Overview of TRMA

A simplified vision of humanity is a founding premise TRMA is based on. Human beings have two basic needs: for love or connection and the need to relieve the pain from unmet needs.

The underlying driving force of addiction is the need to relieve pain. The greater the pain, the greater the need to relieve it.

The cause is the cure. Non-nourishing relationships are the spawning ground of addiction and creating nourishing relationships is the cure, by reducing the level of pain driving the addiction.

Addiction is a relationship (not a disease) with a means of relief of pain from unmet emotional needs.

Means of relief include mind and mood-altering substances, process addictions like sex, porn, gambling as well as addictions to people, as in the cases of love addiction and codependency.

This relationship with a means of relief is akin to carrying on an all-consuming secret love affair, that becomes a primary relationship, rendering all others secondary.

Recovery is a three-stage transitional journey out of unhealthy, non-nourishing relationships and into healthy, nourishing ones.


Stage I is Breaking-up

The first stage of recovery is breaking up the relationship with the means of relief to create a space for a new primary relationship (with your Self) to begin developing.


Stage II is Developing the Relationship with Self

Intensive self-work to discover and grow that relationship with your Self.)


Stage III – Creating Emotionally Nourishing Relationships (relationship training).

Having a relationship with your Self is a pre-requisite for entering Stage III.

Learning the arts of relating and connecting with others, basic principles apply, essential skills practiced and honed.

The relationship with your Self is the mother of all your other relationships; the quality of which is always relative to the quality of the relationship with your Self.

When you are making deeper connections or creating nourishing relationships for yourself, the need to relieve the pain from unmet needs abates, the addiction naturally extinguishes itself.


The Five Steps to Breaking Up Mindfully:

1. Recognition of an Unhealthy Relationship: Acknowledging the detrimental impact of the relationship (mental, emotional, physical, relational, spiritual), recognizing your deep involvement and the isolation it has caused. This fosters motivation for change.


2. Discovery : Going Back to the Beginning: Revisiting the emotional context and primary relationships at the relationship's onset. Realize that pain relief, not love or connection, was the primary driver. Consciously acknowledging this pain fosters self-compassion and understanding. Making unconscious pain conscious diminishes its power.


3. Denial – How it Works & Identifying Manifestations: Recognizing denial as a survival mechanism protecting the dependency; understanding the interplay between denial and dependency and how it obscures reality and disconnects you from yourself; and identifying its various forms (illusion of choice/control, repression, projection)


4. Conscious (Emotional) Withdrawal: Expect emotional fallout when disengaging.


5. “Goodbye” (to the means of relief) and “Hello” (to your Self): Proactively affirm your intention to break up through action or communication ("We're Done"). This creates space for a new primary relationship – with your Self. Conscious engagement during this "goodbye" is transformative. Writing a "Goodbye Letter" can accelerate this process.  Once you break-up one primary relationship, space opens for new relationship to take hold (with your Self, or others). “Goodbye” is “Hello”( to your new best friend)

(Write a Goodbye Letter to the substance, activity or person you were involved with, and include your rationale, the challenges you’re facing, and how you are adjusting to your new-found freedom, and standing on your own two feet without that crutch. That you are saying “goodbye” to what you no longer want and “hello” to what you do want.


Moving Forward

How you end one relationship shapes how you begin the next. Breaking-up mindfully close the door on the relationship with the means of relief and opens the door for a new relationship with your Self to begin, which enables you to make authentic connections with ​others.