“We are feeling creatures who think, not thinking creatures who feel .” - Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Trauma, Secret Addictions and Your Brain

Trauma can be defined as an emotional reaction to a shocking or disturbing experience, whether it be a natural disaster, an accident, an illness or an assault.

To characterize an addiction: it’s something we do often enough that it brings harm to our lives and if we were to tear it away suddenly, would cause us trauma.  

The relationship between trauma and addiction is a complex one and is supported by various studies and observations. Trauma can indeed lead to a range of psychological and emotional challenges, including secret addictions.

There is even a part of our brain (a character of our neural anatomy, aka “the Shadow”) dedicated to the remembrance of its survival reactions, (traumas) so while some people have experienced more distressing events than others (by society’s standards), every individual carries some level of trauma (an emotional wound) simply because this character of their human brain is designed to produce such experiences.

I was already well versed in my understanding of the vibrational laws of the universe and used what I knew to quit my own personal addictions, but when I read Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, Whole Brain Living - the anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive our life, I KNEW I was onto the path that would help me further bridge the gap for my clients between our desires and our knee-jerk reactions to numb emotional pain, those behaviors that turn into our secret addictions.

Anybody who’s got a secret addiction is having a battle in their own head. But that battle isn’t solely existing between two personalities, it’s actually existing between four personalities, since we have both emotional and thinking tissue in each of our two hemispheres, and our hemispheres function using completely different processes.

The good news is that only two of the four characters of our neural anatomy house addiction, albeit they are powerful characters because they can put a freeze on the rest of our neural functioning when trauma is triggered, whether due to a thought we’re having that feels like a threat or whether there is an actual threat.

Our emotional tissue is the tissue close to the brain stem, on the inside, and is sometimes referred to as our reptilian brain, or lizard brain, because it is wrapped around the reflexive centers of the cerebellum which governs our heart rate, breathing, and internal systems.

You may or may not have heard of the amygdala which resides in the limbic brain or emotional tissue and acts like an emergency brake inside of us, signaling danger, but both the amygdala and the cerebellum have been referred to by scientists as the “reptilian brain”. The reason for the comparison is this: Think of a lizard and its lightning-fast reflexes. That’s pretty much all you need to know. It’s the reflexive part of us that reacts before thinking.

The left hemisphere of our brain is all about the past and the future and it thinks in language. It organizes and categorizes every detail it deems significant to our interests and survival. It thinks methodically and cares about hierarchy and order. It’s the A-type personality within us. Because it wants to control everything, it values things like money, power, and looking good. It cares that things are put away, in their places. It cares if the clock is hanging crooked on the wall or is a couple minutes fast or slow. It offers up a constant borage of ongoing brain chatter that connects us to the external world and reminds us when things need to get done.  It thinks linearly, like a serial processor, which means it takes information in, one thing at a time, and is therefore slower to process that information, so, it is ALWAYS busy. A taskmaster and workaholic, if you will. It’s judgmental, verbal, punctual and focuses on differences. It associates everything that’s happening to us with something from our past so it can calculate all the possibilities of our future. It’s completely “me-centric”, focused on itself. It is the voice inside us that says, “I am” and when it does, it creates a sense of self that is separate and solid and different from all others. It is fixed, analytical, cares about structure and details, right and wrong, good, and bad. If we didn’t have a left hemisphere, or if our left hemisphere became damaged, we wouldn’t be able to fully function. It is responsible for why we walk, talk and can participate with the outside world as a member of society.

Our Right Hemisphere functions like a parallel processor, which means it takes in multiple streams of sensory information through our body’s 6 senses and processes that information simultaneously and quickly. It learns kinesthetically through movement and experiences. It thinks non-verbally, in pictures. It focuses on the collective WE and seeks similarities. It doesn’t keep track of time but rather flows with what’s happening, open to all the possibilities. It’s compassionate and available, flexible and resilient. It is also unconscious and foundational since its brain activity mainly lights up with the quieting of the left hemisphere. Hence the usefulness of meditating to release resistance thoughts and get in touch with the rest of ourselves.

