Summary of Brenda Schaeffer's Is It Love or Is It Addiction

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Love is the expression of productiveness, which implies care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. It is a striving towards growth and happiness of the loved person rooted in one's own capacity to love.

#2 Love is the bridge between our human experience and our spiritual experience. It is experienced as emanating from the heart. As we get to the source of our feelings and heal them, we begin to feel the higher emotions of the heart, which lead to the deep unconditional love of self.

#3 Any activity that can influence or shift our subjective experience holds addictive potential. The euphoria produced by process addictions, for example, is the same as that produced by drug or substance addictions.

#4 Addiction is a dysfunctional habit that has become unconscious. It is a compulsive ritual that is no longer a choice, and it is a psychological or physical attachment to the object, often characterized by withdrawal or intensity of symptoms when the object is removed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822514768

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Insights on Brenda Schaeffer's Is It Love or Is It Addiction

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Love is the expression of productiveness, which implies care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. It is a striving towards growth and happiness of the loved person rooted in one's own capacity to love.

#2

Love is the bridge between our human experience and our spiritual experience. It is experienced as emanating from the heart. As we get to the source of our feelings and heal them, we begin to feel the higher emotions of the heart, which lead to the deep unconditional love of self.

#3

Any activity that can influence or shift our subjective experience holds addictive potential. The euphoria produced by process addictions, for example, is the same as that produced by drug or substance addictions.

#4

Addiction is a dysfunctional habit that has become unconscious. It is a compulsive ritual that is no longer a choice, and it is a psychological or physical attachment to the object, often characterized by withdrawal or intensity of symptoms when the object is removed.

#5

We don’t need love to physically survive, but we do need it to emotionally survive. Without the experience of being loved as a child, the recipe for a healthy human being is sadly incomplete.

#6

addictive love is a reliance on someone or something external to the self in an attempt to get unmet needs fulfilled, avoid fear or emotional pain, re-enact trauma, solve problems, and maintain balance. It is often associated with feelings of never having enough or not being enough.

#7

The roots of love, romance, and sexual addiction are similar and often overlap, but the addiction processes of each are unique. When a person’s object of love is also the object of his romantic and sexual desires, he will experience intense feelings and irrational behaviors when the person/object withdraws or threatens to withdraw.

#8

Love addiction is when we become dependent on the object of our love. It is a form of passivity in that we do not directly resolve our own problems or ask for what we need, but instead attempt to collude with others so they will take care of us and our problems.

#9

Romance addiction is when the object of love addiction is also a romantic object. The fix may be an elaborate fantasy life not unlike the story line of a romance novel, or the euphoria of a new romance.

#10

The power of sexual love is unparalleled in human experience. When normal sexual love is distorted, repressed, or forbidden by religious or family structures, it may result in sex addiction.

#11

There is often more to love than just sexual attraction, romance, and relationship compatibility. Childhood traumas often hover over adult relationships like powerful, unseen ghosts.

#12

Anna began to realize that the fear she felt about Andrew was similar to the fear she