Speaker 1: Emotional manageability shows up years before the external manageability. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Veronica Valley, a former
Speaker 1: psychotherapist who now works as a sobriety coach. With almost
Speaker 1: twenty years of experience, Veronica has helped thousands of people
Speaker 1: live happy, healthy lives and reach their full potential by
Speaker 1: being alcohol free. She's been the keynote speaker at annual
Speaker 1: conferences including Women for Sobriety and Sober Eastas Veronica is
Speaker 1: also the co host of the popular Sober Full podcast
Speaker 1: and the author of the book. Her and Eric discuss
Speaker 1: here Sober Full Uncover, A Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol.
Speaker 1: Hi Veronica, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, it's great
Speaker 1: to be here. I am really happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: We're going to be discussing your book, which is called
Speaker 1: Sober Full Uncover, A Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol.
Speaker 1: But before we do that will start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. And in the parable, there is a
Speaker 1: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. There's a good wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: kindness and bravery and love, and there's a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and thinks about it and looks up
Speaker 1: at its grandparents says, well, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that parable, it's just it's so interesting. So I was
Speaker 1: thinking about it so thinking about, for example, resentments and
Speaker 1: fear and how there is a seduction to them. There's
Speaker 1: something seductive about blaming and it's not fair. And let
Speaker 1: me tell you what he did and how easily we
Speaker 1: can fall into that seduction, and how I've needed tools
Speaker 1: to not fall into that seduction of giving into the
Speaker 1: fear and telling myself a limiting story, in a negative story.
Speaker 1: And I know when I felt seduced into that place,
Speaker 1: there's sort of something satisfying, but something very empty about it.
Speaker 1: It's like you think it's gonna fill you, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't fill you. And actually it's the other wolf that
Speaker 1: fills you, which is forgiveness and love and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And I want to say, I can't
Speaker 1: think my way into that. I can't think my way
Speaker 1: into being forgiving and loving. I wish I could. I
Speaker 1: wish I had that switch. I have to work my
Speaker 1: way into it. I have to use the various tools
Speaker 1: I have to restore my perception to how things really
Speaker 1: are and not the story I'm telling myself. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense totally? Yeah, that's a great take on it.
Speaker 1: And I agree with you about the sometimes we can't
Speaker 1: think our way into something. I mean, there are cases
Speaker 1: where we can work with our cognitive perceptions of things
Speaker 1: and we can alter them, but yeah, there's also a
Speaker 1: place where we kind of have to. I like the
Speaker 1: way you said it, work our way into it, and
Speaker 1: your book is full of tools for doing that, particularly
Speaker 1: in the case of people who were trying to quit drinking.
Speaker 1: Although you make the point very clearly over and over
Speaker 1: again that that alcohol is just a symptom of deeper malaise,
Speaker 1: how would you describe that deeper malaise? You know, I
Speaker 1: really like the description that's in the Big Book of
Speaker 1: a A where on page fifty two it's described as
Speaker 1: the bedevilments, or much more simply, in the Doctor's Opinion,
Speaker 1: it's described as restless, irritable, and discontent. And I was
Speaker 1: born discontent, like I always thought the next thing would
Speaker 1: fix me and make me better. Like when I got
Speaker 1: that thing, whatever it was, that would be the solution.
Speaker 1: And I would often get it and it would fulfill
Speaker 1: me for about one and a half minutes, and then
Speaker 1: I would be discontent. It was like my default position.
Speaker 1: And really what that was was I was very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: in my own skin. I was really uncomfortable being me
Speaker 1: and in this world that we live in. Alcohol is
Speaker 1: such an accessible and quick and easy an esthetic to
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable nous of being me. And more than that,
Speaker 1: it's rewarded and encouraged and you know, celebrated, and it
Speaker 1: just numbed the edges of that discontentment. Yeah. I have
Speaker 1: always loved that line, restless, irritable, and discontent. You know,
Speaker 1: I was like, Yep, that pretty much describes it. That
Speaker 1: describes my default state if I'm not either a taking
Speaker 1: a sub or be working fairly diligently to not be
Speaker 1: in that state. I'm not sure I love the way
Speaker 1: I started that, working really diligently. It makes it sound
Speaker 1: like life is a constant march, and that's not what
Speaker 1: I mean. But I do have a tendency to know
Speaker 1: that that is where I end up at if I
Speaker 1: just sort of let my brain do whatever it wants
Speaker 1: to do all the time. Yeah, it's like I'm a
Speaker 1: magnet without the grace of a spiritual experience, without the
Speaker 1: work that I do on myself. And I say work,
Speaker 1: it's really the wrong word because it doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 1: But the effort I just put into personal development, let's say,
Speaker 1: you know, I can go to the other wolf. I
Speaker 1: can go to the joy and the security and the
Speaker 1: safety and the beautifulness and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But without that effort, I just seem to be like
Speaker 1: a magnet. I will drift towards that. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a whole discussion there about where we're born, that
Speaker 1: way we made, but it's really my earliest memory. It's
Speaker 1: really my earliest sort of feeling of not feeling right.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: here because I want to primarily focus on a lot
Speaker 1: of your work today. But I wonder if you could
Speaker 1: tell listeners briefly about your history with alcohol you're getting sober,
Speaker 1: just paint the broad strokes of that for us. So
Speaker 1: I got sober relatively young. I was twenty seven and
Speaker 1: I'm British, so when I was drinking, you could get
Speaker 1: into bars when you just had to the cold enough.
Speaker 1: So I was drinking at fourteen and fifteen, and it
Speaker 1: was a lightbulb going on for me. It was the solution.
Speaker 1: It just made me feel exactly how I imagined everybody
Speaker 1: else felt, and it was brilliant. I loved it. And
Speaker 1: I remember this memory of being outside a bar in
Speaker 1: my hometown, actually where I am right now recording this,
Speaker 1: and I was fifteen years old and I went into
Speaker 1: blackout and I woke up outside the bar, literally in
Speaker 1: the gutter, covered in my own vomit, with the landlord
Speaker 1: throwing a bucket of water over me. And I remember
Speaker 1: coming to thinking this isn't right, There's something wrong with this,
Speaker 1: and then everyone around me told me that that was fun,
Speaker 1: that I was wild, that I was like a party girl,
Speaker 1: that I was so much fun. I ended up in
Speaker 1: the gutta, and my brain just kind of filed that
Speaker 1: away and went, Okay, this is what makes you popular
Speaker 1: and fun. We'll just do this. And I had a
Speaker 1: great time till I was about eighteen, which is the
Speaker 1: legal drinking age in the UK. And then I hit
Speaker 1: a rock bottom through drug use. I went into drug
Speaker 1: induced psychosis with magic mushroom use, and I was suicidal.
