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In this episode:

Join me on a journey of self-discovery and transformation with my dear friend and cycle breaker coach, Priscilla María. Priscilla María is a Keynote Speaker and Certified Trauma Recovery Coach who empowers others to become cycle breakers. Some cycles her clients are courageously breaking are unresolved trauma, childhood wounds, people-pleasing, self-doubt, domestic violence, and self-criticism.

She has her own coaching practice, Cycle Breakers Club LLC, but also coaches for the Reframe App and a scholarship program that serves first-generation Latinx college students.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re shining a light on the powerful concept of cycle breaking—a vital step in overcoming inherited trauma and addictive behaviors. Priscilla shares her personal healing journey, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and the courage needed to confront and change dysfunctional patterns. Tune in as she offers practical wisdom on using feedback, introspection, and a deep understanding of our nervous system to create a healthier, brighter future.

Resources:

Work with Priscilla

Follow Priscilla on Instagram

Learn about ACEs (adverse childhood experiences)

DBT Resource Mentioned by Priscilla

Six-Week Writing to Heal Program

Transcript:

00:02 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, for this week’s episode, I am super excited to have my friend and also speaker and coach, priscila Gutierrez, here on the episode. So you probably have known her if you’ve seen her on social media as the cycle breaker, and really I am just really honored to have Priscilla here. It is Mental Health Awareness Month and Priscilla has been really just taking off and traveling around the country going to different universities and giving really powerful talks on mental health, so I wanted to bring her on today’s episode specifically to talk about the process of cycle breaking and what are the challenges that come up and how we can go about this work. So, hey, priscilla, hi, beautiful, so good to have you. So for folks who have not been exposed to your work before, who are listening, can you share a little brief overview of your background and the work that you do as a cycle breaker coach?

00:58 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Yes, sure, and thank you for having me as a guest on your platform. I really appreciate it. And so, as far as my work, my whole focus is trauma releasing, trauma recovery, so really encouraging others to heal from whatever they might’ve experienced during this life. That we’re all doing for the first time, and so my background and my education was not in any type of psychology or social work. It was in different subject matters, so social sciences and then law after college. But my lived experiences prepared me for the work that I’m doing now, because throughout my adolescence, my young adulthood, my twenties, I went through a lot of different things, and so I know firsthand what it’s like to be trapped by trauma, and so once I did quite a bit of healing myself, which is an ongoing process, I wanted to use my talents, my skills, my lived experiences to help others also pursue healing.

02:12 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s awesome, and so you know, I think, again, the cycle breaking part is so powerful and I think that that resonates with a lot of folks, because I think a lot of us can recognize, especially if we’re recovering from addiction or recovering from other things right, there’s a lot that we have inherited from the people before us, right, Like our parents, grandparents, et cetera, and so really, my first question is, you know, recognizing that someone is stuck in a cycle, that’s usually the first step to breaking it. But I guess my question really is is how do people even gain that awareness, right? Like, how, how do you even recognize that you’re in a cycle? What, what did this process maybe look like for you? And how does this apply? Say to any of the clients that you work with or people like how do we identify that we are in a cycle in the first place?

03:05 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
That’s a great question. Awareness is definitely key and precedes any type of action like at least cognizant action. And so for me, I would say the biggest cycle that I stopped was the drinking, and so my grandfathers were heavy alcohol consumers and for that reason my parents were not drinkers at all. I mean, they’ve never been drunk, like like really belligerent or any none like not at all, and so it really kind of just like skipped a generation, none like not at all. And so it really kind of just like skipped a generation. And then my brother and myself picked it up again. And so alcohol and that cycle, I’ve always known about it since I was a little girl, but once it started to affect my life then it was like, oh okay, this is something that I need to confront. And so what helped me? A few things, I would say feedback from people that I trust, and so that would be my parents at the time. They definitely were observant and encouraged me and supported me in my trips to, encouraged me and supported me in my trips to, you know, the wilderness program, outpatient program, substance abuse support groups, and so I was blessed to have their observations.

04:38
But even before that, I did have this inner voice that was kind of like hmm, something is going awry. Because if you’re going to compare yourself and I say this often comparing yourself to other people is futile. There really is, unless you’re using it for inspiration. That’s good, that can be motivating, like you know. That’s, that’s good, that can be motivating. But when it comes to judging yourself or valuing yourself, the best person to compare yourself if you’re going to is yourself. So once I started to reflect more and be like wait, why am I? I went into college saying I wasn’t going to drink. I went into college saying a lot of things and being a really dedicated student to now being very distracted, prioritizing partying and drinking and going out. And so, because I was able to make a comparison with my current self and my past self, it was undeniable that, okay, I’m evolving into someone that I don’t recognize and never wanted to be like, and so, definitely being self-curious, asking yourself questions. Not all of us have access to our family history, so it’s not required that you have, like, a family tree with okay. So this is you know where the addiction started, or this is where the domestic violence you know started.

06:11
I would say get to know your nervous system. So how do you feel when you interact with other people? When someone gives you a compliment, how do you react? When someone criticizes you, how do you react? What do your relationships look like? Do you have real friends? What do your romantic relationships look like? So, once you just kind of start taking an inventory of your relationships, your habits, your perspectives, your word choice when you speak to yourself and others, it will kind of show itself like oh okay, I’m seeing a common thread of, maybe, anger, I’m seeing a common thread of distrust, you know a little paranoia. And so, for me, I was noticing things. I was noticing a lot of anger, a lot of distrust, a lot of impulsivity, and so that’s really what helped me is observations for people I trusted, and then also being introspective.

