Should You Quit Drinking for Your Mental Health?

Image by Pesce Huang

Giving up drinking was a slow, organic process for me. I had been drinking increasingly moderately for over a decade, mostly sober with a few glasses of wine at the weekend. But I increasingly felt that my body had just had enough. And the turning point came at a friend’s party, when I was still getting over a bout of Covid. I drank half a glass of prosecco and it tasted weird. I felt weird. And everything in me just said, ‘No!’

I literally felt like I was drinking poison – which, of course, I was. Research increasingly shows that any amount of alcohol, however small, is detrimental to your health. This all sounds a bit dramatic, but it just felt like an epiphany. I knew I had to make a change. At first I thought I would give it a month and see how I felt. ‘Never say never – I might have the odd drink,’ I would say, or ‘I’m just giving it up for a while and let’s see how that goes.’

But as time went on I realised that I was done. Enough. And that this was part of my spiritual journey, wanting to be calm, clear and mindful all the time. I try to live my life according to the five Buddhist precepts, one of which says, essentially, don’t drink or take drugs. And in recent years I have found that, even after one glass of wine, I just didn’t feel quite like me. I said things that felt a bit off, or clunky, or made jokes that didn’t land. And the next day I would wince at the memory, wishing I hadn’t said/done the things I had.

The rock ‘n’ roll years

A little context would be helpful. From the age of 17 I was pretty hedonistic. I grew up in north London and everyone I knew drank, partied and had a bit too much fun. And I kept being hedonistic for decades, sometimes really struggling with my drinking/excessive partying with friends, especially after traumatic events like bereavements and divorce. It was only when I retrained as a therapist, started meditating daily and met my lovely wife, Laura, that I was able put those hedonistic years (what I call the ‘rock ‘n’ roll years’) behind me.

And, although I now see all that madness through the lens of internal family systems – that the parts who drank and partied were just trying to numb my pain the only way they knew how – I still feel a deep sense of regret, even shame about it. Even though I managed to reduce my drinking to normal, moderate, middle-aged levels, something in me knew I just needed to quit.

Getting sober at 56 feels like an act of deep self-compassion. It’s been three months now and I feel great. I love being clear and fresh all the time, especially in the morning. I no longer berate myself for silly comments I made the night before. It just feels… calm. And right. I only wish I had given up sooner.

Should you quit too?

It’s important that I say here, I’m not putting pressure on anyone else to quit the booze. It’s a personal decision and we all have a different relationship with alcohol. You may drink moderately, enjoy a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, and that’s totally fine. Enjoy that Rioja!

But for people like me – with a history of childhood trauma and decades of working on my mental health – I do think sobriety is a powerful, healing choice. At 56 I’m just done with beating myself up. I have engaged in more than enough of that for one lifetime! My Critic can take a well-deserved rest too.

I still have parts which are very addictive, so have a compulsive relationship with other things – coffee, sugar, work, tech. I’m working on those, but I reckon one thing at a time. Let me bed in this newfound sober lifestyle first, because although it’s mostly easy, there are definitely wobbles and moments when it feels a bit tough. I’m off to Barcelona this weekend, which was always party central back in those crazy years, so let’s see how I manage that! I’m sure it will be fine, but it’s amazing how much context matters – being with the people you used to party with, or going to places that have somewhat hazy/regret-filled memories. It will be good to have fun and come back with brand-new, entirely clear, positive memories to replace them.

If you do struggle with addiction, to alcohol or anything else, I strongly recommend the IFS approach to treatment. It’s warm, kind and accepting – as well as offering a revolutionary way of thinking about and managing addiction of all kinds. My colleague and dear friend Claire van den Bosch is a brilliant therapist, thinker and teacher, as well as being a leading expert in this area, so do check out her site at www.atimetoheal.london

And whatever path you choose in healing your addictive processes, as they are called in IFS, I wish you love and strength on your journey,

Dan ❤️

A More Compassionate Way to Think About Addiction

Image by Benjamin DeYoung

Do you struggle with addiction or compulsive behaviour? Many of us do, whether that’s drinking a bit too much wine, too often, eating more chocolate than we would like, or impulsively buying stuff we don’t really need. Our use of substances and activities can range from mild and fairly benign, like a bit too much chocolate, to severe and potentially dangerous, like using heroin.

Whether you are at the mild or severe end of this spectrum, addiction is probably something you have heard a lot about, either through your own research, from a health professional or in the media. And much of the information we get about addiction can, in my opinion, be both unhelpful and stigmatising. It can also be a bit old-fashioned, based on 20th-century ideas about the mind and brain that don’t stand up well to the latest research/insights from neuroscience and psychology.