Speaker 1: I had auditory hallucinations and I couldn't tell anybody. I
Speaker 1: was literally going mad on the inside and I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell anybody. I didn't even know how to tell anybody.
Speaker 1: I had no words to say what was going on
Speaker 1: with me. That's when I started looking for help and
Speaker 1: I went to the doctors and they just put me
Speaker 1: on prescription drugs, which started off whole prescription drug problem,
Speaker 1: and I spent from eighteen to twenty seven. I knew
Speaker 1: something was wrong with me, and I just had to
Speaker 1: find this allusion to what was wrong with me. And
Speaker 1: I thought it was a rare, absolutely rare. Nobody else
Speaker 1: had it mental health problem, so I really did think
Speaker 1: everybody was fine. You all look fine to me. We're
Speaker 1: talking about restless. I moved continents seven times. I was
Speaker 1: always looking for whatever the solution was, an external fixes
Speaker 1: and you know, vaguely suicidal young woman drinking, putting myself
Speaker 1: in very dangerous situations. And I didn't use it llegal
Speaker 1: drugs for a long time after that, but then I
Speaker 1: started using towards the end of my drinking cocaine again,
Speaker 1: which I'm actually quite grateful for because it brought me
Speaker 1: to my knees very quickly, I mean very very quickly,
Speaker 1: finished me off. I think it really, in all seriousness,
Speaker 1: if I hadn't started using cocaine, I had a drunk
Speaker 1: for another ten years. But it just absolutely finished me off,
Speaker 1: and I was desperate and I at the same time
Speaker 1: this sounds very crazy because I had really bad panic
Speaker 1: attacks from drug in juice psychosis. I couldn't be in groups.
Speaker 1: I found it very difficult to be in groups. I
Speaker 1: get panicky and anxious. So I thought i'd be a therapist. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I started doing some training and it was in addictions,
Speaker 1: and I was sitting there in the classroom going m
Speaker 1: and then I don't even think I made a conscious
Speaker 1: decision to stop drinking. It just sort of happened. One day.
Speaker 1: I just thought I'm not going to drink today, and
Speaker 1: it turned into a week intention month. And then I
Speaker 1: went to an a A meeting because I wanted to
Speaker 1: see what these poor people that I would be counseling
Speaker 1: were like. And I didn't identify or relate, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why I went back, and I thank god
Speaker 1: I did, because it was there that I heard someone
Speaker 1: talk about fear, and they spoke about fear in a
Speaker 1: way that I had never heard it described. And it
Speaker 1: was really for me that changed everything, because I truly
Speaker 1: believed up until that point I was the only person
Speaker 1: who was frightened. I really thought everyone else was just
Speaker 1: getting on with life and they were okay, and I
Speaker 1: just sat there and thought that's me, because I wasn't
Speaker 1: relating to the stories like I hadn't had a d
Speaker 1: u I or anything like at so I wasn't relating
Speaker 1: to any of those drinking stories. But when someone described
Speaker 1: the inner world to me, that was me, and that
Speaker 1: probably saved my life because then I just was like,
Speaker 1: what do I do? Sign me up? What do I do?
Speaker 1: Get a sponsor? Do steps right? I'll do that, And
Speaker 1: I just threw myself into it because I was so
Speaker 1: desperate to not feel the way that I felt for
Speaker 1: so long. I mean, I was absolutely a hundred percent
Speaker 1: convinced that I was never going to have fun again
Speaker 1: because alcohol was fun. I just wanted peace. I just
Speaker 1: wanted piece in my head. So it was much to
Speaker 1: my amazement after about a year, maybe I I was
Speaker 1: just having experiences and beginning to have fun and go dancing,
Speaker 1: and I would say, you know, I've done everything so
Speaker 1: but you know, I was going to nightclubs. I was
Speaker 1: going to concerts and festivals and traveling abroad and doing
Speaker 1: everything that you know, someone my age would do. And
Speaker 1: I had way more fun sober. So I got sober.
Speaker 1: I continued my training as a therapy piston, and here
Speaker 1: we are. Yeah, I'm always amazed by the varying ways
Speaker 1: that people get to a point of sobriety. You know,
Speaker 1: you describe stopping drinking almost without thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: then there are other people I know who getting stopped
Speaker 1: for two days is a torture. And neither of you is,
Speaker 1: more to use a term that's certainly out of favor
Speaker 1: these days, more alcoholic than the other. Those external circumstances
Speaker 1: are not really the issue. And I think we'll probably
Speaker 1: spend some time on a blog post you did in
Speaker 1: response to someone who strongly criticized a A. But the
Speaker 1: thing that you said in that blog post and I
Speaker 1: want to hit right now. We may go to it
Speaker 1: all in a moment, we may not, But you talked
Speaker 1: about in a A the first step talks about admitting
Speaker 1: where powerless over alcohol in our lives have become unmanageable.
Speaker 1: What I love that you said in that article was
Speaker 1: the unmanageability we're talking about is not the external life.
Speaker 1: I mean, your extra of life maybe unmanageable, and alcohol
Speaker 1: maybe causing it and making it worse. But you're describing
Speaker 1: in terms of an internal unmanageability. Say more about that. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to me how I got sober as well,
Speaker 1: Like I was really half asleep. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know why I kept going to a meetings. I wasn't relating,
Speaker 1: and it was when someone described their emotional unmanageability, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't relate to any story, not nothing. But when
Speaker 1: that was described, I was like, oh my god, that's me.
Speaker 1: And emotional manageability shows up years before the external manageability.
Speaker 1: The d U I is the falling out, getting arrested,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I mean, lying in the gutter at fifteen,
Speaker 1: covered in vomit. That's external manageability. But I also want
Speaker 1: to say, when you're young, that behavior is extremely normalized,
Speaker 1: Like that is just normalized, and it's not normal, and
Speaker 1: it's not okay to be a fifteen year old child
Speaker 1: lying in the gutter not knowing what you're doing. The
Speaker 1: internal manager ability is when we don't have emotional mastery.
Speaker 1: I was like a little boat with no rudder on
Speaker 1: the ocean, and I was just thrown this way and
Speaker 1: the other. And I was full of fear. I was
Speaker 1: full of self loathing. I was full of resentment, all
Speaker 1: of the bad wolf stuff. The only way I could
Speaker 1: fix that was to numb the feelings with something external.
Speaker 1: The only way I could control it, make it go away,
Speaker 1: soothe it, calm it was to do something external like drink,
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette, flirt with a guy, binge on food, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That was the only way I could make that internal
Speaker 1: storm livable with so behavior is the truest manifestation of
Speaker 1: how we feel. If you look at someone's behavior, it
Speaker 1: will show you how someone feels. So that emotional manageability
Speaker 1: is when your emotions are ruling you and all you
Speaker 1: can do is just just try and get them to
Speaker 1: a point that you can live with them by just
Speaker 1: numbing them. And that's what recovery is. The very reverse
Speaker 1: of that. It's about having emotional mastery. It's about having
Speaker 1: appropriate emotional responses to events. It's not that I don't
Speaker 1: feel angry or frustrated or disappointed or whatever. I feel
Speaker 1: all of those things appropriately to whatever event is happening.
