Emotional and Cognitive Restructuring (Part 3)
June 18, 2009
Addicts come from families that might have wounded them emotionally, physically, sexually, and/or spiritually (Carnes, 1997). They have deep sadness, feelings of shame, and loneliness.
A. Protect against emotional triggers.
It is vitally important for these emotional issues to be addressed. Any stimulus that potentially triggers an addict into these feelings can provoke the old answers, addictive activities that were used to medicate and change these feelings. These rationalizations and lies are referred to as “stinkin’ thinkin’” in the AA vernacular. Cognitive restructuring involves identification, confrontation, and correction of this erroneous thinking and this requires a psycho-educational approach. One principle to remember is that unhealed wounds often yield a relapse.
The competent Christian counselor will either be skilled in this kind of work or will know whom to refer to who is. The process of healing requires several factors:
1. Understanding the nature of the harm that caused the woundedness.
2. Providing support for the importance of dealing with it.
3. Accepting any anger that will be a part of the experience.
4. Allowing the person to grieve the losses associated with the woundedness.
5. Helping the person find meaning in the suffering of the experience.
6. Guiding the person in the process of forgiveness of those who caused the harm.
This is a process and should not be avoided. It is irresponsible to suggest that a person should just “forgive and forget.” It is also irresponsible to suggest that a person who never let go of their anger so as not to get hurt again. Healing of life’s hurt can be a lifetime journey but there are ways to get stuck in sadness and anger.
B. Thought-stopping interventions.
Every addict starts his or her acting out behavior by obsessing or fantasizing about the substance or behavior. This very thought life is an attempt to alter mood, to relieve pain. Christian counselors will hear the fantasies of addicts and know that they are windows into the mind and heart of the addicted person. Substances and behaviors are often ways that addicts seek to heal wounds from the past. It is mostly useless to tell an addict to stop thinking about a substance or behavior. Seek understanding for what the thought life, the fantasies, mean. If healing can be achieved for the wound that the fantasy seeks to correct, the fantasy will eventually disappear.
C. Covert sensitization.
Another approach is to directly intervene in an addict’s fantasies. These fantasies are self-reinforcing because they are typically followed, in the case of a sex addict for example, by sexual arousal. In covert sensitization, the addict is instructed to articulate his or her preferred fantasy, and then to add to that fantasy an imagined aversive scene (such as the embarrassment of being caught and punished). Both exposing the secret fantasy and associating an aversive outcome reduces its attracting power. The goal is to reduce the reinforcement value of the fantasy by pairing it with an aversive consequence. Finally, the offender also adds a reward scene to the failed fantasy, emphasizing a positive outcome associated with successful control.
Comments
Got something to say?