How to Manage an Addicted Friend or Family Member

Addicts seem to have a Ph.D. in emotional manipulation.

Many therapists have clients in their eighties who have turned themselves into paupers and are living our their retirement years in distress and torment because they are unable to resist the emotional blackmail of their alcoholic or addicted children. (It should also be noted that some people can become addicted to spending itself, for a variety of reasons.) At the other extreme, I have interviewed prison inmates whose families have decided to press charges because their children have stolen money and personal belongings from them in order to support their addictions. In the middle are the clients we see every week in our private practice, who have sought our support in order to learn the art of "toughlove" -- to say no to the demands of their addicted children or other family members, both for the sake of the addicts themselves and to preserve the clients' own financial and psychological well-being.

When the victims threaten to deny or withdraw emotional support, they are subject to a series of manipulative tactics from their addicted family members which may include anger, rage, threats of suicide or actual suicidal gestures, and promises that the abuser will never have anything to do with them again. These tactics frequently succeed because, as family members, the abusers often know their victims well enough to understand exactly what to say and which buttons to push in order to manipulate their victims into giving in. This only encourages further exploitation in the future. For this reason, you should never make a threat to an addict, i.e., "This is the last time you are getting one cent out of me!" that you are not prepared to carry out.

Victims of emotional manipulation need to recognize that addicts are not the loving, playful children, friends, or relatives they once were were before their addiction turned them into someone else. Victims need to see themselves as survivors of abuse, and to create healthy barriers between themselves and their abusers.  

Don't let an addict shame or guilt you into giving in!

While some people can come to these realizations on their own, in many instances they need the emotional support and encouragement of a therapist, and possibly the services of an attorney, in order to disentangle themselves.    

 

Here are just a few the practical applications of hyperempiria, or suggestion-enhanced experience, contained on this Blog,  You can learn how to:

• Keep your boss from driving you crazy  
• Learn deep relaxation hypnosis for falling asleep 
• Conquer anxiety and perform at your best
• Overcome depression
• Get thin and STAY thin 
• Improve academic performance
• Achieve your goals without using "will power"
• Recognize a personality disorder
• Motivate yourself for long-range tasks
• Learn to hypnotize yourself
• Explore Alternate Universes 
• Eliminate procrastination   
• Overcome perfectionism 
• LIVE the action of your favorite dramatic scenes
• Suppress the ravages of pain 
• Reap the  full benefits of meditation for personal growth 
• Master the art of hypnosis
• Facilitate meditation and prayer 
• Improve your psychic abilities 
• Re-create a mystical experience whenever you wish.
• Learn to Forgive Yourself and Others
• Discover the Most Important Things in Life
• Find Your Life's Goals and Values
• Talk to Your "Inner Healer" 
• The Blog contains many other examples of hyperempiria  for the enhancement of human potential, the ennoblement of the human spirit, and the fulfillment of human existence.

Sources 

Gibbons, D. E. (2001). Experience as an art form. .New York, NY: Authors Choice Press.

Gibbons, D. E. (2000). Applied hypnosis and hyperempiria. Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press (originally published 1979 by Plenum Press).

Gibbons, D. E., & Cavallaro, L (2013).. Exploring alternate universes: And learning what they can teach us. Amazon Kindle E-Books. (Note: It is not necessary to own a Kindle reader to download this e-book, as the Kindle app may be downloaded free of charge to a standard desktop or laptop computer and to most cell phones.)

Gibbons, D. E., & Lynn, S. J. (2010). Hypnotic inductions: A primer. in S. J. Lynn, J. W. Rhue, & I. Kirsch (Eds.) Handbook of clinical hypnosis, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 267-291.

How to Overcome Flashbacks and Panic Attacks

Here is a list of grounding techniques which you can use immediately, to help when you have lost control of your surroundings in a panic attack. Grounding techniques work well not only with panic attacks, but also with flashbacks from PTSD.

First, look around you. Find five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

It is also good in a flashback to ask yourself how old you are now, to differentiate from how old you were when the trauma actually happened.

One of the worst things about having a panic attack is how frightened you are about having the next one.

The following video by Babette Rothschild (herself a victim of childhood trauma) illustrates how to overcome panic attacks by focusing awareness on the perception of here and now rather than on the internalized memories of previous trauma.

