Michael Anderson, MA, LPC, is a Licensed Professional Counselor and the Clinical Director at Healing Pines Recovery, a residential addiction and mental health treatment center in Castle Rock, Colorado. He oversees the clinical program and works directly with adults in recovery from alcohol, drug, and behavioral addictions, including many who carry co-occurring trauma, anxiety, and personality-disorder presentations. His clinical lens is developmental. He frames substance use and behavioral compulsion as downstream effects of unmet emotional needs, insecure attachment, and limited capacity for self-soothing rather than as character problems. In treatment he leans on cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based relapse prevention, and family-systems work, and he is candid about where ...