07:22 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
And I think that that’s really helpful too, because, well, the point that you made with regard to you don’t necessarily have to have a family tree that outlines everything, because I think what happens a lot nowadays too is we do have a lot of folks being raised in homes where maybe it’s not their birth parents who are raising them, so you really might not have access to this information, but if you have the people around you giving you feedback or like sharing in some kind of way, like hey, I’m worried about you, right, or if you’re recognizing that you yourself are having these patterns that are causing a lot of disruption for you in your life, like that can be important information.

07:58
Maybe it’s generational trauma, maybe it’s not, but the point is you’re stuck in a cycle and here you are having the awareness, so maybe you can move into breaking it. Really, really I love that. And then I had a quick question, because you mentioned that your grandparents drank and then your parents didn’t drink, but then you and your brother did pick it up. I’m just kind of curious did your family like, did your parents ever have conversations with you all about alcohol and like the risks, or was it just they didn’t drink but they didn’t talk about their experiences growing up with their parents.

08:29 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Yeah, thanks for asking that. And one also just a response yeah, when it comes to cycles, it doesn’t. It’s not only generational cycles, it can be individual cycles that you notice within yourself, such as okay, I’ve seen a pattern with the people I date, and so that can be a cycle to look into. And then, as far as the alcohol in my family, so we had conversations around alcohol, for sure, and my mother, for example, she grew up, her childhood home in Ecuador was a bar, so her house doubled as a neighborhood bar, and so she was very much surrounded by highly intoxicated men. She saw the worst side of, you know, alcohol, and so she was extremely turned off to drinking because of what she observed, off to drinking because of what she observed.

09:32
And then my father, yeah, he, he, he wasn’t raised by my dad, my grandfather, and so he, my dad, was very turned off by behaviors that his father uh, partook in, such as promiscuity, such as heavy drinking, domestic violence. So my dad was definitely like I see what my father did and maybe other men that he saw, and he was just like I’m not gonna do that. And then I also recognize that my parents did and and maybe other men that he saw and he was just like I’m not gonna do that. And then I also recognize that my parents childhoods and adolescence were very different from their parents and very different from mine and my brothers. So, for example, my father if you look at his ace score, I I don’t know the exact number, but when I read the questionnaire and I asked him to do it, I’m like you check off a lot of them, not all of them, but just a lot of them.

10:33
So he, even as a kid, almost passed during the massive earthquake I believe it was 1972 in Manawa, and so he thankfully did not. I think he said there was like a rock or something collapsed, like, so it was a close call. And so he was displaced. His family was displaced from Manawa because 90% of the city was devastated, and so they went to La Finca, they went to a farm, and it was a completely different lifestyle. I don’t think he had electricity. Yeah, it was just a different world.

11:14
And so then after that there was a war in Nicaragua, the civil war. So my father had to flee at 14 with my grandmother and my two uncles, otherwise they’re probably going to die, because my uncle was 18 at the time. So they definitely wanted to draft him and so it’s just a lot of chaos, a lot of violence, and so I can’t relate to my father’s upbringing and he can’t really relate to mine, and so I have a lot of, I guess, understanding now more about why my dad is the way he is, why my mom is the way she is, and so with my brother and I, our parents were open, definitely, were like like look at your grandfathers and and look at, you know, other people in the family, like this is not something that you want to really partake in. And and it’s not that they didn’t have any alcohol ever in their life, but probably like extremely rare, like a piña colada or like like super never been, like drunk and intoxicated. There was never alcohol in the house. There was never alcohol and family parties either, because on my mom’s side, at least openly, or I know for sure, probably 90% of them don’t drink same. You know similar reason. I imagine 90% of them don’t drink same. You know similar reason. I imagine my, yeah, so on both sides actually, even the their generation wasn’t big on drinking, but some of my cousins, that’s not the case, and then obviously Yvonne and myself, not the case.

12:57
So I think I think it’s a very complicated answer, but I know that my parents absolutely did the best they could with what they had and what they knew, and they were pretty young parents and they were navigating a new country on their own and so they’re not going to catch every single thing, and so I think my brother I can’t really speak for Yvonne, but I’ll speak for myself it was trauma.

13:29
It was trauma that they didn’t directly cause. It was, you know, other factors, and so I would say the fact that trauma healing and trauma healing and trauma strategies or ways to release, for self-care or mindfulness were not passed down in the family and it’s not not to say that they like deliberately was like, let me just not pass this down. They didn’t have it. So like with my dad when he came with his family, there wasn’t like, okay, let’s sit down and do some group coaching or some group therapy. There was nothing, there was no check-in, there was just survival, and so they didn’t have any tools to pass down to my brother and I. And so I didn’t live in Nicaragua ever. I didn’t live in a war zone, but I very much feel impacted by it vicariously because of the parenting that and the way that it affected my dad and my uncles and grandmother. So I would say it comes down to trauma, honestly trauma and mental health.

