Sydney Addiction Therapy

22/10/2025

At Sydney Addiction Therapy we help our clients unravel their dependent relationship with addiction. Often there is unresolved ghosts from the past we need to meet and learn to set free!

Addiction wraps around our pain, our fears, and our traumas like a comforting shroud. It protects us from and softens life’s sharpest edges, but it also isolates us. What begins as relief ends up distorting reality and turns us into haunted ghosts.It took me many years to realise my addiction was ...

19/08/2025

https://www.sydneyaddictiontherapy.com/post/trauma-hides-our-authentic-self

In all my years as an addiction psychotherapist, I have found unresolved trauma to be the most common underpinning of addictive behaviors. A trauma-informed therapy approach realizes that trauma is widespread, recognizes the signs and symptoms, responds by integrating knowledge about trauma, and (mo...

12/06/2025

Are you looking for counselling therapy support with an addiction concern? Here's a video where I talk about how we at Sydney Addiction Therapy can help you 🫱🗣️
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In this short video addiction therapist Su Naseby from Sydney Addiction Therapy talks about defining addiction with the biopsychosocial approach of dependence.

05/08/2023

What role does Toxic Emotions play in relapse?
From the neurobiological perspective, there is evidence that people with a high risk of addiction have dopamine systems that are hypersensitive to emotionally salient stimuli, such as stress and other toxic emotions.

The stress of Toxic Emotions are the primary cause of relapse.

To understand stress and toxic emotions we need to have a less personal understanding of emotions. Most of us believe that everyone basically feels the same kinds of emotions (unless the person has a mental health disorder) but in fact emotions are neither hardwired into our brains nor universally felt. Emotions are a complex system of internal and external sensory input created by our brain, our nervous system and messenger chemicals, such as hormones, to essentially keep us safe.

What is fascinating is we are taught the meaning of all those sensory goings-on by our early childhood care givers and experiences, so we can’t really be sure that what we call sadness or anger feels the same for everyone. In fact, we know that emotions aren’t even universal across all cultures!

We can see my old friend The BioPsychoSocial Model is at play here. Emotions have biological causes with psychological meaning and are triggered in relationship to people, things, and environment.

So, how do emotions become toxic?

Let’s use salt as an example to understand toxicity. Salt in small amounts is not only healthy but necessary for life but in large amounts it can become toxic, just think about the Dead Sea.

There are healthy levels of all emotions, but they become toxic when we are swamped by one particular emotion to the point it feels like who we are. Take shame for example.

It’s perfectly natural and even helpful to feel the blush of shame if we make a social faux pas by saying something hurtful or stepping on someone’s toe. In this case we have made a mistake and will be forgiven. But when a child associates the blush of shame over and over again whenever they make understandable and unintentional mistakes, they begin to feel as if they are the mistake, and they are a shameful person.

In my practice my clients struggle with toxic shame more than any other painful experience. When we understand how we have been conditioned to interpret the blush of shame as a core aspect of who we are as a person then we can re-educate ourselves about the actual meaning of that feeling. It is only a message from our primitive brain and nervous system doing it’s best to keep us alive.

With understanding, kindness and gratitude we can free ourselves from toxic emotions and the chances of relapse.

Research indicates that emotional issues are one of the primary causes of addiction relapse, which involves how addicts view themselves.

06/03/2023

I’m currently reading Dr Gabor Maté’s book The Myth of Normal: trauma, illness & healing in a toxic culture. This book examines the close relationship between mental health and physical ill-health and well-being.

In his practice Maté details how “time after time it was the ‘nice’ people, the ones who compulsively put other’s expectations and needs ahead of their own and who repressed their so-called negative emotions, who showed up with chronic illness …” and addiction can definitely become a chronic 'illness'.

The problem isn’t with being nice (or nasty). The problem is with being too anything if done as a way to repress (unconsciously) or suppress (consciously) supposedly unacceptable feeling states, emotional responses or behaviours.

This is where addictive behaviours can come in because all that repression (or suppression) needs to have a release valve!

One of the most common traits I've experienced in my clients has been the so called 'people-pleaser'. We learn this trait in childhood.

What we generally understand to be personality traits are created both from “inborn temperaments” and a child’s attempt to “accommodate their emotional environment”. In essence, being too nice is a coping skill.

Consider Santa's naught or nice list (not far removed from St Peter's book at heaven's pearly gates). Have you ever questioned why 'nice' is the opposite to 'naughty'? After all, aren't all children naughty sometime, and to err is human. Right? (See your name on the list??)

Child behaviour modification is a primary task of caregivers, but parents are not to be blamed just because they want nice children, not nasty ones. In fact blaming anyone isn't helpful nor justified.

