About Us

Welcome to LAVA! We’re glad you are here!

LAVA is a concept that evolved in recovery from sex and love addiction, but we believe its principles apply to all those in recovery from addiction.

At the heart of LAVA is the understanding that many of us entered Sex and Love Addiction Anonymous (SLAA) after years of being deeply disconnected from ourselves. We had tried to find Love, Attention, Validation, and Acceptance outside of ourselves. We had searched for it through relationships, fantasy, sex, romance, rescuing, people-pleasing, validation, and emotional dependency.

Looking for these things outside ourselves left us hopeless, exhausted, emotionally depleted, heartbroken, and in deep despair. 

Learning how to give ourselves these vital qualities of Love, Attention, Validation, and Acceptance has been the journey of a lifetime. We no longer have to chase outside ourselves what we were always meant to learn how to nurture within.

So where does this unconditional self-love come from? 

Our benchmark for self-love is the unconditional, all-abiding love of a Higher Power as we each understand It. Through prayer, reflection, inventory, surrender, spiritual connection, and daily practice, we begin learning how to extend that same grace, compassion, forgiveness, and care toward ourselves.

Here are The Four Qualities of Self-Love that serve as the core of The LAVA Framework for Healing in Recovery: 

Unconditional Self-Love
Practicing unconditional self-love means learning to stop abandoning ourselves when we struggle, fail, fall short, relapse, or make mistakes. It means eliminating shame by forgiving ourselves generously and repeatedly. In LAVA we learn a core foundation for healing is knowing, “It’s all forgivable, all the time!” We learn that self-love does not have to be earned through perfection, performance, or approval from others. We begin treating ourselves with the same compassion, mercy, and patience that our Higher Power does. This becomes the foundation for true healing because only unconditional self-love heals shame.

Authentic Attention
Authentic Attention means prioritizing our physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs instead of ignoring, minimizing, or escaping them. Many of us learned how to be wantless and needless in order to survive. Today, it is the daily practice of showing up for ourselves through generous, nurturing self-care that is sincere, grounded, and life-giving. No more breadcrumbing ourselves. We prioritize our top ten basic needs that include: honoring sleep, rest, nourishment, hydration, movement, daily life enrichment, supportive connections, fun, laughter and play, personal preferences and daily LAVA practices. Rather than living in self-neglect or survival mode, we learn to care for ourselves as people worthy of generous love, protection and self-care. 

Meaningful Validation
Meaningful Validation helps us develop an internal relationship rooted in encouragement, compassion, and emotional support from within. Instead of constantly depending on external approval to feel okay, we affirm our own feelings, needs, experiences, and humanity. When we give ourselves Meaningful Validation we become our own best friend, confidante, and cheerleader! We learn how to talk ourselves out of a shame spiral instead of into one. We’ve always been a good friend and cheerleader for others, in LAVA we begin to do so for ourselves. 

Total Self-Acceptance
Total Self-Acceptance means embracing our humanity with grace instead of living in constant state of self-criticism and judgment. We truly accept that we are imperfect human beings growing one day at a time, not projects that need to earn love, attention, validation and acceptance through flawless behavior. Through sobriety, spiritual growth and unconditional self-love, we begin making peace with ourselves while continuing to grow into the people we are meant to become.

These qualities create the internal conditions required for sobriety, spiritual growth, lasting recovery, and a life worth living and protecting.

But building something sacred also requires clearing away what destroys it. That is where The Four Emotional Predators, often referred to as character defects, come in:

Shame, Unworthiness, Perfectionism, and Self-Criticism.

These Emotional Predators quietly sabotage recovery by attacking our sense of worth, safety, belonging, and self-trust. They keep us trapped in cycles of self-neglect and self-abandonment, people-pleasing, relapse, addiction, and suffering.

LAVA actively works to dismantle these Emotional Predators through heightened awareness, confrontation, affirmation, self-forgiveness, prayer, meditation, spiritual practices, and daily acts of unconditional self-love because Unconditional Self-Love cannot flourish when these Emotional Predators are running amuck.

We like to think of our lives as a construction site. The Four Qualities of Self-Love become the foundation. The Four Emotional Predators become the demolition plan. And the result is not just sobriety, or survival, but cultivating a deep love for ourselves, lasting recovery, emotional freedom, flourishing, and the ability to live our optimal lives one day at a time.

Please join us soon for one of our SLAA All-Gender or SLAA Women’s LAVA meetings. We would love to meet you and support you on your journey of unconditional self-love, because learning to love yourself is your divine right!