NACHUM KAPLAN · ADDICTION & TRAUMA EXPERT
The behaviour may be the problem. It may also have been the solution to another problem.
Addiction, anger, overwork, avoidance, compulsive behaviour and emotional shutdown rarely appear out of nowhere. Sometimes they begin as ways of coping with pressure, pain, shame, loneliness or experiences that felt too difficult to manage directly.
Nachum works with people who want to understand not only what they are doing, but what the behaviour has been doing for them.
WHO HE WORKS WITH
Capable on the outside does not always mean calm on the inside.
Many of Nachum’s clients function well in demanding environments. They may be successful professionally, responsible for other people and accustomed to pushing through discomfort.
What is harder is what happens underneath: anxiety, self-doubt, anger, compulsive behaviour, loneliness, burnout or the fear of losing control.
Addiction and compulsive behaviour
Alcohol, substances, gambling, pornography, work, exercise or other behaviours can become ways of regulating emotions that feel harder to face directly.
Trauma and PTSD
Past experiences can leave people permanently braced for danger, even when the immediate threat is gone.
Anger and reactivity
Anger may be the visible emotion, while fear, humiliation, helplessness or hurt sit underneath it.
Men and emotional expression
Nachum also works with men who may find it easier to solve problems than talk about fear, shame, grief or vulnerability.
HOW HE WORKS
Understand the function before trying to remove the behaviour.
Nachum’s approach is direct, structured and practical. He works primarily from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy while integrating attachment-based thinking, trauma-informed work and insights from leadership and martial arts.
What is the behaviour protecting you from?
Before asking someone to stop a behaviour, it can be useful to understand what happens when the behaviour is not available.
What feeling appears? What thought becomes louder? What does the person suddenly have to face?
This is often where the real work begins.
Challenge without humiliation
Nachum does not believe people change well through shame.
He may challenge thinking, avoidance or self-deception directly, but the goal is clarity rather than punishment.
Build the ability to stay with discomfort
A great deal of impulsive or compulsive behaviour happens because discomfort feels intolerable.
Learning to remain present with frustration, shame, craving, uncertainty or failure can create more room for choice.
THE MISTAKE MENTOR
Most people were taught how to avoid mistakes. Fewer were taught how to recover from them.
We are often taught to succeed, perform, prepare and prevent failure. What we are less often taught is how to respond when something goes wrong without collapsing into shame, defensiveness or avoidance.
Face the mistake
Without turning one mistake into a judgement about your entire worth.
Learn, instead of beat yourself up
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
ADDICTION & COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOUR
If you only remove the coping strategy, you still have to deal with what it was coping with.
Addiction work can easily become a battle against the behaviour alone. But if the behaviour has been managing anxiety, shame, loneliness, trauma or emotional pain, simply removing it can leave the person exposed to everything the behaviour was helping them avoid.
Nachum’s work therefore looks at both sides: the consequences of the behaviour and the emotional function it has been serving.
The aim is not to excuse harmful behaviour. It is to understand it well enough that change becomes possible.
HIGH PERFORMERS, MEN & LEADERS
When competence becomes armour.
People who are used to leading, performing or being relied upon often become very good at functioning under pressure. The difficulty is that competence can sometimes hide exhaustion, insecurity, fear of failure or a sense that there is no room to fall apart.
Nachum’s background in corporate leadership means he understands environments in which performance matters, mistakes have consequences and self-worth can become entangled with outcomes.
Therapy can become a place to examine what happens when the person who is usually expected to cope is no longer coping particularly well.
ABOUT NACHUM
Nachum (Nak)
Nachum has spent much of his life thinking about what makes people resilient — and what happens when resilience turns into armour.
Long before becoming a therapist, he worked for decades as a journalist, editor and communications strategist in high-pressure environments, including senior international roles at Reuters and International Financing Review. He continues to write extensively and runs Moral Clarity, his Substack on politics, culture and the Middle East. His work has also appeared in publications including JNS and The Times of Israel.
His interest in vulnerability is personal as well as professional. Becoming a father was not effortless for him, and his own early struggles with parenthood gave him an appreciation for how disorienting it can be when the person you thought you would be collides with the person you actually are.
He also grew up with a strong model of advocacy. His mother worked at a women’s shelter, and that exposure helped nurture a lasting instinct to protect people who are vulnerable, overlooked or struggling to speak for themselves.
Then there is martial arts.
Nachum has trained in Ninjutsu for many years and passed the Godan test in Japan — a traditional test in which the practitioner kneels with eyes closed while a sword is brought down from behind and must sense the attack early enough to evade it. The Straits Times documented him doing exactly that. It is a dramatic story, but the lesson he took from martial arts is less theatrical: panic narrows choice; trusting his instincts saves him many a time.
That idea carries into his therapy work. The aim is not to pretend fear, anger, craving or uncertainty do not exist. It is to become sufficiently aware of them that they stop making every decision for you.
At home, Nachum has a cat who, by his own account, remains an excellent judge of his character.
He brings that same mix of seriousness and irreverence into therapy: direct without being cruel, challenging without humiliating, and deeply interested in the complicated reasons people do things they themselves wish they would stop doing.