Understanding and working with addiction, compulsion and dependency; a 6-part guide for addicts, enablers and therapists

“Choosing the temporary discomforts of desire over the permanent discomforts of possession”

Part I VIOLENT PLEASURES ARE RELIEFS OF PAIN Each one of us is prone to addiction or dependency to a greater or lesser degree. Part I is about understanding why this is so.

Part II SOME ADDICTIONS FEEL PHYSICAL, BUT ALL ADDICTIONS ARE MENTAL Addiction is a subject for study. Addicting is something we do. Part II follows the bodymind process of becoming addicted as a basis for deciding where we wish to go next.

PART III THE PHYSICIAN’S PROVIDER How as therapists and facilitators do we position ourselves in relation to addictive clients? How does language affect our beliefs and practices? Part III discusses the difference between intervening and interfering, and between conscious and unconscious outcome forming. It suggests a way to align ourselves with the client’s outcome and to activate change without resorting to supposition, interpretation or suggestion.

PART IV THE LIMIT OF DESIRES As addicts we give energy to a system that encourages us to play victim and persecutor in turn. Part IV examines the differences between ‘quitting’ and ‘controlling’. The continuum of progression from simple desire to complex need to total possession is explored.

PART V ADDICTIVE CONTRADICTIONS Part V deconstructs typically addictive double-binds and dualities, including the familiar dilemma of being caught between aversion (‘I must give up X’) and attraction (‘I can’t give up X’). Eight approaches to resolving duality thinking are identified and explained

PART VI AUDITING FOR X Unscrambles haphazard approaches to client assessment and offers a systematic audit for facilitators of all kinds, including self-helpers, to assess addictions, compulsions, and dependencies and to work successfully with them through language as an alternative to medical means. The audit is arranged in four frames: person, possession, pattern, and preference:
Person: how much of the client is involved, and where?
Possession: what is the nature of the client's attachment?
Pattern: how do the client's life patterns and internal patterns relate?
Preference: what choices does the client have?

Most of us can learn to move from addictive state to non-addictive state. Those uncertain about the path to take will find the aids to navigation here useful both theoretically and practically. We may all – addicts and enablers, therapists and clients alike – learn to deal with the occasional discomforts of desire rather than the permanent discomforts of possession.

Philip Harland is a Clean Language psychotherapist and author of ‘Trust Me, I’m the Patient: Clean Language, Metaphor, and the New Psychology of Change’; ‘The Power of Six, A Six Part Guide to Self Knowledge’; ‘Resolving Problem Patterns with Clean Language and Autogenic Metaphor’; and ‘How The Brain Feels: working with Emotion and Cognition’. All published by Wayfinder Press.

For more on these books go to Amazon or to www.wayfinderpress.co.uk