Doing The Work from Naples Integrated Recovery

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

Recurring arguments about money, phones, sex, chores, and communication can carry a deeper fear about the security of the relationship. Couples may know Gottman’s Four Horsemen, use “I” statements, take breaks, and understand communication skills while still feeling emotionally disconnected. Drawing from John Bowlby, Sue Johnson, Gottman’s Four Horsemen, and Ed Tronick’s Still Face experiment, this episode explores why criticism, defensiveness, pursuit, and withdrawal become linked and why small moments can trigger powerful reactions.
The episode also examines safe haven and secure base, along with Sue Johnson’s ARE framework: accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement. Can I reach you? Will what I share matter to you? Will you stay emotionally present when things get uncomfortable? These questions help explain how couples build security through attention, responsiveness, follow-through, and repair.
Watch Tronick’s Still Face Experiment:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Jw0-LExyc
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

After betrayal, the biggest question often becomes: How am I supposed to know what’s real now? An affair or major deception can destroy trust, but rebuilding trust involves much more than avoiding another catastrophic lie. Half-truths, omissions, minimizing, changing explanations, and giving your partner the version of the truth you think they can handle can reactivate a betrayal injury long after the original discovery. This episode explores emotional dishonesty in relationships and why seemingly small inconsistencies can feel enormous after infidelity.
This episode looks at lying by omission, self-deception, conflict avoidance, emotional honesty, and the ways couples can unintentionally make truth harder to tell and harder to hear. We’ll also examine what actually rebuilds trust after cheating or deception: consistency, transparency, tolerating uncomfortable conversations, and learning to stay present when the truth creates disappointment, anger, shame, or tension. Because rebuilding intimacy requires two people who can tolerate the discomfort of standing in the same reality.
 
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 when fighting for fairness starts costing you more than the original problem? Anger, damaged trust, emotional regulation, competing values, and the need for resolution can turn a legitimate conflict into something that consumes far more time and energy than the issue itself. This episode explores how self-protection can become hypervigilance, how the need to be understood can keep us stuck, and why values-based decisions often feel messy when fairness, self-respect, responsibility, money, and long-term goals are all pulling in different directions.
The conversation moves into radical acceptance, amor fati, Stoic philosophy, surrender, and the limits of control. Brian connects these ideas to recovery, relationships, work, conflict, and major life decisions, including his own experiences leaving law enforcement and walking away from a house he once thought he had to have. The central question is simple: when something feels unfair, unresolved, or outside your control, how much of your life does it deserve?
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 keeps us in jobs, relationships, roles, or systems that have become unsustainable? We can know something is wearing us down and still be terrified to leave because uncertainty feels even more threatening. Through a personal story involving professional rupture, burnout, anxiety, recovery, supervision, and private-practice change, this episode looks at the ways fear, dependence, and the need for stability can keep us trying to preserve something long after it stops fitting.
The work is learning to tolerate enough uncertainty to make choices based on what is actually happening rather than only on what feels safest. That can mean knowing when to repair, when to set a boundary, when to leave, and how to live without immediate closure or guarantees about what comes next. It is also about what happens after the rupture: how we use the support we receive, what we do once we have more autonomy ourselves, and how recovery can become the ability to stay present through fear and discomfort without needing to escape it.
Special thanks to the show’s friends mentioned in this episode. Please check out the people & Practices mentioned:
Marci Wise, M.A., LMHC — Wise Counseling, Inc. EMDR-certified therapist and Director of Wise Counseling, providing individual, couples, trauma, and EMDR therapy in Naples and Fort Myers, Florida 
https://wisecounselinginc.com 
 
Kelly Knell, LMHC — Headquarters Mental Health. Individual and couples therapy in Bonita Springs, Florida.https://headquartersmh.com
Andrew G. Pierce, MCAP — Blueprint Therapy Solutions Addiction treatment, recovery, family therapy, codependency, and behavioral addictions in Naples, Florida.https://www.andrewgpierce.com
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

Rage becomes easier to justify when we assume another person fully understands the harm they are causing and chooses it anyway. The image of a blind man knocking someone to the ground offers another possibility: some people keep crashing into the world because they genuinely cannot see what they are doing. Compassion asks us to understand that blindness while still naming the damage, protecting ourselves, and imposing consequences. The groceries are still broken, and someone still has to clean them up.
Compassion also becomes complicated when recovery programs, religious teachings, or spiritual practices encourage people to distrust themselves, suppress anger, and tolerate harmful behavior. Drawing from Jack Kornfield, Buddhism, Stoicism, IFS, AA, and personal recovery, this episode examines self-hatred, moral disgust, boundaries, accountability, and the difference between correction and punishment. Compassion needs enough tenderness to understand suffering and enough spine to stop harm. The central question is what kind of person we become while deciding what happens next.
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