And how slowly reconnecting with yourself can become part of recovery.
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about addiction is that it rarely makes much sense when we look only at the substance or behaviour.
Why would someone keep doing something they know is hurting them?
Why drink again when you promised yourself you wouldn’t?
Why reach for drugs, gambling, pornography, food, or some other compulsive behaviour when part of you desperately wants to stop?
From the outside, it can look irrational.
From the inside, it can feel completely different.
Often there is a moment before the behaviour. • Anxiety • emptiness • restlessness • shame • loneliness • a tightening in the chest • that horrible feeling of wanting to crawl out of your own skin.
Or perhaps there seems to be almost nothing at all.
Just an urge.
And before you really know what has happened, you’re reaching for the thing that has helped you get away from that feeling before.
For me, this is an important part of understanding addiction.
Sometimes addiction isn’t simply about wanting to feel good.
Sometimes it’s about not wanting to feel what is already here.
When being in your body doesn’t feel safe
We often talk about getting “back into the body” as though that is automatically a good thing.
But what if being in your body has never felt particularly comfortable?
What if slowing down means encountering things you’ve spent years trying not to feel?
For different people that might be: • anxiety that seems to come from nowhere • a deep sense of emptiness or loneliness • uncomfortable physical sensations • memories that begin to surface • shame or self-criticism • a restlessness that makes sitting still almost unbearable.
In those circumstances, disconnecting can make sense.
Alcohol might soften things. Drugs might change the internal landscape. Food might soothe. Gambling, pornography, scrolling, or other compulsive behaviours might provide stimulation or simply give your attention somewhere else to go.
For a while, something changes.
There is relief.
And I think that word matters.
Relief.
Because when we begin to understand what someone is seeking relief from, addiction can start to look less like a moral failure and more like an attempt to manage an experience that has become difficult to bear.
That doesn’t mean addiction isn’t destructive. It can be enormously destructive, both for the person struggling and for the people who love them.
But understanding the function it has served gives us somewhere more compassionate to begin.
The body can become something we avoid
Over time, addiction can change our relationship with our own internal experience.
We can become very good at moving away from discomfort.
A difficult sensation appears and almost immediately there is an impulse to change it.
• Get rid of it • distract from it • numb it • soothe it • replace it with something else.
Eventually, we may hardly notice the sensation at all.
We simply notice the urge.
This can create a strange kind of distance from ourselves. We may become less aware of • hunger • tiredness • tension • anxiety • anger • sadness • loneliness • the need for comfort or connection until those experiences become overwhelming.
The body hasn’t stopped communicating.
We may simply have become less able to hear it.
Recovery can involve learning to stay
Recovery isn’t only about learning how to stop doing something.
It can also involve slowly developing the capacity to remain present with ourselves when something uncomfortable appears.
Not endlessly.
Not heroically.
And certainly not by forcing ourselves to feel things we aren’t ready to feel.
Sometimes it begins with something incredibly small: • noticing your feet on the floor • feeling your breathing without trying to change it • recognising that your shoulders have tightened • noticing an urge and becoming curious about what happened immediately before it.
We might begin asking ourselves: • What am I feeling right now? • What am I noticing in my body? • What happened just before this urge appeared? • What might I actually need?
There is a very different quality to this kind of attention.
Instead of battling ourselves, we begin listening.
TRE and reconnecting with the body
One practice I sometimes use in this work is TRE, or Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises.
TRE uses a series of exercises intended to invite the body’s natural shaking or tremoring response.
For some people, this can provide a way of becoming more familiar with bodily sensation and noticing tension without needing to explain or analyse everything.
But I think pacing matters enormously.
More sensation is not necessarily better.
If someone has spent years using substances or compulsive behaviours partly to escape overwhelming internal states, suddenly asking them to become intensely aware of their body can be too much.
So the emphasis is not on pushing through.
It is more about gradually developing the capacity to • notice sensation • recognise when enough is enough • slow things down • remain connected to the environment around you • discover that bodily sensations can change and pass.
The aim isn’t to overwhelm yourself in the name of healing.
It is to gradually discover that you can experience sensation and remain present.
That you can notice something without immediately having to escape it.
The Safe and Sound Protocol
Another approach I sometimes incorporate into somatic addiction recovery is the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP).
