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About Me

Hello my name is Jovica but everyone calls me " JoJo" for short. I am a license mental health counselor based in the Boynton Beach, Florida area. I graduated with my masters in counseling from Nova Southeastern University. I completed my internship at an inpatient program for addiction. I've been working in addiction for the past 5 years. I love what I do and I love helping others. I remember during my undergraduate program, I sat in my first psychology class ( you know, the psychology 101) and I remember telling myself that if I were to ever change my major this is what I would pursue. After taking those science classes....let's just say I switched my major pretty fast. I forgot to mention that I wanted to be a pediatrician.

Anyways, I've always been interested in working with individuals who experienced trauma and domestic violence. I came to realize that working in the field of addiction, many of my clients were exposed to some type of childhood trauma or trauma they experienced in their active addiction. I also learned that many of them not only struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol but also an addiction to love and relationships. This was the catalyst that drove me to explore futher and develop a competency and niche in love addiction, dysfunctional relationships and codependency. Let's just say I may be able to relate to a thing or two. Shhhhhhhhh we won't go there.

My goal in creating this blog is to educate my readers on love addiction and dysfunctional relationships. To help them understand that many others are also struggling with this issue and to let you know that you are not alone. I've myself struggled with love addiction majority of my life. Let's heal together.

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Healthy Versus Unhealthy Relationships

                                Love Makes Me Accept Crazy Things                         I have to give some back story on how this topic for my blog even came about. As I was sitting down messaging my clients, I had Jerry Springer broadcasting in the background. Normally, I don’t watch this, (I am serious); but for some reason ended up on this episode. Anyways, as I began watching this, the topic was regarding a man who was confessing to his girlfriend his faithfulness and how he would never cheat on her. She gave him an ultimatum that if he wanted to continue the relationship, then he would need to drop his female friends. Needless to say, he was cheating and this resulted in a full on fist-fight with other woman who he was having an affair with. Jerry asked him, do you love this woman? He stated “yes”, she ...

Are Unhealthy Relationships The Norm?

I was sitting in the office of my colleague and we started talking about relationships. She is an older lady and has been in the field for over 20+ years, so I always love to get her feedback and wisdom. While I was talking to her, it dawned on me that many people learned how to have an UN-healthy relationship; never really learned what a healthy relationship consisted of. When you look back at some of the relationships you’ve had, do you ever ask yourself what was I thinking? How did I ever tolerate or accept something like this? Its funny how when we remove ourself from a toxic or unhealthy relationship and have time ( Sometimes you have nothing but time after a relationship ends) to reflect on it, we find that what we had was never deserving of our energy or our time. See, the problem with having a pattern of unhealthy relationships, is we have nothing to judge what a healthy relationship is. In other words we have nothing to compare it too, because we have never seen or known on...

What Is Love Addiction ?

Love addiction in the psychology jargon is termed " a process" addiction. Like an addiction to drugs or alcohol there are certain criterias that must be met in order for it to be considered an addiction. If we look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) it breaks it down into 11 categories which atleast 2-3 criterias should meet the criteria in order for it to be classificated as a substance addiction.  The ones that I would like to highlight are tolerance ( needing more and more of the substance to achieve a desired effect) and withdrawal ( physical symptoms one experiences as a result of dependency on the substance). This relates to the love addiction in that you develop a tolerance, where you need more and more of your point of contact to feel better. Also, you experience physical withdrawal symptoms when you are no longer around that point of contact. I believe it is important to note that despite how this problem may int...