8 Signs of Love Addiction – How to Tell If You Are Addicted to Love & How to Beat it!

Love addiction is mainly dependent on love relationships and a lot of dependencies. Though the beginning stages are all romantic but eventually when the dependency develops, the relationship also strains and it then turns the relationship to the love addiction stage wherein one partner who loves more or is under the impression of loving the other more becomes the love addict, and the other one becomes the love avoidant. Besides, the love addict tends to fall in love quickly with every person as he walks around with his heart on the sleeve. He eventually gets into a relationship and starts dominating the other person under the pretext of love and passion. Most of the time they get into a relationship so that they can get over the pain they had gone through in their childhood.

Healing the Roots of Women’s Sexual and Relational Struggles

Girls are often born into this world surrounded by messages about who they are supposed to be, and who they should become; Be cute.  Smile.  Be a nice girl.  Just give them a hug.  Don’t make a fuss.  Suck in your belly.  Be the ideal body type.  Look sexy.  Stay pure and innocent.  Be good in bed.  You can have it all if you do it this way.

Is it any wonder why girls and women struggle with feeling comfortable in their own skin?  There is such a deep and contradictory connection between the messages they receive about their bodies, their emotional expression, and how to be sexual and relational.  Girls and women are set up to be at odds with themselves inside—to question their own experience and reality within.

Those messages are tiny ruptures in the attachments girls and women have with the people conveying them.  They’re conveyed through words or examples.  Subtle hurts, that develop insecurities.  They may be layered on top of even more abandoning or abusing experiences from family members, friends, teachers, coaches, spiritual authorities, leaders and authority figures, intimate partners, bosses, colleagues, and strangers.

• 1 out of 3 girls will be sexually abused before they reach age 18 (dosomething.org, 2018)
• 1 in 3 women ages 18 to 34 has been sexually harassed at work (timesupnow.com, 2018)
• 80% of 21-year-olds abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder (dosomething.org, 2018)

The “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” movements of today are reflective of what many girls and women have long known; that it’s difficult to move through the world without having your body, sexuality, identity, and more be objectified or used in some way.  These movements encourage individuals to step out of isolation, into shared truth and support and are messages that are useful for all.

Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) shows that women who experienced these messages, abandonments, and/or abuses when they were younger, are very likely to struggle with being sexual and relational as adults. 

“Among individuals with a history of adverse childhood experiences, risky sexual behavior may represent their attempts to achieve intimate interpersonal connections. Having grown up in families unable to provide needed protection, such individuals may be unprepared to protect themselves and may underestimate the risks they take in their attempts to achieve intimacy” (Hillis, Andra, Felitti, & Marchbanks, 2001).

These childhood experiences can develop into adult intimacy issues ranging on a spectrum from attachment disorders (over- or under-connecting with others) to sex and love addiction issues (confusing sex with love, being compulsively sexual, fearing and avoiding sex, inconsistent boundaries in and around sex, and more).  Girls experience early life attachment ruptures and carry them into womanhood.  Adverse childhood experiences shape how women see themselves, see the world around them and see themselves in relationship to the world.  They may find themselves with unconscious, seemingly body-driven urges to over-connect with some people, and under-connect or wall off with others.  They may even find themselves seeking validation and closeness from people and situations that could cause further hurt, as they strive to fill unmet needs from childhood.  Sometimes the only way for a woman to feel a sense of power and control over the world that has exploited her is to become the exploiter of herself—of her body, emotional expression, and how she is sexual and relational. This is often how eating disorder and sex addiction issues arise. 

In sex addiction, women essentially reenact the trauma they’ve survived, or try to avoid more of that trauma, by using their bodies. 

A woman may use the sex appeal she’s been taught to develop, to build intrigue with a sexual or relational partner, and have a brief encounter seemingly without strings attached by remaining emotionally walled off in an attempt to avoid possible hurt.  She may do this repeatedly. 

For the same intention, a woman may get involved with a partner who’s already involved in a primary relationship, lending itself to limited emotional entanglement for her. 

Or a woman may feel over-connected emotionally to a long-term relationship partner who gives her more affection and attention than she can handle.  It feels engulfing and unsafe but she doesn’t want to make a fuss like she was taught.  So she may need to get away to breathe and act out in an affair which seems simpler. 

Or a woman may find masturbation as a way to soothe herself, without having to be relational with others—especially if she has a negative body image—yet find herself needing more frequency and intensity to feel the same degree of soothing.  She may need to use a substance or another process to take the edge off being sexual because she feels scared, ashamed, or overwhelmed. 

And so many other examples.

These types of sexual and relational experiences are just an illusion of power and control, of course, because in trauma reenactment and addiction, women are not operating from the frontal cortex of the brain where logic and intentionality live.  Instead, they are very much out of control or hijacked, by the limbic brain that holds implicit memories, drives, distorted perceptions, and survival modes of fight/flight/freeze.  They’re unable to decipher what their body and emotions truly tell them.  All the messages, abandonments, and/or abuses they’ve carried are a barrier to their true needs.  Women with this lifelong set-up are bound by the type of soothing and relief that sexual and relational acting out seems to provide, however brief.  This brings susceptibility for unsafe sex, sex with unsafe partners, exploiting others and being exploited by others, infidelity, and more. At the root, it is a woman’s best attempt to feel comfortable in her own skin, while actually sacrificing that very body which is her home.

