Trauma Treatment
Treating Trauma
For many individuals who have experienced trauma, spending time in a residential rehabilitation facility is the first step in the healing experience. However, it is absolutely critical that the rehab center offers suitably qualified and professional staff who understand the intricacies and complexities of trauma and are able to work with the client safely through the effects of trauma.
Lead by Matthew Little, the clinical team at Calm Rehab are trained and experienced in working with men and women who have suffered trauma, and through a range of evidence-based therapies are able to work safely with the individual to help them reclaim their lives.
One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma is that it is caused only by overtly life threatening events. In actual fact, research now shows that 75% of trauma is interpersonal, meaning that it does not come from a battlefield, refugee camp or an earthquake but is inflicted by one person onto another, often purposefully.
The research is also now unequivocal that unresolved trauma is commonly the underlying cause behind addiction. In this context addiction is in fact a process of ongoing pathological self-soothing. It is also now well established that many individuals who relapse after a period of sobriety often do so because of untreated traumatic memory.
At Calm Rehab Bali, our view is that addiction is not the core problem. It is actually the solution to a problem that has admittedly become much bigger than the problem it was designed to solve. Our trauma focused program at Calm Rehab Bali recognizes that when our clients stop their drug and alcohol use, they are forced to confront the reason they became addicted in the first place. Without resolving the underlying trauma, the individual remains at a high risk of relapse, crossing into another addiction or worse still, living a life beset with depression, panic, rage, despair and intense feelings of shame and worthlessness.
Trauma and Addiction
Of course experiencing a trauma doesn’t guarantee that a person will go on to develop an addiction, however, there is a lot of research out there which shows that trauma is often a major underlying source of addiction behaviour.
Nobody wakes up and makes the conscious decision to become addicted to a substance. More likely, if you have experienced trauma in your past you woke up with the conscious or unconscious desire for what all survivors of trauma are looking for: safety and control. There are two ways to look at your addictive behaviour: feeling embarrassed, angry, ashamed, frustrated, or any number of other negative emotions. Or, you can learn to view your addiction or substance usage for the good intention that lies beneath it: the desire to comfort yourself and make yourself feel better.
Acknowledging this allows you to begin understanding that while the addiction outcome is not desirable the behaviour behind it makes perfect sense.
Calm Rehab through the work and experience of Dr Reshie offers a fully dedicated Trauma Program which co-exists with our Residential Community Program. In addition to his medical training and his masters in psychology, Dr Reshie has had extensive training in multiple PTSD and complex trauma treatment modalities including EMDR, prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive reprocessing therapy, trauma-focused CBT and many other therapeutic modalities. He has authored his own treatment manual for complex trauma and is recognized and highly respected as an expert in the treatment of all forms of psychological trauma.
