Are you suffering from an Addiction or Compulsion?
If so, please read on to learn how Emotional Connection can heal you once and for all, putting the power in your own hands and employing a consistently effective method missing entirely from the most common current approaches.
Much of the material on this page is drawn from The One Thing Holding You Back.
If you have any questions at all about this approach, please contact me by email.
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In counseling hundreds of people about their addictions and compulsions, I’ve come to my own description of the phenomenon that encompasses them both: The continuous use of any substance or activity to create disconnection from one’s emotions. Let me put that another way—with the practice of emotional connection, virtually all addictions and compulsions cease.
That doesn’t mean people never use the substance or partake in the activity again. Instead, it means they become able to choose if, when, and how to do so with complete conscious awareness. They go from being irresponsible to responsible, from powerless to powerful.
At first this may seem like a controversial claim. Isn’t addiction a disease? Isn’t the first step in every Twelve Step program to admit that we’re completely powerless over our addiction? The answer to both questions is yes. But the root condition underlying the disease is emotional disconnection, and we’re only powerless as long as we remain in that condition.
New definition for Addiction and Compulsion: The continuous use of any substance or activity to create disconnection from one’s emotions.
Addictions and compulsions are part of the primitive brain’s arsenal for keeping us “safe” from unwanted emotions, and they operate by creating a temporary but potent protective effect. They protect us specifically from the emotional reality of any moment. Unfortunately, this effect grows less successful over time, while the personal fallout continues to mount.
Addiction: A Closer Look
Many years ago, Alan quit drinking. But in the process he developed a compensatory smoking problem and essentially traded one addiction for another.
I asked Alan to tell me how the decision to have each cigarette occurred for him. He described a nearly universal experience related to all varieties of addiction. First a switch went off in his mind, alerting him that it was time to partake. After that it was a done deal, whether he actually partook right away or hours later, and also whether the current craving seemed more physical or emotional.
Would it be possible, I wondered, for Alan to create a small space between the switch going off and the decision being made. What if he got the internal message, “You’re going to have a cigarette,” and his response was, “Okay, maybe, but let’s put off the final decision for a little bit.”
Note: This practice is called “Done Deal Delay.” You can read more about it here. It’s described in depth in The One Thing Holding You Back.
Done Deal Delay replaces will power with self-acceptance. With will power, one part of us fights against another, such as the part that wants to quit smoking doing battle against the part that doesn’t. This can work for a time, but almost always with a subsequent “pushback,” in which the defeated part of us finds a way to get expressed.
Will power never works. Self-acceptance always does.
With self-acceptance, we’re able to make decisions that are peacefully sustainable because no parts get banished and therefore no pushback is necessary.
Note: You can read more about Self-Acceptance in The One Thing Holding You Back.
Next, I introduced Alan to what I call the “No Fail Zone,” which is crucial for handling those moments when surfing our sensations becomes overwhelming and we just can’t continue. When employing the no fail zone, we view every such experience not as a problem but instead as an opportunity. In all such instances an emotion appears that is especially challenging for us to feel. Provided with this information, we’re now alert and prepared for the next time it shows up. When it does, we take special care to go slower and get more microscopic.
Note: You can read more about the No Fail Zone in The One Thing Holding You Back.
The next week, Alan returned for his appointment with great excitement. He was finding, to his surprise, that he could often keep surfing his emotions after the urge to smoke not just minutes but hours. He didn’t require special time for this, apart from his other life activities, but rather could check in and surf the emotional waves right alongside daily life. He still smoked, but much less, and the pull of the cigarettes was diminishing significantly.
Inspired by these developments, I asked Alan for an update on his experience in the No Fail Zone. He told me that what usually tripped him up was a sense of panic. This panic arose as an insistent command—“Can’t be here. Gotta get away. Gotta run.”
When he got slower and more microscopic, the panic projected internal images of Alan as a child, cowering in the bathroom as his alcoholic father rampaged through the house. Alan was starting to see that while his father never actually hurt him, the legacy of this fear had lingered for years.
Feeling this emotion fully after so long wasn’t easy, and all he could currently take was about five seconds at a time. Those five seconds had the power to be life changing, I promised Alan, and they would increase exponentially if he kept at it.
Alan did keep at it. At the time of this writing he’s been nearly smoke-free for three years. On the few occasions that he has smoked, it didn’t lead to “hitting bottom” or anything similar. Within a day or two, he was able to employ the No Fail Zone to learn what was really happening.
He could only feel his hurt for about five seconds at a time. But those five seconds had the power to be life changing.
These times brought Alan into contact not just with the fear, but also with another core emotion—anger. He met this anger with the advanced techniques for feeling described in Chapter Six of The One Thing Holding You Back, especially Breathe Into It and Posture-Movement-Sound.
It left him raw, but also more alive and less reactive. In addition, his wife and kids came to see a huge difference in his everyday demeanor. He grew softer, much more approachable. His newfound self-acceptance, to their relief and delight, was leading him to greater acceptance of them as well.