Speaker 1: You know, if you crushed into my car, I'd be
Speaker 1: furious with you. That's an appropriate emotional response, But it's
Speaker 1: not appropriate for me to be still furious about that
Speaker 1: nine months later, and telling that story over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. So yeah, it's the emotional unmanageability that
Speaker 1: I think people don't understand. They think that we've normalized
Speaker 1: abnormal drinking. That's the first thing. So as long as
Speaker 1: we've got a mortgage, in a car, in a job,
Speaker 1: we can't have a problem. And we think they're drink
Speaker 1: problem is external things, but it's internal and UT's usually years,
Speaker 1: if not decades before the other. There's so many things
Speaker 1: in what you just said there that I want to
Speaker 1: touch on, and I won't get to all of them.
Speaker 1: I want to hit that last point very quickly, which
Speaker 1: is that one of the things I've seen the recovery
Speaker 1: movement really do well in the recent years, and I
Speaker 1: think you've been part of this and you write about
Speaker 1: it very eloquently in your book, is we've moved away
Speaker 1: from this idea that like there is a bottom that
Speaker 1: has to be hit in order for sobriety to happen,
Speaker 1: and that you have to be, you know, an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: which is some define herble thing, and it's a lot
Speaker 1: more about, you know, the very basic question of would
Speaker 1: my life be better if I wasn't drinking? And your
Speaker 1: book I really love in a lot of places you
Speaker 1: talk about those sort of niggling thoughts that won't leave
Speaker 1: us alone, that keep telling us there's something not right
Speaker 1: about my drinking or use. There's something that's not right
Speaker 1: about my drinking or use, and they just eat at us,
Speaker 1: they eat at us, and that is you know, if
Speaker 1: you want to use the work consequence, right, that is
Speaker 1: a really big consequence. That is a big price to pay,
Speaker 1: which is to have most of your energy debating whether
Speaker 1: or not you have a problem with something. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I described that as bandwidth because to really, you know,
Speaker 1: frame this, it's like alcohol is just an inanimate object,
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It's not the main event, but
Speaker 1: we make it the main event. None of us came
Speaker 1: here to flip and argue with ourselves about whether we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a drink tonight or not. When you kind
Speaker 1: of think about it like that, like I'm spending precious bandwidth,
Speaker 1: which is energy and thought to my head arguing with
Speaker 1: myself about whether I want to drink tonight or not,
Speaker 1: or I shouldn't drink or to other people know I'm drinking,
Speaker 1: should everyone. It's like that's absurd, but so many people
Speaker 1: do that. And that's for me, the first indication that
Speaker 1: there's a problem because people who don't have a problem
Speaker 1: with alcohol, they don't think about it. It just rents
Speaker 1: no space in the head. They have a drink of
Speaker 1: occasion in the in the appropriate setting or not, but
Speaker 1: don't really think about it. It's the waste of bandwidth.
Speaker 1: So we have finite amount of bandwidth, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: energy and thoughts in our head. And we can waste
Speaker 1: say bandwidth on alcohol. And when we have a problem
Speaker 1: with our care we do four things. We drink, we
Speaker 1: think about drinking, we think about not drinking, which is
Speaker 1: the big one, and we recover from drinking. And that
Speaker 1: requires energy and bandwidth. Now, you can do a lot
Speaker 1: with bandwidth. You can have a career and buy a
Speaker 1: house and all those kind of things. But what you
Speaker 1: cannot do is emotionally grow and develop the way that
Speaker 1: you're capable of. And I want to say that is
Speaker 1: the juice of life. That growth is like, don't miss that.
Speaker 1: That's the main event, not this argument that you're having
Speaker 1: with yourself. Does that make sense totally, totally, And I
Speaker 1: love that breaking it into those four categories. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times when I'm talking with people about coaching.
Speaker 1: Part Way into the conversation, after we've been talking about
Speaker 1: a bunch of other goals and things they want, they'll
Speaker 1: start to talk a little bit about, well, I might
Speaker 1: be doing a little bit of drinking, you know. And
Speaker 1: I always find it interesting because I immediately sort of
Speaker 1: hone in on that, because very, very often it's the
Speaker 1: drinking that's making all those other things really hard to do.
Speaker 1: The analogy I use, it's a little bit different than
Speaker 1: the one you use, is if you've got a problem
Speaker 1: with drinking, and again we're defining that pretty broadly, but
Speaker 1: if you're spending a lot of time in your four categories, right,
Speaker 1: it's like carrying a backpack with a hundred pounds of
Speaker 1: rocks around with you all the time. Everything is harder.
Speaker 1: You set that backpack down, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I'll be damned. I actually do exercise
Speaker 1: pretty regularly. It's kind of amazing. And oh, I'm a
Speaker 1: lot more patient with my kids. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that in early sobriety all those things happen right away,
Speaker 1: but in general, it gets to that point. And I
Speaker 1: love that way of thinking about it. With bandwidth, I
Speaker 1: want to circle back to two other things that you said.
Speaker 1: They're one is you said, I may not have this
Speaker 1: exactly right, but the behavior is a very clear reflection
Speaker 1: of our emotions. Is that more or less what you said?
Speaker 1: We behave how we feel, We behave how we feel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've done so many of these conversations that it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to remember a lot of things. But one
Speaker 1: thing I do remember. It was an interview in the
Speaker 1: first hundred and the guy his name was David K. Reynolds,
Speaker 1: and he said, when you have control of your behavior,
Speaker 1: you become free to feel your feelings. And it blew
Speaker 1: my head off. I've been around these ideas a long time,
Speaker 1: since early in recovery, but that idea hit me so strongly.
Speaker 1: I was like, Yeah, if I'm not worried that being
Speaker 1: really angry, I'm going to do something terrible. If I
Speaker 1: know that I've got control of my behavior, it allows
Speaker 1: me to have that emotional bandwidth because I don't have
Speaker 1: to be afraid of it. Yeah, because the behavior and
Speaker 1: the feelings are linked, it goes backwards and forwards. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, as a therapist, it's all patterns, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't care what you say, you know, it's the pattern,
Speaker 1: the behavior pattern. So you know, I'll get a client
Speaker 1: or a friend who's got I don't know, they're in
Speaker 1: a difficult relationship, and perhaps the person is difficult or
Speaker 1: abusive or whatever, and they're promising to change. They mean
Speaker 1: at this time they mean it. They're and they do
Speaker 1: mean it a h when they say it's like when
Speaker 1: we promised to stop drinking. But unless they have done
Speaker 1: some therapy or but you know, done some different things,
Speaker 1: that behavior will come back again because they haven't got
Speaker 1: to the root causes of how they feel, which is
Speaker 1: what the behavior is, a manifestation of it. You can
Speaker 1: tell and we know, we all know this without even
Speaker 1: being a therapist. We can look at our friends and
Speaker 1: be like, are you all right? And if the person goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm fine, but we know they're not all right. And
Speaker 1: it's not because anything they've said. It's because we're seeing
Speaker 1: how they behave you know. That's what my job is
Speaker 1: is to read behavior. I wonder if you could share
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what emotional mastery looks like,
Speaker 1: because emotional mastery often gets turned into never feeling bad.
