What if ‘chronic relapse’ is just unresolved trauma misdiagnosed as disease?

For decades, the dominant narrative has told people in addiction that they’re dealing with a chronic, relapsing brain disease.

Relapse becomes a personal failing, a moral weakness, proof that someone just doesn’t want it badly enough.

And….what if that’s not the truth? – are you willing to consider?

What if what we call “chronic relapse” is actually the body doing exactly what it was designed to do – protect you?

When trauma hasn’t been seen, felt, or processed – it doesn’t go away. It waits, it holds itself in the nervous system, in the muscles, in the breath, in the not seen.

Then life happens – stress, conflict, fear, rejection – and the old strategies resurface. Not because someone doesn’t care, not because they’re broken, because it worked once, and the body remembers.

The dominant system doesn’t explain that, it just tells you to try harder. Surrender more, go back to step one.

And when that doesn’t work? You get labelled.

“Unwilling.”
“Not ready.”
“Chronic relapser.”

But these aren’t people refusing to heal, they’re people who were never truly met.

In Infinite Recovery Project Recovery, we start from a different place:
Addiction is not a disease,
It’s an intelligent adaptation,
A response to disconnection, pain, and unmet needs – often from early life.

When you see this clearly, relapse stops being a mystery. It becomes information, a signal that something is still asking to be seen.

Not judged. Not pathologised. Not controlled.

Met

That’s what recovery really means…
Not symptom suppression
Not white-knuckling your way through another day.
But seeing yourself with clarity and compassion – maybe for the first time.

You can’t heal what you still think is broken in someone, you just cannot help them.

But when you realise relapse isn’t failure – it’s protection – you can be curious from a present, non pathologising, healing place.

They’re not broken….They’re still surviving and we have a responsibility.

Can you help your clients do more than survive?