All children really want is to feel loved and secure, so children are willing to play the naughty or nice 'game' if it means getting these needs met. As adults, when we acknowledge our fears surrounding being loved and secure, we can begin to see how niceness (or self-scarifying or people-pleasing or unbounded striving) does not require us to repress our authentic self, as it did when we were children. As adults we have the capacity to make free choices about how much and why we put the needs of others before our own … and we have the resources to take time out to balance the scales of self-care/others-care ... without needing to resort to addictive behaviours.

26/09/2022

I've been quiet on this page because I've been on a long break from FB. In some ways it's hard to come back. The power of social media is troublesome, yet it has become the way of our human world. I want to live slow. This is hard to do living in the city but shutting down social media helps.

I was (and am still) aware of the pull the 'check' and how this 'pull' is really my brain (not me) utilising the 'checking' as a great solution to a wide range of problems. Problems like not wanting to get out of bed, or avoiding doing my tax, or being hungry but not knowing what to eat, or wanting social connection with friends I'm too busy to connect with in real life but still wanting to 'catch up' with what they are up to.

It's very helpful to notice this is A Brain Thing 😆

FOMO is a popular reason people give for too much social media.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is talked about like it's a real thing but the concept of FOMO didn't really exist before 2000. The phenomenon was first identified in 1996 by marketing strategist Dr. Dan Herman, who published his findings on the topic in 2000. It's almost like Herman invented the 'condition' and technology gave us the 'disease'.

Of course people have undoubtedly always felt a fear of missing out but the arrival of FOMO as a thing along with the growth of social media has compounded and amplified the problem to a chronic condition.

I can highly recommend getting into the drivers seat of device and social media use. This article has a great antidote called JOMO - the Joy of missing out. I certainly enJOYed when I took my FB sabbatical 😇

JOMO is the experience of joy we feel when we do real things that are important to us rather than scrolling. In fact we could say FOMO actually means the missing out of real joy and replacing it with the mind-numbing absence of perceived fear 🤔

You have just had an exhausting week. You finally come home, tiredly lie down on your bed and open up social media. Suddenly you are welcomed by a picture of your friend on a sunny beach on some tropical island. You suddenly think that while others are out there enjoying life, you’re just browsing...

16/05/2022

Post pandemic lockdowns I've noticed more and more new clients arriving at my practice with stories of alcohol and other drug use turning incrementally from a few nights a week to every night, and a few glasses to bottles! These behaviours have become so normalised over the past few years but our health, jobs and relationships are starting to suffer. Thankfully I've been able to successfully help most of my clients regain a healthy relationship with these behaviours 🙏

Like many others, I turned to alcohol out of stress and boredom. I had to draw a line, says writer Lauren O’Neill

02/02/2022

I just watched a special screening of this awesome play. It's a raw and poignant true story of trauma, addiction and recovery. Check out this interview with the very talented Peter Cook - producer, writer, performer!
https://fb.watch/aUxpcELR2c/

27/01/2022

WOW! I can't believe it's been over 6 months since I've posted!!

The pandemic has actually opened up my life in many ways and I'm not using social media very much at all (not watching Netflix much either). I'm doing a lot more walking in nature with friends and on my own or with my daughter's dog. I'm meditating, reading and growing veggies. I'm also seeing a lot of clients both face-to-face and via Zoom! Addiction counselling and sober coach services are in high demand.

I wanted to share this podcast A Soberful Life with Veronica Valli with you, she's a sober coach too and I really resonated with her approach. I love the concept of a 'soberful life' ... Yes!!

Here are some key points:

• Understanding your own relationship with alcohol (or drugs)
• Living sober as a new norm for our society
• Hanging out with sober people, and making lifestyle changes
• The myth of willpower
• Honouring the inner call to growth
• We need skills and support (not strength) to choose sobriety
• The importance of boundaries & honesty with self
• Human connection and the power of vulnerability

In “A Soberful Life,” Sounds True founder, Tami Simon, speaks with Veronica about her new book, Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol. Tami and Veronica also discuss: making a cost-benefit analysis of your own relationship with alcohol; alcohol-free living as a new nor...

08/06/2021

Are you thinking of going Dry for July?

If you are, my tip is to use this break from alcohol to create new coping and life skills. Many people just avoid the times they would usually drink, or they simply 'white knuckle it' through the month and then reward them self on the 1st of August with a big alcohol indulgence.

Another tip is to be mindful of not eating more chocolate or other snacks and treats than usual. Instead why not use the month for trying other healthy lifestyle add ons.

Go alcohol-free in July and raise funds for people affected by cancer. Dry July raises funds to improve the comfort, care and wellbeing of people affected by cancer.