Part 2: The Pain Beneath Addiction

Trauma, Narrowing, and the Struggle to Be Fully Oneself Pain isn’t always obvious

One thing I haven’t talked about yet in this story is the role of pain and trauma in the genesis of addiction. No! You might be shouting inside your head as you read - addiction is a way of self-medicating emotional trauma that the person doesn’t know how to cope with, and what they need is better coping skills, more emotional regulation and maturity. 

The thing is - this explanation isn’t wrong. Pain and trauma matter enormously. But I think we often imagine pain too narrowly, as though addiction begins only in acute suffering: unbearable memories, overwhelming grief, terror, loneliness. Sometimes it does.

Trauma can look like narrowing

But trauma can also look quieter than that. It can look like years of not being able to relax into your own skin. A childhood where your joy felt excessive. Sensitivity felt embarrassing. Anger felt dangerous. Neediness felt humiliating. Tenderness felt unsafe. Aliveness itself became something to regulate, hide or suppress.

Pain isn’t only what hurts. Sometimes pain is the absence of something essential: freedom, belonging, spontaneity, protection, delight, rest, self-expression, being deeply seen. Trauma can live as a narrowing of the person over time - a gradual cutting-off from ways of being that once belonged to them.

When substances restore what was lost

If substances offer temporary relief from pain, they may also offer temporary relief from that narrowing. They can create a feeling of expansion. Permission. Ease. Courage. Defiance. Playfulness. Power. Softness. Connection. They may restore, however imperfectly, access to qualities that felt lost long before the addiction began.

Why stopping the substance isn’t always enough

This is part of why simply removing the substance often isn’t enough. Because what emerges in its absence isn’t only craving - sometimes it’s the original pain, yes, but also the original constriction. The impossibility of being fully oneself.

Healing beyond symptom reduction

From this perspective, healing addiction isn’t only about learning to tolerate discomfort, though that can be important. It’s also about helping a person build a relationship with the fuller life inside them that the substance was imitating, amplifying or standing in for.

UnShaming as one piece of a larger picture

And this is where I want to be careful: UnShaming is not a replacement for addiction treatment. Addiction is complex. It can involve physiology, nervous system dysregulation, trauma, nutrition, social isolation, psychiatric conditions, family systems, chronic stress, and severe physical dependence.

An UnShaming approach is one piece of a larger picture. It can sit alongside somatic therapies that support nervous system regulation and help a person develop greater capacity to be with difficult states without becoming overwhelmed. It can exist alongside practical coaching and accountability, community support, trauma treatment, nutrition work that addresses depletion and blood sugar instability, medically supervised detox when needed, medication support, and addiction-informed psychiatric care.

Different approaches, different layers

I don’t see these approaches as competitors. I see them as addressing different layers of the same human struggle. One helps stabilize the body. One helps keep a person safe. One helps interrupt dangerous patterns. One helps support brain chemistry. One helps restore relationship.

A different question beneath addiction

UnShaming enters the picture with a different question: not only How do we stop this behavior? but also What was the person reaching for through it?

The longing beneath destructive patterns

Because beneath even destructive patterns, there is often something uniquely human: a longing to feel alive, whole, free, connected, protected - as well as to be able to bear being oneself.

And if that longing can be met more directly, more honestly, and with less shame, something new becomes possible: restoring relationship to the parts of a person that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to come back into the world.

This perspective is informed by UnShaming, developed by David Bedrick from Process-Oriented Psychology, originally created by Arnold Mindell. My own work also draws from other somatic approaches, philosophy and embodied practice.

Follow Me on Instagram