SUD War Zones At Home
- Tom O'Connor
- Mar 10
- 6 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
New Generations: SUD
March 10, 2025
Tom O’Connor, Co-Author & Publisher
Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., Subject Matter Expert
Topic
War zones might be closer than you realize, with 25% of children growing up with a father, mother, or both parents who have a substance use disorder (SUD). These children experience intense childhood trauma from being raised in a highly stressed, dysfunctional, and chaotic family environment, which takes place in the living rooms of homes, rather than in distant military war zones.
Recovery from domestic conflict zones requires customized strategies that allow individuals to find significant relief from the parental neglect they experienced in childhood, which often led to feelings of anger and helplessness. These children developed survival skills that were effective during childhood but are not suitable for adulthood. Relying on these childhood survival skills as an adult can extend conflict from one household to another. Retaining childhood survival skills into adulthood is known as adult-child syndrome (ACS). An adult-child is someone who grew up in a dysfunctional, substance-abusing environment and continues to display traits in adulthood that reflect past neglect.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. is a groundbreaking work by a leading figure in the study and treatment of psychological trauma resulting from chronic child neglect and abuse. I consider this book crucial reading for healthcare professionals dealing with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health issues, including adult-child syndrome.
Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and is the co-director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress Complex Trauma Network. Bessel received his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) from the University of Chicago.
Additional Information For You
According to Dr. van der Kolk’s:
Trauma Happens Nearly To Everyone
Trauma happens to us, our friends, and our neighbors. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 70% of people globally will experience a potentially traumatic event during their lifetime. Traumatic events can include accidents, natural disasters, the loss of a loved one, other life-threatening situations, and childhood neglect and abuse.
Trauma may not completely go away over one’s lifetime, but with the proper support and treatment, individuals can learn to manage and reduce its impact on their lives.
Brain & Body Trauma
Childhood trauma physically affects the brain and body, causing anxiety, rage,
Impacts on the Brain
The brain's most important job is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary. For survival, brains need to:
Generate internal signals that register our bodies' needs, such as food, rest, protection, sex, and shelter.
Create a world map to determine where to go to satisfy those needs.
Generate the necessary energy and actions to get us there.
Warn us of dangers and opportunities along the way.
Adjust our actions based on the requirements of the moment.
Chronic traumatic events impact the brain. While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival is not very good at denial, no matter how far we want to push traumatic events deep down. Long after a traumatic experience is over, it may be reactivated and triggered at the slightest hint of perceived danger, mobilize disturbed brain circuits, and secret massive amounts of stress.
The childhood traumatic experience, even now as an adult, precipitates unpleasant emotions, intense physical sensations, and impulsive and aggressive actions. These post-traumatic actions feel incomprehensible and overwhelming. Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption.
The birth of new psychiatric branches of science, including neuroscience, developmental psychopathy, and interpersonal neurobiology, led to an explosion of knowledge about the effects of psychological trauma, abuse, and neglect.
Neuroscience is the study of how the brain supports mental processes. Developmental psychopathy is the study of the impact of adverse experiences on the development of the mind and brain. Interpersonal neurobiology is the study of how our behavior influences the emotions, biology, and mindsets of those around us.
Research from these new scientific medical disciplines has revealed that trauma produces physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, increases in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filter relevant information from irrelevant information.
After trauma, the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life.
These changes explain why traumatized individuals become hypervigilant to threats at the expense of spontaneously engaging in their day-to-day lives. Throughout my lifetime, I have always been hypervigilent with adult-child syndrome (ACS).
Impacts on the Body
A tug-of-war ensues when our emotional and rational brains conflict (when we are enraged with someone we love, frightened by someone we depend on, or lust after someone off limits). The war is primarily played out in the theatre of visceral experience – your gut, your heart, your lungs – and will lead to both physical discomfort and psychological misery.
Psychological trauma can befall anyone, not just soldiers and refugees. Trauma affects the entire organism - brain, mind, and body. In Post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), the body continues to defend against a threat that belongs to the past. Healing from PTSD means being able to terminate this continued stress mobilization and restore the entire organism to safety.
Learning to Live in the Present
The challenge of trauma treatment is not only dealing with the past but, even more, enhancing the quality of day-to-day experience. When treating to help someone learn to live in the present, a best practice is to incorporate mindfulness techniques through therapies like Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which teaches individuals to become more aware of their thoughts and feelings in the present moment, allowing them to manage difficult emotions and avoid getting stuck in past traumatic events or future anxieties.
Key points about this approach include:
Focus on the present moment. Mindfulness exercises help individuals focus on their current sensations, thoughts, and emotions rather than ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.
Somatic therapies. These practices can also be beneficial, as they encourage individuals to become more aware of their body sensations and use them as a grounding tool to stay present.
Trauma-focused therapies. Therapies like Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) can help individuals process their traumatic experiences in a safe and controlled way, allowing them to integrate the events into their narrative and move forward.
Emotional regulation skills. DBT provides specific strategies for managing intense emotions, which can be crucial for trauma survivors who may experience strong emotional reactions to triggers.
Other important aspects of trauma treatment for living in the present are:
Establishing safety and trust. Creating a safe therapeutic environment where the individual feels supported and validated is essential for them to open up about their experiences.
Gradual exposure. Slowly exposing individuals to triggers in a controlled setting can help them desensitize to these stimuli and manage their anxiety.
Cognitive restructuring. Identifying and challenging negative thoughts related to the trauma can help individuals develop healthier coping mechanisms.
How to Live in the Present Additional Research:
Change your focus. Focusing on a single thing, not everything at once, is critical when learning to live in the now. Despite popular belief, no one can effectively multi-task, juggling many tasks to try and get ahead. Our brains do not work that way. It is impossible to live in the moment if you are distracted like that.
Notice what is around you. You cannot remain in the moment if you are unaware of it. It is easier to be present in the moment when you stop to look at the stars, the flowers, or your children.
Practice acceptance. To live in the now, one must learn to let go of the things one has no control over and accept them for what they are. You cannot control everything that happens to you or prevent other people. All you can do is practice acceptance of what you cannot change.
Seek social support. Positive and caring social support is vital in helping you learn and live in the present. It is much easier to seek out others who are supportive and positive in their attitudes than to be present alone. Surrounding yourself with people who make you feel positive and happy will enhance your focus on the present by making it more manageable.
Your Call to Action
Read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Follow Dr. van der Kolk’s recommendations to develop methods and experiences that utilize the brain’s natural neuroplasticity to help trauma survivors feel fully alive in the present and move on with their lives.
According to Dr. van der Kolk, there are fundamentally three paths to follow:
Top-down by talking, reconnecting with others, and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us while processing the memories of the trauma.
Taking medically prescribed medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions.
Bottom-up by allowing the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, and collapse that result from trauma.
Which of these is best for any particular childhood trauma survivor is an empirical question. Most people Dr. van der Kolk has worked with require a combination of treating thousands of traumatized children and adults.
The challenge for anyone who has experienced trauma is to regain control over the remnants of their past and once again steer their own lives. It is their Vital Voyage!
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