In addition to my regular blog posts this week, I added three posts to the Healing Section of the website this week (one also appears as a blog post). Here are all the week’s new posts:
Anna’s Moment of Clarity: Anna’s story highlights the need for family members to accept that they cannot take ownership of their loved one’s addiction. They are not responsible for the addiction and they cannot do recovery for their loved one.
Factors Facilitating Recovery: (Gaining) Recovery Capital: Recovery capital is the quantity and quality of internal and external resources that one can bring to bear on the initiation and maintenance of recovery. It includes personal, family/social and community factors.
‘Lost Connections’ by Johann Hari: ‘You are not suffering from a chemical imbalance in your brain. You are suffering from a social and spiritual imbalance in how we live. Much more than what you’ve been told up to now, it’s not serotonin [brain neurotransmitter]; it’s society.’
‘Lost Connections’ by Johann Hari, Part 2: ‘Depression and anxiety might, in one way, be the sanest reaction you have. It’s a signal, saying—you shouldn’t have to live this way, and if you aren’t helped to find a better path, you will be missing out on so much that is best about being human.’
‘What’s Wrong With You? Nothing. What Has happened to You? Something.’ by Michael Cornwall: It’s a tragic shame that emotional suffering has been categorized and treated by the medical profession just like it is a physical injury or physical disease. They aren’t equivalent.’
Addiction and Psychological Pain: ‘One of the outcomes of childhood distress is addiction and the more adversity an individual experiences in his or her childhood the higher their risk of resorting to addictive behaviour to sooth their pain, even temporarily…’ Gabor Maté
Gabor Maté: Our Strange Indifference to Aboriginal Addiction: Addicts are made, not born, and the most common precursors are early childhood privation, neglect and abuse. For several generations, Canada’s native children have been far more likely to suffer grinding penury, abuse and childhood substance addictions than non-natives.
Judith Herman: Trauma and Recovery: ‘The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections.’
The photograph used in this blog post is by Tom Gainor and has come from Unsplash, a great resource of free high resolution photographs.
