Addiction Counselling

Addiction Counselling is about learning strategies and coping skills to overcome and treat compulsive disorders and a wide range of unhelpful behaviours including substance misuse. Examples can include problems with alcohol, heroin and cocaine, or polysubstance abuse including prescription medications or amphetamines etc. 

People can develop many different addictions including compulsive shopping, gambling, pornography and overeating, not to mention the growing number of addictions associated with the digital age including; gaming, internet addiction, social media and dating apps, all of which can negatively affect a person's quality of life exponentially. 

 In some instances people may struggle with a combination of substance addictions and behavioural addictions. 

What is Addiction?

 According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine; "Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences".  

Addiction often co-occurs with underlying emotional and mental health issues, all of which require addressing when looking to manage addictive behaviours or achieve long-term abstinence.

Addiction Counselling is compatible with other substance misuse treatments including holistic therapies and Twelve Step Facilitation.

Psychotherapy is a term used generally to describe long-term counselling work with an experienced therapist where unlike counselling which aims to develop coping skills, psychotherapy  looks to heal the root causes of psychopathology which may include trauma, childhood abuse, attachment disorders or mental health problems. 

Couples' counselling  aims to provide a safe, neutral environment for people to explore dysfunctional patterns of behaviour within relationships. There may be many goals of couples' counselling including learning to communicate better, gaining understanding of each others' perspectives, overcoming resentments and hurts or ending a relationship amicably. 

Group therapy is an important part of addiction treatment where individuals learn to develop and expand their social support networks through improving interpersonal skills. Working within a therapist led group consisting of people affected with similar issues can enable identification,  provide insight, learning and different perspectives around ways of managing difficult situations and experiences.