In this article we discuss 1) the different types of talk therapy or psychotherapeutic methods that are currently in use to treat patients overcoming addiction, and 2) a review of the learning theories that can help us understand how the mind learns. By providing current curated information and making recommendations to support deeper knowledge, drug abuse can be more preventable, successfully treated, and dissolves the stigma caused by ignorance and lack of compassion thinking, "this is us and that's them" instead of "we are all in this together." Everyone plays a part.
Individuals struggling with substance abuse or any other form of addiction may need treatment for a long period of time before the change occurs in the behavior patterns that caused addiction in the first place. Going back in time even before birth is not uncommon. Much of our outlook in life is learned and passed on from one generation to another.
How is epigenetics connected to the development of addiction behaviors and addiction recovery?
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our DNA genetic make-up increases the chances of drug addiction as much as 50%. More risk and prevalence of addiction is found in individuals with more vulnerability due to lack of protective genes against certain mal diseases that manifest only due to extraneous factors such as environmental or lifestyle ones. This is the case with heart disease, diabetes, and addiction. The term for this is Epigenetics.
Epigenetics is the study of functional, and sometimes inherited, changes in the regulation of gene activity and expression that are not dependent on gene sequence.6"Epi-" itself means "above" or "in addition to." Environmental exposures or choices people make can actually "mark"—or remodel—the structure of DNA at the cell level or even at the level of the whole organism. So, although each cell type in the human body effectively contains the same genetic information, epigenetic regulatory systems enable the development of different cell types (e.g., skin, liver, or nerve cells) in response to the environment. These epigenetic marks can affect health and even the expression of the traits passed to children. For example, when a person uses cocaine, it can mark the DNA, increasing the production of proteins common in addiction. Increased levels of these altered proteins correspond with drug-seeking behaviors in animals.
Therefore, disorders may go untreated for generations. But don't give up, The plasticity of the human brain is such and the power of intention so motivational that nothing is impossible. Healing is a miracle that happens daily.
But there are steps to the process and SUCCESS depends on perseverance and motivation. We don't just become addicted from one day to another and we're not just victims of our genetic pool, nor of the environment. But combining the effect of these over time in a breeding ground for addictive behaviors and it becomes hard to break away free even after spending a several weeks in rehab.
Medication assisted treatment is important so that the body can detox from Opioids. Additionally, to start taking Suboxone you must have detoxed first. No one would be able to take both at the same time without major side effects and withdrawal symptoms or worse.
Addiction Treatment Programs Treat the Whole Individual
When you or someone you know with a substance use disorder is not under a comprehensive addiction treatment program, the chances of recovery are not being maximized. Taking the next step in recovery to wean off the MAT Suboxone, in the case of OUD, make take time. But mouth than 12 month is not advisable. When you're at the third stage of recovery, will cause withdrawals and therefore needs to be weaned off a little at a time. . Talk Therapy is the most widely used psycotherapy method .
If doctors are just handing over a prescription every two months, chances are the individual is also vulnerable to abusing the medication administered under MAT guidelines and patients with underlying psychological disorders may use other street drugs like Xanax to get high or to assuage the side effects of Suboxone. They may also abuse suboxone. This may complicate their situation even further.
Additionally, the side effects caused by long term Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT), such as suboxone and co-occurring underlying conditions in the patient may in turn add a second or third drug to the scenario to mitigate the side effects and because the MAT is not abel to alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and depression that may present as a consequence or as a root cause or both.
Unless patients receive mental health therapy, their road to recovery is dubious. Many choose to go the holistic way, Bravo! you are ahead of the crowd and you will be able to bloom as a whole human being faster because you will have more faith and greater wisdom. But holistic practices take time to work as well as perseverance and research study.
However, because medical insurance doesn't consider meditation or religious retreats as mental health therapies, yet (hopefully one day); so you must do your best with psychological methodologies for treating addiction related mental disorders such as PTSD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar Disorder II, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, and other more serious ones like Schizophrenia. Each can seriously endanger a person's life and well being. And guess what?
Mindfulness is a therapy that is found embedded in each one of the methods used in cognitive behavioral therapies. Mindfulnes, becoming aware, helps us unravel our brain.
Through Talk Therapy we can express our fears and hopes with the support of counselors trained to implement cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT strategies and modalities provides the structure that our brain can use to abstain and retrain, so it can then develop mechanisms to heal based on intention and mindfulness. Your genes will thank you.
When mental health disorders caused by childhood trauma, accidents, loss (grief), war, displacement and disease, to name a few, are at the root of addiction, healing starts by diving into the story you have been telling yourself about your life before you can start to change its narrative. Sometimes is this can happen through art therapy, writing exposure, and other occupational therapies used in combination with CBT.
HEALING FROM WITHIN IS...
THE THREE PART JOURNEY OF THE BODY, MIND, AND SOUL GOING BACK TO LOVE
Every journey has a beginning, middle, and end, just like every story. EVERY story is a journey, The journey of recovery from addiction starts with awareness and never ends as long as we are living in mindfulness. To find, tread, and stay on the path requires love. It alone can give us all we need to persevere and turn our lives around.
First of all, getting on Suboxone takes a lot of courage. This is and the decision to get well which constitutes the first three steps in the twelve step process—the first step. This is not an easy process as there is no clear cut way of getting off this medication while the drug seeking addictive behavior continues to cause discomfort which translates into anxiety and depression. Suboxone may subdue the mind and keep it from craving and increasing tolerance. But it needs a support system. Addiction patients recover sooner when they are not alone. The risk os using other drugs may come into play making the hike up the mountain of sobriety twice as difficult.
Once a a doctor prescribes Suboxone follow directions to the T if you are going to start at home.
How to Start Buprenorphine-Naloxone at Home (pdf)
MEDICATION ALONE WON'T GET YOU OUT OF THE DARK PLACE OF THE SOUL
How mental health therapy facilitates the addiction recovery process?
Recovery is a journey that requires guidance, introspection, and above all love, which is synonymous with will.
Is addiction a mental disorder or a physical one? Why do some people become addicted while others don't? Why do some people heal from addiction and others don't?
The relationship between addiction and mental disorder is described as having comorbidity by the National Institute of Drug Abuse , that's another way of saying they are codependent.
Mental health disorders and addiction are simultaneously present in patients. That doesn't mean one causes the other. The psychotherapy modalities, or talk therapies used to treat mental health patients with substance use disorders also vary.
What is talk therapy for addiction recovery?
What is Behavioral Therapy?
One of the most widely used of these therapies is the un-Jungian CBT and derivatives.
Behavioral therapy includes a wide range of therapies, including exposure-based, where you 'expose' the traumatic event through talk or writing, to overcome ones for anxiety. It utilizes relaxation techniques, assertiveness training, and more. Self talk is a very big part of talk therapy and the exercises in behavior will help you train your brain to think the thoughts that are necessary to feed the subconscious mind the right program. Although we are not animals in training, we must think of our brain as a machine that we can utilize for the greater well being of the self. Freedom from addictive behaviors is necessary to achieve freedom, and a healthy lifestyle starts with your attention to your intention, your behaviors and thought patterns.
Traditional Behavioral Therapy focuses on helping patients change their thought patterns for the attainment of better or more stable emotional states. Modern behavior therapy is usually part of a comprehensive treatment program that incorporates cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies. Its aim is to reduce the symptom of various mental health conditions. This is the most common form of talk therapy used in addiction treatment. Patients work with a mental health counselor for a number of sessions.
CBT helps patients become aware of their negative thought patterns and analyze their challenging situations more clearly and calmly. The outcome should be the ability of responding to negative thoughts in a more effective way.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) 5 easy steps are:
1. make a list.
2. record unproductive thoughts
3. replace thoughts
4. read your list
5. notice more thoughts and replace
Self directed CBT can be effective. Studies have shown that self help reduces anxiety using CBT techniques.
Other strategies include:
1. Focusing on your thoughts. You may choose to discard the thoughts that hurt and suppress them. Instead, just watch the thought detached from its emotional hold on you as if you were witnessing your self. do this no more than 15 min at a time, two to three times a day.
