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The Struggle to Connect: The Impact of Addiction on Relationships

5 Jun 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:58

A short YouTube video (speaker: Amber Hollingsworth) discussing how substance addiction disrupts the emotional state required for genuine interpersonal connection—explaining that addiction shifts people into fight/flight, intoxication, or withdrawal states, leaving little time in the calm/safe zone needed for empathy and sustained closeness.

Chapters

Because you kind of have to be in this like optimal state of like calmness and safety to be able to really connect with other people in your life, to be able to really feel empathy and have an exchange of feelings there. And when you're in addiction, you're constantly not in that optimal zone. You're in fight flight or you're high or you're in withdrawal or you're, you're something. And you really just have either no time in that zone or very little time in that zone. Occasionally depends on the substance. People will tell me, well, sometimes when my loved one gets high or they're drinking, they'll like get really honest with me and we'll have these deep conversations and we'll connect. And my thinking about why that happens is because with the right amount of substance, that's when they get to that optimal zone. But it's very brief. A lot of times they miss that. Mark.