Devastating as this cycle is, there is hope.

Just as women’s realities within are shaped by hurts, their realities can also be shaped by healing and recovery.

Ironically, healing and recovery for women’s sex addiction is rooted where the seeds of the hurts began—in the body, emotional expression, and sexual and relational attachment templates.  Working slowly, and with a strong, safe, and qualified support system, women can explore the early messages, abandonments, and/or abuses they’ve carried.  Expert therapists, somatic and experiential practitioners, 12 Step fellowships, and groups of women who have walked this path themselves are so valuable; this is a somatic healing process, using the body’s inner wisdom as a guide—attuning to grief, heartache, suppressed anger, and a core of shame and worthlessness that is often old and familiar.  Experientially, this history can be moved through to bring shifts from the inside out. Honoring and acknowledging what has happened.  Using experiential processes to move carried toxicity out of her worldview in a fully embodied way.  Developing healthy attachments that provide repair.  And addressing real and tangible boundaries to change her future.  This is a recovering path built on a woman’s newly developing trust in herself and her reality within.  This is a path that allows a woman who has survived struggle to overcome the messages and hurts and find comfort in her own skin as well as recognition that she is deeply worthy of that comfort and the boundaries to protect it.  This is freedom from the inside out.

Journey of a Woman’s Heart: Finding True Intimacy is a five-day intensive therapeutic workshop offered at the Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows designed to cultivate this healing and recovery.  Women are supported as they work through the roots of their sexual and relational struggles, where the seeds of the hurts began.  Identifying traumatic messages, abandonments, and/or abuses, and how they have sacrificed their own bodies and spirits through sexual and relational patterns in attempts to manage it all, is at the heart of this workshop.  The process is led by an experienced therapist in a small group of up to six participants to maximize the healing power of walking alongside others and moving out of isolation toward shared freedom.  For more details, call 866-582-9850.

References:

11 Facts about child abuse.  Retrieved January 2018 from http://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-child-abuse.

Cosmopolitan survey of 2,235 full and part-time female employees, 2015.  Retrieved January 2018 from http://www.timesupnow.com.

Hillis SD, Andra RF, Felitti VJ, Marchbanks PA.  Adverse childhood experiences and sexual risk behaviors in women: a retrospective cohort study.  Fam Plann Perspec.  2001 Sep-Oct;33(5):206-11.  PMID: 11589541.

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Workshops For Self Improvement

Rio Retreat is a part of The Meadows organizes a different workshop for mental health and healing. Men and Women respond to everything differently as they are programmed differently. It is a 3-days Men’s way professional development workshop offers practical guidance and tools for professionals working with men in navigating these challenging areas. Many treatment professionals may be unintentionally re-traumatizing male participants, thereby increasing their risk of failure in the program.

A Unique Equine Experience

Content Source : Trauma Retreat Centers

"The Spirit Equine program of Colleen DeRango and Buddy Uldrickson is at the forefront of therapies for trauma and the healing of emotional wounds. Buddy’s calm, centered, presence, his immense horsemanship, and Colleen’s organic mastery of Somatic Experiencing™ have partnered to create a magical and transformative experience. I recommend this powerful program without reservation."

~ Peter A Levine, PhD, Developer of Somatic Experiencing , Senior Fellow and clinical consultant for the Meadows and author of Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice

Details

This workshop is held on a scenic rustic ranch in Wickenburg, AZ. Attendees will not be riding; they will be provided at time of registration with a list of what to bring. This workshop runs Monday through Friday, from 7:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with an hour lunch break. A Five- and Three-day workshop options that runs 7:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. are available.

Mutual Respect and The Power of Intimacy

Power is a very interesting phenomenon. I remember having numerous conversations about the complex intersection of power and relationships in graduate school. There was a lot of confusion as to what exactly power even is.
One of the most common misunderstandings about power is that it is a linear phenomenon. In fact, power comes at us from numerous sources all of the time.

The second most common misunderstanding is that power is a zero-sum game— either you have it or I have it. And whatever you have, I can’t have, and vice-versa. This fundamentally flawed way of thinking about power greatly impacts our experiences in relationships.

There are two main ways we experience power in our relationships: power with and power over (you have power over someone else or some else has power over you). The Man Rules say that real men have power and are never weak or powerless. Therefore, from a very early age, young boys are encouraged to find power over – power over others, power over their feelings, and power over themselves.

The Woman Rules say that women should be cooperative, passive, nurturing, selfless, and not too strong. Therefore, from a very early age, young girls are encouraged to find power with. Women are expected to share power with others even if it puts them at a disadvantage; even when it means they have to give up their own power.

And that is the rub in so many heterosexual relationships.

Making Peace with Power

You cannot have a relationship that doesn’t involve a complex interaction with power. What some people don’t often consider is that power can be healthy. In fact, it is an essential part of the day-to-day human experience.

