Therapy for habits & addictions in Orange County
Substance use. Alcohol. Pornography. Screens. Food. Procrastination. Patterns you understand but can't seem to break — and the willpower-only approach has stopped working.
Habits and addictions persist because they're doing something for you, even when the cost is clear. The work isn't to remove the behavior by force — it's to find what need the behavior is meeting and address that need at the root.
Most habit-change attempts fail at the surface layer. "Just stop." "Try harder." "More discipline." The behavior comes back because the underneath hasn't moved. Therapy at the root looks different: identify what the habit is regulating, what triggers the urge, and what the underlying need actually is. Then change what's possible at each layer.
Four layers, surface to root.
Habits stick because they work — at some layer. Naming which layer is doing the work changes what you can do about it. The deeper you go, the slower the change, and the more durable it tends to be.
The drink. The scroll. The bag. The pattern you've named to yourself a hundred times and still can't seem to interrupt. This is the layer most people try to fix directly — and it's the layer where willpower runs out fastest.
Every habit is meeting a need. Numbing something. Regulating something. Filling something. Until you can name what the behavior is doing for you, replacing it is just subtraction — and the system fights subtraction.
Stress at a certain hour. A specific feeling. A specific person. A specific situation. The trigger is the part of the loop you usually have more control over than the urge itself — but only if you can see it before the urge has its hand on the wheel.
Loneliness. Exhaustion. Old grief. A bond that isn't safe. A nervous system that learned a long time ago that it wasn't going to be helped any other way. The work at this layer is slower — and it's the work that makes the change stick.
The method depends on which layer the work is at.
Identify the triggers, beliefs, and consequences driving the loop. Track session-by-session whether change is actually happening.
When the urge is here and the willpower-only approach has stopped working — DBT distress tolerance is the toolkit.
If a specific event or set of events is the original driver of what the habit is regulating, EMDR can move that piece.
The pattern is workable.
Start with a free 15-minute consultation. We'll talk through what's actually going on and what kind of work would help.
Do you treat substance use / alcohol?
Janie works with patterns around substance use and alcohol when they're part of a broader picture — meaning the work is integrated with the underlying emotional, relational, or stress patterns driving the use. For active addiction requiring medical detox, intensive outpatient (IOP), or inpatient treatment, she's not the right primary clinician — but she can be part of the care team and refer you to the appropriate level of care.
What about behavioral addictions — pornography, screens, food, gambling?
Yes. The mechanism behind behavioral addictions is the same as substance ones: the behavior does something for you (regulates emotion, fills a need, numbs something) and the brain learns to repeat it. Therapy works at the root — what need it's meeting, what's keeping it in place, and what to replace it with.
I don't have an 'addiction.' Just a habit I can't break.
Same toolkit. The line between 'habit' and 'addiction' is more clinical than functional. If a pattern is sticky and you can't seem to break it, the work is figuring out what it's doing for you and changing what it's responding to. Procrastination, overeating, scrolling — same shape underneath.
Will you tell me I have to quit?
Not unconditionally. Some patterns are genuinely safer to step away from completely; others can shift through moderation or different conditions. The work is figuring out what your relationship to the behavior actually needs to be, not imposing an answer. Honest conversation about what's possible and what's not is part of the work.