Sherry Gaba is a licensed Psychotherapist and Certified Recovery and Transformation Coach who’s helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people cope with lifelong addictions, including those addicted to alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, eating, sex, love, co-dependency, as well as those struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, single...
Sherry Gaba is a licensed Psychotherapist and Certified Recovery and Transformation Coach who’s helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people cope with lifelong addictions, including those addicted to alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, eating, sex, love, co-dependency, as well as those struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, single parenting, and divorce.
She has shared her expert addiction advice on Dr. Drew Pinsky’s Celebrity Rehab show on VH1 and later on the spin-off, VH1’s Sober House, as well as Celebrity Rehab’s Sex Addiction, CNN, Inside Edition, and numerous other stations and programs.
With over twenty years of experience as a clinician, Sherry has worked at some of the highest profile rehab and treatment centers in the country…
Love is an essential component of any relationship. Unfortunately, for those in relationships with addicts or narcissists, love can begin to feel like an addiction itself. Individuals in these types of relationships must develop unhealthy coping mechanisms that mimic the behaviors commonly associated with addiction.
Toxic relationships create ripples throughout our mind and our body. In a toxic relationship, our mind reads cues and our body responds in ways that are effective coping mechanisms for that relationship. However, these responses to social cues are often not effective or helpful in a new relationship or when trying to heal from a dysfunctional and toxic partner.
Our body responses, emotional regulation, and even the fear response to social cues are controlled by the vagal nerve. Depending on our experiences and the specific situation, we may have different responses than others around us, which is important to understand in healing after the trauma of experiencing a toxic relationship.
The early stages of any new relationship are always the most intense. This is the time when the exhilaration of meeting the right person is the most pronounced, and we feel immediately close and may even become focused on thinking about them frequently or on an ongoing basis.
This is typically a period of time when all of our emotional energy is on the relationship. Hormonal changes in the body, including higher levels of adrenaline, create a high level of emotional awareness. The levels of serotonin, which naturally calm and relax a person, are low, leading to a heightened sense of every interaction with the person who is the object of your focus.
There are various types of treatment options used with individuals through therapy. Some types of therapy are designed to work from the diagnosis of the patient or individual, while others are focused on holistically treating the individual and not focus on treating the diagnosed condition.
Internal Family Systems Therapy, also known as IFS, is a therapy that treats the whole individual. It can be used with a variety of different mental health conditions and diagnoses, as well as for those areas of life where people struggle. Examples of this can be in personal or professional relationships, professional or career challenges, feelings of self-worth and self-esteem, and building and developing resilience.
Most people have had at least one bad relationship. Often these toxic relationships end badly, with one person storming off and never being heard from or seen again by the other. In fact, in many of these types of difficult relationships, neither person wants to see the other.
It is common to hear addicts talk about themselves as if they were different than other people. They have often gone through so much and felt dehumanized so many times that seeing things work for other people is like watching a foreign film, they can’t understand the message and they don’t get the plot.
In my book “The Law of Sobriety”, I discuss how important it is for addicts to see themselves as any other person. Learning how to tap into the Law of Attraction and using the energy provided to us by the Universe can be used for healing addictions and developing a positive message to send forth to the world around us.
The terms love avoidant and narcissist are often used interchangeably, but these two types of individuals are not always the same. They do have similarities, but there are also differences that have an impact on the relationship. As a general statement, all narcissists are love avoidant, but people can be love avoidant and not be narcissists.
One of the common thoughts people have about the Law of Attraction in recovery is that it is a passive type of process. They would like to believe that it will involve just reading a few books or blogs and thinking good thoughts to get their life back on track and to avoid addictive behaviors in the future.
As I have outlined and stressed in my book, “The Law of Sobriety,” this couldn’t be further from the truth. It takes emotional energy, deep and honest examination of our values as well as the self-determination to make the best decisions for yourself that are needed moving forward. I dedicate a whole chapter in the book to “Living a Life of Right Action” which brings the focus and the responsibility of our sobriety right back to ourselves.
Think as You Want It to Be
One of the key characteristics of narcissism is a sense of grandiosity or a sense of being superior to others. In addition to just thinking they are better than everyone, including their partners, the narcissist constructs a fantasy world where they are always on center stage, regardless of what is happening around them.
These anxious attachment people gravitate to love avoidant people. The love avoidant person is often very similar to the distant, uncarHow To Spot The Love Avoidant Personing, neglectful, or even absent parent of the anxious attachment style partner. It is, however, a familiar style, and love avoidant people often mask their true behaviors in the early parts of a romantic relationship. Keep in mind, the love avoidant style still needs human contact and relationships. Still, they are uncomfortable when confronted with this. In other words, they want to be close but dislike the thought of being close or dependent on another. To reinforce this, they distance themselves both emotionally and physically.
