In recovery and throughout addiction treatment in Wisconsin, trauma-informed care (TIC) is highly effective and, most importantly, human-centered. It stems from fusing a person’s historical, personal, and societal trauma into their customized treatment plan.
The main idea is to create treatment methods that don’t further traumatize the individual seeking help by ignoring what’s happened to them in the past. Often, root causes of addiction can be met with a stigmatized approach, causing healthcare professionals, friends, family members, and even employers to shame or punish the person with the addiction for developing it in the first place or relying on substance abuse to cope with life’s stressors and painful past events.
Some authorities on the topic like to use doctor’s gloves parallel, likening TIC to using gloves to prevent infection during medical treatment to avoid further the spread of racialized, political, or negative social norms while treating patients. When our Middleton-based residential treatment center and our intensive outpatient facility in Waukesha take trauma-informed steps with their clients, they provide safer, more empowered environments for successful sobriety and long-term, rewarding recovery.
Adopting TIC aims to create a more efficient, supporting, and healing-centered environment. It aims for a more proactive plan to reach long-term recovery, rich with opportunities to practice resilience, exercise dignity, and foster hope.
Shifting From What’s Wrong to What’s Happened: Avoiding Retraumatization
When addiction treatment plans stop leading with the question “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you,” they’re based in based anti re-traumatization practices. It’s too easy to place someone back into their most painful memories within the treatment environment or during procedures and day-to-day interactions that replicate past traumatic experiences.
These replications can be literal or symbolic, and trigger the body’s nervous system into fight, flight, or freeze modes. This dredges up emotions, physical reactions, and thought processes from those original hardships and memories of abuse or violence.
Most people in recovery have suffered short and long-term traumatic experiences that later push people into substance abuse and substance use disorder (SUD). That’s why Miramont is hyper-vigilant about adopting TIC at all levels of our systems: from individuals to staff, and from our business model to our organization as a whole. That said, it’s important to note that re-traumatization is typically unintentional and unconscious. It can show up in the form of harsh disciplinary actions or overlooking a patient’s negative reaction to certain smells, sounds, interpersonal interactions, or interactions with certain family members. People who come from communities of color, poverty, or certain religions are often most vulnerable to retraumatization in modern recovery treatment environments. However, people who do not come from such communities can still be vulnerable to unnecessary triggers.
How Does Miramont Behavioral Health Practice TIC?
When we treat you or your loved one for substance use disorder, our service providers look for all instances of past trauma and conduct thorough assessments to learn more about our patients as people with complex histories and experiences. To do this, we inquire about the following and offer therapeutic programs to help work through past trauma:
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) like psychological and emotional childhood abuse, sexual or physical abuse, domestic violence, and household dysfunction or substance abuse in childhood
- Comorbidity, or the presence of two mental health or physical illnesses at the same time. This could be, for example, the presence of alcoholism and a personality disorder.
- All possible areas of individual, interpersonal, and collective trauma that may be present in a person’s history
- How toxic stress from living chronic traumas may have helped develop SUD in the individual
Later, when it comes to our own staff and administrative leaders, we strive to educate all workers on the powers of transforming trauma into processed emotions. We train teams to engage with clients as they plan for their treatment and the organization of treatment as a whole. We also make it a priority to train both clinical and nonclinical employees to create safe, welcoming, respectful recovery environments.
Keeping a close eye on potentials for re-traumatization in our outpatient and residential centers, and favoring trauma-informed candidates for professional roles with us also help to build up our TIC community.
Get Trauma-Informed Care For Substance Abuse in Wisconsin
Miramont Behavioral Health Center is a safe haven for anyone dealing with past or current traumas that are causing negativity and addiction in their daily lives. From mental health disorders to SUD, to a combination of the two, we can help. Contact us today to receive human-centered TIC services for substance abuse today.
