Addictions and Relationships - a word with a therapist

TOPICS IN THIS EPISODE

• What are addictions and why do we adopt them?
• How can we establish healthier ways of coping?

HELPFUL  LINKS

• About the Host  - Ela Senghera 
• Speak to Me - Book Here
• Get Free Brochure  -Be True You in Your Relationship
• Audiobook - Finding Love
• Parenting Book (2nd Edition) - Teach Your Kids to Build a Positive Self-Image

Transcript

Ela  0:20 
Hi, Anna, welcome again. So we spoke a lot about relationships recently, but we haven't really touched the subject of addictions so much. And as some of us know, from our personal experience, addictions are very present, unfortunately, in today's life,and they touch the lives of men and women. And quite often, if it's a family home, children are unfortunately the victim of, of addictions. Can we just briefly focus on that? Please? Can we perhaps start from defining what an addiction is? And why so often do we observe addictions originating in relationships or unhealthy relationships?

Anna  1:46 
Yeah, Hello, nice to talk to again, this time about addictions. So it's like, as you said, it's, it's it is some form of unhealthy coping mechanism. And we sometimes in psychotherapy, call it self medicating. Okay. So it means that your addiction somehow covers the pain that you are having your emotional pain. And in order to not to touch this pain, you try to self medicate, you try to use any form of addiction cannot to feel anything.

Ela  2:30 
Yeah, so it's almost like a coping mechanism that we develop in response to a stressor, or in response to an event or a situation, or a person, perhaps something that is really a curing, can you think of what could cause an addiction? Can you tell us two or three examples of situations or events that could cause addiction in in a man or a woman?

Anna  2:59 
Now, for sure, first of all, it's childhood trauma, and the kind of abuse in your primary relationships from parents. So it can be emotional, physical, sexual variable, and the form of abuse in your previous relationships. So even if your childhood was quite good, you could for example, meet a partner who was not treating you in a great way and then you develop these traumas in your relationship. Yes, it is. It is always no relationship that you are creating the pain and it might come even later in life, not during your childhood.

Ela  3:48 
Exactly. Yeah. And how do we is it essential that when we we or our partner when we come to terms that we might be addicted to a substance for example, we -  is it important to acknowledge that what was the reason for it? Is it important that we acknowledge it's because of my childhood and it's because this and that happened in my childhood? It does that help?

Anna  4:21 
Yes, in the course of therapy, it usually helps very much to come back to what was going on before and what's happened in this election in this primary relationships where you were like hungry of love somehow so much that that now you it's never enough whatever you're doing whatever you achieve even and you're so hungry of love that you can be even Addicted to Love. This is what we were talking about last time about codependency codependency is a love addiction. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like you excessively love the other person so much that you neglect yourself, your children, your dreams, goals, everything. It's one of the form of addictions compulsive love. Yeah, it's almost like it feels to me like, it's almost like you lose your identity for the sake of keeping this relationship going. Right. And I think so many women are guilty of this, and women and men. But as we are both women, we are talking about women perspective.

Ela  5:36 
I've seen this so many times in so many women that I know, there's a huge need to satisfy him, or satisfy him or, or help him or rescue him. And just being there and always being reliable, always being there, as this rescue engine or whatever you want to call a rescue service, right. And in the process, what many of us don't realize is that we lose ourselves. And we lose this really precious connection with ourselves, and our dreams, our goals and our ambitions, and who we were before we ended up in this relationship. So I think it's just important to highlight that, and, and the questionabout what better ways are there to help us cope with stressors? So like you said, many of addictions originate in from unhealthy relationships that we have with our parents, with our partner, and so on. But what what are our alternatives? Like? Let's say, let's say that we are not a child, we are an adult. And we've identified we have an addiction, and what what can we do to help ourselves?

Anna  7:08 
Definitely, you could use psychotherapy and through psychotherapy, psychotherapy, you can explore your primary relationships, what was really going on in your life, far on an emotional level. And somehow, in one point, maybe this, like addiction medicine will stop being needed. You won't need that anymore. To somehow create this fogginess in your life to run away from your feelings, you start feeling again, everything, including pain, because there is also one more thing apart from self medicating. These relationships, like these addictions, in relationships are also the way of not being intimate to your partner on a deeper level.

As you can see, like, even compulsive love, you think that you love the person, if you are doing so many things for them. But if you're, if you're really, really caring about them that matter about what they want, what their dreams and goals are, you just want to control them and their behavior, but not exactly knowing them who they are or who they would want to be. And not necessarily help them to become a better version of themselves.

Ela  8:37 
Just convenient for us.

Anna  8:40 
Yes, and codependency can also even aggravate addictions, very often we allow for more and if we if we are creating boundaries while disengaging ourselves with love, then we give like a strong signal to the person that he has to change. And if you're accepting everything as it is, so, it may never change. Another thing is like you can avoid intimacy by overworking, by having a no sex addiction or drug drug addiction, but it can be can be even religious addiction. So you obsessively focus on religion reading a lot listening that and it can also be the way of avoiding your partner.

Ela  9:33 
So the way I see it is very interesting. The way I see it is that addiction is almost like your need to fill the gap, the empty gap that exist in your heart. And the gap exists because of a lack of understanding lack of love, or unprocessed trauma from the past. Is that correct?

Anna  10:03 
Yes, this this emptiness is like, very huge. And it is so painful that people cannot access it. They don't want to eat, they don't want to face it, they don't want to face them teenagers. So they keep taking the substance, whether it's food or alcohol, or drugs, or sex or anything else, in order to distract themselves from the harsh reality of this huge problem that they carrying with them, everywhere they go. They, they don't want to face it, right. And it's also some form of short term pleasure. Long term really building peace in your life.

Ela  10:54 
Correct. So this is super interesting. And I would like to encourage you to follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, subscribe, and follow our channel on YouTube. Also, just to mention at the end together with Anna, who is a couple psychotherapist and a counselor, we are creating a product dedicated for those of you who want to improve your love life. So for those of you who are interested in getting free access to this product, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and drop me a message. You will see the link to my bio in the comment section. And thank you so much, Anna, for joining us today.

Anna  11:38 
Thank you. I'll see you soon.