Understanding
Addiction and emotions: how they talk to each other
Depression, anxiety, anger, burnout, loneliness, adolescence… Addiction is usually in conversation with difficult emotions. This guide goes through the situations that come up most often.
Addiction & depression
This one speaks to me: I went through a depressive stretch of close to eight years myself. Psychoactive substances (tobacco, cannabis, alcohol, cocaine…) stimulate the system artificially; gradually the body loses its own capacity to do so. When they are missing, what arrives is an under-stimulation close to a depressive state — apathy, no appetite for anything, little creativity, isolation, boredom.
The good news: stimulation, desire and creativity come back. On condition that you leave the addiction while getting clear on why and how, reconnect with your needs and emotions, meet the inner discomfort, and rebuild connection with other people. It does not happen overnight.
When depression lasts, it is often because access to emotions and needs is blocked by avoidance — substances, distraction, losing yourself in others. The state is never moved through: it comes back as soon as the outside effects fade. One way to put it: depression closes the connection to the outside world and calls for solitude — not to move away from other people, but to reconnect with yourself.
Difficult emotions
Meeting them, listening, stopping the running — the groundwork before any way out of addiction.
Whatever the emotion in the room, the first step is to notice it, meet it and accept it — without judgement and without getting stuck in your head. Emotions are signals on a dashboard: they point to a need, a value, or a pain that has not been lived through and is asking for your presence.
Running through work, screens, substances or food settles things for a moment — then the emotion comes back stronger. Anxiety, emptiness, shame, a racing mind, loneliness: all of them are calls to slow down and hear what is happening inside. Exploring that tension is disorienting at first; support makes the learning safe until you can settle yourself alone.
Conversations that matter
Difficult conversations are often the most important ones — with a partner, a parent, a child, an employer. What blocks them is rarely a lack of courage, but a lack of clarity about what we feel, and the fear of hurting or being misunderstood. By avoiding the exchange, we cultivate bitterness, frustration and distance.
The idea: rehearse in a safe space to prepare the conversation, get past what blocks you, then state emotions, needs and limits as accurately and as gently as possible — before doing it for real.
Other situations that come up often
Transition, anxiety, anger, adolescence, burnout, loneliness… Open the one that concerns you.
A difficult transition
A transition gets hard when it brings a rush of uncomfortable emotion — pain, fear. It is a kind of rebirth: letting the old go, shedding old skins, walking into the unknown. The gap between needs that are shifting and old ways of functioning that no longer match is what makes the passage so tender. It takes time, calm, and sometimes an outside ear to point attention back towards what you can actually control.
Anxiety
Three things to try through the body, at least five minutes each: joining your hands as though reconciling two parts of yourself in conflict; breathing in cardiac coherence to create space rather than fight the anxiety; meeting the physical sensations and letting the breath widen the place where the intensity moves. The goal is not to crush the anxiety, but to leave it enough room to change.
Facing your anger
Anger stays heavy for as long as you do not know how to receive it. Believing the thoughts it produces usually leads to words or acts you regret. The exercise: watch those thoughts without believing them, then look for the needs asking to be heard — the usual source of the frustration. At the start, a neutral outside view makes this far more manageable.
Understanding your teenager's needs
Adolescence brings together self-assertion, autonomy, hormonal change and pressure from school or from parents. A young person's needs are easily misread by a parent still caught in their own conditioning. The work aims to strengthen the parent–teenager bond and to clarify what fulfilment looks like at home, at school and among friends.
Expressing needs and limits
Knowing how to express needs and limits is one of the least obvious skills — and one of the richest. It teaches respect for yourself and for the other person, as you are and as you feel. It is the road towards unconditional acceptance, towards choosing a community that fits, and out of victimhood into self-assertion and responsibility.
Burnout and bore-out
Burnout and bore-out are often tied to a difficulty in hearing or expressing needs, limits or values. You wear yourself out because the work no longer aligns — out of fear of what others think, because you cannot pin down what is wrong, or because you believe there is no other option. Getting clear on that and exploring other strategies, before your mind or body raises the alarm too loudly.
A feeling of loneliness
Loneliness is a call to connect with your emotions. Going out and meeting people settles it for a while, then it returns the moment you are on your own again. It can accompany grief — for a person, a relationship, a job, a place — as a rebirth outside the old cocoon. Allowing yourself to feel that pain is often what eases it.
A need for spiritual exploration
At certain passages in life, people become unusually sensitive to synchronicity and signs — surprising encounters, repeated coincidences, patterns that keep returning. Life can start to feel more like a waking dream. It is thrilling and unsettling, and sometimes hard to share. The task: meeting those experiences lightly, simply and fluidly, without forcing them or writing them off as mere coincidence.
Going further, by substance
Quit smoking · Alcohol · Cannabis · Cocaine
Frequently asked questions
How many sessions does it take to stop using cannabis or cocaine?
It depends on your history and on what the substance is doing for you. On average, a structured programme runs between 3 and 12 weeks, with sessions spaced out so the changes have time to settle. The free 45-minute assessment is there to sketch out a realistic path together.
Does hypnosis work on alcohol?
The interactive hypnosis I use (different from classic Ericksonian hypnosis) lets you reach the states you drink for — relaxation, relief, a quiet mind, a sense of freedom — by another route. But the work does not stop at hypnosis. We build new strategies and new habits to replace the addiction, without ever writing off pleasure and enjoyment, then go through every risky situation one by one. It is that combination that has repeatedly proved itself against alcohol addiction. Medical follow-up may be suggested, but it is not always necessary.
Is this covered by French social security?
Private coaching and hypnotherapy sessions are not reimbursed by Assurance maladie. Some French mutuelles do cover part of the cost under complementary medicine — worth checking your policy.
One thing to keep in mind: cost should not be your only criterion. Not getting free of an addiction usually costs between €1,500 and €4,800 a year, before counting everything else it affects — focus, wellbeing, relationships, family.
What happens during the free assessment?
For 30 to 45 minutes, over the phone or by video, we map out how your addiction works: the emotional needs it meets and what is getting in the way of stopping. You leave with a clear picture of your situation and of the work we could do together. If you want to go ahead, we agree on a session rhythm and a first date. There is no obligation to continue.
A first assessment
A 45-minute conversation, free and with no strings attached
- 01Understand the mechanics behind your addiction
- 02Identify what stands between you and the way out
- 03Decide together whether this support fits you
