![]() If we ignore it for too long, we either explode or shrink to nothing. ![]() But the child who constantly gets ignored by their parents will often act out more and more until finally, they explode. When you ignore a screaming child, they generally get louder for a while and eventually give up. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden-but it’s there. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. Gabor Mate, Author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, speaks to the root of addiction: Little hurts and stresses, all the way to low-grade trauma are generally brushed off as “not a big deal”, but that doesn’t mean these experiences don’t leave a mark. We were sent to our rooms when we acted out, shamed for having big feelings, and sometimes even bullied at school for being the sensitive kid. Many of us have been taught that anger or sadness aren’t acceptable emotions. For the most part, we’re a society with low-emotional intelligence and an inability to mindfully work through conflict. Low to high-grade trauma is passed down from parents to their children and the cycle repeats itself. Our culture doesn’t take trauma very seriously, and this has resulted in multi-generational wounding. ![]() In the book “The Journey from Abandonment to Healing”, author Susan Anderson explains how a seemingly minor event such as being dropped off at summer camp can cause a small child to learn the world is unsafe and feel their security is under threat. On the journey to healing my own abandonment issues, I learned that it doesn’t always take a catastrophic event to form an abandonment wound. The story might be different, but the wound is the same. Most people carry some sort of an abandonment wound. Rather reluctantly I might add, but that’s a story for another day. Then I met a man who seemed different than all of those other assholes, and we got married. From abusive relationships to opting for a vow of celibacy to “find myself” at 21. This foresight alone made me one of the lucky ones. People saw potential in me, I knew my mom loved me even though she couldn’t properly care for me, and I was exposed to enough diversity to recognize that I had a choice how my life would turn out. That belief was the evidence I needed to keep my walls up and protect myself from future pain and abandonment.ĭespite the ways life challenged me, I always knew I was meant for something. My outside environment reinforced the belief that I wasn’t good enough. No one could get through to me, for I was unlovable. Shielding myself from any possible threat or danger, the walls around my heart were thick and unmovable. ![]() Later in life as a teenager, trouble was my middle name. I was a little girl with an impressionable mind and the imprint of abandonment on my psyche was immense.Īs a child, anger became my coping mechanism. It didn’t matter that my mother loved me or that she was just a 22-year-old fumbling her way through her own deeply traumatized life. I hated sleep-overs and any experience that resembled that first traumatic night when, at just 3 years old, I was handed off kicking-and-screaming into the arms of foster parents. I navigated the world as though I was always under attack. My wounds with my mother and an absent father embedded a deep distrust in me. I couldn’t do things a normal kid would do, like go on a field trip or get my drivers license at 16 without a government ministry signing for me. My mother lost custody and a government body became my legal guardian. In the eyes of many parents and teachers, being a foster kid meant I was a “bad apple”.Īt the tender age of 12, as an angry and aggressive pre-teen, I became a ward of the government. Something that belonged to the other kids I went to school with, but not me. Staring up at a foreign ceiling on sleepless nights, I yearned for control over my own life. We’d spend a few years together before unpredictable chaos would turn our happy home upside down and once again, I’d find myself living in the home of strangers. I grew up in and out of other people’s homes while my mother battled with her mental illness. My first exposure to the world was scary and unsafe. I was born by emergency c-section to a 22-year-old, alcoholic mother struggling with depression.
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