After this basic level of security and safety has been attained, client and therapist can then collaborate in the construction of a therapeutic relationship which will increase feelings of confidence and self-esteem, overcome anxiety, depression, and despair, and bring forth an optimistic outlook on life which enables them change the narrative of their life story. (Levine, 1997; Naparstek, 2004; Rothschild, 2000; Scaer, 2007).  These new methods of treatment by the world's leading trauma researchers and clinicians constitute  ". . .a paradigm for understanding trauma's far-reaching psychological and physical consequences, without which, psychotherapeutic interventions remain extremely limited, and at times harmful to our clients." (emphasis mine). 

Procedures such as these are rapidly dealing a death blow to outmoded, Twentieth-Century notions of "healing" based upon regression to cause, which is about as sophisticated and as useful as trying to housebreak a puppy by "rubbing his nose in it." The puppy will usually stop sooner or later, but is that because of our treatment or in spite of it? And if the "training" is vigorously pursued, could the frustration and anxiety thus engendered actually make new learning more difficult? 

The following video from PESI Seminars features some of the world's leading experts discussing how recent breakthroughts in the treatment of trauma, dissociation, and multiple personality are making it possible for clients who have gone years without improvement to finally begin to change.  

References

American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-V, 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

Forward, S. (1997). Emotional blackmail: When the people in your life use fear, obligation, and guilt to manipulate you. New York: Harper-Collins.  

Forward, S. & Buck, C. (2002). Toxic parents: Overcoming their hurtful legacy and reclaiming your life. New York: Bantam.

Levine, P.A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Naparstek, B. (2004). Invisible heroes: Survivors of trauma and how they heal. New York: Bantam.

Rothschild, B. (2000), The body remembers: The psychophysiology of trauma and treatment. New York: Norton.  (Click on the link for a YouTube book review.)

Scaer, R. C. (2007) The body bears the burden: Trauma, dissociation, and disease. New York: Routledge.

Hypnotic Mistrsses, Goddesses, and Those who Worship Them

I recently ran across a video on YouTube by "Mistress Lisa," which has been viewed over one and one half million times:

If you watch the tape carefully, within a fraction of a second after she completes her induction, you will catch her quickly throwing her head back with a momentary gleam of triumph in her eyes. There is trouble brewing in paradise! Although she herself does not appear to have followed up on it, there are many other postings of female hypnotists, hypnotic mistresses, goddesses, and seductresses, some of whom merely provide constructive suggestions of well-being, and some of whom seem to be seeking the worshipful adoration of male (and occasionally, female) worshippers who appear to be all too willing to turn their lives and worldly goods over to them. What in the world is going on? 

These videos are obviously not illegal, and not very many people have complained about them, or they would have been closed down years ago. You can enter the words "mistress" or goddess" on Facebook, You Tube, or a Google prompt, and simply follow the links for an in-depth introduction to dozens, and possibly hundreds, of other mistresses and goddesses of varying methods and temperaments. However, I found only one Website,devoted to the hypnotic enslavement of women. 

What are the psychological motives behind these practices? Are they dangerous, or merely harmless role playing? Some parents view their children not as individuals to be loved and encouraged to develop their own lives, but as extensions of themselves, whose purpose in life is to flatter the parents' ego. They selectively withdraw love until the child, desperate for affection and totally dependent on the rejecting parent, will do almost anything to get it (Forward, 1989). The parent or parents may also act seductively, and even sexually molest the child in order to gratify their own needs, because "babies don't tell."

As adults, we often tend to re-create an approximation of the family environment in which we were raised. Is it any wonder, then, that some men long for a relationship with a woman whom they can worship as a goddess if this is the kind of mother they had, who is alternately seductive, punitive, and distant and rejecting? But why are so many more men than women looking for this type of satisfaction? 

There are a few documented instances of male seducers such as Rasputin, who have taken advantage of women in repressed societies who could not admit their secret longings, even to themselves. if, on the other hand. a woman  in our present-day culture wants to dedicate herself completely to a man who only occasionally shows any concern for her, she probably will have little trouble finding one. 

Reference

Forward, S. (1989). Toxic parents: overcoming their lethal legacy and reclaiming your life. New York: Bantam.

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