How Parents Can Regulate Their Nervous System During Addiction with Ashley Howitt

How Parents Can Regulate Their Nervous System During Addiction with Ashley Howitt

What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? Here, parents get a front‑row seat to a very different way of responding to addiction in the family. Jeff Jones talks with hypnotherapist Ashley Howitt about why so many mums, dads and carers end up living in a constant state of alert, and what it might mean to finally give their nervous system a rest.

Ashley shares how years of “walking on eggshells” with an addicted child can leave a parent’s baseline permanently activated. Jeff explains that in this state, blood flow moves away from the part of the brain that makes good decisions and into the internal fire alarm, the amygdala.

As he puts it, “You cannot set a boundary that is going to be useful from an activated nervous system.” To shift this, Ashley talks through her three‑week nervous system reset, built around a three‑hour hypnotherapy session. She describes guiding parents into the subconscious to find the early experiences that shaped their anxious beliefs, then helping them reconnect with the “inner child” they pushed aside. The aim is more time spent in calm, collected self, rather than survival mode.

You’ll hear practical, everyday ideas too: simple breathing exercises, using text instead of intense face‑to‑face talks, walking or driving while talking, and even sitting outside a child’s bedroom door to show, "I'm not going anywhere." Ashley reminds parents to be gentle with themselves and to notice the familiar scripts of "I'm a bad parent" before they take over.

Throughout, Jeff ties this inner work to family recovery, explaining co‑regulation and how one calmer person can lower the collective nervous system of the household. For parents who feel powerless, this conversation suggests a different starting point: your own body, your own breath, your own nervous system. Could a calmer you be the most powerful support your loved one has?