Now let’s go a little deeper and talk about the 2 Characters that make up our Left Hemisphere because I want to highlight Character 2 in this example and show you how the trauma center of your brain works.

Our left thinking tissue, Character 1, is just that, thinking tissue, so while it is judgmental, it doesn’t have feelings about those judgments, it’s more detached like a computer or a calculator, and just keeps systematically categorizing and organizing, constantly, in order to check things off our list and get us to its desired status. Character 1 loves lists. It likes to get along with others so that it can accomplish results, make more money and get more status. If you’re a workaholic, you’re living within the circuitry of your Character 1. While we love our character 1 for getting the job done, it also can overwork our body as a whole and create too much cortisol (the stress hormone) that sends us out of homeostasis, has us gain weight and be headed in the direction of illness. It’s a workaholic machine! The great news is that Character 1’s storytelling capabilities and machine-like tendencies are a great asset for helping us create the new habits that will replace our addictions.

Now let’s take a look at Character 2. Our emotional left feeling tissue, or lizard brain, also thinks in the past and future. It’s here that we notice our thought loops since the things we repeatedly say that hurt us belong to our Character 2. So Character 2 is the reason we feel emotional pain. It projects meaning into our future. It’s the keeper of our traumas, even dating back to the trauma of our birth. It’s the keeper of our fears, our cravings and our addictions. Because Character 2 thinks in the past and the future, its job is to protect us from danger by being suspicious and overreactive. Therefore, its general outlook on life is negative and disgruntled. It’s also manipulative, likes to bully others, calls names, doesn’t like to take responsibility, pushes people away, loves conditionally, holds grudges, is self-centered, behaves superiorly or inferiorly, is critical, righteous, and fixed. It feels guilty about being the way that it is, also. But we should appreciate our Character 2 because we could not survive life without it. Character 2 houses our fight, flight, freeze or fawn instincts which I call our Emergency Brake. I call it our emergency brake because when it gets pulled it stops everything else from working, which when there’s a real threat, is very helpful, but not so much when there’s an imagined threat, like a threat or trigger to our ego, pride or self-image.

Character 2 is likened to Carl Jung’s Shadow, and is one of the most important characters to understand and integrate when it comes to transformation in your life since it lives in our blind spot and our Character 1 likes to pretend we do not have a Character 2 and most often denies its existence. I’m sure you can see how that could cause a lot of interpersonal problems for us.

Now let’s talk about the two Characters of our Right Hemisphere, 4 & 3.

Your Character 4 is your right thinking tissue. You could say Character 4 is the consciousness of your Inner Being because it is wise, pure and loving. I’m just going to go ahead and say it, your Character 4 IS your Inner being. It’s the all-inclusive, wise, all-knowing, all-is-well part of you. So if you were to get good at distinguishing between your 4 characters and realizing who’s “talking” and when, you could effectively have Dr. Jill’s brain huddle, and ask each character what their say is on any given topic you can think of.

Ultimately, everyone wants to hear from Character 4 because the wisest ideas come from this place within you. And then, while you’re delegating who gets to take charge on which matters, you can know that you actually have made the best decision possible. Don’t you think it’s just fascinating that we have tissue hard-wired into our anatomy, an entire section of our brain that’s spiritually-minded and advanced? I just think that is so cool!

Character 4 is the beingness of being. It knows. It enjoys all experiences. It loves all, including the different parts of us like our Character 2, even though Character 2 doesn’t love Character 2.

Character 4 is giving us intuition; it’s that feeling in our gut. It has everyone’s best interest at heart. Often this is a quiet, subtle voice, but when we pay attention, we can hear it. For me, it’s usually in a whisper or a soft thought because with the non-physical there is no assertion. It’s just always patiently answering our asking, whether we are listening or not.

