Do you find yourself triggered to dive back into addictive behaviors, almost without a thought? Do you feel like you’re constantly slipping back into old behaviors despite your best intentions? Then read on, because this week's post is for you. 

Meditation Is Used to Cope With All Kinds of Issues These Days

From depression to trauma, meditation is being used by many, many people to help them cope with all kinds of difficulties. Addiction is one area where it is very helpful in general, but recently there have been some forms of meditation that are more helpful for coping with it and others. The whole problem centers around a part of your brain called the amygdala, which tends to keep people engaging in reactive patterns of behavior over and over again.

How Meditation Works with Brain Science

People who struggle with addictions tend to not use the executive functioning area of their brain when they are triggered into addictive behaviors. Meditation can help people to be in touch with and use other parts of their brain other than their left brain amygdala, which is the part of our brain responsible for addictive behaviors, then the chance of relapse goes down dramatically.

RAIN Meditation is Useful in Overcoming Addiction Triggers

A particular form of mindfulness meditation, called the RAIN meditation by Tara Brach, offers people who suffer with addictions a way to get past their triggers. The acronym RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nourish. When you are feeling triggered into an addictive behavior, you are encouraged to breathe consciously for a moment, then Recognize you have inner turmoil between what the urge to engage in the addictive behavior is and your better judgment. Then you are invited to Allow these conflicting feelings and experiences to exist within you. The next step involves Investigating what are the contradictory messages or difficult messages you were giving yourself that have caused this internal strife. Then you were invited to Nourish the part of yourself that suffers because of this internal strife, in a way that does not involve relapsing into the addictive behavior. Much of the time this involves somehow taking care of the “inner child” that was neglected when people were abused as children or first started engaging in addictive behaviors to medicate some sort of emotional wound.

Here’s a link to the meditation on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm1t5FyK5Ek

What Meditation Will and Won’t Do for Addictions

While meditation can help you to address triggers and urges for addictive behaviors, it won’t necessarily help to alleviate underlying trauma that can contribute to addictive behavior. For that, most people need to have trauma therapy, or some other mode of healing to help to remediate the trauma. Meditation will help you to connect to a higher power, which we typically access through our right brain capacities. These are there all the time, but meditation often helps us to be more in touch with them than we would be otherwise. It helps to expand your mind, and your sense of connection with others, and a higher power of your choosing, to the extent you identify with one.

What To Do if Meditation Doesn’t Seem to Help

Well, meditation is a very useful tool in many people's experience of recovery from addictions and other disorders, it may not do everything you need as mentioned above. I’ve been helping individuals to overcome addictions for my entire social work career, most often men who suffer from compulsive or addictive sexual behavior. If you would like to find out whether I can help you, please call the number at the top of the page or fill out the form below if you live in Maryland or Texas. I have a number of different methods that can be helpful in addressing addiction issues. I can arrange for a consult to help you better determine whether I can be of help to you in your particular situation. Whatever you do, I encourage you to reach out for the help and support you need, because your life, sanity, and recovery are worth it!

Visit our page on sex addiction therapy to find out how Scott can help you with your addiction issues.

About the author:  Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland.  He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin.  He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His most recent book is titled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.