Speaker 1: You know, I know I have emotional mastery if I
Speaker 1: never feel bad, and we're saying, oh, I drink because
Speaker 1: of how I feel, which then makes it think well,
Speaker 1: in order for me to stay sober, I must feel
Speaker 1: good all the time. And I know that's not what
Speaker 1: you're saying. So clarify what emotional mastery looks like or
Speaker 1: means to you what you just described as toxic positivity.
Speaker 1: When we get sober, you hear people say, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to work on yourselves, so you have to
Speaker 1: do a program or whatever. And for me, I was,
Speaker 1: how long do I have to do this for? Like
Speaker 1: when do I graduate? And I was told forever? It's
Speaker 1: a for everything, and I was like, oh crap, Like
Speaker 1: that was And I understand it is the same as
Speaker 1: physical exercise. You know, I have to physically exercise. But
Speaker 1: I want to say, there is a destination, and when
Speaker 1: we work a program, we do this personal development work.
Speaker 1: The destination that we are looking for is to feel
Speaker 1: comfortable in our own skins and to have appropriate emotional
Speaker 1: responses to events. And that is when we have I
Speaker 1: call it emotional sobriety, but it's the same thing emotional sobriety.
Speaker 1: It's emotional mastery is having appropriate emotional responses to events.
Speaker 1: So it's not that you crash into my car and
Speaker 1: I'm like, peace and love Eric. You know, I'd be furious.
Speaker 1: I would probably shout at you, because that's an appropriate
Speaker 1: emotional response to that kind of event. But the emotional
Speaker 1: mastery piece is that I want to move through the process.
Speaker 1: So after anger, I might go to sadness because that
Speaker 1: was my beloved car or whatever I'm you know, and
Speaker 1: eventually I want to get to a place of acceptance
Speaker 1: with that. So it's about moving through the appropriate emotional
Speaker 1: process to whatever the event is. I'm a great believer
Speaker 1: in the tool of doing resentment work, and whenever I
Speaker 1: come across and says I don't I just don't have resentments,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, right, you're just suppressing it. You're just
Speaker 1: because we all do. It's part of the human experience.
Speaker 1: Now I get far less than I did when I
Speaker 1: first got sober, but once in a while I'll get
Speaker 1: a blinder and I need to write that down and
Speaker 1: look at it and sometimes talk about it with someone
Speaker 1: so I can move through the process to be free
Speaker 1: of it and have an appropriate emotional response to it.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? It? Does it? Brings up the
Speaker 1: question though, of what is appropriate and how do we know.
Speaker 1: It makes me think a little bit about People will
Speaker 1: be like, well is that normal, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that word even has any meaning, but
Speaker 1: appropriate does. But how do we know what is appropriate
Speaker 1: for us? Because we're not all the same, not all
Speaker 1: events are made the same, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different opinions on what an appropriate response would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting, and that's really important because it
Speaker 1: is very very personal. So just earlier, I was here
Speaker 1: with my mom and she put the TV on and
Speaker 1: there was an advert and it was actually for a
Speaker 1: charity raising money for children in a very poor country,
Speaker 1: and it had some very distressing images of children suffering,
Speaker 1: which I found since I became a parent, I find
Speaker 1: that stuff very difficult. It just I mean, it just
Speaker 1: I cry immediately. Now, before I had kids, I would
Speaker 1: find that sad and I'd probably donate some money, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't burst into tis. It's changed since I've become
Speaker 1: a parent. So appropriate emotional responses are subjective to where
Speaker 1: you are. So, for instance, when I have a response
Speaker 1: that feels a little bit out of balance, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's an inappropriate response to an event immediately, that's a
Speaker 1: red flag for me that something's going on with me
Speaker 1: that really triggered me. You know, normally that wouldn't really
Speaker 1: bother me so much, but I've had a very big
Speaker 1: reaction to that, what is going on with me? So
Speaker 1: all of that is data. It's information that I can
Speaker 1: look at that can help me grow and help me
Speaker 1: change and help me work on it. So absolutely, as
Speaker 1: we are growing, our responses to things emotionally will begin
Speaker 1: to change because we will begin to understand them better.
Speaker 1: But I want to say a key part of having
Speaker 1: an appropriate emotional response is about having tools so we
Speaker 1: can get to a place where it feels more balanced
Speaker 1: and appropriate much faster. I want to talk about your
Speaker 1: article about a A. You know, there was a very
Speaker 1: specific article you were responding to, but that was among
Speaker 1: many many criticisms of A they're pretty common ones at
Speaker 1: this point, and it Before we go into that, i'd
Speaker 1: like to have you share a little bit about the
Speaker 1: importance in your mind of having a program of some sort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for me, that's key, And you know I got sober
Speaker 1: in the twelve Steps almost twenty two years ago, because
Speaker 1: that's all there was. There wasn't anything else that was
Speaker 1: certainly free or affordable. There was no Internet then. For me,
Speaker 1: having a program is key. We have lots of different
Speaker 1: programs that are much more visible now. I really like
Speaker 1: women for sobriety. I know that there's a couple of
Speaker 1: Buddhist programs, there's smart recovery, etcetera, etcetera, and I don't
Speaker 1: really think it matters, to be honest, the key component
Speaker 1: to having a program is consistency. And I hear this
Speaker 1: a lot. I see it a lot on Facebook. I've
Speaker 1: tried everything, tried everything, I've joined this, I've done that,
Speaker 1: And I'm going to say when I hear that, what
Speaker 1: generally they haven't tried this consistency is they've done it
Speaker 1: intensely for a bit and then not done anything at all.
Speaker 1: It's the consistently having a frame work. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I felt like before I got sober,
Speaker 1: I always lived on quicksand I never felt safe, like
Speaker 1: I didn't have the rules to life almost. I felt
Speaker 1: like there was a lot of things I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was always going to go under.
Speaker 1: And having a program gave me like a framework. It
Speaker 1: gave me something to hold onto even though this storm
Speaker 1: is raging outside of me and within me. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to do these things. And when I've discovered it
Speaker 1: by then doing these things, and for me it would
Speaker 1: be the twelve steps I can weather and get through
Speaker 1: whatever the storm is. And then that would happen again
Speaker 1: and again, and then that really solidified, like this is
Speaker 1: what works when the storm rages internally or externally. This
Speaker 1: is what I held onto. Whereas before I felt like
Speaker 1: the little boat. I felt like a big wave was
Speaker 1: going to come and I could really go under, and
Speaker 1: that was terrifying. I was really missing some key tools.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have tools to navigate this world, and
Speaker 1: people didn't have tools to navigate and deal with people.
Speaker 1: And what a program gives us is those missing tools
Speaker 1: that makes that navigation just so much more possible. Now,
Speaker 1: most of these things that we would think of as
Speaker 1: a program a or smart recovery or refuge recovery or
Speaker 1: any of these, there tends to be two components to them,
Speaker 1: or you might argue there's more than two, but there's
Speaker 1: two very obvious ones. And the two obvious ones are
Speaker 1: a series of things to do that are intended to
Speaker 1: change your inner state, the way you relate to the world,
Speaker 1: your emotional response, your mental response. We could categorize that differently.
Speaker 1: So there's that actual sort of program like you know,
Speaker 1: do this, do that, do that. And then there's also
Speaker 1: a fellowship. You know, there is a community of people
Speaker 1: that are getting together and talking about these things. How
Speaker 1: important do you think both of those are? Are they
Speaker 1: both critical? Yeah? I mean it's the connection piece. There's
Speaker 1: nothing like being really seen, especially I think with an
Speaker 1: alcohol and drug problem. I think one of the defining
Speaker 1: characteristics is loneliness, is separation, is disconnection, and I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything more painful than that. I felt like
Speaker 1: that my whole life until I got sober. I felt
Speaker 1: like there was a glass green and everyone was one
Speaker 1: side and I was the other and I could see
Speaker 1: you and hear you and talk to you, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't connect with you. And I felt like that loneliness
Speaker 1: was killing me. I felt like I was dying on
Speaker 1: the inside. So what goes hand in hand with connection.
Speaker 1: We can't have meaningful connection unless we know how to
Speaker 1: be vulnerable, and that for me was terrifying. But there's
Speaker 1: no other pathway to meaningful connection. And by meaningful, we
Speaker 1: need people to really know us, and that there's different
Speaker 1: levels of that. We need people who know our souls.
Speaker 1: But that's not going to be like twenty people. That's
Speaker 1: going to be maybe one or two or three. But
Speaker 1: we all need friends, people around us who just get us.
Speaker 1: I think that's the magic of support groups is it
Speaker 1: just doesn't matter. Like if you walk into a meeting,
Speaker 1: I don't know you or your story, but I know
Speaker 1: your insights, like I know how you feel, I know
Speaker 1: what you have been through, and there's something incredible, so
Speaker 1: powerful about that that I think it's even kind of
Speaker 1: hard to quantify. But having the framework of a program
Speaker 1: and the connection of people who get what you've gone
Speaker 1: through is absolutely essential. You know, one thing that I
Speaker 1: hear from people a lot is that the fellowship aspect
Speaker 1: of it, they feel like it causes them more anxiety
Speaker 1: and pain than it does give them support. Go into
Speaker 1: a meeting makes them so anxious and they don't know
Speaker 1: what to say to anybody, and they don't know how
Speaker 1: to say anything. And then afterwards they stand there and
Speaker 1: maybe nobody comes up to them, or if somebody does,
Speaker 1: it's a stilted conversation and all they want to do
Speaker 1: is run away, And you know, how do you advise
Speaker 1: people work with that? Because I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think that that community of having at least a few
Speaker 1: people who know you and connect you is critically important
Speaker 1: and that that really rings true that fear that people have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are we talking about a A in that respect, Well,
Speaker 1: we could be talking about a A, but we could
Speaker 1: just as easily be talking about refuge recovery or smart recovery.
Speaker 1: You know, any place where you're going to show up
Speaker 1: at a meeting of a bunch of people you don't know,
Speaker 1: and some of those people are already going to have
Speaker 1: an existing relationship with each other. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: terrifying for most people. I know my first a meeting,
Speaker 1: my ex boyfriend came with me because I really didn't
Speaker 1: want to go on my own, and I start at
Speaker 1: the back and ran out at the end. I actually
Speaker 1: think that that's why the Internet has been so helpful.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people that the first
Speaker 1: connection they've had online feel safer. You don't have to
Speaker 1: have a camera on, you can make a name up,
Speaker 1: but you could be present and you can listen. And
Speaker 1: I know from the groups that I've been in the
Speaker 1: genuine like real nuine connections have happened and people have
Speaker 1: met up in real life. So I actually encourage people,
Speaker 1: if it feels overwhelming and terrifying, start with online groups
Speaker 1: because you're in your comfort zone. You can control so much.
Speaker 1: If you hate it, you can just turn it off
Speaker 1: and go, you know, in a way that you can't
Speaker 1: if you're in real life. And then if that feels
Speaker 1: good and comfortable, then maybe you can go into real
Speaker 1: life and it's it's much more of a softer landing.
Speaker 1: So I think that we've done, you know, just with
Speaker 1: the A A. I don't think a A was online
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, you know, and I know a lot
Speaker 1: of meetings are going to stay that way, I think,
Speaker 1: and there's been there's so many others now. I think
Speaker 1: that that's been really helpful for people. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think there are some things that have come out
Speaker 1: of the pandemic that have been positive, and I think
Speaker 1: that is one of them, is that community is available
Speaker 1: to more people in more ways now. Again, I believe
Speaker 1: a lot in face to face connection and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of value in that, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: connections that happened, you know, mediated like yours and mine
Speaker 1: right now, those are very real connections. You know, just
Speaker 1: because there's a screen between us doesn't make it and
Speaker 1: not real connection. Yeah, And that's what's amazing to me,
Speaker 1: is to see these online connections. I have several girlfriends
Speaker 1: when I was just with over New years, who I
Speaker 1: met online. I have several friends that I met online
Speaker 1: and we you know, various groups, and that we met
Speaker 1: in person, and the connection and friendship was as genuine
Speaker 1: and deepened from meeting in person. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about your book. In your book, the heart
Speaker 1: of it is what you've described as five pillars for
Speaker 1: sustainable sobriety, and so I don't know that we'll get
Speaker 1: through all five of them, but I'll let you choose
Speaker 1: which one we start with. You know, do you have
Speaker 1: one that just feels more like you feel like talking
Speaker 1: about right this moment, Because I know if I ask
Speaker 1: you which is more important, You're gonna be like, they're
Speaker 1: all five important. So I'm not going to ask you
Speaker 1: to pick the most important or your favorite, just the
Speaker 1: one that right now you know comes to mind that
Speaker 1: you mostly like talking about. Well, let me just kind
Speaker 1: of frame this that I would see people really struggling
Speaker 1: in sobriety, kind of stopping drinking and and doing stuff,
Speaker 1: but really not understanding why they didn't feel comfortable in
Speaker 1: their own skins, why they were still dissatisfying all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And for me, it was the therapeutic work.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to put the therapeutic work that we
Speaker 1: have to do in a framework that was very easy
Speaker 1: for people to digest and understand. And really it's just
Speaker 1: personal development. And many people have read the book and said, like,
Speaker 1: this is for everybody, This isn't just for people, and
Speaker 1: it's true. It's just the work of being human, that's
Speaker 1: all it is. So I conceptualized it into the five
Speaker 1: pillars as a way to just kind of understand that
Speaker 1: and and see that as something that was just more digestible.
