The Reframe: A New Way to View Addiction through the Lens of Adverse Childhood Experiences

By Bari Sobelson, MS, LMFT & David Lee Sexton, Jr.

As a Family Therapist, one of the techniques that I have found most useful and beneficial when working with clients is reframing.

Reframing is the process of changing the conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced and to place it in another frame which fits the “facts” of the same concrete situation equally well or even better and thereby changes its entire meaning. (Watzlawick et al., 1974, p. 95).

This technique has the ability to change an entire system. And, at least one family physician in Tennessee appears to be on that track with his own use of reframing. Dr. Daniel Sumrok prefers to use ‘ritualized compulsive comfort seeking’ rather than the term addiction. And, for some, changing the name can change everything.

Sumrok (as cited in Stevens, 2017) states that what most think of as addiction is a completely normal response to Adverse Childhood Experiences that leads individuals to engage in illegal or unhealthy coping mechanisms. Thus, contempt and punishment of the behavior of various addictions are akin to demonizing “bleeding [as] a normal response to being stabbed” (Stevens, 2017).

Instead, Sumrok says that professionals should be addressing individuals’ Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) through therapy, compassion and respect, and medication to help them combat opioid and other types of dependence. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, sublimation of addiction with healthy ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking.

Providing compelling evidence emphasizing the connection between ACEs and addiction, Sumrok indicates that over 90% of the patients he has worked with had an ACE score of three or higher (Stevens, 2017).

He further explains that ACEs result in neurobiological changes within the brain that cause individuals to become more susceptible to substance abuse issues, which are linking to all major chronic illnesses.

Through Sumrok’s use of reframing, he has opened the door of possibility and hope for so many who are suffering and have struggled with ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking through one simple formula: “Treat people with respect instead of blaming or shaming them. Listen intently to what they have to say. Integrate the healing traditions of the culture in which they live. Use prescription drugs, if necessary. And integrate adverse childhood experiences science: ACEs.” (Stevens, 2017)

Check out our archived webinar from Dr. Melissa Merrick with the CDC: