Addiction support

At Bright Light we understand it can often be difficult to talk about your addiction - or the addictive behaviour of someone else - and how it is harming your relationships.

We promise you a safe confidential place where you can talk to us about anything. 

Our therapists are experienced and fully trained in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help you. It will probably take several sessions of relationship counselling for us all to be able to recognise, understand, and talk about the addictive behaviour, why its happening, how its affecting others.  We will then work with you to identify goals to achieving a better future and support whoever is affected by addiction to achieve these goals.

Addiction -  Help for you

Addiction describes any activity that feels 'out of control'.  What is key is that you are engaging in an activity that you feel you are no longer control of and that is likely to result in harm to you or others - a partner or partners, or to family or friends. 

Being 'addicted' is not defined by the activity itself but by the possible negative effect it is having on your quality of life - and on people around you.

If you're worried then as a start, see if you recognise the statements below as fitting with how you are feeling:  

• your behaviour is out of control.

You:

• Believe that there may be severe consequences if you continue but carry on any way.
• Persistently pursue destructive high risk activities, want to stop but are unable to do so.
• Need more and more of the addictive activity in order to experience the same level of high followed by feelings of shame and depression.
• Experience intense mood swings around repeated addictive activity.
• Spend more and more time planning, engaging in or regretting and recovering from addictive activities.
• Neglect social or work commitments in favour of the addictive activity.
• Repeatedly try to stop and perhaps stay stopped for a while, only to start up again.

Some or none of the above may fit with how you're feeling about what you do but the important thing is to talk to us if you're worried. Our therapists will offer support in a safe confidential environment to help you recognise which activities are causing you and others problems. We will carefully assess your individual needs and how we can meet them, often through lots of discussion because we understand that this is a complex issue where many other factors could contribute to your experience. 

Addiction -  Help for your partner ...

If you're worried about your partner, you can talk to us in complete confidence. We can help you alone or as a couple, to explore your feelings and out of control activities and look at how it's impacting on your relationship. We will support each of you to find a positive way forward - that you are in control of and gets the best out of your relationships.