2. Scheduling a manageable day. Wake up and smell the coffee or the tea, take 5 minutes to do at least one sun salutation (stretch your limbs and crouch and extend your body flat to the floor and back to standing on your arms and legs) (see below for a diagram)
3. Relaxation techniques (breathing exercises, meditation, music) at least three times a day. It doesn't have to be more than 15 min at a time. Just sit and listen to your favorite music, meditate, and/or simply follow your breath in and out slowly for 3-8 counts at a time. Breathing exercises can simply be noticing your breath.
4. Reframe thought patterns. When your mind goes to undesirable thoughts, catch it, replace them for ideal ones. You may think it doesn't work at first, but that's how we retrain the brains patterns of thought: we replace it with a predesigned one.
What is Cognitive Self-Talk?
Recognizing automatic thoughts
Automatic thoughts of catastrophe, shou and regrets, jumping to conclusions or making unfounded assumptions, and similar patterns of thought that may have been acquired from childhood are resurfacing from our subconscious mind and making us feel guilty, depressed, and/or anxious. First you learn to identify your thoughts and watc them wihout trying to change them. Then you learn to evaluate them. And lastly you learn to replace these thought for more accurate nes.
Replacing thought patterns
Self talk is a habitual way of responding to our experiences. We can be very negative and have a lot of prejudices against our own self. These are called cognitive distortions.
Based on the premise that how we feel depends on what we think, therapy offer a way to elf talk in a way that will support healing and making your goals attainable instead of just dreams.
Our thought patterns can be undermining our ability to succeed:
Catastrophizing - nothing turns out right - things are expected to be worse than they really care
Mind Reading - assuming - you think people are against you.
Shoulds- regrets and remorse
Polarizing - the world is black or white, good or bad, no middle ground..
Personalizing - everything is your fault, it only happens to you. You blame your self and the stars that are against you.
The goal is not necesarily to have "positive thoughts", although that would be a lot better than the above. We can turn everything into0 a positive experience and that may be closer to realistic thinking than just wishful thinking. Replacing your thoughts for realistic ones that are based on positive outcomes may take time, and that's exactly what behavior therapy can help you expedite.
Self talk, your internal dialogue, can enhance your well being:
increased vitality
greater satisfaction in life
improved immune function
reduced pain
better cardiovascular health
less stress
Research suggests that positive self talk helps you solve problems, think outside the box, and have better coping skills.
"When you change the way you look at things the things you look at, change." Wayne Dyer introduced me to this model of thinkin . Helpful tactics include:
Surround yourself with positive people
Find the humor
Use positive affirmations to feed your subconscious
Identify negative thoughts as they surge
Check your feelings and turn them around as they arise
CBT Third Wave Therapies:
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: usually indicated for people with intense emotions or those diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD), post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and co-occurrent drug addiction. It is a 6 to 12 month commitment that includes mindfulness practice, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotional regulation.
BPD iS MARKED BY UNSTABLE EMOTIONS, SELF-HARMING BEHAVIOR (INCLUDING THE USE AND ABUSE OF DRUGS) AND CHAOTIC RELATIONSHIPS.
PTSD SYMPTOMS INCLUDE FEENLING TENSE, SAD OR HOPELESS, WITHDRAWAING FROM SOCIETY AND PEOPLE, IMPULSIVE BEHAVIORS, DEFIANCE, TREMORS, PALPITATIONS, AND HEADACHES.
Midfulness Based Cognitive Therapy: MBCT aims to cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing awareness to what you are feeling through your senses, thoughts, and emotions through meditation. Combined with CBT, it helps patients see their perceived reality in a new light. It helps you suspend judgment and approach life with more kindness towards yourself and others.
Acceptance Commitment Therapy: This is a type o action-based approach to help you stop avoidance and denial, conflicting inner feelings and emotions. It helps to accept the hardship of your life and move forward by committing to change. This is aso a form of mindfulness based therapy. It addreses your commitment to change and sticking to your goals.