4 is totally aware of the difference you make on planet Earth and the ripple effect of your actions. It knows the impact your life has on everything and everyone. It knows that all is well exactly as it is no matter what and is enjoying your life. It sees the perfection and beauty and energy of all. 4 experiences peace and bliss right now, and, at all times.

Many people have little experience with their Character 4, or have thought of those experiences they’ve had as the anomaly. But the truth is, this is part of your brain’s circuitry and can be experienced daily with enough practice running it.

Now let’s discuss your emotional feeling tissue Character 3. 3 wants to participate! It is curious, has no ego, loves unconditionally, and is expansive and fearless. It wants to play and share and be extremely active. It feels appreciation and wonderment and is friendly and open. When it feels, it’s feeling sensations like the temperature of the air and the way clothes feel on your skin. Or the way it feels to twirl your dress or skip or blow bubbles with your gum.

It loves to take risks and feel alive. When it comes to relating with others, it doesn’t think in terms of black and white. It lives inside the gray area, focusing on context and the equality of all. It is kind, trusting, supportive and creative. It is attracted to colors and has been referred to as the artist brain. It likes to move a lot and go with the flow and doesn’t much like rules or planning stuff.

Because this part of us is a risk-taking, adrenaline junkie, it also can promote addiction when it feels like getting into some trouble for the fun of it, or the rush of it, maybe out of boredom or maybe out of desiring to celebrate. None the less, it also has it’s hands on that emergency brake if we should fail to give ourselves enough new experiences and action and it becomes too restless.

So this part of us can topple our efforts at creating new habits if we don’t learn to control it. Character 3’s instinctual override can look like catching a Frisbee coming toward our head or darting out of the way all of a sudden. When it wants something it has a tendency to act now and “apologize later,” which sometimes renders us taking action so fast we accidentally injure ourselves by not surveying our surroundings or positioning our body well before hand.

I would venture to say that Character 3 is Also your Inner Being because this is our joy factor. The only caveat to this comparison is the potential for Character 3 to take violent action to harm another, which is not an Inner Being-like potential.

Character 3’s emergency brake function tends to spontaneously free us up to do the next thing and the next thing, unlike our Character 2 who tends to stop us through worry about the future and shame of the past. Both of them, however, share the fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses necessary to our survival, and both of them pull the emergency brake on our brains to serve their needs and fancies.

Understanding how to meet the needs of these Characters in advance of them pulling their strings is one highly emphasized component of my work with clients.

If we were trying to be sober and fell off the wagon, the consciousness of our present tense Right Hemisphere would look at it as a moment of tripping and nothing more significant than that, which can help a great deal on a path to recovery if what recovery means to you is releasing the fear and compulsion cycle that causes knee-jerk reactions (addictions). But if you think of recovery as the 12 steppers do, meaning abstinence while telling the story of the incurable disease of addiction, then your Right Hemisphere wouldn’t be very helpful to you in this regard. You’d have to keep it very busy with “healthy” momentum, for example, exercise, to maintain that kind of disciplined lifestyle. Our Right Hemisphere wouldn’t hold us in the “story of recovery” or the “story of addiction” at all, which is why our Right Hemisphere doesn’t jive too well with 12-step programs in their “once an addict, always an addict,” philosophy. In fact, a more complimentary character to aid in the usefulness of the 12-step philosophy is Character 2, because fear and humiliation can aid in the hard work of becoming disciplined, always keeping the past horrors in the forefront of our mind in order to incentivize the work it takes to create discipline. “Hello, I am so-and-so and I am an addict, or alcoholic”, etc…

However, in my opinion, and that of my clients, that is no way to live. Could there be a point where a person can change their addictive patterns?  Could they actually create moderation with the very thing they have gone crazy-out-of-control with using in the past? Yes! But what it takes for each individual to make this a reality is unique and may be more work than one is willing to put in. In this case, abstinence can be the easier road to continued peace and empowerment. This distinction is what people get to uncover in my program, The Demystify Addictions Method. They can use what they learn there to make informed choices about what they can handle and what they cannot handle, and what benchmarks to use to gauge their progression with their addictive habits over and throughout time. The happiness factor matters. Those people who will never agree that their addiction is an incurable disease or will never resign themselves to the 12-step method, also may never find relief until they find the support they need that will meet them where they are (addicted), and move them forward to where they wish they were.

