Underlying Causes of Addiction
The underlying causes of addiction include trauma, unmet needs, or other emotionally painful experiences resulting in the desire to cope in the short-term through substances or behaviors that mask the pain…
What Drives Addiction?
Addiction is driven by neurological changes related to dopamine, the reward center, and the self-regulatory center in the brain. This produces a learned pattern of coping with underlying pain or unmet needs…
7 Ways to Stop Gambling and Save Money
Let go of common gambling fallacies, decide if gambling is really worth it, self-exclude or use a gambling blocker, replace gambling with other activities, identify your gambling triggers…
What Are Our Underlying Needs?
Our underlying needs consist of the following: belonging and connection, meaning and self-direction, competence, coherence, orientation, and feeling. Let’s delve into each of these six areas…
16 Reasons Being Sober Is Worth It
Being sober is worth it because you can live a life of meaning and purpose, you feel healthier and more vital, you’re thriving rather than just coping with life, and you’re no longer living…
Helping a Son With an Addiction
If your son is struggling with an addiction, how can you help? Don’t blame yourself, set personal boundaries, engage in helpful communication, find a counselor or support group. Each of these strategies will help you be the most helpful version of yourself…
How to be More Flexible In Life
Accept what you can’t change, step back from your thoughts, focus on the present, see the bigger picture, live by your values, and take some risks. Let’s take a closer look at each of these six areas of mental flexibility…
What are the Benefits of Counseling?
Counseling can lead to fewer anxious thoughts, improved mood, insight into self-destructive patterns, increased self-esteem and confidence, a clearer sense of purpose, better focus on the present moment, greater…
What Counseling is Not
Counseling is not just advice, counseling is not cheerleading, counseling is not necessarily easy, counseling is not a quick fix, and counseling is not all the same. Let’s look at each of these areas, one by one, to further dispel some common myths about counseling…
Suicide as an Escape
Suicide is an escape from deep emotional pain, in addition to an escape from the self and the world. It often occurs when one feels hopelessly socially isolated or feels like a burden on others. Let’s unpack what this means and how suicide and addiction operate…
How Does Motivation Work?
Motivation works though a dopaminergic neural process whereby our brains reward us when we carry out a task that meets our internal human need for a sense of autonomy, competence, relatedness, or basic survival needs such as food, safety, or relief from pain…
What is Creative Hopelessness?
The concept of creative hopelessness is a technique in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) designed to help persons give up on ineffective ways of being, helping them open up to a new values-based path forward…
How To Do Motivational Interviewing
Engage them through reflective listening, focus on the main issue they are facing, evoke their reasons for change, and collaborate on a plan for change. In this article, I delve into each of these four processes of motivational interviewing, translating…
How to Improve Psychological Flexibility
Be willing to feel difficult emotions, step back from your thoughts, focus on the present, focus on connection, not comparison, live by your own values, build habits based on your values. These six processes can be divided into three major areas, including…
12 Self-Care Tips for Mental Health
Practice saying “no,” ask for support when needed, let go of toxic relationships, meaningfully connect with others,focus on the present, get clear on your values, take time for yourself, focus on what you are grateful for, incorporate some form of exercise…
What are the Root Causes of Addiction?
Underlying root causes of addiction include trauma, pain, and unmet needs such as purpose, belonging, and self-esteem, which may be amplified by family and genetic factors. Let’s dig into the research and unpack each of these underlying causes…
How Does Stigma Affect Mental Health?
Stigma affects mental health by inflicting further harm on already vulnerable populations. A person may internalize a stigmatizing label, causing further isolation, distrust, and low self-esteem, resulting in increased anxiety or depression. Anxiety is the fight or flight…
Why it’s so Hard to Find a Good Therapist
It can be challenging to find a person who specializes in a specific area of concern. Also, there are many ineffective therapists, so persons seeking therapy need to be critical of the support they are receiving. This article dives into this important issue, helping you…
Does Counselling Work?
Counselling works in the short-term and long-term, so long as it is practiced by a skilled counsellor using evidence-based techniques, in addition to having strong empathic interpersonal abilities to facilitate a supportive therapeutic relationship. As a counsellor, I’ve personally seen many…
8 Types of Denial in Addiction
Some of the most common types of denial consist of the following: minimization, optimism bias, avoidance, control fallacies, mental filtering, normalizing, just-world Fallacy, and externalizing responsibility. Each of these are types of cognitive distortions, logical fallacies, or defense mechanisms…
12 Early Warning Signs of a Relapse
Early warning signs of a relapse consist of isolating oneself, becoming irritable and reactive, becoming dishonest and deceptive, worrying about other people, overconfidence in one’s recovery, shifting back into unhelpful networks, feeling…
The Importance of Having Direction in Life
Having direction allows you to maintain mental resilience during transitions by facilitating a sense of underlying purpose, not dependent on the specific role one occupies. Also, having a sense of direction promotes better mental health and stronger adherence to…
What Does Opioid Withdrawal Feel Like?
Opioid withdrawals are so painful because of the rebound effect. Since opioids reduce one’s ability to feel pain, stopping an opioid once dependent causes the opposite effect, producing severe pain. The rebound effect is a phenomenon that can be applied to…
What Are Some Addictive Behaviors?
Addictive behaviors operate similar to addictive substances, causing craving, loss of control, and continued use despite negative consequences. Addictions are ways of coping with difficult underlying thoughts or feelings in the short-term…
Is Defunding the Police a Good Idea?
