Discussing Trauma, Addiction and Spirituality

• Autores: Peter Bray
• Localización: Ruptured Voices: Trauma and Recovery / coord. por Karen O´Donnell, 2019, ISBN 978-1-84888-372-7, págs. 137-152
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The following chapter outlines a series of discussions held over a twelve month period with a group of New Zealand mental health professionals. The clinicians are associated with a residential unit and they work with clients who have alcohol and substance addictions. As most of the participants work as counsellors in settings that are influenced by the medical model, they wanted to discover how far their utilisation of, and interest in, spiritual orientations of professional practice might be recognised and developed as an aid to therapy. Naturally they were concerned to explore how they might work in this way in a perceived atmosphere of institutional judgement. As the group freely explored their own spirituality in the context of their professional relationships with clients and the institution, it highlighted the positive benefits of their own non-denominational spirit-led practices. As they discussed addiction as originating in an act of self-medicating survival that supports the individual to overcome behaviours which originate in trauma, they began to consider recovery as a spiritually inspired self-actualising process. Although the initial aim of the group was to explore the significance of spirituality in clients’ presentations and to identify similar principles and beliefs that might underpin their own professional practice, a central theme began to emerge that resonated deeply with the group’s participants. It suggested that the experience of trauma significantly disrupts, or wounds, human beings’ tendencies to actualise, forcing them down less effective pathways to achieving or recovering the capacity to reach higher levels of consciousness. Addiction was therefore conceived not only as a false or unwelcome outcome of the struggle to meaning, a detour in the human journey into actualisation, but also as an adaptive process of recovery. In this context, counsellors saw themselves working with clients in a spiritual quest to reconnect their clients with their lost potential.