A love avoidant individual may be charming, happy, and spend time with you, even initiating this time spent together. Unavailable partners know they must demonstrate some level of intimacy at the beginning of the relationship. At the same time, the needs of the anxious and avoidant attachment types are opposites, and there is little chance of these types of relationships being healthy. Instead, avoidant and anxious attachment style partners create a toxic relationship with a high risk of emotional damage.
The holidays are a special time of year for most people. They are a time of friendship, of giving, of sharing, and of being around the people you love and those who love you. Unfortunately, what makes the holidays so special for most people makes them intolerable for a narcissist.
The narcissist must be the center of attention. In the holiday season, there are a lot of things to attend to, and trying to become better than everyone else at the family gathering, the concert, the staff party, or any other event can be impossible. Rather than trying to accept this, the narcissist moves to devalue and destroy the happiness of those they are around, showing their complete inability to express empathy and to simply enjoy the fact those around them are having fun.
New terms are becoming popular for many of the bad, destructive, and even toxic relationship behaviors that help people label what they are experiencing. Over the last few years, people have become familiar with gaslighting and ghosting. To add to that, the term breadcrumbing has become mainstream, adding to the ability to easily describe the difficulties you are experiencing in your dating relationships.
What is Breadcrumbing?
Breadcrumbing is the act of dropping little bits of attention through social media platforms or technology to keep the other person interested in the potential of the relationship. Accepting breadcrumbs means that you are settling for these small and virtual signals of the potential for the relationship.
Most people that engage in breadcrumbing are those who have a significant fear of being on their own or alone. To hedge their bets of not having someone to be in a relationship with, they focus on keeping multiple potential partners available. In some ways, they are also testing the waters with numbers of potential dates or relationships without committing to any one person. It is highly manipulative, even if the person doing it may not think they are doing anything harmful.
We want love, but we are afraid of it. We seek out a relationship and then sabotage it the first chance we get. We want space and when we get it we are lonely. We can’t live without a relationship and we can’t live with it. What is going on here? It is simple. We are ambivalent.
Ambivalence is the number one problem in relationships today. We are no longer bound by a social order that dictates we marry and have children. We are no longer bound by a division of labor where the man has his duties [bread winner] and we have ours [domestic bliss]. We have choices and now we are confused.
I sometimes think that this is the lost generation and that in many respects my generation had it easy. I was told to stroke a man’s ego. I was told to let him make all the decisions. I was told that I should have children. Unfortunately, I was not meant to be a housewife and mother. I was born to write which is what I am doing now. So everyone around me suffered, especially my children, as I tried to find myself. I have thus concluded that even if this generation is confused and unhappy, so was mine.
I recently wrote an article about knowing yourself and it took me a long time to discover my true identify. So my heart goes out to young people today who have so many choices they don’t know what to choose. The media tells they can have it all and they believe this. So they run themselves ragged trying to take all that life has to offer. Then they reach middle age and are unhappy with life and the choices they made. They dream about starting over again and they can’t. They take control the situation, which has always served them in the past, and try to fix everything right now.
It is common to have a disagreement with a partner in a relationship. In many cases, the source of the conflict or the disagreement is a difference in perception or a different memory or recollection of an event or conversation.
This is understandable as we see all experiences through the lens of past experiences. This means that two people can see, hear, or have the same event occur but walk away with a very different memory. Both people are absolutely convinced their experience is authentic, and for them, it really is authentic and accurate.
Gaslighting is a different situation. It involves the intentional manipulation of the other person to gain or maintain control of the situation. It is the creation of a false narrative to attempt to make one person look good, and the other person look bad. It is a technique used by narcissists to keep the other person uncertain, confused, and questioning their own perception and experiences. This is a form of emotional abuse, and it is both effective as well as highly destructive.
Understanding the difference between a healthy disagreement and gaslighting is not always easy, but it is possible. Often, working with a therapist or counselor is the first step in detecting an emotionally abusive or toxic relationship.
Narcissists are chameleons with the ability to appear to be just what you want and need, at least for the initial whirlwind part of the relationship. However, once they have established the relationship, the dynamics change rapidly, with the narcissist utilizing a variety of tactics and manipulations to keep you close. The relationship stops being about creating a partnership and becomes a focus on keeping them happy and their needs fulfilled.
The tactics that narcissists use in this process are easily recognized by those outside the relationship. They may also be evident to the partner, but the myths around narcissism can make it extremely difficult to leave.
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