14:41 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know when it’s great that, like you said, our parents for the most part they do the best that they can within like the structures that they have in place. Because, you know, in my family addiction definitely runs pretty rampantly in my family but it’s never any conversation really or any warning about it. It was just like the people who drank too much they were called drunks, you know, they were called borrachos and that was that.

15:14
but there was never any attempt at like, an awareness of like oh, maybe you shouldn’t drink that. You know it. Just, there was literally zero conversation, so I was just curious. So it’s great to see that your parents did talk about it.

15:25
You know, and obviously, yeah, like, there’s a lot of tools that our families, that our parents don’t have, that we have the luxury of having, like being born here, being raised here, you know, having access like, with like, for, in my case, you know, with my job, I have access to like healthcare so I can pay for a therapist. You know things like that, that you know things like that that you know our parents didn’t have like, they didn’t have jobs that were offering them EAP benefits or things like that. The other point, just for anyone listening, you made a mention. You referenced ACE score. So, if anyone is listening, aces are adverse childhood experiences and I’ll post a link in the show notes so that you can take a quiz and see how adverse childhood experiences may have possibly impacted you too. But, yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that perspective with or to your parents.

16:11
So, I mean kind of coming back now to the idea of breaking a cycle. I know we talked a little bit about the awareness, how, what are the signs? How can you tell if you’re stuck in a cycle, whether it’s generational or your own cycle? But breaking a cycle can also be really challenging. And I mean I like to think of you know one of Newton’s laws, you know the law of inertia an object in motion stays in motion, right? So like, if we’re in a habit of living a certain way, of making decisions a certain way, it can be really hard to break from that. So what do you believe are, like, the biggest challenges that someone faces when trying to break cycles, if you don’t mind sharing, say, from your own experience, like what were some of the challenges that you personally encountered in terms of breaking a cycle?

16:59 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
I would say awareness and support are key and can be obstacles. So with support, if you don’t have people in your corner, you know true connection, or people that validate you, believe you, that can really be devastating for someone. I have been invalidated. I have been invalidated by family, by therapists, other loved ones, and so that really kept me stuck in a cycle either blamed myself or I. I felt like I didn’t have the right to get support or to to change.

17:50
And then the awareness piece was major. So now I can reflect and see okay, this, for example, in college, with the binge drinking. You know, I am so removed from that life, from that period of my life. It’s been 12 and a half years since I’ve been drunk or drank alcohol and so now I know why I did it. But during those years that I was consuming alcohol, I didn’t have that awareness. I thought everyone in my mind you know, everyone is drinking and I’m just doing me. But now I know and I can, I can look back and think, oh, I remember saying this when I was drunk, I was. That was a cry for help. Or I remember being extremely reactive and in other situations like, oh, okay, that’s because this person reminded me of someone that had harmed me, and so that awareness is really key to to even knowing that there’s something to break.

18:55
Otherwise, you might just think that’s your personality, that’s your culture, that’s just how your family is, and so what I would say is, as far as the awareness piece because, yeah, mental health care is not super accessible in this country is to educate yourself. So hop on online and find some books. I know Jessica has. She does book clubs, so she has like great recommendations when it comes to books for you to learn about. You know, the body keeps the score is a great one where you can learn about the science of trauma, you can learn about how real it is. This is not opinion. This is scientific fact that trauma can absolutely rewire your brain. It can affect how you view the world, how you view yourself, and so learn some. Learn from books, learn from podcasts, learn from documentaries, take courses, if you’re able to, but really start to consume and absorb information around trauma, recovery and mental health.

20:07 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I love that and I think that that’s really, really important. Like getting informed is one of the most powerful pieces to just make sense of what the hell happened to us. Like reading the books, getting informed, asking questions, learning from others oh, my dog is joining in the background here, I know but yeah, learning from others that that is so, so, so helpful. Speaking of breaking cycles, are there any specific strategies or tools that you feel like are particularly helpful with breaking cycles?

20:42 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Let’s see. I think it will depend on the type of cycle. So when I look at my clients and people that I’ve worked with, I’ve helped people with, uh, it ultimately comes down to mindset, because I’m not a therapist, I’m not a psychologist and so my role is not and I’m not qualified to be clinical, so I’m not here to diagnose anyone or provide them any treatment plans. So what I really focus in on is mindset. Like, what do you tell yourself? And that has been pretty much the consistent theme is, whether it’s a CEO at a company with low self-esteem or a rape survivor from an underserved community, whatever extremes you want to use as examples.

21:35
The mindset we all have a mindset. We all have certain beliefs, certain things that we say to ourselves, certain thoughts and values that we hold on to, and so I think really exploring your mindset can be a game changer. So, whether it’s learning how to be more mindful, learning to be more self-compassionate, learning to be more self-compassionate, anything that allows you to really rewire or unlearn any type of beliefs and thoughts that don’t journey in itself, what I have found helpful I would say what was really helpful was DBT, so dialectical behavioral therapy, and that was recommended for my BPD diagnosis borderline personality disorder that is like a whole course on how to communicate with others effectively, how to manage stress, how to tolerate when you’re upset without maybe doing impulsive or intense reactions, so that is a good starting point as well. I did it in a support group, so in a clinical setting I also did with a therapist, but the good thing about being in 2024 is a lot of this information is accessible online.