Speaker 1: So they all work together, and its movement connection balance
Speaker 1: process and growth, and you know, movement is really just
Speaker 1: about exercise and being conscious of the direction you want
Speaker 1: your life to go in. What are you moving towards
Speaker 1: and what are you moving away from. That's about waking
Speaker 1: up and it's also you know, the research is overwhelming
Speaker 1: about how effective exercises to manage our mental and emotional health.
Speaker 1: I feel for people who are just getting started. It's like,
Speaker 1: can you walk for fifteen minutes today, That's an achievable goal.
Speaker 1: You'll get some serotonin, but you're also that whole action
Speaker 1: is I am worth making fifteen nets to just go
Speaker 1: and walk outside as something that's good for my mind
Speaker 1: and body. It's a statement all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And then connection is about we have to be vulnerable
Speaker 1: and we have to connect with people, and there's lots
Speaker 1: of different ways that we can do at that, and
Speaker 1: it's life sustaining. Balance is that we all have needs
Speaker 1: and those needs change with our circumstances. So we need sleep,
Speaker 1: and we need the right food. We need exercise, and
Speaker 1: we need time with our friends and time with our family,
Speaker 1: and we need meaningful work and all of these different
Speaker 1: things that make us human. And fulfilling those needs it
Speaker 1: just changes balancing. You know how I get those needs
Speaker 1: met before I had kids, and then when I had
Speaker 1: very small babies, I still had the needs to exercise
Speaker 1: and see my friends. But when I had two young children,
Speaker 1: I had to meet those needs in different ways. When
Speaker 1: we are out of balance, we will feel uncomfortable. In
Speaker 1: our own skins. We will begin to feel restless and
Speaker 1: invitable when we're out of balance, when we're not getting
Speaker 1: what it is we need. So it's learning that tool
Speaker 1: of listening to our bodies, listening to the signals, listening
Speaker 1: to the I'm not okay, so I need to do X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. You know I had that happened to
Speaker 1: me when I hit burnout years ago. It was like, ah,
Speaker 1: I'm not okay, I'm out of balance here. I need
Speaker 1: to do this very quickly. And then the last two
Speaker 1: pillars are process and growth, and that maybe process is
Speaker 1: the one that I want to talk about. The process
Speaker 1: is about understanding. It's hard for me to just talk
Speaker 1: about one and not mention the others. Process is about
Speaker 1: understanding how our past shows up in our presence, and
Speaker 1: it's understanding why we are the way we are. And
Speaker 1: you know, I have had clients when I was just
Speaker 1: like a thread persons. I don't want to wake up
Speaker 1: the past, and it's like we're not. It shows up
Speaker 1: every day anyway. We don't have to wake it up.
Speaker 1: It's obvious in your behavior that you don't trust, or
Speaker 1: you are hurt or whatever. So it's really understand processing
Speaker 1: and understanding and getting free of the stuff that is
Speaker 1: the hundred pound weight that we're carrying. The first thing
Speaker 1: is like I like that analogy that used. It's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know I was carrying it away. I
Speaker 1: had no idea I was carrying it, and I had
Speaker 1: no I did I didn't have to. And that's the
Speaker 1: first part of the process. And then it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what is all this stuff I'm carrying? Why? Why am
Speaker 1: I carrying this? And so process leads to growth, which
Speaker 1: is the job of being human, and that's unavoidable. That's
Speaker 1: a universal law of life. If you look around, you
Speaker 1: will see it to be true. We are either growing
Speaker 1: or we are dying. You can see that in businesses
Speaker 1: and communities, in people, like I was dying on the inside.
Speaker 1: So those two are linked. And I want to say,
Speaker 1: those are the rewards. That's where the richness is, that's
Speaker 1: where the juice of life is. Is it easy? Now?
Speaker 1: It's not always easy. But I also want to say
Speaker 1: having an alcohol problem is hard. That's hard. That's hard work.
Speaker 1: Getting sober and doing this work, it's not hard. It
Speaker 1: requires effort. It does require effort, but it's far far
Speaker 1: easier than the life that we have been living. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of the five pillars in a nutshell, it's
Speaker 1: and then in the book I go deeper, for instance,
Speaker 1: you know, part of process and growth work is understanding
Speaker 1: our limiting beliefs, the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Speaker 1: Dealing with resentments is part of process work, so we
Speaker 1: can process through our emotions to be in a different place.
Speaker 1: Understanding our attachment patterns, that's a really important part of
Speaker 1: process work. That was key for me. I had such
Speaker 1: a train wreck relationship history, Like just understanding about attachment
Speaker 1: and understanding that how I felt was actually not really
Speaker 1: anything to do with this guy in front of me,
Speaker 1: and everything to do with my feelings towards my father
Speaker 1: when I was a child, and blah blah, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 1: That's what sets us free. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I see in in people often. And I'm curious your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this. When we go back and we explore
Speaker 1: the past and we understand and why we are perhaps
Speaker 1: the way we are, so we might say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: Eric could look back at his life and go okay,
Speaker 1: well he had a very angry father. And so if
Speaker 1: there's a mail around him who starts to get even
Speaker 1: just the slightest bit testy, he gets afraid. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: not a made up that's real. Um. People like, that's
Speaker 1: something very specific. So knowing that is one thing, and
Speaker 1: there is some value in that. But I hear people
Speaker 1: say to me a lot. I've done all that therapy
Speaker 1: where I know why it is, and nothing seems to
Speaker 1: be changing, though, So what's the step to connect? Okay,
Speaker 1: now I know why, I know what happened to me.
Speaker 1: I know that I was harmed in that way. I
Speaker 1: sort of have that, but it's not changing my behavior
Speaker 1: or how I feel in those moments. What's missing there
Speaker 1: to sort of tie all that together in your mind?