The SSP uses specially filtered music and is designed to support physiological regulation and sensitivity to cues of safety.
I don’t think of this as a cure for addiction.
Addiction is far too complex for that.
But for some people, practices that support regulation can become one part of a much larger recovery process.
Because if substances or compulsive behaviours have helped regulate unbearable internal states, simply taking them away leaves an important question:
What happens when those feelings return?
Part of recovery may involve developing other ways of meeting those moments: • recognising what is happening earlier • having ways to settle and orient yourself • reaching towards another person rather than withdrawing • tolerating discomfort in smaller amounts • gradually discovering that every difficult internal state doesn’t have to be escaped.
And ideally, we don’t have to learn those things alone.
Mindfulness without turning it into another demand
Mindfulness can also be helpful, but I think we need to be careful about how we talk about it.
It can easily become another thing we’re supposed to be good at.
• Sit still • watch your thoughts • don’t react • control yourself • be present.
For someone already struggling with shame and self-criticism, even mindfulness can become another opportunity to feel like they’re failing.
I prefer something gentler.
Can you notice what is happening right now?
Can you feel one breath?
Can you notice an urge without immediately judging yourself for having it?
Can you become interested in the few seconds before you automatically reach for something?
For me, mindfulness isn’t about achieving some perfectly calm state.
Sometimes it is simply creating a little more space between experience and reaction.
And inside that space, occasionally, there is a choice that wasn’t available before.
Addiction recovery happens in relationship too
I also don’t believe addiction exists solely inside an individual.
We are relational beings.
Our capacity to regulate ourselves develops in relationship, and many of the wounds we carry were formed there too.
• Isolation • shame • rejection • trauma • poverty • family dynamics • grief • loneliness • difficult relationships • the environments we have had to survive within can all form part of the field in which addiction develops.
So recovery cannot simply become another demand that you fix yourself.
Sometimes healing happens through experiencing something different with another person.
• Being honest without being rejected • feeling ashamed and discovering someone hasn’t turned away • saying what is actually happening rather than pretending you’re okay • asking for help without feeling weak • being able to struggle without becoming the struggle.
These experiences matter too.
Sometimes enormously.
Somatic Addiction Recovery Brisbane
In my work as a somatic therapist offering Somatic Addiction Recovery in Brisbane, I’m interested not only in stopping the addictive behaviour, but in understanding what has been happening underneath it.
Together, we might become curious about questions such as: • What does the substance or behaviour actually do for you? • What happens in the moments before you reach for it? • What feelings or bodily sensations are hardest to remain with? • What situations make the urge stronger? • What happens relationally when you’re struggling? • What might you actually be needing in those moments?
Depending on the person, our work may draw on: • Somatic therapy • Gestalt therapy • mindfulness practices • TRE • the Safe and Sound Protocol • relational approaches to therapy.
There isn’t one technique or method that is right for everybody.
And none of these approaches replaces appropriate medical care, medically supervised withdrawal, rehabilitation or specialist addiction treatment when those are needed.
They can, however, form part of a broader process of learning how to inhabit your life, your relationships and your body differently.
Coming back to yourself
I don’t think recovery is about becoming someone who never feels uncomfortable again.
Life simply doesn’t work that way.
There will still be • anxiety • loneliness • anger • boredom • shame • grief • uncertainty • difficult days.
There may still be moments when you desperately want to get away from yourself.
Perhaps part of recovery is gradually discovering that you don’t always have to.
That an urge can rise and fall.
That a feeling can be felt without becoming everything.
That discomfort doesn’t always mean something is wrong.
That another person can sometimes sit alongside you when things are difficult.
And that your body can slowly become somewhere you can listen to rather than somewhere you constantly need to escape.
For me, there is something deeply hopeful in that.
Recovery is certainly about what we stop doing.
But perhaps it can also become something more.
A gradual process of coming back into relationship with yourself.
Looking for Somatic Addiction Recovery in Brisbane?
If some of what I’ve written about here feels familiar, you can read more about my Somatic Addiction Recovery Brisbane approach and what working together might look like.
I offer a free 30-minute consultation, where we can talk about what has been happening, what you’re struggling with, and whether my approach feels like the right fit for you.
There is no expectation that you need to have everything figured out before reaching out.
Sometimes we can begin exactly where you are.
Ewan Nicholson is a somatic therapist based in Brisbane.