PERSONAL RECOVERY TALKS
Christophe Sauerwein has been on his journey of recovery from multiple addiction and family of origin relational trauma since 1999. After a 17 years career in investment banking and private equity, Christophe turned is a leading therapist in addiction, relational childhood trauma and dysfunctionning relationships.
Christophe holds an MSc in Addiction Psychology and Counselling and fully qualified in Childhood Trauma Reduction therapy (PIT/Pia Mellody model) Sex Addiction (Paula Hall Model) and Attachment and Relationship disorders.
Christophe also sits on the board of directors as Academic Director of iCAAD, the International Conference on Addiction and Associated Disorders, the largest European conference in the field. After having worked with the Priory North London Hospital as part of the addictive disorders multidisciplinary therapeutic team; more specifically in charge of sexual compulsivity, trauma reduction and relationship disorders.
Christophe developed his private practice in Harley Street, joined the Hale Clinic in late 2015 and has now moved into his independent private practice in High Street Kensington, London Christophe also delivers therapy in his mother tongue of French.
“I believe an addictive disorder is a bio-psycho-social mechanism developed by a human being to deal with acute sensitivity and compensate for a lack of affect and emotional self-regulation. The cause is primarily embedded in adverse childhood experiences re-enforced in adult life by developing multiple addictions in a self-destructive complex individual unique system and extremely disruptive and insecure bonds of romantic and social attachment. It is my personal experience and my observation working with clients that beyond substance addiction there are most of the time underlying non-substance addictions and attachment issues, which are to be eventually captured to reach happiness in life and recovery.
More profoundly routed in the soul there are always unbearable pain, fear and shame coming from the past as a daunting tsunami hurting deep in the heart the humanity of an addict.” Presentation Abstract Attachment is a necessary bio-psycho-social human process. When and does it become an addiction? Maybe when it develops into a dysfunctioning pattern to survive profound affect insecurity when the early-life experiences and states become a trait in adulthood. Attachment is the human manifestation of basic evolutionary process, DNA helix duplication, genes perpetration, future of the species and human social groups, it is embedded in the central neural system. Attachment is rooted spacialy into social rules determined inside a cultural space.
Attachment is informed in time by family of origin traits and tradition within the timeline of an individual life span starting at a very early stage. Attachment becomes a problematic disorder when the early negative insecure experiences shape structural corresponding traits for life: a paradoxical anxiogenic human necessity to attach, a fear based evolutionary constraint, extremely difficult to regulate where the more an individual feels biologically compelled to create attachment the more he socially fails.
A lot of questions are still pending and unanswered today despite an vast increase of research and findings, when it becomes clearly a prevalent issue leading more and more individuals to ask for professional help. How do the different addiction models can conceptualize and provide an account for attachment disorders? What are the treatment implications? What are the alternative models? How to capture the underlying reality of the client’s narrative and expression of fear, shame and pain when demanding help with attachment disorders? What are the dimensions of the self at stakes? What are the different possible treatment modalities and integrative approaches?