Struggling  with Addiction

Support & Understanding

Are you afraid that you may be developing a reliance on alcohol or marijuana or a drug? It didn't start by you needing it everyday, you just wanted to feel some relief, but now you feel like you need it every day. Maybe you no longer feel like yourself, you feel exhausted, stressed out, maybe work is not going well, but you don’t know how to stop the cycle.

Perhaps, you are finding yourself isolating from family and old friends. You don't enjoy the things you used to love and you don't feel connected with your partner. Each day is a struggle, you feel depressed and maybe even irritated with everyone around you. Have you found yourself doing things you never thought you would do?  Saying to yourself, "I need to cut back." Have there been relationship issues? Have you had an affair and feel unsure what to do?  Have you found yourself frequently lying, missing work, hiding things? This isn’t who you are and things feel out of control. You aren't happy and you have tried your best to fix it, but at this point you need a place to turn.

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Maybe you are in recovery but  each day you worry about slipping into a relapse. Are you worried that your relapse prevention plan isn’t addressing all you need it too? Do you have a relapse prevention plan or do need to tweak your plan? The battle with an addiction is one that you do not have to fight alone. You are taking the responsibility of healing by coming to therapy.

Most people struggle with addiction for a multitude of reasons. Addiction has a genetic and biological component, but also has trauma at its roots. Traumatic experiences in childhood or adulthood can create dysregulation within the body and the brain. Leaving the unresolved emotional pain, fear and sadness in the body can lead to a search for coping methods. Many times these methods were developed as children and they worked for a while, but now as an adult these methods (that respectfully kept us alive) no longer are working and we need new coping skills. The use of drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, food are all “numbing” coping skills that have turned from survival skills to unhealthy and our causing more stress in our lives instead of relieving stress. You were doing your best with what you had, but now we can heal the trauma, work away from addiction and build new coping skills.

We can work together to help you with addiction. We can help you break cycles with addiction and return to healthier behaviors. We can get to the roots underlying the addictive behaviors and help you heal the pain, fear and sadness that lies at the bottom. 

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While working at the Meadows Behavioral Health, one of the top addiction centers in the United States, I was trained in specialized therapy modalities for addiction treatment and relapse prevention. Together we will work into the deeper reasons of why addiction has happened in your life. We will examine childhood and developmental trauma, abandonment and neglect and work together to heal.

Our work together will help you develop healthy coping skills, increased support systems and a rock-solid relapse prevention plan. You do not have to battle addiction alone. You deserve to have compassionate, trauma-informed support.