Health coaches support individuals or groups as they find their motivation for change, and they help come up with strategies to achieve health goals via habit and behavior modification. The coaching process is enjoyable, positive and even transformational.
It is a relatively new vocation meant to stem the tide of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, autoimmune issues, depression/anxiety, etc.
Prescription medications and rushed doctor’s visits alone are not working.
The key to reversing and preventing chronic disease is behavior change. As simple as that sounds, it just isn’t. That's where coaches come in!
You either know what you need to do to improve your health and ... just aren’t doing it, or you do not know what to do and want help figuring that out. In either case you could benefit from consistent support, encouragement and accountability.
As a health coach I do not tell, I ask. I promote incremental change and experimentation while providing judgment-free support. My aim is for you to articulate your own compelling reasons for why you want to change. As your health coach, I am there to help you stay accountable to yourself.
Taking good care of yourself, in all areas of your life, is critical to stop living out the addiction. A well nourished body and a stable daily routine help support you as you work through the emotional muck.
Behavior change is challenging. If you identify as a love addict, you likely have a hard time focusing on yourself and your own needs in a healthy way. Without proper awareness of how love addiction tricks the mind, adopting new habits is even harder.
If you are newly recovering or in withdrawal, you are probably enduring waves of intense emotions. You are OK one minute and then coming apart at the seams the next. It takes conscious effort to not emotionally check out by returning to the denial and delusion that fuels the addictive process.
So in addition to making diet and lifestyle changes you need help with countering self-destructive thoughts and learning to self-soothe in a healthy way. As a love-addiction-aware health coach, I can support you in staying emotionally sober and offer guidance – with your permission – on how to redirect away from destructive behaviors.
What if I told you your bad relationships are a result of unresolved issues and NOT a fundamental flaw in you? Love addiction is an unfortunate coping strategy born out of trauma.
To identify with the concept of love addiction, you need to see the connection between your upbringing, any social or cultural dislocation you have endured, and who you are today. Unresolved issues leave you unable to enjoy honest intimacy or emotional reciprocity. In other words, you keep sabotaging the best part of relating to other humans.
Love addicts are prone to repeating the same dating and relationship mistakes. It takes conscious effort to break the cycle.
It takes a lot of support to recover from love addiction. Therapy focuses on self-understanding and emotional healing while coaching is about moving to a higher level of functioning. Having both a coach and therapist is great.
Love addicts are uniquely challenged when it comes to establishing and maintaining healthy habits. To recover, you need to be eating right, sleeping well, exercising regularly, cultivating friendships, managing stress, exploring spirituality, achieving career/personal goals, and also making time to play. The thing is, ACTUALLY DOING all that requires self-worth. And it is that very lack of self-worth which fostered love addiction in the first place.
By getting a coach, you are practicing asking for help and establishing healthy routines that support the real, non-addicted you. These new routines help create a positive cycle. Healthier behavior leads to healthier thoughts, which puts you in alignment for a more meaningful life, which in turn attracts people who are also seeking mutually satisfying relationships.
It's a viciously positive healing cycle.
Generally, six to nine months is ideal. Health coaching sessions are built around a wellness vision that asks you to consider the changes you want to make in the next three to six months. You can do as little or as much as you feel is necessary.
Start and stop as you see fit. You are the authority on what is the right amount of time for you.
No. I’m not a nutritionist or dietitian. Food plans and nutritional advice are not within my scope of practice.
No. I’m not that kind of person (or at least that's always the goal) and anyway shaming and bullying are terrible motivators.
“Any behavior in which the individual finds temporary relief or pleasure in—and craves for that reason, despite negative consequences” — Gabor Mate´
“A pathological relationship with a mood altering substance or experience that has life damaging consequences.” — John Bradshaw
“Any process that succeeds at removing intolerable reality and because of that it begins to take priority in your life, taking time and attention away from other important priorities, creating harmful consequences that you ignore.” — Pia Mellody
Love addiction is the abandonment of self in order to put a romantic partner, real or imagined, on a pedestal and thereby expecting to be rescued from a deep sense of loneliness and emptiness. The love addict makes the object of their affection into the source of their self-esteem. When this love interest inevitably disappoints by failing to live up to unrealistic expectations, the addict gets resentful, angry and even vengeful.
Love addiction can go undetected. People often focus on the symptoms — depression and anxiety — rather than the root, which is addiction.
The good news is, you can absolutely get a handle on love addiction and live your life from a place of choice rather than compulsion. However, you must increase your awareness of your addictive patterns and choose to behave differently. In doing so, over time you will find you are no longer limited by your old patterns and are free to make positive, emotionally satisfying decisions moving forward.
Love addiction, in my experience, is the root of many chronic health issues. Being stuck in addiction is depressing and alienating. It leads us to become apathetic and to overconsume bad food and bad media, which only makes things worse.
Love addiction, and just addiction in general, permeates our culture. It robs us of our sense of self and blocks our creativity and zest for life. Without doing recovery work, you risk a life of quiet desperation, unable to get through the day without a sinking feeling of unworthiness and generalized quiet rage.
People who experience love and sex as a non-addictive medium are able to be present in their own lives without feeling drained and miserable.
Love addiction robs you of your dreams. And what happens to a dream deferred?
Next Steps:
Schedule a discovery coaching Zoom conversation with me here.
Not quite ready for coaching? Read this article.
I am an ADAPT Certified Health Coach who provides online coaching around the world via Zoom.
Shame and despair welcomed.
DISCLAIMER: The role of a Health Coach is not to diagnose, treat or cure any disease, condition or other physical or mental ailment of the human body. The content on this website is for purely informational and educational purposes. It should not be seen as medical or nursing advice and is not meant to take the place of seeing licensed health professionals.
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