Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain Through Emotional Literacy

Summary

For the past decade, author Tian Dayton has been researching trauma and addiction, and how psychodrama (or sociometry group psychotherapy) can be used in their treatment. Since trauma responses are stored in the body, a method of therapy that engages the body through role play can be more effective in accessing the full complement of trauma-related memories.

This latest book identifies the interconnection of trauma and addictive behavior, and shows why they can become an unending cycle. Emotional and psychological pain so often lead to self-medicating, which leads to more pain, and inevitably more self-medicating, and so on—ad infinitum. This groundbreaking book offers listeners effective ways to work through their traumas in order to heal their addictions and their predilection toward what clinicians call self-medicating (the abuse of substances [alcohol, drugs, food], activities [work, sex, gambling, etc.], and/or possessions [money, material things].)

Therapists treating patients for whom no other avenue of therapy has proved effective will find that this book offers practical, lasting solutions. Case studies and examples of this behavioral phenomenon will illustrate the connection, helping listeners understand its dynamics, recognize their own situations and realize that they are not alone in experiencing this syndrome.