Helping Addiction and Addictive Behaviours, Gambling Problems at 1066 Therapy
covering East Sussex, Battle, Hastings, Bexhill, Rye, Heathfield, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Crowborough, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Ashford, Maidstone and Kent.
 Many people struggle with addiction, or have problems with addictive behaviours. The term ‘addiction’ broadly means any behaviour that we cannot change or stop despite our best efforts in doing so. An addiction can be to any substance and/or any behaviour: including food, alcohol, diet drinks, drugs (prescription or otherwise), gambling, compulsive shopping or sex, online pornography, over-eating, binge drinking, compulsive exercise, being a ‘workaholic’, social media etc. I help people with these sorts of problems at my practice just outside of Battle, East Sussex.
According to Thomas Hora MD in ‘Beyond the dream, awakening to reality‘ addiction can be described like this: “The meaning of all addictions could be   defined as endeavours at controlling our life experiences with the help of external remedies…Unfortunately, all external means of improving our life experiences are double-edged swords: they are always good and bad. No external remedy improves our condition without, at the same time, making it worse.”
Gabor Mate, author of ‘In the realm of hungry ghosts‘ and a world-renowned expert on addictions and addictive behaviours describes the hallmarks of addictions as:
- Compulsive engagement with the behaviour, a preoccupation with it
- Impaired control over the behaviour
- Persistence or relapse despite evidence of harm
- Dissatisfaction, irritability or intense craving when the object – be it a drug or another goal – is not immediately available.
There is some info here on gambling and internet pornography use. Please see other pages for information on compulsive eating or drink / drug problems.
Gambling
Gambling problems are more widespread nowadays as online casinos, sports betting, poker, bingo has made it so easy. We don’t part with ‘cold, hard cash’ so often. We don’t even have to leave our house. Also, the National Lottery has ‘normalised’ gambling generally in our society. The Lottery especially has made gambling more ‘socially acceptable’ although, when someone has a ‘real problem’ with gambling, this still has a social stigma attached.
Online Pornography
Another problem (which has really only developed in this century with the easy access to the internet via all sorts of devices) is excessive use of online pornography. Of course ‘excessive’ is a relative term but, alongside the hallmarks of addiction listed above, here are some signs when it could be considered a problem:
- thoughts of it are often uppermost in your mind
- you sometimes get up after going to bed to use it while a partner is asleep
- your ‘tastes’ are changing to ‘fringe’ or illegal porn
- you are substituting ‘normal’, healthy intimacy within a loving relationship with porn use, and thus causing problems within the relationship
- your partner has discussed that they have problems with your use of it yet you cannot stop using and perhaps have to lie about it, causing trust issues.
The Causes
Gabor Mate says that traditional ways of trying to help people with addiction ask ‘why the addiction?’. In contrast, he urges us to ask ‘why the pain?’. Studies are now showing that there is a strong correlation between what is known as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and later problems with addiction and addictive behaviours. Take a look at this link for more info but please remember to come back to this page! 🙂 Get your ACE score.
Many addiction recovery programmes focus on the ‘external agent’ (i.e. the drink, food, gambling, drug etc). This can be useful for people to help them to better manage an out of control behaviour. However, these approaches generally do not explore what is compelling someone to carry out their addictive behaviour. If you want lasting change, we need to look at the causes of the addictive behaviour.
Firstly, the causes are not genetic – there is no gene for addiction, or for that matter a gene for an ‘addictive personality’: there are some genes that may predispose us to having addictive behaviours but they will be activated, or not, depending on our early environment. The causes are most often unresolved feelings from challenging past experiences. They tend to be complex and are usually from early life and often long-forgotten by the time a person develops addiction problems. And perhaps you also have low self esteem, or lack confidence, or feel stressed and unable to cope. Whatever the causes, people feel ‘compelled’ to carry out their addictive behaviour to make themselves feel better somehow…if only temporarily. Often these ‘compulsions’ are subconscious (i.e. operating outside of conscious awareness) which makes things more difficult.
Therapy help
However, it is possible to resolve even subconscious causes using appropriate therapy. That said, I have found that people with addiction problems can sometimes find it difficult to go through therapy successfully without significant relapses along the way. It may therefore be the case that they will need some support for their addiction outside of therapy sessions.
I offer different approaches for every problem depending on the individual and their circumstances. We usually make the decision together during the initial consultation.
Please browse my site for information on the various therapies / approaches that I practise..
Call or text me now on 07722783490 to book your free 30 minute initial consultation.