But there is another, newer way to think about addiction. This approach is kind, compassionate and understanding of the reasons why we might misuse substances or activities, whether it’s smoking, over-eating, gambling, taking recreational drugs, drinking heavily or compulsively shopping. I have found this approach a game-changer in terms of helping my clients and understanding my own behaviour, especially when I was younger and, let’s say, not as sober and sensible as I am now!

Addiction = pain-relief

In order to understand why we become addicted to things, you first need to understand that our mind is made up of many subpersonalities or parts, with different functions for us, internally. I won’t go into detail about that here, as I have written about it extensively elsewhere, but my favourite parts-based model is internal family systems (IFS). In IFS, there are two main types of parts. You have young ones who hold painful memories, thoughts and feelings from that time in your life (so a four-year-old part, an eight-year-old part, and so on). And protectors, whose job it is to make sure those young parts never get hurt again.

These protectors are then divided into managers, who are hard-working, proactive and strategic – your Worrier is a typical manager, trying to anticipate bad things and help you avoid them. And firefighters, who are the opposite – they are reactive and want to get rid of the pain as quickly as possible, with no thought given to the consequences.

In IFS, addiction – or more accurately, addictive processes – is primarily about the firefighters. So a young part of you is in some kind of pain, feeling overwhelming emotions like stress, anxiety, loneliness, shame or anger. And the firefighter wants to put out the fire of painful feelings, by any means necessary. So firefighters might make you smoke weed, drink whiskey, use pornography, zone out with games on your phone, help you detach/dissociate from your feelings, or use a virtually limitless range of strategies to numb, distract or soothe the anguished young part.

And it works, right? That is why we have a glass of wine or two when we are stressed after a long day. Or go for a cigarette/vape break at work when we’re buckling under the weight of our workload. And it’s why people get addicted to heroin and other opioids, because they are so damn (and dangerously) effective at numbing physical and emotional pain.

Compassion for the firefighters

If you want to change your own addictive processes, understanding that any kind of addictive process is essentially the same, inside, and that they just vary in terms of severity, is step one. Then understanding that it’s all about getting rid of/distracting yourself from pain, is step two. And the admittedly tricky final step is having compassion for the parts of you that make you do things that can be harmful or downright dangerous.

As I often say to my clients, it’s helpful to separate the intention (soothing your pain) from the method or behaviour (drinking alcohol, etc). Because however damaging the method, the intention is always good. And when we speak to these firefighter parts, we get how desperate they to help – and the fact that they use the only tools they have available to them.

Learning to speak to them with compassion – rather than judgement and frustration, as we typically do – helps them soften and eventually change. And this change is long-term, because we have buy-in from every part of you, rather than the yo-yo dieting or swinging between sobriety and relapse we see so often with more traditional treatment approaches.

If you would like to find out more about this approach to healing your parts, try my Fire Drill: IFS Meditation. This will help you enter into a more compassionate and helpful dialogue with any part of you, even the more extreme and ‘difficult’ ones.

I hope it helps – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

You Need to Watch Dele Alli’s Powerful Interview About Trauma & Addiction

Following on from my last post, about men’s mental health, this is such a powerful interview. As a Spurs fan I have a lot of love for Dele – such a great player and obviously a guy with a very traumatic past. He was adopted and was in all sorts of trouble as a teenager, so this interview is about that and his recent struggles with addiction as the trauma resurfaced.

Please watch and share with any of your male clients/friends/family members who struggle to open up and keep their feelings locked away inside.

And big love to Dele. It took such courage to open up like this.

Dan

Book Your Place on Our Overcoming Addiction Workshop in London this April

If you struggle with addiction or compulsive behaviours, book your place on a one-day, in-person workshop co-presented by Dan Roberts, Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Founder of Heal Your Trauma and Claire van den Bosch, Psychotherapist, addiction expert and Clinical Director of Heal Your Trauma. Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle is the latest in a series of monthly Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops. 

This event, which will be both highly informative and experiential, will take place from 10.30am-4.30pm on Saturday 29th April 2023. It will be held at The Gestalt Centre, near King’s Cross in Central London. The Gestalt Centre is easily reached by bus, Tube or mainline rail, being a 10-minute walk from King’s Cross Station.

This event has a limited number of free places available if you need them – or please choose the Reduced-Fee Ticket or Supporter Ticket options when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. Every penny we receive, after covering expenses, is invested in the project so we can help as many people as possible with their mental health.

Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle features teaching from us, combined with powerful individual and group exercises, to help you feel more centred and able to support the parts of you that have learned to find solutions with addictive or compulsive behaviours. You will also have the chance, throughout the day, to put your questions to Dan Roberts and Claire van den Bosch, leading experts on trauma, mental health and addiction.

In this powerful, highly experiential workshop you will learn:

• Why trauma is often a crucial factor in addiction, as people with a trauma history often have a ‘dysregulated’ nervous system, which makes you more reactive/impulsive and so more likely to use substances/behaviours to numb painful emotions, as well as to experience the stimulation of feeling alive 

• The key role of core developmental needs in addiction and how – when these needs are not met, for any reason - you are more vulnerable to addiction in later life

• How these unmet developmental needs create painful ‘schemas’, which play a key role in the addictive cycle

• How, through the eyes of Internal Family Systems, trauma and unmet developmental needs prompt lonely, young un-resourced parts of us to learn how to soothe distress in the only ways available at the time

• How in turn other lonely, young un-resourced parts of us try to mitigate the negative consequences of addictive behaviours and how this internal battle ends up feeling stuck and looping

• The powerful insights about addictive cycles offered by the Internal Family Systems model, which teaches us that when wounded young parts are triggered, protective parts rush in to try to numb the pain as quickly as possible, using various substances or behaviours

• The wide range of substances and behaviours we can class as addictive/compulsive, including alcohol, prescription/recreational drugs, junk foods, sex and pornography, excessive phone/social media use, gambling, shopping, working, thinking, smoking and many more – and how common and human it is to have these patterns

• How some, if not all addictions need to also be understood from the perspective of hijacked brain chemistry and behavioural conditioning in ways that leave even the most determined of us experiencing powerlessness

• The central and painful role of shame in the addictive cycle and how compassion is both possible and essential for recovery

• How to use a selection of experiential exercises – such as Compassionate Breathing, and 4-7-8 Breathing, inner dialogue, guided meditations and imagery, trigger diaries and more – to help you feel calmer/regulate your nervous system, making you more able to respond wisely to cravings and find new, more effective and healthier ways to calm yourself when stressed, anxious, upset or generally triggered

Don’t miss this chance to learn from two leading trauma therapists and experts on mental health, wellbeing and addiction – book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Don’t Miss Our Overcoming Addiction Workshop in London – 26th November 2022

If you struggle with addiction or compulsive behaviours, book your place on a one-day, in-person workshop co-presented by Dan Roberts, Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Founder of Heal Your Trauma and Claire van den Bosch, UKCP-accredited Psychotherapist and an expert on treating addiction. Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle is the latest in a series of regular Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops throughout 2022. 

This event, which will be both highly informative and experiential, will take place from 10.30am-4.30pm on Saturday 26th November 2022. It will be held at The Gestalt Centre, near King’s Cross in Central London. The Gestalt Centre is easily reached by bus, Tube or mainline rail, being a 10-minute walk from King’s Cross Station.

This event is booking up fast, so don’t miss this chance to learn from two leading trauma therapists and experts on mental health, wellbeing and addiction – watch the video for more information and book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Come to My Overcoming Addiction Workshop in London on 26th November 2022

A Compassionate Approach to Overcoming Addiction

When Dan and I decided to run a workshop together on Overcoming Addiction I felt extremely excited! Dan has become one of my most respected colleagues and a dear friend – and I'd collaborate with him on a workshop about tractors if he asked me to.

But this topic is also one I'm passionate about – and understanding addictive processes and supporting other so-called addicts like me on their healing journey is probably my life's deepest purpose, at least when I'm not on my motorbike.

I've been professionally upfront about my status as a recovering addict for around 10 years, because I was ‘raised’ in 12-Step recovery where we support one another through sharing our own experience, strength and hope so others can identify and begin to be freed from isolation and shame, which are often such painful aspects of living with addictive struggles.   

The times have changed so much when it comes to common perceptions of addiction, but not as much as I would wish. I still meet people who see addicts as lacking willpower and being weak including, very often, the person with the addictive struggle themselves. Being able to understand some of the basic brain science of powerlessness and behavioural conditioning that puts so many behaviours out of the reach of conscious control is essential if we're going to have a chance of changing our patterns. 

Childhood distress and addiction

So is being able to understand the role of childhood distress. The distress can be dramatic, obvious experiences that are the easiest for us to label as ‘trauma’ – and also the quiet, understated and lonely experiences of lack. We lack the kinds of good-enough caretaking that is required by the human organism (and many other mammals) for the development of a well-regulated nervous system and the acquisition of adaptive behavioural strategies for navigating the minefield of life. 

