Trauma & Addiction: What I’ve Seen, Lived, or Learned
Welcome to Mamahood After Trauma, a space created to support mothers as they heal from trauma, break generational cycles, and discover healthier ways of showing up for themselves and their families. Here, you’ll find honest conversations, practical tools, and encouragement to remind you that healing is possible, one step at a time.
Intro
Sometimes the things we reach for to cope really did help us survive.
Maybe they gave us an escape when life felt unbearable. Maybe they helped quiet the noise, numb the pain, feel in control, or simply get through another day.
But what helped us survive in one season of life can sometimes begin to hurt us in another.
That can be a difficult thing to recognize, especially when the behavior has been with us for a long time.
Trauma educator and podcast host Emily Cleghorn encourages us to look beneath the behavior and ask a different question: What is this doing for me?
The goal isn't to shame ourselves for the ways we learned to cope. It's to understand what we were needing, and whether there might be a healthier way to meet that need now.
Table of Contents
What Is This Doing for Me?
Motherhood Changes the Conditions
Don't Take Away the Relief Without Replacing It
Some Problems Need More Than Self-Help
What Is This Doing for Me?
From the outside, addictive behavior can look baffling. Why keep drinking, scrolling, shopping, working, or reaching for anything that seems to make life worse?
Cleghorn suggests starting with a different question: What is the behavior doing for the person?
It might quiet a racing mind, soften loneliness, offer a fleeting sense of control, or provide an escape from a body and memories that feel difficult to inhabit.
A behavior can help in the short term. That relief is part of why it's repeated. But over time, the strategy may bring its own costs.
The shift in perspective doesn't excuse harm or mean that every repeated behavior is an addiction. It simply changes the starting point from accusation to investigation.
Instead of asking, "Why don't they just stop?" we can ask what they are trying to feel, or what they are trying not to feel.
"We don't have to shame the younger version of ourselves who found it. We can simply recognize that maybe we need something different now."
The answer might be grief, anger, fear, or shame.
Or it might be no single feeling at all.
Sometimes it's just too much.
Too much noise. Too much responsibility. Too much remembering. Too much thinking.
Reaching for relief is human. It just isn't always sustainable.
Motherhood Changes the Conditions
Motherhood can expose coping habits that once went unnoticed.
The old escape routes may become harder to take. Time, privacy, and control are suddenly in shorter supply. There are children watching, and responsibilities that don't disappear just because a parent is overwhelmed.
"Sometimes motherhood removes the very things you used to use to cope," Cleghorn says, "which can force you to confront what's underneath."
That confrontation can be painful.
It can also reveal patterns that look admirable from the outside.
Constant productivity.
Being the one everyone needs.
Working without pause.
Taking care of everyone else before asking what you need yourself.
Not every intense habit is an addiction.
But some behaviors can function as avoidance, even when they're praised.
Keeping busy can leave little room to feel.
Being indispensable can make it easier not to ask for support.
Always taking care of others can become a way of avoiding taking care of yourself.
The disguise is part of what makes these patterns so difficult to notice.
Sometimes the thing we are praised for is also the thing keeping us from slowing down long enough to ask what is really going on underneath.
Don't Take Away the Relief Without Replacing It
If a behavior is providing something, stopping it without addressing that need can leave a person facing the same pain with fewer tools.
The work isn't only to identify what's harmful. It's also to understand what the behavior has been providing and find other ways to meet that need.
If the behavior offers relief, look for another path to relief.
If it provides connection, seek connection.
If it creates a sense of rest or escape, those needs matter too.
The questions can be practical:
When do you reach for the behavior?
What tends to happen just before?
How do you feel afterward?
What does it help you avoid?
What else might offer some of the same comfort?
Curiosity is not permission to ignore harm.
It's a way to examine what is happening without turning the person into the problem.
"This behavior is hurting me" leaves room for change.
"I'm bad because I do this" can deepen the shame that keeps people hiding.
There is a difference between taking responsibility for a behavior and believing that the behavior defines who you are.
Some Problems Need More Than Self-Help
Reflection has limits.
Addiction can be serious, and sometimes support needs to look like trauma-informed therapy, addiction treatment, medical care, or peer support.
Where there is immediate danger, overdose risk, dangerous withdrawal, or thoughts of self-harm, the priority is getting help. This isn't something you have to manage alone with a few new coping strategies.
But for anyone beginning with self-inquiry, the question can be simple:
"What do I reach for when I don't want to feel?"
The answer may be a substance.
It may be food, a phone, work, exercise, cleaning, or caring for everyone else.
Naming it isn't the same as condemning it.
A coping mechanism may once have helped someone survive.
Understanding that history doesn't mean staying stuck in it. It can actually give us a starting point for change.
We can acknowledge the version of ourselves who needed that coping mechanism without hating her for needing it.
We can have compassion for the person we were while still recognizing that we may need something different now.
Because healing isn't always about asking, "How do I make myself stop?"
Sometimes it starts with asking:
"What was I needing when I learned to do this?"
And then:
"What do I need now?"
Healing doesn't mean being ashamed of the ways we learned to survive. Those coping mechanisms came from somewhere. They often made sense for the person we were and the circumstances we were living through.
But we don't have to keep using the same strategies forever.
As we heal, we get the opportunity to become curious about what we need, what we're reaching for, and what might serve us better now.
So if you recognize yourself in this, start there. Not with shame. Not with judgment. With curiosity.
Because sometimes the first step toward changing a coping mechanism isn't forcing yourself to let it go.
It's understanding why you needed it in the first place.
Resources
Emily Cleghorn’s Free Quiz: “Find Your Next Step to Calm and Healing”.
If you’re a mama healing from trauma and seeking a new way forward, remember: You deserve support, your child deserves joy, and together, you can break cycles and build a brighter future.
Comments