(5 minutes reading time)
Are you ready to love yourself?
To finally stop running from your pain?
Are you tired of not really living?
If you’re asking these questions, you’re not alone. Most people I work with aren’t just dealing with addiction, anxiety, or self-sabotage. They’re dealing with a deeper issue: a desperate need to avoid feeling.
They’ve spent years, sometimes decades, numbing themselves from pain—because no one ever taught them how to feel safely. For many, this pattern began in childhood. It was never safe to be angry, upset, afraid, or even excited. They learned early on that their emotions were too much for others—so they became too much for themselves.
One of the most common trauma responses in these stories is the fawn response—a survival strategy where you appease, please, and contort yourself to keep others happy in order to stay safe. You might have learned to avoid conflict, to keep the peace, to be the “good one,” all while silencing your own needs and emotions.
And so when feelings start rising—shame, rage, grief, loneliness—you reach for something to help you not feel.
This is the start of the addiction cycle.
The Addiction Cycle: Avoiding Feeling at All Costs
Let’s walk through the cycle so you can start to see the pattern in yourself or someone you love. Addiction isn’t just about substances. It can also be food, sex, screens, people, gambling—anything that helps you escape yourself.
1. Trigger
A trigger is anything that stirs emotional discomfort—stress, rejection, conflict, loneliness, shame, trauma reminders, or even just boredom.
Sometimes, the trigger is subtle: being around someone who reminds you of your past.
Other times, it’s obvious: a breakup, a stressful day, someone else using.
The common thread? You’re emotionally activated, and your body goes into danger mode.
2. Craving
The craving doesn’t always show up as a thought like “I want to use.”
It might come as restlessness, irritability, anxiety, or even emptiness.
You don’t want to feel this way—so your brain reaches for the familiar escape.
Some people describe cravings as unbearable, but in reality, they often pass within 15–20 minutes. That short window can feel endless when you’re trying to survive your own emotions.
3. Ritual
Here’s where the brain starts preparing. You find reasons—often subconsciously—to justify using.
You might pick a fight, feel victimized, or isolate.
You say, “Well, they made me feel this way,” so now you deserve to use.
But here’s the truth: no one can make you feel anything. Your feelings are your own, and learning to take responsibility for them is key to your healing.
4. Substance Use
You use—whatever your drug of choice may be—to stop the emotional pain.
It brings short-term relief, a fleeting high, or simply numbness.
For a moment, the shame quiets, the anger vanishes, and the fear recedes.
But it doesn’t last. And deep down, you know it’s a cycle.
5. Guilt + Shame
Once the high wears off, the self-hate creeps in.
You tell yourself you’re weak, broken, a failure.
You feel guilt for using and shame for not being stronger.
This shame becomes your next trigger—and the cycle begins again.
Why We Use: It’s Not Just About Addiction
Most people think addiction is about the substance. It’s not.
Addiction is about pain. It’s about disconnection from self.
It’s about growing up in environments where your feelings were too much, too loud, too inconvenient.
It’s about learning to fawn—people-please, shrink, appease—to survive.
When you’ve never learned how to safely feel your emotions, of course you’ll do anything to avoid them.
But numbing pain also numbs joy. Avoiding fear also avoids freedom.
You’re not just avoiding feeling bad—you’re avoiding feeling alive.
Resisting the Cycle: A New Way Forward
Breaking free starts with awareness. It starts with asking:
- What am I feeling right now?
- What am I trying to escape?
- Can I sit with this feeling for just five minutes?
You don’t have to stop everything today.
You just have to start—start acknowledging your pain, your patterns, and your worth.
Start noticing the part of you that uses and the part of you that wants to heal.
Both parts are you. And both deserve compassion.
Because when you learn to feel safely, you won’t need to escape anymore.
Final Words
You are not weak for struggling. You are human.
You are not broken. You adapted.
And healing is possible—not when you stop feeling, but when you finally let yourself feel everything.
You don’t need to do this alone.
If this article resonated with you, and you’re ready to start breaking the cycle, reach out. Counselling can help you learn to face yourself—with love, with courage, and with hope.
How does counselling come into it?
In counselling, we explore how your addiction is connected to your trauma—especially the parts you’ve buried for years. We talk about why you fawned instead of fought. Why you disconnected instead of felt. Why you used instead of cried.
The therapeutic relationship provides a supportive and non-judgmental safe space to explore your feelings and validate your true self and what triggers you to engage in your addiction.
I will support you to navigate how it all started, to identify your associations and get to the root cause of your addiction.
I will help you to clear your trauma, unprocessed memories and unresolved emotions, which have created your distorted thinking patterns, and started these unhealthy coping strategies. You will create new ways of coping, thinking and new healthier beliefs about yourself, others and the world. You will heal by allowing yourself to feel, which will validate you. You will turn your wounds into wisdom so that you see yourself differently and recovery will be more sustainable than it would be doing programmes without counselling.
By addressing the addiction cycle through counselling, along with specific programmes designed for overcoming addiction, you will break free from the grip of addiction, regain control of your life and embark on a journey towards lasting sobriety and well-being.
Are you ready to talk?
I offer a low-cost confidential service. I offer space to speak, find your voice, be really heard and validated. I am a trained professional counsellor who specialises in anxiety and trauma. Make an appointment to meet me and tell me what you want from counselling. See if you feel comfortable. The first session is over Zoom for both of our safety and then you can do sessions over Zoom from your own home or in person in mine, in my safe, comfortable therapy room.
Book your appointment today
Click here and book a free initial consultation with me today. Read what people are saying about working with me in counselling here. I hold a private, confidential space for you. I’m looking forward to meeting you and hearing you very soon. Best wishes, Karen.
Disclaimer: I am a UK qualified person centred counsellor specialising in anxiety and trauma within the context of counselling. I write from my experiences and from my client work in counselling. My work is dependent on the therapeutic relationship and the meeting of two minds. It is a humbling experience and that is all part of the healing process that I witness every day. It is the best job in the world. This is not an emergency service. If you need to speak to someone urgently outside of my sessions, please call the Samaritans on 116 123 (24/7 confidential helpline in the UK).