Defunding the police may be a good idea if resources are effectively reallocated to preventative measures and mental health first-responders. Defunding the police may also come with risks to public safety if funds are not sufficiently reallocated…
Can You Be Addicted to a Person?
You can be addicted to a person. This is also referred to as relationship addiction, love addiction, or codependency. Each of these consists of seeking external validation to compensate for low self-esteem. Let’s take a closer look at this often overlooked…
When Does Helping Become Enabling?
Helping becomes enabling when you diminish someone else’s responsibility by not allowing them to experience the natural consequences of their behavior. Helping allows someone to gain further responsibility, whereas enabling takes away…
The Benefits of Meditation for Addiction
Meditation can reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and improve emotional regulation, leading to improved coping skills for persons with addiction. This allows for increased behavioral control and spiritual development. Let’s take a look at the science…
Do You Have to Be an Addict to Be an Addiction Counselor?
You do not need to have a history of addiction to be an effective addiction counselor. Also, there are both benefits and risks to entering the field after having personal experience with addiction. Addiction counseling is one of the few professions where…
Why Crystal Meth Is So Dangerous
Crystal meth provides a dopamine spike more powerful than any other drug. This initially makes a person feel invincible, seducing them into centering their life around the drug, leading to extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and an inability to function in day-to-day life…
A Powerful Story of Addiction and Recovery
On the go? Listen to the audio version of the article here: In my previous article, What Does Addiction Feel Like, I shared Stephanie's experience of addiction. Here, I want to share her story of recovery. Her recovery was a six-year process. She spent two years...
What Does Addiction Feel Like?
Addiction feels like a chaotic loss of control, a sense of being worthless, hopeless, isolated, and lost, all while having an intense craving, and only feeling fleeting pleasure. To help understand this feeling in more depth, I interviewed a fellow addiction advocate who is in recovery from an addiction…
How Does Motivational Interviewing Work?
Motivational interviewing works by supporting a client’s sense of intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and a sense of empathic connection to the counselor. Each of these factors leads to increased motivation to change. Let’s take a look at each of these areas…
What Causes People to Change?
People change when motivated by a sense of independence, a sense of competence, and a sense of connection to others. These motivations can be sparked in moments of extreme frustration when a person realizes their current approach is no longer working. This answer is based on the empirically…
The Meaning of the Serenity Prayer
The Serenity Prayer means letting go of situations beyond your control and taking action toward things within your control. It also means being able to know when things are within your control and when things are beyond your control. Let’s take a look at the Serenity Prayer…
When Does Something Become an Addiction?
Something becomes an addiction if it begins to have significant harmful impacts on other areas of your life. In addition, the individual experiences craving, loss of control over the substance or behavior, and is unable to stop despite these harms…
The Only Way Out Is Through
“The only way out is through,” means facing the pain of a situation head-on rather than avoidance through distractions, including alcohol, drugs, or other behaviors such as gambling, gaming, and work. Let’s look at how this is currently playing out and how we can use…
Why Responsibility Is So Important
Responsibility is important because it provides a sense of purpose, in addition to building resilience amidst adversity on an individual and societal level. Like an addiction, sidestepping responsibility may feel good in the short-term, but leads to exponentially worse…
The Impact of Isolation on Addiction
Isolation increases the risk of addiction among individuals using a substance or behavior to cope with the loneliness, boredom, or loss of purpose due to isolation. It is important to note that isolation and loneliness are not synonymous. You can be living in…
Do Positive Affirmations Work? A Look at the Science
Positive affirmations do not work for persons trying to boost self-esteem, change negative thoughts, or escape from painful emotions. The evidence suggests positive affirmations only work in individuals who are already positive or high performing. In this article, I take a closer look…
Does Online Counselling Work?
According to recent evidence, online counselling is effective for treating mental health and addictions. Multiple studies show it is generally as effective as face-to-face counselling and has the benefit of expanding access to mental health and addiction treatment. Let’s take a closer look at the research….
Is Worrying Helpful?
Worrying can be helpful or harmful, depending on the type of worry. It is helpful when focused on practical short-term actions, but it is harmful when focused on abstract ideas about the future that lead to repetitive thoughts and inaction. Let’s take a closer look at what this means…
How to Stop Living in Your Head
Accept what you can’t control, step back from your thoughts, focus on the present moment, remove limiting self-definitions, live by your core values, take action toward what matters. This information is based on the principles of Acceptance and commitment Therapy, supported by over 330 clinical trials…
How Gambling Addiction Works
Gambling addiction works by hijacking the brain’s learning mechanism through random rewards. This means you feel rewarded often enough to keep going, despite increasing losses. The idea of missing a potential win keeps the person focused on trying to get the money back…
Are You Addicted to Your Phone?
On the go? Listen to the audio version of the article here: As smartphones take over the world, you may find yourself asking, "am I addicted to my phone?" Whenever I tell someone I treat internet addiction, they commonly mention how often young people are using their...
Why Are Video Games Addictive?
Although every case is unique, there are general patterns that can help explain why video games are addictive. Video games are addictive because they help meet our basic psychological need for a sense of freedom, purpose/progress, and social connection…
Why is Youth Suicide a Social Problem?
Youth experience social isolation due to the increasing dependence on technological communications at the expense of in-person interactions. Social Connection is a universal human need and one of the major protective factors against suicide…