Description
You stop drinking. You stop taking drugs. But what happens when the addiction simply takes another form?
Join me for Mastering the Addictive Personality: The Path Out of Hell, 7th–13th November 2026, in London.
https://carolyncowan.com/mastering-addiction-the-path-out-of-hell-7th-13th-november-2026/
My name is Carolyn Cowan, and in this video I'm exploring cross-addiction: what happens when we put down one compulsive behaviour, only to find ourselves caught up in another.
I got sober from drugs and alcohol at 31. But 14 years later, despite being clean and sober, I was deeply unhappy. My anxiety was off the charts, and I began to recognise that I'd replaced one set of addictive behaviours with another, including gambling and taking enormous financial risks.
I had changed what I was doing. But had I really changed how I felt?
For me, this is the heart of understanding the addictive personality.
How much do you hate how you feel? And how much of what you do is driven by an attempt to escape those feelings?
In this video, I explore the connections between shame, anxiety, compulsive behaviours and what Freud described as repetition compulsion. I talk about why stopping a behaviour doesn't necessarily resolve the suffering underneath it, and how learning to change your relationship with your feelings can open up entirely new possibilities.
This understanding is at the heart of Mastering the Addictive Personality (MAP), the week-long training I've been teaching for 16 years.
You do not have to keep repeating the same patterns.
Beautiful person, there is so much more possible.
Find out more about my work, classes and training at
https://carolyncowan.com/
#CrossAddiction #AddictivePersonality #Shame #AddictionRecovery #CarolynCowan
You can get a copy my book, Shame: The Path Out of Hell:
(UK) On my website: https://carolyncowan.com/buy-the-shame-book/
(Global) Via Amazon: geni.us/Ksp7AL2
You can find information on my upcoming workshops and trainings on my website:
https://carolyncowan.com
For great emails, links to free classes, and to download a free copy of my Trigger Triage sequence, sign up for my newsletter:
https://carolyncowan.com/triggertriage/