps the only way to discover this is through some very expensive therapy sessions, or maybe vaping some 5-Meo-DMT.
Trauma only appearing in super-deep going therapy sessions can often be False Memory Syndrome, which is an entirely different can of worms and extremely problematic. If you search really really deeply, you're going to find it, wether it exists or not.
Generally: While suppressed memory of trauma exists, the vast majority of people are aware of trauma and there is no evidence suggesting otherwise. And there is clear evidence that lots of mentally well people get addicted as well, so just claiming "it's always some underlying condition" is probably not a great idea. It can, often even, be, sure. But that doesn't make it mandatory and especially doesn't allow the "I struggle with addiction, so there _must_ have been a problem beforehand" conclusion.
So honestly, I'd just not search any deeper to not risk inducing any false memories.
The idea of repressed memories is very popular with untrained general public, but it’s not a substantiated research topic.
Like the comment above said, many “repressed memories” are actually false memories or, in rare cases, false stories that get constructed and encouraged by a misleading therapist who is convinced that some repressed memory exists and pushes too hard to get the patient to “remember” something. When the only way to satisfy the other party is to come up with a story, many people will eventually come up with a story and even believe it themselves.
The same thing happens with false confessions.
> Trauma only appearing in super-deep going therapy sessions can often be False Memory Syndrome, which is an entirely different can of worms and extremely problematic
It is problematic, but not in the way that you think. While memories can be suggestively altered or created by questioning, the evidence for doing so for traumatic childhood sexual abuse is anecdotal and those anecdotes were pretty heavily cherry picked by the clearly biased FMSF, which was run as a support and advocacy group for parents accused of abuse.
That said, my understanding is that in general, dwelling on traumatizing experiences isn't beneficial to recovery. There are times they may need to be confronted and processed, but generally if it isn't causing a problem, don't go digging it up and spending a lot of time thinking about it unnecessarily.
> However I’ve looked inside myself many times to find said trauma or suffering and I just don’t really see anything of note.
Don't worry about it. The trauma diagnosis has been ludicrously poor at treating addiction.
From what I've read, it performs worse than placebos, random chance, etc.
For treatment of substance abuse, therapy is literally at the bottom of the performance chart, below things like hypnotism, alternative medicines and plain old prayer.
Exactly. This reeks of snake oil.
I'm addicted to sugar. I have some trauma now? What trauma? My life has been relatively smooth sailing. You're right, this is just a way of creating the "need" for "therapy".
Man, you're being disingenuous as can be. Not all addiction is the same, and some are much easier to break than others. However, sugar addiction can lead to some very traumatic experiences at the dentist.
The therapy industrial complex at it again /s
You joke, but trauma influencers are a big deal. That’s how they get their followers and their podcast appearances.
1 reply →
It's all because of Big Help.
For me it’s not necessarily trauma or suffering, not beyond the normal expected human “suffering” of doing boring, mundane tasks or feeling sad/frustrated/insecure, but rather feeling these generally uncomfortable feelings and having a habit of detaching from them and developing a low tolerance for handling it in general.
I generally engage more in my own flavor of addictions (caffeine, social media, workaholism) when I am more overwhelmed, understanding that I do this and why… was helpful.
I’ve tried counselling multiple times and I never got that eye opening clarity of what’s wrong with me. Maybe one has to do psychotherapy for that, which is unavailable to most.
IME, there's usually not a moment of absolute clarity where I know what's wrong with me. Instead it's a lot of wandering, digging, and, very occasionally, finding little nuggets of info and wondering, "what the hell do I do with this knowledge?" Gradually, what happens is the process of doing this helps you understand yourself, which, over time, can change perceptions and actions.
The clarity usually comes in retrospect for me.