The subconscious mind can be voracious in it’s appetites with overeating, excessive drinking and an increasing reliance on nicotine being commonplace.

It can be really challenging to control consciously, especially if you’re using these outlets to deal with stress, anxiety or uncomfortable feelings.

How do you know if it’s too much? Well, you may notice what I call the ‘domino’ effect, here’s an example using all three: you get home stressed and wired after working late, the first thing you do is reach for a glass of wine to relax. The glass of wine becomes a bottle as it feels good but you don’t sleep well that night as alcohol affects your sleep. Waking up the next day hungover, perhaps anxious, maybe ‘beating...

Continue reading...

I’m talking about how we can use money here. If we have unmet needs on a deeper level, and we don’t acknowledge and identify these, we can walk around with a subtle or not so subtle persistent, feeling of ‘hunger’ or lack of fulfilment which is actually a deeper sense of deprivation. Attempts to fill the hole of deprivation can take many forms such as over-eating, drinking, partying hard and excessive working but one of the most common ways I have seen it play out with clients in my decades practice is financially.

If a sense of inner personal security is what is missing from your life, no amount of internet shopping will make up for that. If you’re craving intimacy excessive gift buying won’t meet that. In a nutshell: if you’re not getting the proper ‘nourishment’ you need from li...

Continue reading...

The control / release cycle is talked about in John Bradshaw’s excellent book ‘Healing The Shame That Binds You’.

The control / release cycle is this: a period of rigid control and boundaries around an area of your life – stringent dieting and exercise for example, followed by a period of release – when you fall into a ‘binge’ pattern: eat all of the foods you forbade yourself in the ‘control’ period and avoid the gym like the plague!

The control / release cycle means you either have total control ‘compulsivity’ or you have no control ‘addiction’, they are interconnected and set each other up as the more intensely you control, the more you require the balance of release and the more you self destructively release (undoing all your hard work) the more intensely you r...

Continue reading...