Speaker 1: That may be too vague, but if you can work
Speaker 1: with that now. I relate to that very much actually,
Speaker 1: because I was doing all of my training is psychotherapist
Speaker 1: and learning about attachment all that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, yes, oh wow, that's me. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what happened. My daddy abandoned me. It is abandonment.
Speaker 1: I keep recreating abandonment. Oh my god. I was like,
Speaker 1: I get it. But then I had a relationship and
Speaker 1: the same pattern happened, and I didn't understand, like now
Speaker 1: I knew this, why was this still happening? And I
Speaker 1: can tell you for me what began to change that
Speaker 1: was regular self reflection through personal inventory. So I regularly
Speaker 1: write down my resentments, my fears, and my limiting beliefs,
Speaker 1: and I use it, like this very specific process to
Speaker 1: begin to see them differently. And it was that that
Speaker 1: specifically changed it. What happened was by being very specific
Speaker 1: in writing this stuff down in a certain way. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd asked myself, I had certain questions, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: What the result was and it was a slow kind
Speaker 1: of dawning. I began to see how other people behaved
Speaker 1: that it wasn't personal. And I also want to say
Speaker 1: a big part of that was the immense process writing
Speaker 1: out resentments and then having to make direct amends that process.
Speaker 1: I began to see that when you did what you did,
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything to do with me. So when I
Speaker 1: set up the pattern of abandonment, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of brings everything together we've been talking about. So I
Speaker 1: did this work and then I had a relationship and
Speaker 1: I didn't. I had my pattern. I was anxiously attached,
Speaker 1: and I would attract an avoidance. So I would have
Speaker 1: this intense relationship with a guy and then he would
Speaker 1: begin to back away. And the last time this happened,
Speaker 1: this happened in a relationship before I met my husband
Speaker 1: for the first time, I saw that he was really frightened,
Speaker 1: that it really frightened him and he had to leave.
Speaker 1: Whereas previously that behavior would happen and I would immediately think,
Speaker 1: it's because I'm not thin enough, it's because I'm not
Speaker 1: pitty enough, It's because I'm not good enough. That's why
Speaker 1: he's behaving. So my perception completely changed now talking about
Speaker 1: having appropriate emotional responses to events before, when that happened
Speaker 1: and I believed it was because I wasn't good enough,
Speaker 1: I would go into a black hole of suicidal despair.
Speaker 1: That's an inappropriate response to a relationship that was six weeks.
Speaker 1: I could see you relate. The last time it happened,
Speaker 1: I felt sad and upset, and that's an appropriate emotional
Speaker 1: response to that. I wasn't just like, oh, I was
Speaker 1: sad and I was upset, and I moved through that,
Speaker 1: and I saw that he had a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that he hadn't resolved, and it was very frightening to him.
Speaker 1: Intimacy was very frightening, so he had to back away
Speaker 1: and I stopped making the interpretation that another person's behavior
Speaker 1: was personal. And I want to say, that is the
Speaker 1: greatest freedom you will ever know. This is a lesson
Speaker 1: from the Spiritual Habits program that I created, and I
Speaker 1: borrowed it from the Buddhist teacher Ruth King, who borrowed
Speaker 1: it from the three Buddhist Marks of Existence. But what
Speaker 1: she basically said is nothing is permanent, personal, or perfect.
Speaker 1: And you know, like you, I find that a realizing
Speaker 1: things aren't personal is an incredibly huge freedom. I find
Speaker 1: remembering that things aren't permanent is another incredibly huge freedom.
Speaker 1: And then also recognizing like things don't have to be
Speaker 1: perfect is another one of those. Let's circle back to
Speaker 1: your dealing with thus of fears, resentments and limiting limiting beliefs.
Speaker 1: Can you share a little bit more about what that
Speaker 1: process looks like that you go through. So to deal
Speaker 1: with resentments, I do two methods. I do the methods
Speaker 1: specifically that's laid out in the Big Book, and I
Speaker 1: do six columns. I'm resentful at cause affects my I
Speaker 1: have harmed how in order to get to the six column,
Speaker 1: which is to reveal my character defects, which are there's
Speaker 1: only four selfish, selfie in dishonest or afraid. Self seeking
Speaker 1: is just manipulation because the only thing I have power
Speaker 1: over in this life is me. I don't have any
Speaker 1: power over what you're going to do. And if I'm
Speaker 1: waiting around for you to say sorry or do it
Speaker 1: differently or whatever, I'll wait forever. But once it's revealed
Speaker 1: to me that it's my fear or I'm trying to
Speaker 1: manipulate this, or I haven't been honest or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: I can change that. I can change that bit. The
Speaker 1: other method that I use is based on our EBT,
Speaker 1: which is rational motive behavioral therapy, and it's a different method,
Speaker 1: but it ends up in the same place, and it's
Speaker 1: looking at our resentment and then identifying the irrational belief
Speaker 1: we have about that. So it's like this man shouted
Speaker 1: at me, what's the story you're telling yourself about that? Oh,
Speaker 1: he doesn't like me, He's going to get me fired,
Speaker 1: like they all think I'm an idiot whatever, And then
Speaker 1: it's challenged like well is that true? Like what when
Speaker 1: you believe that about yourself? What are the consequences? Is
Speaker 1: that true? And changing it into a more effective way
Speaker 1: of thinking, is that actually, this is a person who
Speaker 1: is always angry, and we know that fear is under anger.
Speaker 1: He must be really frightened. This isn't personal, but I
Speaker 1: am going to have boundaries because it's not appropriate that
Speaker 1: you're going to talk to me like that in my
Speaker 1: place of work. So I'm going to just very calmly
Speaker 1: and clearly say I'll speak to you in your karma
Speaker 1: or whatever. I can't think my way through that. I
Speaker 1: can't do it in my head. There's something cognitive about
Speaker 1: writing it down, and I have resistance. This is about
Speaker 1: the wolf you feed like there is something about self
Speaker 1: righteous anger about what you did to me, and let
Speaker 1: me tell you let me I want to tell people,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what Eric said, like can you
Speaker 1: believe wherek said? And getting people to go, oh god,
Speaker 1: can you believe that? No, Like there's a that's the
Speaker 1: seduction of that wolf. And nearly always I will have
Speaker 1: a resistance to doing this because I know when I
Speaker 1: start it, it will shift for me and I can
Speaker 1: longer tell myself that story and I'll be in a
Speaker 1: different place, And even though I want to be in
Speaker 1: that place and it's a better place and it's a
Speaker 1: liberating place and it's a wonderful place, I still have resistance.