23:16
So there’s actually this really cool site that I can share with you, jessica. If you want to put it into the information, it’s kind of like an interactive module for a DBT, where it kind of like breaks down the basics of okay, here are some exact techniques that you can do when you’re upset, and these are some exact techniques you can do when you want to set boundaries, and so that can be really helpful to to learn like oh, this, I just didn’t learn this growing up, I just didn’t see it modeled in my household, and so, yeah, going back to just being inquisitive, yeah, I would absolutely love that resource and yeah, I think, like it’s totally fair that we can recognize, right and we can own, like yeah, there’s a lot of things that we didn’t own or learn when we were at home growing up, and that’s okay, right.

24:11 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Like this is the opportunity where we get to empower ourselves and educate ourselves to make decisions that are going to help us grow and heal. And I think, like you know, to really kind of piggyback off that point. It is 2024. And a lot of this information is online. A lot of this information is accessible, so we don’t have to, because I sometimes feel like I’ve heard, as a coach, when I work one-on-one with people, I hear a lot of different responses or experiences to therapists, hear a lot of different responses or experiences to therapists. And it’s been interesting because I’ve had some people come work with me for coaching because they’re kind of done with, like, the therapy, how some therapists might operate.

24:54
I guess you could say and so again, everyone, anyone who’s listening, all of us, we all have to determine what, what works for us. Like I do still work with a therapist. Um, that, that’s my choice. You know, I also have a mental health diagnosis of bipolar disorder. So for me I still choose to work with a therapist and for now that works Right. And so I think like we all have to decide what we’re doing. But I’m glad that you brought up kind of like the difference between a therapist or someone who is a clinician, say, versus a coach. Now I guess if someone is looking to do, say, cycle breaking work, trauma work I know you mentioned you emphasize mindset Is there anything else that should let somebody know? Like, okay, I should work with a coach versus a therapist.

25:41 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
I would say experiment or trial and error. So I have worked with therapists, different modalities, so CBT, prolonged exposure therapy, dbt, as I mentioned, and I’m actually working with a therapist now. I started oh she’s cute, I’m like cute actually. I just started working with her in the last like maybe two weeks and so far I really like her, and I can’t say that for other therapists that I’ve had. I haven’t had the best experiences with some therapists and it’s because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know what they were saying was inappropriate or invalidating or things like that.

26:29
I felt very much a power imbalance and so what I would say is a key not to say that all therapists are this way or all coaches are this way, but with therapy, where it’s in a clinical setting, it’s more like okay, this is, you know, I’m here to diagnose you or see if there’s any diagnosis and prescribe a treatment and then see how you follow the treatment. Where coaching is more peer support, more informal to me because I’ve also been on the receiving end of coaching it’s more. I feel like it’s a partnership, it’s more collaborative, and that’s just my experience. It’s more collaborative and that’s just my experience, and so I would say test it out. You know, many coaches and therapists offer free consultations, so it might be like a 15-minute discovery call or a 30-minute discovery call just to talk to them, tell them your goals, tell them your style of learning, your personality, what you expect, what you’re seeking and see if there’s a match. So, like this therapist that I’m seeing now, that wasn’t the first therapist that I reached out to. I met with another therapist before her and I was like I’m not feeling it, like I don’t see myself, I don’t see myself feeling super comfortable, and so trust is a big deal.

28:05
So ultimately, you are in the driver’s seat, so you are the one who selects. It’s not them picking you as a patient, it’s you picking them as a provider. So shop around, do your research and also lean into community resources. So I know I believe it’s the Open Path Collective. That’s one example of a resource to find more affordable mental health care. I think the SAMHSA, something like that. If you just Google like drug addiction, it’s usually one of the ones that pop up. But look into what’s available. Are there support groups in your area that are free? Are there other activities that maybe aren’t explicitly therapy that could also aid in your cycle breaking. So it’s not all about trauma recovery and learning about the brain and learning about your vagus nerve. It’s also finding things that bring you peace, maybe bring you structure. So signing up for a yoga class, signing up for a dance class, something that allows you to move, movement, is really good for you, and so those are some of my ideas.

29:22 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and I mean I love that you brought up the idea of support groups and community, because you know a lot of the research with regard to healing right, and I’m I mean I’m thinking specifically with to addiction a lot of that touches on the power of community and community can look very different depending on what your interests are, what kind of communities that you’re into.

29:42
But you know, like Bessel van der Kolk talks about it in the Body Keeps the Score, like just being in sync with somebody else can make a huge difference. And you know, like his book, I love that you mentioned a dance class, because the Body Keeps the Score literally talks about things like getting into theater, getting into dance. I finished a book study for the buddy keeps the score a couple, probably like a month or two ago, and one of the students in the class decided to sign up for an acting class and like that way to get more into their body Right, like how cool is that? But yeah, I mean he totally proposes acting or theater as a form of healing for anybody who has been used to disconnecting from their body, because now you have to be fully present in order to imagine. How could you possibly convey how someone else is feeling right, and so, yeah, I think I love all those things that you said, because I think that it is okay to look for healing outside of the box, right?

30:40 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
and it’s okay to.

