Following on from our recent blogs on who interpersonal factors (e.g. family and love relationships conflict and distress) can interact with intrapersonal factors (e.g. insecure attachment based rejection sensitivity, low self esteem) can prompt relapse.

Today  we look at both a detailed video on the concept of the interpersonal neurobiology (INPB) of addiction. Our next blog will look at how this interpersonal model of addiction appears to effectively model internet addiction.

In this video author, professor and clinician Jon Daily illustrates how attunement and secure attachment affect one’s emotional, psychological and neurological development and, concomitantly, one’s regulatory systems and result in affect (emotion) regulation or dysregulation.

He makes the valid point that people regulate our emotions and behaviour and do so in every day life and have done so since we were babies and infants.

Just as caregivers contribute to insecure attachment and this leads to an impaired ability to regulate emotions, people in our adult lives can give us a secure attachment and help us greatly improve our ability to regulate our emotions and behaviour.

This for me is one of the reasons for “How it Works” in recovery. Fellow recovering people, reconstructed relationships with our loved ones and our relationship with a Higher Power allow us to gain secure attachments and higher self esteem, less rejection sensitivity and great emotional regulation. Hence the chances of relapse are greatly reduced.