Speaker 1: It's very, very interesting, but I've had so much experience
Speaker 1: of knowing that this works and I want to get
Speaker 1: to the place of freedom that I do it. Do
Speaker 1: you think that some people are more resentment focused and
Speaker 1: other people are more fear focused? Do you see any
Speaker 1: of that? I saw that in myself early on in recovery.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, yeah, I did have resentments,
Speaker 1: but in comparison to fear, my resentments, you know, were
Speaker 1: like a tenth of my inventory, and my fear was
Speaker 1: like of it. And I know other people who were
Speaker 1: almost exactly the opposite. They are just perpetually, you know,
Speaker 1: pissed at the world. Do you see that breakdown or
Speaker 1: is that just a pattern I'm making that's not really there?
Speaker 1: For me, it felt the same way it felt ten
Speaker 1: percent resentment. Fear felt that fear withll my life. But however,
Speaker 1: through pers listening through my resentments, I saw that fear
Speaker 1: was at the bottom of everything. So the reason I
Speaker 1: told myself the story about whatever it is you did
Speaker 1: was because I was frightened or the reason I tried
Speaker 1: to manipulate that situation that then backfired on me that
Speaker 1: made me resmble, was because I was frightened. It's two fears.
Speaker 1: I'm frightened that I'm not going to get what I
Speaker 1: want or I'm going to lose what I have. When
Speaker 1: I make a decision or act from a place of fear,
Speaker 1: it's always wrong. So what's your method for working with
Speaker 1: limiting beliefs? So limiting beliefs, it's it's similar, it's kind
Speaker 1: of zoning in on that. What is the story I'm
Speaker 1: telling myself about this? And I think you can boil
Speaker 1: most limiting beliefs down to one or two things, which
Speaker 1: is I'm not good enough and if I'm not good enough,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be loved. You know, there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of variations from that. So what I do is
Speaker 1: then I asked myself, I do this with clients. You know,
Speaker 1: some people might say, well, I you know I'm not
Speaker 1: good enough. I'm like, proved that to me? Do you
Speaker 1: have some evidence? Can you prove that to be true? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy dumped me and I didn't get the promotion,
Speaker 1: earn and I'm like, those are events that happened, but
Speaker 1: we can't prove it to ourselves, and we'll filter out
Speaker 1: all of this stuff that disproves it. So then what
Speaker 1: we do is change it to an empowering belief, which
Speaker 1: is it's important that it's not Pollyanna like I'm the
Speaker 1: best person in the whole world, because our ego voice
Speaker 1: will go yeah right, we change it to it I
Speaker 1: am learning that I'm good enough. I'm learning that I'm
Speaker 1: good enough in my role at work, for example. And then,
Speaker 1: and this is the crucial bit, is look for evidence
Speaker 1: to support that. So for example, I'll get, you know,
Speaker 1: people like I'm not worthy of being loved, So we
Speaker 1: change it to I'm learning to love myself or learning
Speaker 1: I'm worthy to be loved, and we look for evidence,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, don't look for Prince Charming coming down
Speaker 1: the street. Notice when the guy in Starbucks just uses
Speaker 1: your name and says, so I find a go Decaflada Hugo.
Speaker 1: We're just going to look for little tiny pieces of
Speaker 1: evidence that you know, your neighbor said, oh you know
Speaker 1: you have it looks nice today or whatever. We're going
Speaker 1: to just begin to consciously change this filter system that
Speaker 1: we have that us filters out anything that contravenes these
Speaker 1: negative stories we have, and we're going to change it
Speaker 1: so it supports the more positive story. Awesome you write
Speaker 1: each year. I guess I didn't go back a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of years, but I see the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: you wrote twenty lessons for twenty years in sobriety. At
Speaker 1: nineteen years of nineteen, the same lessons. I just add
Speaker 1: one for you, just add one. It's very smart. You
Speaker 1: get a whole new post each time. It's brilliant. That said,
Speaker 1: I wanted to hit a couple of these, and I
Speaker 1: guess we already hit the two I really wanted to hit,
Speaker 1: which was it was never about you. Say a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that though, and maybe where that particular
Speaker 1: line comes from. It was never about you. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a poem that that comes from. I think
Speaker 1: there was a mother Teresa. Yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is the ultimate freedom. It talks about this in
Speaker 1: The Big Book, which I think has some incredible wisdom,
Speaker 1: spiritual wisdom in it, and it talks about the self
Speaker 1: obsession and and that really defined me, the obsession of
Speaker 1: self everything was about me. Everything you did was about me.
Speaker 1: Everything was just about me. And it's exhausting and horrible
Speaker 1: and getting to a place where you realize that nothing
Speaker 1: is personal, that you're free of the good band opinion
Speaker 1: of other people and it's just not about me. It
Speaker 1: just isn't That's the ultimate freedom. I think that mother
Speaker 1: Teresa line was something like, it's between you and God,
Speaker 1: it was never about them. Yeah. So the other one
Speaker 1: that we could hit on, we we certainly covered personal,
Speaker 1: But what will matter more in ten years? Say a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. I found that really useful for
Speaker 1: getting out of when I go down a rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: you know, of like oh my god, this thing has
Speaker 1: to work out, or this is really important, or this
Speaker 1: has to get done now. When I get in the
Speaker 1: woods and I can't really see and it just feels
Speaker 1: like it's really really important, that question really frees me,
Speaker 1: like what will matter more in ten years? And immediately
Speaker 1: it's like, you know what, that's irrelevant? What my what?
Speaker 1: My obsessed know that that won't matter in ten years.
Speaker 1: It just kind of puts everything in perspective for me.
Speaker 1: And these are the tools I'm talking about. It's like
Speaker 1: we go down rabbit holes and get obsessive about something,
Speaker 1: and we need a tool to pull us out, and
Speaker 1: that one pulls me out of there and just helps
Speaker 1: me shift my perception so I can really see what's
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, I have a version of that. I
Speaker 1: don't think I came up with it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: will this matter in five hours, five days, five weeks?
Speaker 1: You know? And you find the vast majority of things
Speaker 1: won't matter in five hours, and very few will matter
Speaker 1: in five weeks. Some will, you know. And then you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is an appropriate use of my energy in
Speaker 1: my time. But me being upset that I'm on hold
Speaker 1: for an extra five minutes, I will have forgotten about
Speaker 1: this by five pm today, unless I choose to allow
Speaker 1: myself to get into such a ladder about it that
Speaker 1: I'm still mad four hours later. But like you, I
Speaker 1: need that tool. I need that reminder, I need that context. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the framework. It's something to hold onto. It's
Speaker 1: like when I can great within this frame bookwork. I
Speaker 1: just have these tools to just stop me going to
Speaker 1: these places that are unhelpful. Well, Veronica, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. Your book is called Sober Full
Speaker 1: uncover A sustainable, fulfilling life Free of Alcohol. Will have
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to where you can get
Speaker 1: the book will have links to Veronica's website and everything
Speaker 1: she has to offer there. So thank you so much, Veronica,
Speaker 1: It was a real pleasure to talk with you. Thank
Speaker 1: you Eric, it was wonderful to be here. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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