What happens when you still love your partner but no longer feel sexually attracted to them? Loss of desire in long-term relationships can involve pressure, mismatched libido, performance anxiety, pornography, aging, weight changes, resentment, attachment, and sometimes a simple change in attraction that therapy cannot force back into existence.

Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy offers a strong framework for understanding how rejection, pursuit, shame, and emotional safety shape sexual connection. This episode also looks at sexless marriages, affairs, secrecy, aging and attraction, unconventional sexual agreements, and the limits of couples therapy when emotional closeness improves but erotic desire does not.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Therapist vs psychologist vs psychiatrist can get confusing quickly, especially when your mental health problems feel serious. The highest credential does not automatically mean the deepest expertise in addiction, trauma, couples therapy, OCD, ADHD, autism, or whatever problem brought you to treatment.

Addiction, trauma, couples therapy, ADHD and autism assessment, and medication management all require different kinds of expertise. A clinician can be highly trained and still have limited experience in the area you actually need help with. This episode also looks at therapist fit, professional limits, and why claiming expertise in nearly everything should raise questions.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Getting sober can end the immediate chaos of alcoholism, but families often keep living with patterns that developed during the drinking years. Secrecy, mistrust, defensiveness, watching for danger, controlling information, and avoiding certain subjects can all continue long after the alcohol is gone. Using the story of a couple I worked with, this episode looks at how a family can become organized around addiction and why those habits do not automatically disappear with sobriety.

The episode also explores rebuilding trust after addiction, the difference between privacy and secrecy, why a spouse may still question their own perceptions, and what recovery asks from both people once the crisis has passed. For people in Al-Anon, partners of someone in recovery, and families affected by alcoholism, the deeper work is learning how to live together without the old rules that once helped everyone survive.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

GLP-1 medications like semaglutide, Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound are best known for diabetes and weight loss, but researchers are increasingly studying their effects on alcohol craving, nicotine use, reward processing, and addiction. In this episode, I look at the emerging science behind GLP-1 drugs and alcohol use disorder, including dopamine, reward salience, craving, reinforcement, and why some people describe food or alcohol occupying much less mental space after starting these medications.

The episode also examines the overlap between GLP-1 medications and established addiction treatments such as naltrexone and Vivitrol, along with the cultural tendency to treat obesity and addiction as failures of willpower. Early studies of semaglutide and alcohol use disorder are promising, larger Phase 3 trials are underway, and the evidence remains developing. The bigger question is what addiction treatment could look like if medication becomes increasingly capable of reducing craving itself while psychotherapy addresses emotional regulation, relationships, trauma, habits, identity, and long-term recovery.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

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 brain can continue pursuing something long after the pleasure is gone. It also looks at why knowing the consequences often fails to stop addictive behavior, how recovery retrains the brain, and why structure can create more freedom over time.

The conversation also moves into relapse, shame, accountability, and the experience of coming home after things have gone badly. Drawing from addiction treatment, Al-Anon, neuroplasticity, and the story of the prodigal son, the episode explores how compassion can coexist with consequences and how recovery involves learning the wiring you carry and building a life that works with it. Honey may always have a prey drive, and an addictive brain may always carry its own vulnerabilities. Learning how to live wisely with both is the work.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

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 how fear, hopelessness, and isolation can continue shaping identity, relationships, and decision-making long after someone gets out.

The conversation examines cult trauma, coercive control, trauma avoidance, shame, loss of agency, and rebuilding self-trust—dynamics that can also appear in abusive relationships and other high-control environments. Dr. Garcia discusses why recovery often requires revisiting and telling the story in a safe relationship, how avoidance can maintain trauma symptoms, how therapists can accidentally recreate controlling dynamics, and how exposure to new experiences can gradually weaken beliefs built through fear and control.

Want to watch the video of the entire conversation? https://youtu.be/rLeQ3-AYWC4

Connect with Dr. Garcia: https://www.therapytreatmentteam.com/team_member/yaro-garcia/

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work with Brian? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

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 shifting loyalty can slowly change a relationship from the inside. It also explores how someone can remain physically present in a marriage while becoming psychologically gone, and how another person can start to represent relief, freedom, understanding, or a different life.

The episode also looks at betrayal from both sides of the therapy room: the devastation experienced by the betrayed partner and the psychological process that can lead someone toward crossing a boundary they once would have considered unthinkable. Understanding that process helps reveal where commitment starts eroding, where emotional honesty breaks down, and where choices still exist long before anybody finds the text message.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Couples can know exactly how their arguments go and still feel powerless to stop them. This episode explores the negative cycle in Emotionally Focused Therapy, including Sue Johnson’s “Protest Polka,” the pursue-withdraw pattern, Gottman’s bids for connection, and how criticism, defensiveness, silence, and pressure begin feeding each other. It explains how a missed bid or small moment of disconnection can take on much greater meaning once both partners start anticipating rejection, failure, criticism, or abandonment.

We also look at why insight alone often fails once the nervous system is activated, how therapists slow the cycle down to uncover the vulnerable emotions underneath anger and withdrawal, and how couples can recognize activation before the old pattern takes over. The goal is to help both partners see the cycle as it unfolds, communicate what is happening underneath their protective reactions, and create new interactions that feel safer and more connected.

Check out the website for articles published weekly: www.naplesintegratedrecovery.com

Want to work together? I see psychotherapy clients in Florida: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brian-granneman-naples-fl/1153470

I also offer accountability, coaching, and sober companion services. Send an email: brian@naplesintegratedrecovery.com