At least once a month, as part of the MV Times’ ongoing Mental Illness series, Dr. Charles Silberstein will write a column that directly addresses issues Islanders have with mental health. Dr. Silberstein is a psychiatrist at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
There is an article that is being shared a lot on Martha’s Vineyard. It is about an addiction specialist who suggests that as assuredly as people bleed after being cut, a child who is abused seeks comfort. And for people who have had multiple traumas as children, the compulsive seeking of comfort is what we call “addiction.” He proposes that rather than call it addiction, we call it “ritualized, compulsive comfort-seeking.” Using drugs and alcohol, binging and vomiting, self-starvation in the form of anorexia, self-mutilation, gambling, compulsively belittling oneself, and becoming numb and tuning out are some of the ways in which people who have been hurt compulsively seek comfort.
[For more of this story, written by Charles Silberstein, go to http://www.mvtimes.com/2017/05...vents-self-soothing/]
Comments (0)