To help us explore the complexity of power in relationships, we can look to the classic Karpman drama triangle which illustrates the shifting, and sometimes destructive, roles of persecutor, rescuer, and victim that people play in relational conflicts. In this “drama triangle” each person involved in a conflict experiences and acts out all of these roles at different times. The role we take on can determine how we perceive our partners, interpret their behavior, and interact with them.

The reason these triangles arise, and often endure, is that each person, regardless of their role, finds that they get their unspoken, and often unconscious, psychological needs met by playing these roles—roles which they most likely originally “perfected” through the power dynamic that played out within their family as a child.

Whether they play the victim or persecutor, or some combination of all three roles, in the end, each person feels justified in acting upon their needs. Feeling satisfied, they often conveniently fail to acknowledge the dysfunctional ways they tend to go about getting their needs met, or the harm that is being done as a result to themselves, their partners, or any third parties (like children) who may be directly or indirectly involved in their conflict.

When there are times of disconnection in the relationship and even if, for whatever reason, there is a loss of respect between partners, intimacy can only be restored in the space of mutuality. We have to move away from the desire to have power over our partners toward the experience of having power with them. When we are able to uncover how our emotional needs arise from our childhood trauma, and release some of that pain, we have the ability to break free from the drama triangle and build an intimate and nurturing environment of mutual respect. Is it easier to let our relationships fall into a series of power plays or to maintain a space of mutual respect? I would suggest the former.

We have to build up our emotional and spiritual muscle in order to truly listen to our partners and maintain respect, especially when they are being their very human and imperfect selves and not doing what we want them to do or being who we want them to be.

Source Link : Mutual Respect

Tending the Garden of Our Souls

The girl was anxious, wanting to get back to the rose bush and save it from being ravaged by the beetle that was just doing what a beetle does. Already the pattern of codependence was set up. There I was at such a young age trying to stop the destruction that seemed an inevitable pattern of my family. As though the hunger of my fearful unhappy parents were just doing what they did to survive and the child was the rose. The analogy was daunting.

Tending to the garden of our soul is not something we think about often. But Spirit, in it's divine wisdom, set up a situation for me to heal the foundation of my roots as well as protect how I bloom.

A few months ago I was getting ready to set course with a production company on a project when Spirit told me, "We want you to heal some of your history." Hum, well, of course I wondered how that would happen, but our agendas or what we think about how such a thing can transpire is often contrary to what we WANT to have happen. I like to have things be loving and copacetic so that communication can be resolved in a harmonious way. But this time I could not make that happen because Spirit had a different idea.

Source Link : Relationship Therapy Workshop

Living in Abundance: Balancing Work, Money, and Relationships is a five-day didactic, experiential, and psychodynamic intensive that will help you develop insights into your relationship to money and work.

Understand The Issues

Living in Abundance is a five-day intensive that will help you develop insights into your relationship to money and work.

Living in Abundance is a didactic, experiential and psychodynamic intensive lead by a facilitator trained in the area of financial and work disorders.

During the workshop, you will address a myriad of disorders including money obsession, work addiction, under earning, spending addiction, gambling, hoarding, deprivation, and codependence related to work and finances. The goals of this workshop are to help participants:

• Discover how your behavior related to money and work developed
• Recognize the rewards and costs of your behavior to one’s self and others
• Obtain a treatment plan which intervenes on existing behavior and fosters a healthy relationship with money and work that will also enhance your relationship with yourself and others, more about

Saying Goodbye to Love Addiction and Love Avoidance

The following letter was written by a woman who attended The Love Addiction/Love Avoidance workshop at The Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows. At the end of the workshop, participants were asked to write a goodbye letter to their Love Addiction and to the walls they had put up around themselves as a result. You can learn more about the workshop by calling 800-244-4949 or by sending us an email. Those who register before June 30 will receive a 25 percent discount!

Dear Soul-Sucking Newly Identified Issues,
First, I'm going to dismantle my wall one brick at a time. I will remove each brick and grind it into dust. I will then reform the dust into something useful, like a bird bath that I will place in my garden where the wall used to stand. I know I will occasionally feel the need to start a new wall, but I will only need to remind myself that maybe a short, temporary fence can serve the same protective purpose. A fence is something that two people can lean on and talk across until they both decide that any kind of barrier is unnecessary.

While I am dismantling my wall, I am also kissing the fantasy goodbye. Rumor has it that men are mere humans, unable to leap tall buildings, and that their ability to read my mind and fulfill my every wish without a word from me has been overstated by both Hollywood and Harlequin. Given that I've been duped by mass media once again, I'm going in search of a better story. There's something to be said for that thing called reality programming! Instead of holding out for the glass slipper, I'm putting on my hiking boots and starting the search for this creature they call a perfectly imperfect human man. You can no longer keep me captivated with stories of happily ever after. I'm willing to strive for "really good" after a lot of hard work, knowing that some days are still probably going to suck.

So, Fantasy Life, I say this: Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to reality I go.

More Read Blog: Saying Goodbye to Love Addiction and Love Avoidance