30:42 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
If you, if you feel comfortable going about different strategies that don’t necessarily involve a therapist, because that’s not something you can afford, that’s not something you have access to. That’s totally fair, right, Like it’s okay to create a plan that works for you. If you’re feeling yourself moving along, if you’re feeling yourself healing, finding comfort, finding safety, if you’re noticing that your body is feeling safer more often, right, you’re definitely moving in the right direction. So I think that’s a super. Those are all super great points. So, kind of speaking of healing, right, is there a point where someone can confidently say like yep, I have broken a cycle? Or would you say that this is just kind of like a lifelong journey where you have to keep an eye out to make sure that you don’t fall back into patterns?

31:31 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
I think and that’s a great question I think it’s possible to reach a place of comfortable remission. But me personally, I’ve been 12 and a half years sober. But I don’t say, okay, well, I guess I can go and pick up another glass of alcohol, just have a little taste and see how it goes. I know it’s still not for me, even though it’s been a long time and so. But I can also say I have broken that cycle of alcohol use disorder for sure for myself. I mean I would love to be blessed with children. I plan to educate them and set the example for them. So I feel confident that I have broken that cycle, but at the same time I don’t feel I don’t consider myself healed from like a healed person.

32:37
A healed person I see myself as continuously healing. That it’s a journey, it’s a chronic condition borderline personality disorder, chronic condition, alcohol use disorder, chronic condition. So I see these as conditions that can be treated, but not necessarily cured, but not necessarily cured. And so I think it’s important not to underestimate or to get too comfortable that you think you could never go back to some degree of where you were at. And that’s just my perspective because I know, for example, medication really helps me. But when I know like I don’t get a specific date, but at one point I was not on medication and that definitely affected me, I was like, oh, I need to be on medication and so but I got comfortable. I got comfortable thinking, oh, I’ve learned all these tools, I’ve learned all this, you know DBT and mindfulness, and it’s like, hey, but I still, I still have this treatment in place for a reason. So I would say that healing generally is not a destination. You can’t point to it on a map. It is continuous, it is a journey.

33:58 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Thank you, and I think that’s super important for folks to remember. Now I know my listeners would obviously know what alcohol use disorder is. However, we don’t often talk about specific mental health diagnoses, so would you mind sharing a little bit about what borderline personality disorder is and kind of like how it’s shown up for you?

34:17 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Sure so. And it’s so interesting because over the years I’ve received different diagnoses and so, depending on who you ask, I guess they have their own perspectives. They have their own perspectives. But even this therapist that I’m seeing now she was like, I mean for insurance purposes, I think you, from what I’m seeing, you know I just met you and and she, and to be fair, she’s seen a medicated version of me, a version of me that has done DBT, a more evolved version. So she said I think you have like adjustment disorder and so what she kind of said like you know, I’m going to work with you and we’ll kind of revisit this, but based on what you’ve shared with me, you know it’s trauma. You’ve been reacting to trauma throughout your life and so the diagnosis itself is not always given. Sometimes people prefer to, or providers use like complex PTSD.

35:32
I had one psychiatrist say that she doesn’t believe in personality disorders, that it’s basically bipolar disorder and just under that umbrella, and so with that said, I just wanted to throw that out there, because borderline personality disorder is not received and viewed the same way. I think across there’s not really a consensus. But as far as that and my understanding is, it happens when you experience some type of trauma and you grew up in an emotionally invalidating environment, so you didn’t really learn how to process your feelings, express your feelings, regulate your nervous system, and so it’s very dysregulated. So a lot of people that live with borderline personality disorder disorder turn to substances or eating disorders or self-harm to cope with the things that they don’t have the coping skills to cope with. And so there are, I believe, nine criteria that they have listed, and then you need at least like five to meet the diagnosis. I know some of them are. Meet the diagnosis. I know some of them are unstable relationships, impulsive bursts of anger, a very shifting sense of self, so you kind of like don’t know who you are. Some of us experience paranoia or a lot of dissociation, and so it’s definitely one of the more stigmatized disorders.

37:22
Usually, when someone says that, they often associate it with the pejorative term of crazy or like. This person cannot have a relationship. This person is like super hot and cold, super like clingy, but also like just volatile. And so what I would say is, regardless if you have a diagnosis or not, first and foremost you’re human. So even just person-centered language goes a long way. I am Priscilla. I’m a lot of things, I’m a Gemini, I’m Latina so many different things and I live with mental illness. But I am not borderline, I am not PTSD. So if you’re listening and you’re not sure, I would encourage you. A first step could be to go online and look at screen tests, but those are not diagnostic. They’re just kind of like a little step in the right direction to kind of be curious and and see okay, well, maybe this is something I should talk to a mental health provider about.

38:26 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know the thing with diagnoses, that can get tricky too, it’s like and again going back off the body keeps the score. One of the biggest issues that Bessel van der Kolk would notice in his studies, especially when he was like in doing his own research early on in his career, was the fact that he would observe that, depending on what the mental health clinicians saw, that was how the diagnosis came forward. Right, so like if they saw someone who was being extremely like moody, then they would be quick to give them a bipolar label versus like that same person days later was like super sad Okay, well, maybe they’ve got clinical depression, right.

39:09
And so you know, I think also, at the end of the day, like we, as the person being diagnosed, have to accept the diagnosis, right. Like I feel like we’re just as a part of this decision-making process in a sense than like the person you know giving us the diagnosis, because a it helps for us to be really honest, you know, and really share all the things with the person making this decision, because how you’re diagnosed can really impact things like medication and treatment plans and you know, getting a bad treatment plan can really negatively impact you, like if you have medications in your body that are not serving you because they’re not treating like the right neurotransmitter, so to speak, right Like that can be an issue too. So I think that it’s just an interesting point that you made in terms of you know how diagnoses can get really complicated.

