Naples Integrated Recovery

Honey is a snuggly codependent little tank. But she also has a prey drive, and once that switch flips, reason leaves the building.

Turns out, addiction can look a lot like that.

New episode of Doing the Work: What My Pitbull Honey Taught Me About Addiction

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7aqoK0gkxJAd9nWQLohsNc?si=x-KQxuzpRoenI9p-J7gJRQ&utm_source=copy-link

What My Pitbull Honey Taught Me About Addiction What can a pitbull teach us about addiction, relapse, and recovery? This episode explores addiction through the story of Honey, a pitbull whose intense prey drive offers a surprisingly useful way to understand dopamine, reward salience, limbic activation, prefrontal control, and why the addicted bra...

You can leave—and still be trapped.

In my conversation with Dr. Yaro Garcia, we talk about cult survivorship, coercive control, trauma avoidance, shame, isolation, and why physically leaving doesn’t always mean feeling free.

Recovery can also mean rebuilding self-trust, agency, and the ability to tell your story without fear.

🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ztbskosWypBbKTif6wvgQ?si=iTyffSPOSh2TMo7N-JIE2A&utm_source=copy-link

You Can Leave—and Still Be Trapped | Trauma, Coercive Control & Recovery What happens after someone leaves a high-control environment, but the fear, shame, isolation, and self-doubt remain? Trauma researcher and cult survivor Dr. Yaro Garcia explores how coercive control can become internalized, why physically leaving does not automatically create emotional freedom, and....

🎙️New episode: WHEN YOU LEAVE BEFORE YOU LEAVE

Betrayal can start long before the affair, the secret message, or the breakup. Resentment builds. Emotional honesty drops off. Someone stays physically present while becoming psychologically gone.

This episode looks at how that happens, and where choices still exist before the relationship fully breaks.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hBV41KHBwqtLd5Tprnzc8?si=x0Aoz5lBSza8xfuL3ENT7w&utm_source=copy-link

When You Leave the Relationship Before You Actually Leave Betrayal can begin long before the affair, secret message, or discovery that finally blows the relationship apart. Drawing from John Gottman’s The Science of Trust and research on commitment, this episode looks at how resentment, emotional disengagement, comparison with alternatives, secrecy, and ...

In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Sue Johnson called the pursue-withdraw cycle the “Protest Polka.” One partner reaches harder, asks more questions, pushes for reassurance, or keeps reopening the conversation. The other gets flooded, feels criticized, shuts down, distracts, or pulls away. Then each person’s protection becomes the next person’s trigger, and the dance keeps going.

This episode of Doing the Work breaks down how that cycle forms, why insight alone often does not stop it, and how couples can slow the pattern down enough to hear the fear underneath the criticism, silence, pressure, and distance.

Listen here:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hBV41KHBwqtLd5Tprnzc8?si=zV869SifSeGSWHKBF_DTDg&utm_source=copy-link

Relationships PursueWithdraw DoingTheWork

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Spooky Season here Naples Integrated Recovery 🎃👻🕸️🧙

Why Your Partner Can Feel Miles Away Sitting Right Next to You

You can know the communication skills, recognize the cycle, and still feel completely alone sitting three feet from the person you love.

In this episode, I get into what attachment theory helps explain about those moments: why criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, and emotional distance can become part of the same cycle, how the Still Face experiment helps make sense of adult disconnection, and how Sue Johnson’s ARE framework gives couples a clearer way to understand emotional security.

🎧 Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WzjzlbemlpTJFchrlnZdV