In this episode:
I explore the emotional toll of navigating the holiday season while staying sober—a beautiful yet daunting tightrope walk. We talk about the importance of reframing the experience of guilt, so it’s more tolerable and discuss looking ahead at 2024 including a new book study opportunity!
Resources:
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops
Real Self-Care by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin
Transcript:
00:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I’m Jessica Dueñas and this is Bottomless to Sober, the podcast where I talk about anything and everything related to life since my transition from bottomless drinking to a sober life. Hey everyone, happy, awkward week between Christmas and New Year. Hope you are doing well and, if you’re listening to this, well after the holiday season, hello. So first, I’m actually really excited to share that I am going to be having a new offering, and that is that I’ll be hosting a book study. This one will specifically be five weeks long, starting January 27th, for the Body Keeps the Score. The Body Keeps the Score is such a powerful book that really breaks down what the hell is going on in our bodies after we have been through some really hard times. However, the book is really difficult and the book can be really triggering, right, and for a lot of folks, the story is they pick it up, they read a couple chapters and they put it down and they never go back to it. So if you have ever been curious about reading that book and you feel like you would benefit from the accountability of basically taking a class on the book, you should totally sign up for this book study. The cool thing is that you only have to pay for the sessions that you choose to attend. So all of that is outlined on my website, and here’s this. The starting price to join is only $4.99 for the Body Keeps the Score, so go check it out on my website, bottomless-to-sobercom.
01:33
I am really excited for this opportunity to teach and I hope that you will be a part of it. And speaking of teaching, I will also be hosting my next round of the Writing for Healing program. It is a six-week writing program where we dive into the writing process from planning to publishing, all embedding also just wellness strategies in there. You get opportunities for feedback from peers, opportunities for feedback from me, including a one-on-one with me, so that we can really dive into your writing. For any sort of short narrative piece that you have been wanting to work on. Highly recommend it. Folks really enjoy the class that is also on my website, and that’s $125 for the six classes plus a one-on-one with me and feedback, so please check those out. That is actually starting on January 6th, though it will be here before you know it.
02:19
Anyway, moving on to what I actually wanted to talk about, though, which is I wanted to do sort of like an end of year wrap up right, not so much like a personal wrap up, but just an opportunity for us to sit and reflect together, wherever you are, as you’re listening to this, right, because I feel like this week between Christmas and the new year, it’s almost like a recovery period. There are a lot of people who are working on their sobriety, right? They have spent so much time and energy gearing up to survive Thanksgiving and gearing up to survive Christmas. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, it’s just the fact that the world is celebrating Christmas that still impacts you, right? So it’s like, whether you voluntarily are a part of it or you’re not, you’re still impacted by freaking Christmas and for a lot of folks, they had just gone through sort of like their first rounds of probably holding some boundaries, setting some boundaries and holding some boundaries, and chances are, those were really really hard moments in individual people’s lives. And so, if you’re listening and this this is you the first thing I want to say is that I really hope you’re proud of yourself for holding whatever boundary it was that you set this holiday season, and I hope that you’re giving yourself grace for any feelings that have come up as a result, that sit heavily on your heart, right, as a result of you setting these boundaries. So I hope you are proud of yourself. If you are not quite proud of yourself, I am proud of you because setting boundaries is so important. If you don’t look out for you, if you don’t watch your back, who is going to watch your back? Right, nobody, at the end of the day. It is beautiful to lean on other people, it is beautiful to be in community, but if we do not care for ourselves and if we do not take responsibility for our journey, no one else will.
04:13
And so if you just went through this period of setting boundaries, saying no to folks, deciding to stay home, whatever it looked like, and you’re reeling from it, you’re recovering from that? I hear you. It is hard, it is absolutely hard and it will get better, right, women? It’s just like you just have to think that guilt that is still sitting there because you said no, because you. Another thing you may have done was opt to not engage in an uncomfortable conversation topic, right? Or maybe you’re the parent who typically goes above and beyond for your kids and this time you did a little bit less right? I again just want to really drive home the point that you did Nothing wrong. The guilt that you’re feeling still does not mean that you did something wrong. It’s just like, at the end of the day, you’re not used to choosing yourself and so your body is reacting as if you’re doing something wrong. And if you join that book club and read, the body keeps a score. You will understand that your body will send you signals that are incorrect because of past experiences, right?
05:26
So anyway, speaking of books, I actually wanted to share a passage from Dr Pooja Lakshman’s book Lakshman sorry, I said her name wrong from her book called real self-care. I’ve talked about it a lot. If you are in any community where I have hosted meetings, you’ve probably heard me talk about her book. Real self-care is a really wonderful read. Especially her target audience is women, but really anybody can benefit from the content of this book, and so I’m going to read this passage from pages 100 and 101, where she’s talking about guilt, and I’ve made reference to this before, but I really wanted to like put it here in today’s episode. She wrote I frequently see women struggle with guilt.
06:06
Tolerance Facing guilt requires accepting the fact that we cannot control and are not responsible for the emotions of other people. To effectively say no. We must learn to tolerate other people’s disappointment and trust that it is not a moral failing on our part. Right like I’m gonna pause there that we have to learn to tolerate other people’s disappointment. For anyone listening who is a people pleaser, how painful does that sound? It sounds like torture, right? However, that’s what you have to learn to tolerate and handle. If you want to say no and set boundaries, you’re gonna have to be okay with disappointing others. I’ll continue. Because many of us did not develop this muscle growing up, it is not unusual for it to feel uncomfortable when we start setting boundaries as adults.
07:02
So much of the suffering I see in my practice is in women trying to get rid of guilt or avoid feeling guilty. They see the guilt as a giant red flag that they need to drop everything and attend to so it will go away. But this doesn’t work. In order to avoid feeling guilt, or fighting with your mind to stop feeling that way, you are still engaging with guilt and letting it, or the avoidance of it, control you. The goal is not to stop feeling guilty, but instead to turn down the volume and not let guilt control your decisions. It means seeing the guilt not as a giant red flag, but as a faulty check engine light, something that’s always been there but operates primarily in the background. You don’t want to let it take up extra energy or have you running to the mechanic in a panic. Sure, it means something, but it doesn’t mean everything. In other words, guilt does not need to be our compass. It can just be a feeling in the background While we learn to reframe the discomfort as a signal that we’re taking responsibility for our own emotions.
08:28
Guilt is pretty much always there. It comes from outside us, from the contradictory expectations that are put on women Sorry if you’re a man listening to this by a culture that asks us to serve others without taking up any space of our own. That feeling of chronic guilt is a way for women to dismiss themselves and make their own thoughts and feelings small. So, again, I highly recommend, if you’re like well, what can I read in the new year, I highly recommend reading real self-care, honestly, because I think that for anybody again who is still reeling from the holidays and setting these boundaries and saying no and, you know, changing these uncomfortable conversations and refusing to engage, refusing to drink when someone offers you something, and now you feel like shit as a result. Again, like the author, dr Pooja Lakshman, says, you are fine. Your body just needs to be retaught. How to interpret this sensation that is so uncomfortable, and eventually you’re gonna get there. You’re just not used to choosing you, that’s all.
09:33
And so, now that we are in this awkward space between Christmas and the new year, I did want to take a moment to invite you also to think about what on earth you’ve got coming up next. Right, it is completely fair game If you have completely not even thought about the fact that next week is the new year. That’s fine Again, for a lot of you. If this is your first time trying to have a healthy holiday season, you probably haven’t really busy with just surviving. Right, you’ve been in survival mode, and that’s okay.
