Your behaviour did not come from nowhere. It developed as a response to something. This module is where you stop looking at what you are doing and start understanding why. You'll begin to uncover the emotional experiences and patterns that have been sitting underneath your behaviour for years, and see the cycle clearly for the first time.
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The Circuit Break Programme
Something has to change. You just haven't found the right solution…
A different approach to addiction, trauma and emotional wellbeing, delivered through our educational residential intensives, online programme and private therapy.
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Why traditional approaches so often fail.
Recovery isn't a retreat from your life. It's a return to it, sharper than before.
Our position
Most programmes focus on stopping the behaviour. But behaviour is a response, it's meeting a need. Until you understand what that need is, nothing truly changes.
Seeing beneath the surface
“When life feels blurred by everything that’s going on, it’s easy to lose sight of yourself.”
How it works
01
Understand
A direct, honest picture of where things stand — no forms designed to make you feel like a case file.
02
Interrupt
Structured tools to break the loop in the moments it actually happens, not just in weekly sessions.
03
Rebuild
A long-term framework for identity, focus and momentum that holds after the programme ends.
Overview
The Circuit Break Programme.
The Circuit Break Programme is made up of six structured modules, each one building on the last. Unlike traditional approaches that focus on managing behaviour, every module is designed to take you deeper into understanding what has been driving it. It's a 12-week programme that includes 17 sessions with your therapist, 25 with your Programme Guide, and reflective exercises built into every module. This is not a programme you are simply handed and expected to complete. Your dedicated therapist and Programme Guide work alongside you throughout, with frequent one-to-one sessions that help you unpack what comes up, challenge established patterns and apply the work to your real life as it unfolds. Take it online from home, or begin with a five-day residential therapy stay.
Learn moreThere is a part of your mind built for immediate relief. It is convincing, fast, and it does not care about long-term consequences. This module helps you recognise it in real time, so that in the moments that matter most, you are the one making the decision, not it.
Most people do not relapse because they lack willpower. They relapse because they do not know how to sit with what they feel. This module gives you practical tools to recognise emotional build-up before it drives your behaviour, and to respond to discomfort without needing to escape it.
When was the last time you were truly alone with yourself — no scrolling, no noise, no numbing? For most people that's genuinely uncomfortable, and there's a reason for that. This module explores why stillness feels unsafe, and begins to change your relationship with it.
Shame is one of the most powerful forces underneath addiction, and one of the least talked about. It shapes how you see yourself and whether you believe real change is even possible for you. This module looks at it honestly, because shame kept hidden tends to grow, and shame examined tends to lose its power.
Real change is quieter than most people expect. It looks like pausing before you react, recognising a pattern earlier, choosing not to abandon yourself in a hard moment. This final module is about building a life with more awareness, stability, and self-respect than you came in with — and learning to measure progress by direction, not perfection.
Who this is for.
For the person ready to change
You don't need to have hit rock bottom. You don't need a label, a diagnosis, or a reason that sounds serious enough. If there's a pattern in your life you can't seem to break, something you keep returning to even when you don't want to, that's enough. Circuit Break was built for people who are done managing the symptom and ready to understand what's actually driving it. Designed for adults aged 18 and over, the programme is for anyone ready to stop repeating the same patterns and understand what is actually driving them.
The programme
For the family standing beside them
Watching someone you love struggle with a pattern they can't seem to escape is exhausting and often isolating, and it's hard to know who to talk to. Our free online family sessions, twice a month, are a space for you: to talk, to be heard, and to hear from people who understand, including Lisa, who shares her own lived experience.
Family support
Scroll to change
Addiction doesn't have one face.
The professional
It can hide behind success.
A full diary, a good job and a life that looks completely together don't tell you what someone is carrying when nobody is watching.
The parent
It can exist alongside responsibility.
You can show up for everyone else every day and still be struggling with something you can't seem to switch off.
The young adult
It doesn't need to look serious to feel serious.
Sometimes it starts as something social, familiar or manageable — until it begins making the decisions for you.
There is no type
There is no type.
Addiction doesn't care about age, background, career or how together somebody appears from the outside.
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When everything carries on
“Life doesn’t stop while you’re trying to get yourself back.”
SEEING THINGS DIFFERENTLY
HOW IT FEELS NOW
It can be hard to see clearly
When you’re in the middle of it, it’s difficult to know what needs to change.
Meet the Founder
Lisa Duff is a qualified psychotherapist specialising in addiction, trauma and emotional wellbeing. But her understanding of addiction was not learned from textbooks alone — she spent 15 years living in active addiction herself. She created The Circuit Break Programme after repeatedly seeing the same gap: approaches trying to stop the behaviour without asking what started it, or what psychological need it was meeting. Lisa's understanding of the psychology behind addiction combines clinical expertise with lived experience and a rare insight into what keeps people trapped in destructive cycles. She believes shame does not create change. Change begins when people understand what their behaviour is doing for them, recognise the patterns beneath it and learn how to respond differently. That belief sits at the centre of everything The Circuit Break Programme does. Lisa is a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), membership number 00978398.
Get in touch
Get in touch.
Whatever's brought you here, send a message or request a short call, whichever feels easier to start with.
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Understand. Interrupt. Rebuild.
You can rebuild, it takes as many times as it takes. Keep going.
Change doesn’t always happen in a straight line. You might have good days, difficult days and times when you slip back into old patterns. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. What matters is understanding what happened, learning from it and knowing you can begin again. Keep learning, keep trying and keep rebuilding.
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Rebuilt