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
