Tips and Tricks For Avoiding Love Addiction Now And In The Future

Question

Dr. Peele,

Do you have tips and tricks for avoiding “love addiction” urges and relapses?

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Dr. Peele’s Answer

As a rule of thumb, we are not the best source for “how I do I resist addictive urges” hints. We’re not against such hints. We just feel that the main target is elsewhere.

Our thinking runs this way. YOU know the tracks of your life, the sources of your urges, the kinds of cognitive “tricks” that will work best for you.

Put simply, we can’t know the feelings you have that driven you to love addiction better than you. We are not Gabor-like gurus who can dig into your psyche and pull out a plumb: “Here it is!”

So in an individual session, we would try to stir the teacup of your mind for YOU to come up with these. We shoot for big game. We would ask about — and work to help you create — connections to yourself and the world that would reinforce your taking a life stand against addiction.

Questions like:

• What are you proudest about in yourself?
• What are the best relationships — or relationship moments — you have had?
• How were you feeling/situated when you created these relationships/moments?
• How did you feel when you were living with them?
• Can you recreate those feelings/moments? How?
• What, on the other hand, causes you to short-circuit these things in the throes of “love”?
• Think of some bad moments/relationships where those downsides came into full view/effect.
• Describe how you feel about yourself right now, at your best, at your worst, when you succumb to addiction.

Describe how you see yourself in the universe. What is your role on earth, in life, in YOUR life, in your most valued relationships (with children, parents, friends, coworkers, partners)?

WALLOW in those good feelings; IMAGINE how to expand them, make them more of yourself, of your consciousness, of your world. That is YOU!

Yours,
Stanton

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