Mental Health
Name some symptoms of complex PTSD.
What is the consequence of a Dysfunctional Prefrontal Cortex?
You can't see the future. You only live for the moment. It doesn't matter what happens in the future. You need your reward NOW.
There is no ability to cognitively inhibit that feeling of reward. That drives dopamine even faster and leads to neuronal cell death.
(Turns human brain into a lizard brain)
This coping skill helps you feel relaxed and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.
BREATHING***
Deep breathing reduces your heart and breathing rates to help you relax and feel calmer. Calms your nervous system and helps avoid fight or flight.
Whenever you encounter one of your triggers, become overwhelmed in recovery, or simply need a break from the day, taking part in deep breathing can help you calm down in a matter of minutes.
This approach's goal is to identify and address high-risk situations and assist in maintaining desired behavior changes.
Relapse prevention
5-step plan:
What are the three F's?
Fight, Fight, Freeze, Fawn.
Fight: protect themselves from threats through conflict.
trauma responses:
Flight: protect themselves from threats through escape.
Freeze: protect themselves from threat through dissociation.
Fawn: protect themselves from threat through placation. ("to soothe" or "to appease.")
What makes you more prone to addiction?
***Unhealthy coping skills
Trauma (Exposure to adverse early life experiences.), upbringing, mental health, genes (family addiction), environment, social, biological, and cognitive factors.
What is the consequence of high levels of dopamine?
This coping skill encourages you to visualize and believe a statement to make positive changes in your life.
Practicing affirmations can activate the reward system in your brain, which can have an impact on the way you experience both emotional and physical pain. Knowing you have the ability to manage stress and other life difficulties can help boost confidence and self-empowerment, further promoting faith in yourself.
What addresses "destructive thoughts"?
Cognitive Behavior Therapy
What does the reward system reinforce?
Behaviors that are essential for survival.
A reward system ensures that you reach for food when you are hungry because it knows you will feel good. It makes the activity pleasurable & memorable. So, you would want to do it again and again whenever you feel hungry.
Drugs and substances hijack this system turning the person's natural needs into DRUG needs!
Conditioning our brain to do something because we need it.
T/F there a correlation between trauma and substance use.
True.
Trauma increases the risk of developing substance abuse, and substance abuse increase the likelihood of being re-traumatized by engaging in high-risk behavior. It is also true that individuals who are abusing drugs or alcohol are less able to cope with traumatic events.
What is the role of dopamine?
What can cause "triggers"?
People, places, things, time, internal (emotional state), external, five senses. Anything people can associate with their old lifestyle.
CBT is based on the following concepts:
Your THOUGHTS lead to your EMOTIONS/FEELINGS which then lead to your BEHAVIOR or ACTIONS.
Thoughts: what we think affects how we feel and act.
Emotions: how we feel affects what we think and do.
Behavior: what we do affects how we think and feel.
What part of the brain is responsible for addiction?
Mesolimbic dopamine pathway. It is sometimes called the reward circuit of the brain.
Mesolimbic pathway (midbrain)—transports dopamine from the VTA (ventral tegmental area) to the nucleus accumbens and amygdala. The nucleus accumbens is found in the ventral medial portion of the striatum and is believed to play a role in reward, desire, and the placebo effect.
VTA plays a significant role in reward, motivation, cognition (understanding through thought, experience, and senses, and aversion (strong dislike)
Why do we seek "emotional numbing"?
Emotional numbness becomes a strategy to protect themselves from further emotional or physical pain. While it may provide temporary relief, learning to cope with difficult feelings this way can have long-lasting consequences.
Detached yourself from unwanted emotions or feelings.
How does chronic stress relate to the lizard brain?
Lizard's brain (reptilian brain) wants the reward NOW. Can't wait for delayed gratification. Which, sets us up for addiction.
These irregularities result from a drug or alcohol establishing itself as a “need” in one's brain. For an addicted person, the abused substance becomes just as important to this part of the brain as food, water, and sleep.
What coping skill focuses on present-moment, non-judgmental awareness?
Principles:
(Dialectical behavior therapy)
DBT for alcohol and drug addiction treats relapse as a problem to solve; therefore, therapists help the individual assess the events that led to the relapse and work to help them repair the harm they caused themselves and others as a result of the relapse.
What are the stages of change?
Stage One: Precontemplation (Not yet acknowledging that there is a problem behavior that needs to be changed) (AA stage is called "DENIAL")
Stage Two: Contemplation (Acknowledging that there is a problem but not yet ready, sure of wanting, or lacks the confidence to make a change) Weighing the pros & cons of changing behavior
Stage Three: Preparation/Determination (Getting ready to change) have made a commitment to make a change
Stage Four: Action/Willpower (Changing behavior) Motivated to change their behavior. (Open to support)
Stage Five: Maintenance (Maintaining the behavior change) being able to successfully avoid any temptations to return to the bad habit. They are able to anticipate the situations in which a relapse could occur and prepare coping strategies in advance.
What coping skills helps with PTSD, stress, depression, coping with serious illnesses and reduce anxiety?
MINDFULNESS!
Studies suggest that mindfulness practices help people manage stress, cope better with serious illnesses and reduce anxiety and depression. Many people who practice mindfulness report an increased ability to relax, a greater enthusiasm for life, and improved self-esteem.
What roles does serotonin play in the body?
This coping skill focuses on touch, smell, hearing, seeing, and tasting. (5 senses)
Grounding!
1. Mental (focusing your mind)
2. Physical (focusing your senses)
3. Soothing (talking to yourself in a very kind way)
Grounding is a set of simple strategies that can help you detach from the emotional pain (e.g., anxiety, anger, sadness, self-harm). It is basically a way to distract yourself by focusing on something other than the difficult emotions you are experiencing.
Provide a temporary way to gain control over your feelings and prevent things from getting worse.
Why do we use CBT?
Cognitive behavioral therapy is used widely today in addiction treatment. CBT teaches those in treatment for a substance use disorder (SUD) to find connections between their thoughts, feelings, and actions and increase awareness of how these things impact recovery.
Why is it important to learn, explore and understand our emotions and feelings?
Those who suffer from emotional dysregulation may struggle to cope with their emotions in healthy and productive ways. Instead, their overwhelming emotions may lead them to turn to drugs or alcohol.
This self-destructive pattern of coping may eventually develop into a substance abuse disorder as the person becomes psychologically and physically dependent on the substances they are abusing.