A = ACCEPTANCE
C = CHOOSE A DIRECTION
T = TAKE ACTION
We may not be able to change our reality but we can change the way we respond to it. We can transform our reality into a postive learning experience and be in control of how we act, think, and feel.
Cognitive Diffusion: also known as deliteralization, is when you become a witness to your thought. It is a method used in accetance and commitment and other forms of cognitve therapies. When we detach feelings from thoughts we stop being the mind's prisoner. Cognitive "fusion” is an automatic human reaction of attaching feelings and emotions to thoughts. The opposite of this is “cognitive defusion.” This is the idea that we can be aware of our thoughts and emotions but don't have to attach ourselves to said thought or emotion.
The difference between behavioral and cognitive therapies is that one is focused on the exterior actions and the other in the interior motivation for the behavior. How we produce thoughts.
Mindfulness: Being present NOW, here and not in the future or the past. Not asleep but awake and aware, knowing I am and my position in the world is devoid of and in spite of social and personal prejudices. This is the practice of stillness and sitting that quiets the mind and lets go.
Acceptance: The act of accepting is allowing without resistance. Once we accept we can begin to change by defusing our thoughts from emotions and feeling. Instead observing the reality without being overpowered by it emotionally.
With the help of a Talk Therapist, individually and in group
sessions, patients can identify their Negative Thoughts and practice: New Skills, Set Goals, Use Problem-Solving skills, and Make better Choices. Other CBT techniques include journaling, role-playing, relaxation techniques, and mental distractions or occupational therapy.
Occupational therapies include arts and crafts, music and writing.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and its clusters are widely practiced methods used for changing negative thought patterns and compulsive behaviors; it is used to treat addiction and its co-occurring mental disorders.
To train our mind to think the right way as to bring our actions in alignment with how we want to feel and create better emotions is not as hard as it seems. It all starts by going within and turning the wheel of karma from hate to love, from jealousy to gratefulness, from envy to joy, and from regret to hope, from pain to pleasure, from so on. This will make us calm. Once the storm subsides and we accept and forgive, give thanks and realize the grace we already are, our lives can ego up and down but our heart and soul will remain at peace, always vigilant.
One prerequisite is HONESTY. We can only get there by being honest with ourself and washing everything in the light of love. This is the journey of self love and walking towards the light.
Third wave psychotherapies' comprise a heterogeneous group of treatments, including acceptance and commitment treatment, behavioural activation, cognitive behavioural analysis system of psychotherapy, dialectical behavioural therapy, metacognitive therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and schema therapy.
Prolonged Exposure: it may not be for eveyrone, but writing down your thoughts and feelings about events and situations that haunt your mind and deprive you of joy can be faced and dispelled to where they will no longer have any power over you and you shall be new, as if putting new wine i na new skin and shedding the old ski
When we master our emotions we can focus and realize our true Self. But without the ambition of the ego many don't keep trying. It is imperative to give up the ego in the process of self realization.
Five Organizing Developmental Themes There are five developmental life themes and associated core resources that are essential to our capacity for self-regulation and affect our ability to be present to self and others in the here-and-now:
To the degree that these five basic needs are met, we experience regulation and connection. We feel safe and trusting of our environment, fluid and connected to ourselves and others. We experience a sense of regulation and expansion. To the degree that these basic needs are not met, we develop survival styles to try to manage the disconnection and dysregulation.
How does the brain learn? Can we unlearn and relearn?
OUR BRAIN'S PLASTICITY ALLOWS US TO LEARN: what is learning and why does it matter in the process of healing from addiction?
As a lifelong teacher, I would say, 'I know how people learn', but do we know the science behind it? To retrain your brain you must override old lessons and allow new thoughts to take over so that your behavior will fall in line with them. We learn with our senses and emotions. As a matter fact, learning can help us unlearn and retrain conscientiously.
Maslow's Hierarchy, (or Pyramid), of Needs is one of the central ideas in modern economics and sociology. The work of a once little-known American psychologist, it has grown into an indispensable guide to understanding the modern world. This film explains who Maslow was, what his pyramid is, and why it matters so much. These needs are universal.
