Trauma. It Sleeps Like Baby, and I'm Addicted!

I've just finished watching ‘The Wisdom of Trauma’ with Gabor Mate. If you don't know about him, he is a retired medical doctor who now travels the world educating people about trauma. It's a very interesting and moving film, and I would suggest you add it to your must-watch list.

At the start of the film, Gabor narrates: 

“The womb forms a template about how we see other people and our place in the world.”

“Our job as human beings is to learn from our suffering.”

He says that the template for virtually all afflictions, mental illness, and physical disease is in fact trauma. 

Adoption and trauma seem to go hand in hand and most adoptees believe their trauma started right from the moment they were abandoned by their mothers. I stand beside those people helping to hold those banners;

“WHAT DO WE WANT?” …….

“TO LIVE OUR LIVES WITHOUT FEAR OF REJECTION!”

"WHEN DO WE WANT IT?" .......

"WHENEVER YOU'RE READY. WE DON'T WANT YOU TO FEEL PRESSURED INTO IT, ON THE OFF CHANCE YOU MIGHT FIND IT ALL TOO MUCH AND LEAVE US!"

Ok not very catchy is it, we need to work on our protest chants people!

The part that made me lean forward in my seat was when the film focused on babies, and it got me thinking.

Some schools of thought suggest that you train a baby to sleep by leaving them alone to cry in their cots. I used to think this also. I’m pretty sure that is what we were recommended to do with my eldest son. He was definitely left to cry himself to sleep. Well we tried, but eventually, it was too much, listening to him so upset that he had been left alone. So we went in to comfort him and scrapped the idea.

Now my eldest son is in his 20s, and guess what? he has suffered from anxiety. Has being left alone to sleep as an infant rewired his brain? We only tried it for a short period of time before returning to him and our usual sleep routine, but perhaps that was all it took.

His Mum and I split up when he was 5 years old. I had closed off, as I always do, and that brought on the end of our relationship. When I heard him tell me about his anxiety I couldn't help but feel the weight of responsibility for the manifestation of that in him.

The effects of a person's attachment disorder through adoption do not end at the door of their own mind, it reaches much further and could take years to show in others.

The work I'm doing within myself today is all great, I just wish that I had the self-awareness and courage to face my problems years before.

When I contemplate trauma and its relationship with me, I think I cover all the bases. The emotional numbness, the anxiety, and the attachment issues are all present within me today and I fight with them constantly to stay afloat. But the one piece of the trauma puzzle that doesn't fit is addiction … Or so I believed.

Thinking of the word addiction conjures up thoughts of drug and alcohol abuse in my mind, then I think of gambling and smoking. (other forms of addiction are available). I have not taken any form of drug beyond a small amount of weed when I was younger, but it never became a thing and was forgotten as quickly as it started. Other heavier drug use scares me to be honest. I’m so worried about losing control that I won't go there at all. Not to mention the health factor of course. 

Alcohol is something that is very present in my life, but again nothing that I would call an addiction.

Smoking I have done, I've been an on-and-off smoker most of my adult life. I avoided it all as a kid and only really started as a way to attempt to fit in socially at around 17 years old. I wanted to feel part of the group and not on the outside.

Of course, a mere cigarette wasn't going to fix that, I know that now. But by then it was too late, the nicotine had got its grip on my young brain. 

I choose to vape these days and smoking is not something I think about at all. The trouble with vaping is, it's just not as cool, is it!?

Would James Dean have been quite as successful if he was leaning against a wall with a pink elf stick hanging out his mouth? I doubt it, would be funny though!

Gambling isn't me either, I’m not into sport so I don't have that draw to place a bet on a team or a horse, nor have I really been much of a card player. If someone gets a pack of cards out I just feel stupid and embarrassed because I don't know how to play poker, or any of the other card games out there that I ought to know. add your own here (..............) because I can't think of any … Does snap count?

Having said all this, I think I've worked out what my addiction is. Productivity. 

(Yes I expected it to be an odd one, I couldn't have a boring one like gambling could I?)

In my normal working life, I carry out my duties as agreed in my employment contract, nothing over the top, but I'll usually go the extra mile to complete a task. No big deal there. But once a personal project starts filling my brain with endorphins, then I am completely consumed. I’m addicted to the rush that comes from productivity associated with my latest hobby or project. 

Let's take the recent writing I've been doing. It's no exaggeration when I say that since the end of May this year, I have written something every day. As well as constructing sentences, I've been working on social media, improving the blog, organising my files, reading, and researching. In short, I completely lost myself in this new world. I think of nothing else.

Once I started to share my work with the world on the blog, the positive feedback and gratification I received was like my heroin. The more I worked and shared, the more acknowledgment I received, the bigger the hit.

Then there was the time I started making guitars, this was during lockdown in 2020. Again completely sucked in by it, for nearly 2 years. I had a website and a Facebook page. I was selling them. I play the guitar, but I had no idea how to make one, so I just had a go. And then never stopped, at one stage I had nearly 20 guitars in my house! 

I could go on …there are so many examples in my past of productivity addiction.

Jessica Muditt writes in her article ‘When Productivity Becomes Addiction’

“The brain can become addicted to productivity just as it can to more familiar sources of addiction, such as drugs, gambling, eating or shopping”

and goes on to quote;

“The selfish productive is obsessed with their own goals and shuns collaboration. “They are so focused on their own world that if they are asked to do something outside of it, they aren’t interested. They do have the big picture in mind, but the picture is too much about them.”

I know this all too well. I'd never written a book until this year, so I had no idea how to do it or how to edit and publish. The only thing I knew was I was hooked on it and I was going to keep control of the entire project. I wrote, edited, designed the cover, and self-published it all from home. The last thing I wanted was to relinquish any of the work to another. When I finally let go a little to ask for others to proofread my work I was immediately anxious, about negative feedback and how long it would take before I heard back from those people. I disliked it immensely, but I knew it had to be done.

As I sit here writing this now, all 3 versions of the book are published and I’m recording the audiobook. I know, I know … Learn to let go Wally FFS!

Ooh, I've just thought!... If you have read, liked, or commented on any of my work, then you know that makes you my dealer … Just sayin’!

Buy Who's Wally? - Adoption, Brian, and Me

Photo by Dmitriy Ermakov on Unsplash