Email: Info@thrivebeyondtraumacounseling.com
Call: (248) 392- 3733
Counselling
Counselling
Relationship Addiction Therapy in Farmington Hills
Available in-person and virtually across Michigan.
You may be experiencing relationship addiction.
Relationship addiction develops when a specific relationship becomes the nervous system’s primary source of:
- Regulation
- Emotional stability
- Relief
- Identity
- Meaning
It’s the pattern where:
- Intensity feels grounding
- Chaos feels familiar
- Separation feels unbearable
- Leaving feels like losing yourself
*Relationship addiction is about survival attachment — Not choice.*
Not sure this fits?
If the hardest part is being alone or needing reassurance to feel okay, see Love Addiction Recovery
If you’re struggling with Relationship Addiction
- You stay in relationships that repeatedly hurt you
- Breakups trigger panic, grief, or collapse
- Reunion brings temporary relief
- Intensity feels like intimacy
- You feel unable to leave despite wanting to
- Your identity becomes tied to the relationship
- You fear losing the bond more than enduring pain
- Calm or stable relationships feel “off” or boring
- You return to the same person again and again
*These patterns are nervous-system responses, not weakness.*
- Individuals stuck in on-again/off-again relationships
- People who feel unable to leave harmful bonds
- Those who confuse intensity with intimacy
- Individuals whose identity revolves around one relationship
- Anyone who fears separation more than pain
*If love feels urgent instead of safe, you’re in the right place.*
What Relationship Addiction Really Is?
Relationship addiction is not simply “choosing the wrong partners.”
Clinically, it is:
- Trauma-bonded attachment
- Nervous-system dependence on relational intensity
- Fear-based connection
- Conditioned relief through reunion
- Attachment wounds replaying in real time
*Your body believes the relationship is protection — Even when it isn’t.*
What Relationship Addiction Is not?
Relationship addiction is NOT:
It becomes a problem when:
- Loving deeply
- Wanting commitment
- Struggling with normal relationship anxiety
- Staying through temporary conflict
- Separation feels like danger
- Intensity regulates emotion
- Leaving triggers panic or collapse
- Stability feels unfamiliar or unsafe
*The problem isn’t love — It’s attachment to instability.*
Relationship addiction is often rooted in:
- Emotional neglect
- Abandonment or rejection
- Inconsistent or chaotic caregiving
- Parentification or responsibility for others
- Early attachment instability
- Growing up around unpredictability
- Internalized beliefs like “love hurts” or “I must earn connection”
These experiences teach the body:
“Connection is unstable.”
“Leaving is dangerous.”
*Relationship addiction is an echo of early attachment wounds.*
At Thrive Beyond Trauma Counseling, Relationship Addiction recovery includes:
- Attachment-focused trauma therapy
- EMDR for relational and abandonment trauma
- Somatic therapy to regulate attachment panic
- Parts work and inner-child repair
- Trauma-bond interruption
- Identity rebuilding outside the relationship
- Boundary development without emotional collapse
- Hypnotherapy for subconscious relational beliefs
*Healing happens when safety no longer depends on the relationship.*
What Recovery Looks Like
Recovery is not about becoming detached or cold.
It often includes:
- Reducing emotional flooding
- Panic
- Reactivity
Healing attachment wounds through EMDR and somatic work
- Restoring self-trust
- Boundaries
- Internal stability
- Choosing connection without urgency or fear
*Recovery gives you the ability to choose connection — Not chase it.*
If a relationship has become the way your body feels safe
And it no longer feels manageable
Support can help.
You don’t need to decide anything today.
You don’t need to leave — or stay — yet.
You don’t need to keep repeating this alone.
We offer trauma-informed, non-judgmental care for relationship addiction and the attachment patterns underneath it.
*You don’t have to do this alone.*