Piaget's theory argues that we have to conquer 4 stages of cognitive development. Only once we have gone through all the stages, at what age can vary, we are able to reach full human intelligence.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Social Development argues that community and language play a central part in learning. Vygotsky believed that children develop independently of specific stages as a result of social interactions.
ERIKSON'S 8 STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Erikson's theory of psychosocial development identifies eight stages in which a healthy individual should pass through from birth to death. At each stage we encounter different needs, ask new questions and meet people who influence our behavior and learning. #learn#development
The Bobo doll experiment is the collective name for a series of experiments performed by psychologist Albert Bandura to test his social learning theory. Between 1961 and 1963, he studied children's behavior after watching an adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll.
The attachment theory argues that a strong emotional and physical bond to one primary caregiver in our first years of life is critical to our development. If our bonding is strong and we are securely attached, then we feel safe to explore the world. If our bond is weak, we feel insecurely attached.
How can we use what we know about science to help us engage the brain and improve learning?
The brain is constantly restructuring in response to learning and the environment. This is known as plasticity. Plasticity involves creating and strengthening neural connections and weakening or removing others. Every time you learn, your brain uses plasticity to develop new neural pathways.
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the distance between what a learner is capable of doing unsupported, and what they can do supported.
TO LEARN .....
Repetition is key
How do we avoid losing the knowledge we want to retain? Well, the most simplistic way to put this is ‘use it’. If you don’t, you may lose neuronal pathways that haven’t been used.
So how do we avoid this? If you can, set your learners up with frequent knowledge refreshers. This could be a quiz about the information they learned, or a repetition of key information later on in the course.
How we remember
One of the most recognizable learning studies was one done by BF Skinner. In this study, animals were placed in cages with levers that would release food pellets if the correct item was selected. He concluded that complex tasks can be learned through practice when there is a reward for behaviors.
Similarly, people learn complex tasks quickly and more effectively with practice and receive rewards upon success. The patient must buy into the rewards of healing.
The overload effect occurs when a hefty amount of information is dumped at once on the brain and patients turn away may run into an effect called ‘cognitive overload’, which causes the brain to become overwhelmed.
To avoid this, chunk pieces of information into small sections (ideally, five minutes or less at a time) and avoid information that isn’t essential. Materials that are sectioned into separate, smaller learning sessions will allow the brain to fully process information and will avoid cognitive overload.
However this is over simplifying LEARNING; we need to build schemas around knowledge. A schema is like a map that allows us to structure and conceptualize the world including our selves. What you believe you are you become, how you see yourself you act, how you act attracts and repels, where you are in time and space matters too. if you live in the projects it's going to be harder for you to get out from behind the veils of poverty that don't let the real you out.
UNCONTROLLABLE ADOLESCENTS AND THE MATURE SELF CONSEQUENCES
The brain is constantly restructuring in response to learning and the environment. This is known as plasticity. Plasticity involves creating and strengthening neural connections and weakening or removing others. Every time you learn, your brain uses plasticity to develop new neural pathways. Repetition is key.
The brain learns through a process of Sequencing: putting information into the right order; Abstraction: making sense of that information; and Organization: using the information to form thoughts. When the brain completes these three steps of processing information, this is called Integration.
https://youtu.be/_tdljIW86e8 - Watch Dr. Maté's conversation with Pathways to Family Wellness
Gabor Mate, MD, author of Hold On to Your Kids, is interviewed by Lisa Reagan for Pathways to Family Wellness at his Kids, Culture and Chaos talk in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the spring of 2011. The event was hosted by Belvedere Integrated Healing Arts.
Most discussions of PTSD focus on veterans to the extent that many people who suffer from PTSD are often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, especially among our children. Since PTSD can masquerade as ADHD, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and even extreme stoicism, many
That resilience is one of the most important traits to have, is critical to their happiness and success, & can be learned.
Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the questions: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to embrace our imperfections and to recognize that we are enough -- that we are worthy of love, belonging and joy?
WE LEARN FROM WATCHING OTHERS (Media, Family, Strangers) AND FROM OUR ENVIRONMENT (Tutors and Resources )
Our parents are our first mentors and tutors, our teachers, and friends come next.