10:10
But now that there’s a pause, now that there’s a chance to breathe and slow down, I do want you to go ahead and reflect a little bit, right? So first I want you to think about how you feel about the following areas in your life and feel free to adjust any of these areas to something that might be more applicable to your situation. But you know, how do you feel about your relationship with alcohol and other substances? Where is that at today? How are you feeling there? How are you feeling about your career? How are you feeling about your education? How are you feeling about your own personal growth? Slash spirituality, right? And again, note when I’m saying spirituality, I’m not meaning religion or connection with a specific organized space of beliefs, right? I’m just meaning in terms of your connection with yourself, right, your connection with yourself, your connection with others. How are you feeling about that development?
11:23
How are you feeling about your finances? Because that’s always a tough one, right, it has definitely been a tough year for folks’ finances. So how are you feeling about your money situation? How’s your health? Now, let’s break that down. How’s your physical health and how’s your mental health? Right? How are your personal relationships with your family? How are your personal relationships with your friends? And also, let me go back and scratch family and say family or family, you choose, right, because not all of us are even in contact with our family of origin. So I want to recognize that.
12:04
And then, how are you feeling about romance? Is that even something that you care for, right? Like, have you thought about it? Is that something you want, or is that something that’s not even on your radar? And then the last one that I have for you is how are you feeling about, like, your sources of pleasure and fun, right, that are not mind-altering? So, again, not alcohol and not other substances, but things that you do that bring a smile to your face, things that you do that brighten up your spirit just a little bit. How are you feeling about those things?
12:42
And, if you’re curious, some of these areas that I’ve pulled, they’re pulled from different wheel of life exercises that you might see in different coaching programs, different personal development programs. Some of them I adjusted just based off personal experience, but in general you can Google Wheel of Life and check out any exercise where you can kind of do this reflection activity right. So I want you to ask yourself how you’re feeling in these areas and first, if there’s any area where you feel good, let’s celebrate that right. Like if you literally need to go and pause this recording right now so that you can jot down what is going well, what is it that you’re doing that is going well in this area, so that you can keep that energy going right. It’s super important for us to pause and recognize what’s going well so that we can keep at it. That’s always so, so, so important.
13:35
So if it’s your sobriety and you have been consistently engaging in a sobriety support community, you go to meetings. You have found either a sober mentor, a coach, you have a therapist whatever it is that’s helping you to stay away from your substance of choice, right Then, like, keep doing that, for example. But now let’s switch gears a little bit and let’s look at the areas that maybe you don’t feel so great about right. Now I’m going to be fair. It is totally possible because you are a human being and we, as human beings, love to be tough on ourselves that you might be thinking well, I feel bad about all these different areas that you listed, jess, and that’s fair and that’s fine. What we’re not about to do is try to flip the script on every single area that you might be feeling uncomfortable in. That, right, like, I understand that maybe you aren’t happy with you where you are in terms of the spaces that you’re occupying, depending on where you’re at, that’s okay. What I want us to focus on is the fact that change big changes don’t happen from a big, grandiose action. They actually happen from being really consistent with small actions, right? So pick one of the areas that you’re not feeling satisfied with, and maybe it is your relationship with alcohol, right, like, maybe you’ve been in and out in terms of, like, recovery, and now you’re realizing what with the new year might be a nice opportunity to really like be consistent. So pick that right.
15:06
What is one small action that you can consistently take to help you move the needle just a little bit from where you are at? And here’s the thing whatever you are choosing, it absolutely has to be something that you will actually do, right, Because it’s so important for you, a to build confidence in yourself and, b to also trust yourself, right? And the best way to build that confidence and self-trust is to complete things that are going to actually happen, or aim to do things that you’re actually going to complete. So think of a small action item that you can take. So again, I’m just using the alcohol example, but you can use this for anything in your personal life too, right? So let’s say it’s with alcohol and your goal is to not drink alcohol.
15:56
What is one thing that you can consistently do on a daily basis? That is a small action item. The small action item might be getting into a community space and showing up on a meeting right, that is a perfect example. You can do that every single day, pretty much no matter what, because, if it’s not, say, like the two communities that I’ve been involved in the Reframe app and the Luckiest Club they both have meetings seven days a week. But let’s say, you go beyond that if you are interested in 12-step programs, aa has literally meetings going on 24 hours a day. Right, so you can have anywhere that you can go and literally get on a meeting. Whether or not you drink or not, that doesn’t matter. The point is that you can build your confidence and your trust in yourself by showing up every single day to a meeting, no matter what. That’s an example.
