Understanding Addiction

Last post I promised to share some ideas for breaking the feedback cycle of addiction. Today I want to suggest a three-part intervention strategy for doing just that. In a nutshell, (1) tune into your emotions, (2) see what “parts” (in IFS terms) those emotions belong to, and (3) help those parts calm down and […] (Read the rest.)

People who use drugs (or drink) addictively are caught in a feedback loop. The addiction makes us feel like losers, blameworthy, perhaps worthless. We carry around this negative self-concept almost constantly — and it’s painful! Perhaps ironically, using or drinking seem the only way to relieve that pain. Yet the net result is that we […] (Read the rest.)

The concept that a person is either authentic or inauthentic (either a liar or not) is based on the premise that people have unitary, coherent personalities. In contrast,  IFS takes the view that people’s inner worlds are made up of parts, or sub-selves, each of which has its own distinct style, motives, and beliefs. Interestingly, […] (Read the rest.)

Hello readers. Are you still out there? I haven’t gone near my blog for over two months. So no new posts, a few comments dribbling in, and of course not as many readers. Something had to give. Having to sell our house in the Netherlands, buy a house in Toronto, move goods, furniture, children, etc, […] (Read the rest.)

On January 28 I started a series of posts reviewing promising psychotherapeutic approaches to addiction. I managed to cover a few, though with stops and starts — mostly due to Covid hassles and anxieties. So today I’m continuing the series with a post on Internal Family Systems (IFS). I wanted to understand it better before […] (Read the rest.)