Trauma that leads to the escape through addictions doesn’t just affect the mind and the emotions.

Trauma that leads to the escape through addictions doesn’t just affect the mind and the emotions. It profoundly affects the brain and the body too. Often ‘the body remembers’ what the mind cannot.

Why is it that so many trauma survivors not only suffer from ‘psychological’ disorders such as Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Dissociative Addiction Disorder (DAD) but also from a whole raft of physical issues — chronic pain; frequent or recurrent infections; auto-immune disorders such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (aka ME), fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis; and difficulty in both connecting with the body and living healthily? The body is both the medium through which often the original trauma was enacted, and the source of ongoing suffering and self-hatred.