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Addiction as an Attachment Disorder

September 27, 2016 By Christine Askew BA, MA, MSc 1 Comment

How attachment styles make you vulnerable to addiction

If you are along the anxious attachment spectrum you will get ‘activated’ within close relationships. This means that your stress response system is constantly triggered. You will scan for signs of abandonment and tend not to trust other people’s motives. Because there is always a heightened sense of anxiety, you will probably struggle with worrying about what other people are thinking, doing, feeling and can end up looking for excessive reassurance.  You will often feel a sense of unease and this can result in:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Posts, Recovery From Addiction Ltd. Tagged With: Addiction, amygdala, anger, anxiety, anxious attachment, Attachment, avoidant attachment, emotions, help with addiction, pre-frontal cortex, re-wire the addicted brain, Relapse Prevention, Relationships, stopping drinking, substance abuse, the addicted brain, why can't I stop drinking

Insecure Attachment – Sowing The Seeds Of Addiction

August 2, 2016 By Christine Askew BA, MA, MSc 3 Comments

Marijuana seedlingIn my last post,   I talked about the link between addiction and connection – or lack of it. And how our earliest experiences shape the way our brains develop and generate a specific ‘attachment’ style.

Knowing your attachment style and how it affects your thoughts feelings and behaviours  can provide an incredible sense of relief. It can help you to start making sense of the struggles that you have and can give you a focus of how to work through them.

Attachment theory is fast becoming the leading theory on why we are prone to a whole host of psychological issues including depression, anxiety, relationship conflict and addiction. Attachment theory is not new; it has been around for decades. But what IS new is the validation it now has from research in neuroscience.

So what is it exactly?

In a nutshell, the type of attachment bond we have with our caregivers in the first few years of life dictates how we live, love and learn for the rest of our lives. Or as John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, said “from the cradle to the grave”  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Posts, Recovery From Addiction Ltd. Tagged With: Addiction, anger, anxiety, Attachment, brain, depression, emotions, insecureattachment, neural pathways, Substance Abuse Counselor, substanceabuse

I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me! – Severing The Attachment To Addiction.

February 2, 2015 By Christine Askew BA, MA, MSc Leave a Comment

I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me! – Severing The Attachment To Addiction.You probably know this cycle well. You promise yourself that you are going to stop. You do well for a few days, a month or even longer then for some reason, you find yourself back in the pub, calling your dealer or getting a bottle of wine on the way home from work. The next morning, after a night of excess, you wake up to those excruciating feelings of shame, anxiety, self-loathing and remorse as you try to remember what you did and said or maybe you are acutely aware of what you did and are trying to work out how to execute damage control. Again you swear that this is it, you are definitely never going to drink or use again. Until the next time.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Posts, Recovery From Addiction Ltd. Tagged With: Addiction, Attachment, Motivation, Recovery Tools

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