Personalized Recovery Pathways for Behavioral Addictions Through Compassionate Clinical Counseling

So I think what clients look for, when they come to Bird's Nest they're looking for hope. They're looking for hope that their life can be better. And we try to help them heal from the different things that they're afflicted with. My name is James Martinez. I am a licensed addiction therapist with Birch's Health and I am located right now in the Baltimore, Maryland area. I've been working with Birch's Health for about two years and one of the things I enjoy about Birch's is that they're very compassionate about the client care and the quality of the work that is being provided to help individuals with different recovery pathways and different addiction situations. So I typically work with individuals who have different types of behavioral addictions. I think that what people realize too late, once the activity becomes very consistent, it's hard to stop. So when a person wins, a gambling disorder usually starts when a person hits a jackpot, which creates excitement. That excitement releases a lot of dopamine and it makes them feel good about themselves. And this is where the progression slowly starts. But at some point, because this is still math and this is still random, once the person starts to experience losses, their emotional state starts to change. Now they're feeling very stressed. I think individuals should ask themselves, If it's worth the risk. The gambling itself, it fills a need, whether it for boredom or an emotional need. When they come to get help, they start to realize that there are other areas of life that need attention, too. When people stop, the recovery journey is still very stressful because you still have family members who don't trust you. You still have a lot of this debt. We try to help the client do is pretty much become self-aware of all those areas, so then they can work on healing in all those areas. Someone who's trying to stop has to go; I want to do this. They don't see themselves as recovered yet. Someone who is actually committed will start to have a different identity, so the identities shift. And they'll say, well, I am someone who doesn't gamble anymore. What do I need to do? A good reframing exercise. is to really ground their inner thoughts, to take things one day at a time. If you get urges, it's good to talk to someone. Let me talk to someone who will understand what I'm going through. A common lie that gamblers tell themselves is that they still have some sense of control. In the beginning, because it's meant to be recreational, they do have some control because I can say I don't need to gamble today. But as it starts to progress, The behavior, the gambling, actually starts to control them. It's ingrained now in your brain, the way that behavior works. So now if you do something different, it seems unnatural, because now this is normal for you. It means that now we have to learn how to change the way we think. It's about not creating new, healthier behaviors to replace them, in the beginning, until they learn to develop those coping skills. In the beginning, as if I were a sports gambler, I might have to stop watching sports for a while. If I'm socializing with certain friends who are doing the same thing, you know, I may need to stop hanging out with them once that topic comes up. But once you start to eliminate the environmental trigger, you work on changing yourself because you can't avoid the environmental triggers forever. But at some point, once you're slowly exposed again, you already know how to handle it. or looking to learn to desensitize. And that takes time. It's not something that's gonna happen from one day to the next.