39:59 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Yeah for sure. And great point, I remember that part in the book where he was like, in some words, if you observe a trauma survivor, you can attach so many different labels to them. Was it defiant, behavioral or something like that defined disorder or, you know, oppositional defined disorder? I think that’s it. Um schizophrenia, just so many things. Because they just experience a traumatic event or it’s unresolved in their body, so they’re like their nervous system is completely dysregulated to the max, and so that’s true. And then also with my experience, one of the therapists diagnosed me in the first session for the first time borderline. And I mean I’ve gotten different opinions to kind of support okay, like your borderline, but that’s super inappropriate. I didn’t that. That you know. But she wasn’t wrong per se.

40:58
But you know it is a little concerning how I guess if one person says it based on what their observations are or their school of thought, that can really determine your trajectory with mental health care and a lot of it is based on self-reporting. So, like you mentioned, you know being honest, because it’s true, like I can go to an office. I’ve always been very honest just in general, but definitely with doctors, mental health providers. But I could lie, I could just lie and be like, yeah, I have great relationships or whatever the case is, and then they could be like, okay, well, that’s what you’re self-reporting. So that’s why, going back to the feedback piece, like if you have people in your life that love you, that are honest with you, like I know you have your sister Sophia, who’s been like super supportive of you Like you need people that will tell you the truth and actually like know you and have your best interests. If you are able to have that in your life, because, of course, not everyone has that support.

42:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Right, and you know it’s. It’s interesting to going back to the diagnosis piece, because so the context for my bipolar diagnosis. So I’m diagnosed with bipolar two. Those of you who have listened to me for a while know this. But if you’re new on this episode, bipolar two is basically the episodes of having depressive episodes without the mania, so your classic bipolar one. Those folks will experience episodes of, say, manic episodes where they might, you know, have impulsive decision-making and you know spending, um, you know risky behaviors, et cetera, while someone with bipolar two will not have that and what they’ll more realistically have are just these episodes of, like, heavy sadness.

42:51
And you know, when I got that diagnosis back in 2020, that made sense to me and but the honest truth is, I haven’t experienced an episode like that since the closest episode that I’ve had to a depressive episode was, you know, after I miscarried in January, like I felt depressed afterward. But let’s be honest, that’s grief, right, and I think that you know we live in a society where we have to normalize grieving more, so, like, yeah, I didn’t have much motivation to do anything, but you know, I just went through something really heartbreaking. So, you know, I gave myself some time and I was like, you know, if I don’t get out of this, you know sadness, I’ll, I’ll go to a psychiatrist and maybe get on meds, but you know that eventually not that it passed, but it became less heavy. But you know, I’ve been working with the same therapist now for actually over a year and she her, her issue. She’s like it doesn’t really matter what your label is at this point, cause she’s like I’m not taking medication, so the label doesn’t necessarily like matter as much, but like she actually pointed out that she thinks that I’m more of an anxious person, like, and so who knows right, because my bipolar diagnosis, also for me it came at the end of my drinking career when doctors were just trying to figure out how the hell do we get this girl to stop drinking?

44:13
So you know, I wonder if, like, so, like I’ve seen, and I have read enough to see, that alcohol can also set off certain mental health issues, like you can have episodes like psychotic breaks under the influence of alcohol or other substances, et cetera, and so I’ve read about alcohol causing some of that.

44:34
But you know, it’s funny that in like my natural human state, like really what I have are just like anxious tendencies, and so, you know, not to the point that it’s been debilitating, thankfully, but enough that my therapist has pointed that out. So I think, like, if I ever wanted to get fully reevaluated, you know we can explore that. But you know I don’t mind again, I don’t mind that my insurance gets billed under a bipolar label for my therapy sessions. Like I’m like whatever, I don’t care. But but it’s just interesting again, just going back to that, the question of the diagnosis, and it makes me wonder, like, can diagnoses change over the years and can they be just as true? It’s just because of the changes that we go through, so I don’t know food for thought.

45:21 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Absolutely Food for thought and I encourage everyone to get second opinions, third opinions, because ultimately you know you, I know I’m not a doctor or anything like that to diagnose myself, but at the end of the day, no one has lived my life but me and I am coherent, I am cognizant, so I can speak for myself and I know like when I think back at certain experiences I’m like who wouldn’t be emotionally dysregulated?

45:54 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
especially if they’re not medicated.

45:55 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
They don’t have the support Like they’re, yeah, and so it’s the big, big picture stuff. So it’s definitely not just cut and dry.

46:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and also it’s very big picture stuff too, because you know some more recent reads that I’ve had to like.

46:13
I’ve read some of like Dr Pooja Lakshman’s work Lakshman, I guess I said that correctly, she’s the author of Real Self Care but I’ve also read like some of her articles.

46:22
She’s done quite a bit of like writing for like the New York Times and she has like a sub stack and you know like sometimes you think you’re depressed but it’s that you don’t have money to pay your bills right, and so sometimes it’s really a result of living in the society that we live in, where there is very little access to so much for so many people, where you might be experiencing legitimate economic hardship, you might be experiencing poor access to health care, and so things are showing up as symptoms that, would you know, you open the DSM and it’s like sure you can see that right there.

