Part of the Solution

 

Here is where we get to the root of the problem and then help heal our clients, in this portion of our program we are focused on deep therapy. We do not just bandaid the problem at Deslongchamps Recovery, we diligently get to what the addiction is all about, then we care for it, and replace the problem with a solution.

Our clients range from teens, to single individuals to complete families.

We have clients who have waited too long to stop their harmful behaviors and have found themselves without their family in their everyday lives. Some of our clients have been involved with thir addictions so long that they are not even in communication with their family anymore. All of our clients situations are different, that is why we chose to divide our program into separate steps of recovery. The sections of our program are detoxification, the solution which is the one discussed here, and recovery.

In this portion of the program our clients spend their time getting to know what makes them tick. We have an extensive search into the root cause of their addiction. We address those causes, then we work on rebuilding them into the person they want to be.

Often we have no idea why we do what we do. We get pushed around, and find ourselves doing the very things we swore we would never do when we grew up. Deslongchamps Recovery understands that and also knows why this happens. We have been there we truly understand.

What we find when we have a closer look is that it is the hurt child within ourselves who is still calling the shots. The child that was traumatized, the child that has now grown physically but is still stuck in PTSD, a post traumatic stress disorder situation.

Trauma is a leading cause to addiction. We know that. The trauma does not need to be that big either. The trauma is the result of what happened when we were children and how we internalized it. It can be a seemingly unimportant event to the rest of the world but to us persoanlly, it changed the way we saw our world. We were a certain way before the event and after the event something inside us had changed, for the worse. Because we are all different our perceptions are just as different, depending on our sensitivity, our personalities, our needs and wants. We react to situations differently.

The trauma can come from always trying to please a parent or older sibling, but never making the cut. It could be a divorce when family life was going perfectly. It could come from a parent who is never home because they are working all the time. Trauma is a very complex subject. The seriousness of the effects often do not show up until much later in life. But if you look closely at a child growing up, you can see the subtle signs as they grow into much more apparent signs from their behaviors. Often parents are so caught up in their own drama they miss the signs in their children, until it is too late. Then the child has grown and now must find their own way through hell, and hopefully get the help they need, otherwise it is passed on from generation to generation, until someone breaks the cycle.

Because children internalize everything and are narcissistic, believeing everything revolves around them, what goes good is because of them, and what goes bad in their world is because of them. Everything that happens, they internalize and fit themselves into the experience. They are so sensitive. You can talk until your blue in the face about how its not their fault, their perseption is that it is.

We have some clients say I had a perfect childhood. At first they refuse to see that something happened that separated them from feeling secure as a child. It could be just a small situation, that nobody else in the family noticed. Sometimes the rest of the kids in the family did ok, it is just one or two of them who grew up finding addictions.

We know the reason why that is, like we said before every child is different they see the world and its events differently. Not all children who were traumatized will become addicted only because they found  an outlet for the trauma and therefore released the negativity of it.  Some experienced the samething but found comfort through a close relationship with someone, perhaps a grandparent, a teacher, a coach, friends, a sibling, maybe through activities they found a way to release the trauma inside. But one thing we know, if trauma has an outlet then the child has a chance of a good life, if not, it grows inside the child and will one day show up in their behaviors.

We often think a traumatic experience has to be something huge, but that’s incorrect. It is something that happens, and the person perceives the event as a threat to their security, it is expecially damaging to a childs mind.

The more of these events that occur in a persons childhood, the more long term damage that child has to deal with in life.

Another factor is disconnectedness. A child must be connected to the people in their environment and everything in it. If the child feels like they dont fit into their enviroment, that perhaps they are always in the way, or a parent is always busy, too busy for them, they feel that, and develop an internal reality that they are not worth anyones time.

We have always, always found that the root cause of addiction is born from childhood issues of trauma and disconnectedness, there is no exception.

We now know that the child experiences everything the mother feels. Even in the womb, if the mother is anxious, the baby is too. If the mother is sad the baby feels that.

Some of our clients were adopted as babies, their adoptive parents were perfect, but yet they ended up addicted to harmful behaviors and substances. Actually, it is common for adopted children to become addicted later on, we see it a lot.

We then have a look as much as we can into the biological mothers pregnancy. It was most likely not one of happiness and joy. The chances are high that it was a time of sadness and hurt, the mother holding that baby in her stomach for 9-10 months knowing that she has to give up her baby, or being unsure is passed onto the baby as well. So, the damage is done early on in the child, it is infact all the child knows before they are even born into the world. Then a loving family comes along and wants to give the baby the best of life, unknowing that their adopted child needs professional therapy as soon as possible.

We explain everything to our clients, until they have an ahh ha moment! And they always do. Sometimes it is harder to see where the trauma came from other times it is easily seen. We do not stop until it is all addressed, and replaced.

One of our ways of helping is  by having our clients relax and think of different events that happened in their childhood that they percieved as not positive ones. We get them involved in the memory with their 5 sences. We guide them through the experience and memory. Then we ask them to replace what actually happened with an experience that is comforting and loving. The result of that is the client comes back to the present moment after the exercise as a different person, because the traumatic event was replaced in their memory by one that was loving, caring and positive.

The reason this works is because the brain is not able to tell the difference between what is actually real and what is imaginary.  It is incredible, and sometimes it takes a couple of times repeating the same event to completely replace it with the good one, depending on how deeply it effected the person at the time. Our clients rewrite their memories, and start to recreate themselves into the person they want so badly to be.

The brain is so complexe, we have a look at our clients brain through brain mapping, it helps our clients understand the way their brains behave and what connections are weak.

We have great therapists, counsellors who explain exactly what is going on to our clients every step of the way. This takes the confusion out of the problem. When we understand how anything works, even ourselves it becomes managable and easier with time to see where things went off.

We have a strong recovery success rate because our clients understand what makes them tick, and can catch themselves when things go sideways.

We are there every step of the way with our clients, we truly care about their lives and their worlds.

Deslongchamps Recovery