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I'm actually glad you posted this response, because it's a topic that needs to be addressed. I recently watched a video of a Columbine survivor giving a TED ta
by md224 9y ago
I'm actually glad you posted this response, because it's a topic that needs to be addressed.
I recently watched a video of a Columbine survivor giving a TED talk about emotional pain and addiction, and he said something along the lines of: "If you want to heal it, you have to feel it." Basically this commonsense idea that the best way to heal from trauma is to face it.
It sounds right... but is it? The guy giving the talk had been addicted to opioids for 10 years before getting sober and confronting his emotional pain. The implication is that he could've saved himself 10 years of drug addiction if he had just confronted his pain after the shooting instead of medicating it. However, he doesn't seem to consider the possibility that he might've been unable to process his pain immediately after the shooting, and that he was only able to overcome his trauma after a certain amount of distance (time-wise) from the incident.
So this is the question: is it always the right move to confront one's emotional pain in full? Is there ever a circumstance where numbing pain via medication (at least temporarily) could lead to better outcomes?
I don't know the answers. I'd love to know if there have been scientific studies done on this issue... I actually asked this question on /r/AskScience a month or two ago but it didn't get much attention. Curious to see what the research says.
- 55555 9y agoThis is only partially relevant, but I know from personal experience that sometimes facing the pain is the wrong choice, at least in regards to anxiety attacks and CBT. It's simply not necessary at all and can be very counter-productive.
- bonesss 9y agoYeah. Generalizing, naturally, but "exposure therapy" is an approach of getting people past phobias and trauma that involves lots of small steps in controlled environments, and it's not recommended in all cases or for all conditions. I think it's also a bit simplistic when we frame avoidance solely as a product of being unwilling to face pain. In some cases (certain forms of PTSD), substance abuse is used to numb because you've exceeded your local tolerance for the pain you've been facing, or because the only thing you've been experiencing/facing is pain and its exhausted your coping mechanisms. Learning at mid-life that you're no longer the person you knew, while also dealing with the traumatic source, compounds the process of processing the events. Particularly when getting into how life altering traumas work, coping and accepting are processes that require different treatments/approaches at different times.
- vlehto 9y agoMy life experience and recent knowledge from psychoanalysis is that from time to time you really should step outside of your comfort zone... to the slightly uncomfortable and bit scary zone. But going into terror or agony is often counterproductive. And human beings are typically the best experts of themselves.