The interconnectedness between trauma and addiction underscores how people may turn to substances or certain behaviors as a way to cope with their distressing emotions.

To cope with self-loathing, depression or anger (or simply confusion about how to resolve their trauma responses), many people fall into unhealthy patterns of avoidance and denial by abusing substances, sex, shopping, and sugar, just to name a few ways to go about it. We can also become addicted to video games, social media, other people, gambling, and so on.

The stigma of emotionality is particularly acute for women since larger percentages of women have experienced betrayal or abuse at the hands of people they know and are more likely to develop trauma bonds with their abusers due to female bonding hormones, and practical dependencies for things such as childcare.

Perhaps you were raised by a mother dealing with these kinds of issues or dependencies?

Activities or substances used as coping mechanisms can provide temporary relief from the pain, anxiety, or depression associated with unresolved trauma. However, it's important to recognize that these coping strategies can ultimately lead to unhealthy cycles of dependency and further negative consequences. Something that once helped soothe our distress has now become a hindrance in and of itself. For example, smoking marijuana in order to distract oneself from stressful thoughts and assist with sleep, turns into a chronic respiratory infection, short-term memory loss, and consequent deterioration of connection to loved ones and colleagues. It could also aid in food addiction and subsequent weight gain, which of course comes with another set of consequences, including stressful thoughts, which is where we started. This is just one common example, nowadays, though there are so many examples I could give you.

While women are similar to men in responding to trauma with upset feelings and dissociation, females experience depression and anxiety more frequently. Yes, it's true… Studies have shown that women are twice as likely to develop PTSD as men who’ve experienced trauma and that 25% of all women and girls will be diagnosed with anxiety in their lifetime.

It has been my experience with clients, both male and female, that trauma is often trapped in their tissues and throat chakras (the energy center of the human body located in the throat area), leading to them being unable to express themselves. This is important to understand because the actual number of people with undiagnosed PTSD or trapped trauma may be far higher than reported.

Sometimes addictions are developed without even realizing it, in an effort to numb trapped emotions in order to function. Most people who rely on substances to cope with trauma do not seek treatment, especially women. Whether it’s the stigma, shame, or fear of losing their children or their partner, there is a cascading effect that can cause attachment issues, continued substance abuse, and poverty down through generations, among numerous other socio-economic effects.

Understanding the gender-specific aspects, such as the higher prevalence of trauma in women and the potential challenges they face in seeking help due to various factors, sheds light on the need for tailored approaches to addressing trauma and addiction in different populations.

Addressing the root causes of addiction often involves acknowledging and treating underlying trauma. Therapy, counseling, support groups, and other interventions can provide individuals with healthier tools to cope with their emotions and work toward healing. Creating an environment of safety and implementing positive self-care practices are important steps in this process.

Some ways to immediately help the situation are to focus on creating environmental safety, getting better sleep, nutrition, physical movement, and talking to trusted friends. And most importantly, try to have patience with the process as it can be a slow one. This is why therapists or coaches dedicated to creating a supportive container can be an invaluable part of this kind of healing process. I personally believe it’s essential to obtain professional outside support.

Recognizing and addressing the trauma character of our brain is a crucial step in effectively managing and treating secret addictions and their underlying causes.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor says, “We are feeling creatures who think, not thinking creatures who feel.”

Does hearing this information affect how you see a secret addiction? … or help you understand your own experience of unresolved trauma?

If you’re interested in having a conversation with me about what you or your loved ones are dealing with and possible solutions, click here to schedule a complimentary call.

Get to know Regina a little bit better

Do you know why you can't kick cravings? Click here to learn the #1 reason.