Answer: A good friend of mine often repeats the statement – “We repeat to complete.” What this means is that we will continue to repeat past traumatic experiences (by recreating them in the present) until we overcome them, make sense out them, and integrate them. The clinical term is trauma repetition. Bessel Van der Kolk, noted researcher and author (June 1989) explains that victims of trauma can repeat or re-enact their trauma on a behavioral, emotional, and physical level. “Compulsive repetition of the trauma usually is an unconscious process that, although it may provide a temporary sense of mastery or even pleasure, ultimately perpetuates chronic feelings of helplessness and a subjective sense of being bad and out of control (pg. 399).” He explains the following about repeating or re-enacting past trauma in the present:
· Anger directed inwards – which often causes self-destructive behaviors and depression – is “itself a repetitive re-enactment or real events from the past (pg. 400).”
· Stress causes “people to engage in familiar behavior, regardless of the rewards.” New ways of dealing with stress are often “anxiety provoking, previously traumatized people tend to return to familiar patterns, even if they cause pain (pg. 401).”
· Fear can be turned into a pleasurable sensation for victims of abuse. As such, even abusive experiences (to self and/or others) that trigger intense feelings of fear, can become addictive and even pleasurable.
· “Re-exposure to stress can have the same effect as taking morphine, providing a similar relief from stress (401).”
· Adult victims of abuse can become addicted to their victimizers and find other men and/ or women to take the place of these original abusers and become just as addictively attached to these new partners.
· Shame and isolation “promote regression to earlier states of anxious attachment and to addictive involvements (pg. 399).” What this means is that when an adult survivor of abuse experiences shame and isolates, he/she will often feel as if they have gone back in time and feel like the abused child. They will be anxious about attaching to others and instead become involved in addictive behaviors.
Being that a part of the co-dependent is stuck in the past, that part will always remain overwhelmed by the past traumatic experience. What is needed is for the adult to go back to that experience and help that part overcome the trauma. An example of this is the love addict that struggled with always picking people that didn’t really “see” him – people that were unable to step outside of themselves to appreciate this person. He could see it especially with his supervisors and bosses. They often discounted him. It wasn’t until he was in therapy that he realized how his parents were “blind” to him. They couldn’t “see” him for who he was or appreciate his individuality and uniqueness. And that is what he ended up doing – repeating and recreating the past relationship with his parents in the present. This is similar to the adult who was raised by emotionally unavailable parents and found other emotionally unavailable people in his/her current life. The hook, which starts the addictive attachment, is the attempt to get the emotionally unavailable person to open up and become emotionally attached to the addict.
There is no healing in the trauma. Every time addicts return to their addictive behaviors, they are actually recreating their trauma. Just like hyperthermia, we no longer feel the very thing that is killing us. As co-dependents act out in addictive behaviors, they induce a dissociative state and become numb to the very thing that is destroying the addict. It is not a person’s normal state to use addiction as a way to live life. The goal for the recovering person is to go through the trauma and heal from it. By doing that, the recovering person will no longer be “stuck” in repeating the past.
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