We have made trauma far too powerful!!

You say trauma caused the addiction. How do you know??

Not: why do you believe it
Not: what theory supports it
Not: what happened in childhood

How do you actually know that this is what caused this person’s addiction??
—–

Two people can grow up in the same home
Experience similar events
Carry very different meanings
Adapt in completely different ways

– One may use drugs
– One may become controlling
– One may disappear into work
– One may appear completely unaffected

So the event alone cannot tell us the outcome

Trauma may matter enormously
But once we decide this is the cause, something subtle happens

We start looking for evidence that confirms it!

We ask trauma-shaped questions
We interpret the person through the answer we already have
And eventually the explanation can become more visible than the person

I’m less interested now in asking
What caused your addiction?
And more interested in
How did your experience become organised in such a way that this behaviour made sense?

That question doesn’t deny trauma

It simply refuses to decide the answer before we understand the person

Next week, I’m bringing a small group together for a live inquiry into exactly these kinds of assumptions

Not to replace one addiction model with another

To see what becomes visible when we stop protecting the answers we already have – https://lnkd.in/eSGuC6Ry