Learning and substance use disorder and recovery are intrinsically connected. We have learned to be who we are through social cultural interactions within the environment. A great many of us have experienced traumatic events in the form of sexual, emotional, physical, and psychological experiences in which we were vulnerable and learned mechanism of coping that led us to drug addiction and despair.
To learn new habits and patterns of thinking, we must unlearn whatever is holding us hostage. We may have to go back to our childhood and face the feelings of avoidance and guilt we have been hauling behind us like a dead horse. We must let go of the old skin to create a new schema.
We must be honest with ourselves and commit to change in our lives. It starts with awareness. But this is not enough. A paradigm shift must occur. You must be motivated.
SCHEMA Theory of learning suggests that people group together the different types of organization about a person place or thing according to previous knowledge and associated ideas. A schema is a is the series of general expectations and knowledge of the world that we build in our mind which helps us make sense of the world. This may include generalizations about people, social roles, events and how to behave in certain situations. We build our own schema or map about persons, our self, and events.
All behavior is learned by practicing it. The reward systems of our brain make them desirable or threatening. Addiction starts as a behavior to fulfill a need or to experience a wow, but the wow only masks the need while it goes unfulfilled. The need your developmental experience left unfulfilled becomes the drug addiction.
A Note from the Author:
Angela Terga is the author of visionary stories in Film/TV script and novel formats. Her stories carry a message of new age proportions: equality, compassion, peace, and the harmony of the elements in progress. Social evolution is inevitable. Have you ever asked yourself: "Just how would we rather evolve? And what is stopping our world from going in that direction?
The mission: To teach the concept of non-dual possibilities through awe-inspiring characters in literature and film to help humanity dream of having the most compassion and building the most bridges between peoples.
"Can that be done in adventure stories?" ask critics. "You bet!" said writer.
· Follow the exploits of Taharai, a venomous hybrid who only wants to be a fully conscious woman. Spiderwoman Taharai: An Amazon Legend
· See the world through the eyes of a 3rd grader her finds a magic rock! Available in screenplay format as children’s movie and talk show.
· Immerse yourself in the plight for freedom of the Seminole people through the reincarnation of a Spanish woman who once lived among them. Isabel III published as screenplay.
· Imagine what it would be like to live in the future when there are no material things (only a reduced space inside a big mountain)) but a lot of knowledge. How would you rebuild civilization? Utopia
· Finally become Sojourner Truth in the compelling retelling of one of America’s new-age leaders (feminist, non religious, spiritual, and equal rights activist). Currently in screenplay format.
· There’s also the memoirs of a child witnessing her own hometown and immigration stories.
· And poetry. Sandcastles.- Finding your true self through poetry.
This Blog, the Blog of Angela Terga, the one that loves to publish and premiere and has something to say about film adaptations, genres in fiction (magical realism) and self help (educational) books, she blogs here as the "Memoirs of a 'Mad' Teacher author and brings to you quality content that is not commercial in nature but gives you the opportunity to pitch in when you think there is something you can learn or enjoy when you follow a link to a sales point and subscribe to receive these blog posts in your mail box.
Getting these projects ahead has been the sweat of my brow without a reward. But I tell myself to keep trying as I learn the trade.
The road of a DIY self-published writer learning the ropes of the entertainment business writing and pitching screenplays, producing and rediting, has been arduous and unforsakable. By reading and sharing this blog, you help Angela reach her goals of achieving greater exposure and keep her dream alive. You will also stay abreast of any progress and receive firsthand invitations to events.
By following the Amazon Affiliate links to books here recommended you can enrich your life with the knowledge and wisdom you desire and at the same time support artists like Angela on their pursuit to produce, publish, and promote literary works of art that teach compassion through adventure.
Thank you!
Angela Terga | TAT Productions
We also publish books by other authors and only make a profit when the book sells.
Décimas de José Arias – Folkloric Poetry of Cuba.
Mi Prima Leonor de Isma el Santos – NF Hispanic Women in History/Psychology/Feminist History