46:59
But it’s not about being in the DSM, it’s that you know you are living a difficult life circumstance and now you have these symptoms coming up as a result of the difficult life circumstance, like, for example, you know I was thinking you mentioned that one of the criteria for borderline personality disorder might be having unstable relationships, and I can see that how that’s the case. Sure, like, as adults, for example, you know we we have some plenty of choice in who we maintain relationships with. But I also wonder like, let’s say, if you’re in a family where the family itself is just like not healthy for whatever reasons, right, like, how much is that really you and how much is that like just the environment that you happen to come into right?

47:47 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Yeah, like you said, it’s not always or just what’s happening like brain chemistry. It can be situational circumstances, it can be what was modeled for you in the home. That could be your norm. I know, when I left for college I was like, oh, I can see differences in other families and how or how other people kind of communicate and things like that. And so yeah, great, yeah, great, great point. It’s more holistic, more a lot of different factors.

48:19 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
For sure. But anyway, as we get to the end of our time, I would love for you to share with folks if you are currently taking clients. If so, like what offerings do you have? So yeah, tell us a little bit about how folks can contact you or work with you or follow you.

48:38 – Priscilla Gutiérrez (Guest)
Of course, and excuse me. Thank you again, jessica, for having me on and allowing me the space to talk about my experiences and the coaching I offer. So I have cycle breaker coaching. It’s a container, it’s three months, but I want someone who is listening to this to let’s talk first, because I recognize three months. Basically, the package that I have is, like you know, 12 one hour sessions over three months and all these other different additives that come with it, but that is a suggested starting point, and so I am accepting new clients. I really love my clients. I’m really blessed to be in this position to support people with some real life situations, real life changes, mindset shifts. You can learn more about the coaching that I offer on my website, which is priscillamariacom, and also my Instagram and my LinkedIn are both at cyclebreakercoach, so feel free to connect with me, reach out, say hello. I’m here to answer any additional questions that you have about what we talked about or anything you might be curious about.

50:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Awesome. Well, priscilla, yes, thank you so much for sharing, for joining and for just sharing your experiences with cycle breaking. I think that you know, again for anyone listening, if you’re feeling stuck, recognize that you are you’re feeling stuck, recognize that you are. You’re not alone. Right Again, like an object in motion tends to want to stay in motion. Right, it’s basic physics and it’s basic human patterns to feel stuck and like not really feel ease. You know, when trying to break from a pattern, whether it’s your addiction to something probably alcohol, if you’re listening to this, or just just any other behaviors that you’re dealing with, and so definitely don’t hesitate to reach out to Priscilla to explore any of this work as well. So, thank you all so much for listening. Thank you, priscilla, for being here. I will catch you all on the next one.

Return to Podcast Directory

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

There’s a profound mix of beauty and pain in the narrative of my family, from my grandmother’s sacrifices of selling lottery tickets to avoid returning to an abuser’s home to the cultural tradition of silence that influenced my own journey in mental health. Honoring the choices of our women before me and discerning what to carry forward, this episode extends a heartfelt message of love and well-being to all who listen, and sets the stage for an insightful exploration of the book “It Didn’t Start With You,” for those eager to understand the profound impact of intergenerational trauma on our lives.

Resources:

Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts June 3rd!

Book Study: It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn

Transcript:

00:02 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, it is Mother’s Day in the US, which means it is a hard day for a whole lot of people on this planet. And this episode is just me talking my randomness per usual. But I wanted to share a little bit of what I do know of my grandmother’s slash mother’s story, because what mother’s day is a really complicated holiday for me too. Um. So first I’ll give heads up in terms of listening to this episode, that there will be talk of intimate partner violence and there will be talk of pregnancy loss and, obviously, by nature of this show, addiction. But I did want to kind of give you that heads up on some of the topics that are going to come up with regard to today’s recording. But today I’m choosing to practice gratitude that is wrapped up in the belief and the reminder that multiple things can be true at one time. Right. And so in this recovery journey, I’ve learned that there can be a lot of beauty and I’ve learned that there can be a lot of pain, and I’ve learned that nothing is just good and nothing is just bad. Right, like, life is not that simple. Things are not black or white. So I really want to kind of focus on that energy today as I tell a little bit of the story of, again, what I know of my grandmother’s story, how it connects to my mother’s story and then my own, because again, there’s a lot that I’ve learned, there’s a lot that’s been passed down.

01:30
I have a book study coming up in June for the book. It Didn’t Start With you, right, and this is a testament to that. It didn’t start with you, it didn’t start with me. If you want to sign up for that book study, check it out on bottomlistsobercom. But again, here is just a little bit of my story, well, really my grandma’s story, just to give a sense of where all the years of me having my addiction be kept like a secret came from.

01:58
So my grandmother her name was Sofia, sofia Vargas, if you notice. Well, sofia Rojas Vargas. If you notice my sister’s namejas Vargas, if you notice, my sister’s name is also Sophia. So Sophia is a popular name in my family thanks to my grandmother, and my grandmother was actually born like way back 1902. And, to give you context, I’m 39 years old, so I’m talking about a grandmother that was born in 1902, but my grandmother had my mom late. My mom is one of, like her, last kids and then I’m my mom’s last kid and my mom, you know, she was 45 when I was born. So yeah, like there’s a huge age gap between, like I don’t even know how old my grandmother was when I was born. Just to give you context, or like if I were to have a child, you know my mom is already 85 years old. So we just have big age gaps in this family.