Understanding the role of trauma in the development of addiction isn't a blame-focused witch-hunt. Nine times out of 10 our caregivers were doing the best they could with their own struggling nervous systems, their own lack of resources and their inherited beliefs about parenting. Cultivating a victim-mindset is no more productive in our desire to heal than maintaining a stance of misguided self-shaming. 

But understanding the damage sustained by our still-tender nervous systems and psyches can facilitate the opening of our hearts to ourselves, including all the ways we’ve learned to cope, and from there can arise the feelings of empowerment to take responsibility for our recovery in ways that really work. 

And we are learning more and more about the ways that really work. The power of psychological approaches like Schema Therapy, Internal Family Systems work, Compassion-Focused Mindfulness, and theoretical frameworks like the framework of Core Developmental Needs, is becoming available to more and more struggling humans than ever before, as we strive to find ways of living in our amazing and challenging world with integrity, respect, joy, purpose and a growing sense of peace. 

Healing for everyone, everywhere

One of the reasons I love Dan and his work so much is that he believes in doing what he can to make healing available to as many people as possible, regardless of their financial means and especially when one-to-one, trauma-informed therapy may be inaccessible. I believe in this vision. I also believe, and I know Dan does too, in the power of connection and community.

Being able to create a day-long workshop for a group of humans all struggling in similar ways, where they can experience the power of a group, as well as the benefits of well-trained and experienced professionals – that really, really lights me up. 

If you struggle with addiction or compulsive behaviours, we'd both love to welcome you to our one-day workshop which we're designing to be both highly informative and experiential. It will take place from 10.30am-4.30pm on Saturday 26th November 2022 at the Gestalt Centre, near King’s Cross in Central London. In keeping with the Heal Your Trauma vision, the workshop will have a limited number of places available for free, if you are struggling financially for any reason.

Otherwise, you can choose the Donation Ticket option to support the Heal Your Trauma project. All donations we receive, after covering expenses, go to support the project and make sure that all of our content is available to everyone, everywhere. You can find the booking page here.

May you be well, and may you be free of suffering and the causes of that suffering.

Love,

Claire

•Claire van den Bosch is a UKCP-accredited psychotherapist and an expert on healing trauma and addiction. Find out more about Claire at atimetoheal.london

What is the Detached Self-Soother Mode in Schema Therapy?

Image by Max Tutak

One of the key aspects of schema therapy is working with people’s ‘modes’, which are different sides of their personality that may serve a particular purpose for them. Some of these are known as ‘coping modes’, because they help us cope with difficult thoughts and feelings, interpersonal problems, or stressful events or situations.

And a common coping mode is the Detached Self-Soother, which helps us detach from our painful feelings or cope with a tough situation using a substance or behaviour that is numbing or soothing.

In the UK, our go-to strategy for self-soothing is with alcohol. And, of course, the odd beer or glass of wine with dinner is not a problem at all – I like a nice glass of red myself at the weekend. It’s just when that glass turns into a bottle, or the occasional pint with friends becomes four or five pints, then a daily habit, or in the worst case we find ourselves sliding into addiction.

We can also use behaviours or activities to self-soothe, such as spending hours on Facebook or Instagram; compulsively shopping; gambling; computer games; or endlessly surfing the Web or slumping in front of the TV. Again, none of these activities are bad per se – it’s all about how much we do them and why.

Escaping painful feelings

When we detach with this mode, one of the main problems is that we are avoiding our feelings – and in schema therapy we see that as ignoring/silencing our Vulnerable Child mode. This psychologically young, vulnerable part of us needs attending to, not ignoring. For example, if you feel sad or lonely because you don’t have a partner, it’s important to acknowledge the loneliness of your Vulnerable Child and help him/her feel better by trying to meet someone you can connect to.

Or if you feel really anxious about leaving the house, because you’re agoraphobic, it’s helpful to listen to and try to soothe/reassure your Vulnerable Child, then seek professional help if you need it to overcome your problem.

In neither case would it be helpful to compulsively avoid or ignore your feelings, numbing yourself with alcohol or distracting yourself with a Facebook binge. It’s important to remember that you don’t need to feel bad or guilty for self-soothing in this way. We all have to find ways of coping with painful feelings – and many of us do so using some form of this mode.

At the same time, just because we have done something habitually for a long time doesn’t make it a good idea, or mean we can’t seek to change.

Warm wishes,

Dan