16:47
Another example might be, let’s say, if movement is something that you’re wanting to do in the new year and doing it more consistently, I’m not saying, go to the gym, pay thousands of dollars for a trainer and then sign up for, like, the biggest training package when you’ve barely moved. If you’ve just been like a couch potato which, being couch potato, can be nice, right, but it might be okay every day, no matter what, there’s five to 10 minutes of movement that I’m going to commit to, no matter what, so that you can build that trust with yourself that, once you’ve hit that first level of completion successfully, you can add on to that right, and add on to that with confidence, adding on to that something that you know that you will then be able to complete, moving forward. And the point is that you keep adding to where you’re starting at, so that by the time we’re sitting here in a year you should have moved significantly from where you are today. As you’re listening to this episode, notice again, I’m not saying for you to change all of the things. It is very difficult to do multiple things and spread yourself in and do multiple things. Well, right, just find that one small thing that you can do for yourself to build that confidence and that trust, and then you move on.
18:06
Because, again, like I said, where your life looks like a year from today is going to depend on your consistency in taking the small actions. And here’s the thing with regard to the actions If there’s one day that you break from the consistency, does that mean that you throw everything out the window? No, what is going to be really important for you to recognize is that consistency means that some days you’re going to feel like you’re doing, like taking three steps forward and you might stumble backward, but then you get back up and you keep going right. Because the point is that if you, the person who literally, let’s talk about walking, if a person takes three steps forward, falls back, gets up and then continues in their forward movement, are they making progress? Absolutely, they literally are moving forward. So, likewise, whatever it is that your journey is, think about it with regards to walking a path, some days you’re going to move quickly, some days you’re going to move slowly, some days you might have a setback, but the point is that you get back up and you continue moving. The only way that you are going to fail at whatever it is that you want to accomplish is when you stop trying. But as long as you don’t stop trying, you are on the path to get to wherever you’re trying to go, and that’s so, so, so important to remember.
19:26
The other last point I’m going to make, and then I’ll stop for today, is whatever it is that your goal is, please don’t attach your worth to that goal. That’s in the future. Please go look in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re worthy now, or play me saying you are worthy now if you are not comfortable enough with telling yourself such words, because here is the thing For so many of us, myself included, we are socialized to think that life will be better when we accomplish this. When I hit six months of sobriety, my life will be better. When I hit one year of sobriety, when I lose these 10 pounds, these 15 pounds right, when we hit all of these markers, then we will be worthy, then we’ll be happy. But let me tell you what happens when we hit those markers we’re not happy, we’re not worthy because of those markers, because our worth and our joy is an inside job.
20:28
It’s not determined by the things that we do on the outside. It absolutely isn’t. There are things that we can do that can help us build confidence and feel better about ourselves. Of course I’m not saying that. But at the end of the day, you can acquire all the things. You can acquire recognitions and awards, and you can acquire everything and still, in the end, have nothing. And so please recognize that your dignity, your humanity, your worth is not determined by outside things. It is not determined by attaining things. It is determined by you simply existing in your flesh as you are.
21:13
So, in closing, just remember, if you’re going to feel guilt when you do the right thing. Just like Dr Pooja Lakshman said, treat that like a check engine line and ignore it and you keep driving and again, pick one small thing that you know you can do to build trust with yourself. Moving forward and regardless of where you are on any journey that you may be embarking on for the next year, remember the most important thing is that you’ve always been worthy. You have always been worthy. So with that, I hope to see you again in my upcoming book study for the Body Keeps the Score.
21:53
Check that out on my site, bottomlesstosober.com. Or I hope to see you in my Writing for Healing program same website, bottomlesstosober.com to sign up. Hope to hear from you. Have a lovely new year and I will see you in the next episode. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomlessesaubercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes, to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.
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