02:42
So, anyway, my grandmother was born in Nicaragua and the year was probably about 1916. But there was a Costa Rican man who went into Nicaragua and he basically charmed her, romanced her and pulled her away from the safety net of her family, right, so her family of origin was erased and taken out of the picture. At this point, when he brings her to the Costa Rican border, he lies to border officials there and says that this is his daughter and of course, again, we’re talking 1916. They’re not like scanning passports to check and verify papers, right, like they basically just have to take you for whatever you say. And it’s my understanding that my grandmother’s husband was also pretty wealthy. So you know, and of course, in the colorist world of my family’s nature, you know, my mom often tells a story about how he had blue eyes, like that was supposed to be, some like winning special feature, like he was an abusive asshole, but he had blue eyes. When I say two things can be true, that’s not the type of two things that can be true that I care to talk about, but just pointing that out. So he takes her, moves her into Costa Rica, marries her when she’s a teenager again about 14, 15, at most 16 years old and very quickly, from what I understand, the whole situation changes, right. So he may have been charming when he appeared in Nicaragua, but in Costa Rica that totally changed. And so he did become abusive, physically abusive and verbally abusive towards my grandmother, and she was so young and she didn’t have any way to reach out back to her family to get help. She was already married off. They were in different countries.

04:23
And to kind of give you a sense of where the world was right, like if we’re talking about the years like 1916 to 1920-ish that time period, let’s remember that the world was in World War I let’s remember that in the United States women didn’t even have the right to vote. So what do you think a woman in Latin America was going to have the right to do, right? So just to give you some context there, at this time period again, women in the United States couldn’t even get a credit card without their husband until the 1970s. So to give you context in terms of where things were in Latin America also, costa Rica to this day is officially a Catholic nation, which means that there’s limited I mean there is access to birth control now. Back then there wasn’t. And also things like abortion not happening legally then, not happening legally now. So again, women’s rights basically don’t exist at this time.

05:16
So if you are being abused by your spouse, not much is happening for you in terms of protection and so, honestly, what is the easiest way to get through it? It’s to be quiet, right, cross your fingers and hope the period passes and that you survive, right? The only time that my grandmother got breaks from this abuse was when she was pregnant, and again she got pregnant quite a bit and pretty quickly. She was young. There was no access to birth control, so she had I want to say it was about four kids three kids in four years. She gave birth, three kids in four years, um, and so again, every time that she was pregnant she had the sense of safety of oh, he’s not hitting me right now, but even then it’s like you know, if he put his hand to caress her, you know there’s that immediate, like jarring reaction, because you are so used to being hit by someone that you know when you suddenly see that hand come out at you you’re going to flinch. And so that was her experience. Now, by the time she had her third child, which is my Tio Carlos, he was a baby, she, and she, for whatever reason, finally was growing sick of this. Right, like you, can only take so much after a while.

06:34
My grandfather would have a habit of going to the local taverna, which is a bar. Basically it would be a Friday night routine. Him all the other like husbands in the neighborhood would just go and get drunk and probably go home, and I don’t want to say that all of them would go home and beat their wives. But he did right. And so you know there was just this pattern of the kids would go to bed, hide hope it wasn’t them, because it was basically whoever was up and around when he got home. They were going to get it, and so typically it was her. The kids were already asleep and there’s just this one point that my mom says that my grandmother just got sick of it and over it, and she was just like I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do, like I might go and starve, I might have to be out on the streets, but anything is better than than this. Right, and again, she had a baby with her, an infant.

07:25
And so it was one Friday, right before he went to go to the bar, to the taverna, that my grandmother approached him, and this was the first time she ever spoke up for herself. And she was like you can go drink, but me and the kids we’re not going to be here when you get back. And so, from what I’ve gathered, his response was like really Like you think you’re going to leave me. You know, he wanted to point out that he had money. He wanted to point out that he had money. He wanted to point out that she had all these kids, right, what was she going to do? He basically said that she was going to have to go be a puta in the streets Puta means prostitute that she was going to have to go prostitute herself. And he was like you’re trying to avoid my hands, but imagine all the other men’s hands that are going to come across you now that you’re putting yourself in this vulnerable situation, and then he’s like you’re going to be back here before you know it, like you have no money, you have nothing. You know again, she’s a woman with little rights. So he was very confident that she was going to come back and she, just she left To fast forward a little bit. She never went back.

08:31
Yes, they absolutely lived with massive economic insecurity, and so from that time period again, my mom wasn’t born yet, my mom didn’t come till 1939. And basically what my grandmother did? She just started selling lottery tickets and so she would move from city to city, province to province with all her kids. As the kids got old enough, my mother’s big sister, marujenia, she became in charge of, just like taking care of them. So my grandmother would leave, leave all the kids with the biggest sister, and she would go work and then bring money back to wherever they were living. So again, they lived in all different parts of Costa Rica. My mom remembers there were times that there was just one bed for multiple kids and that was how they lived and they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. There was no such thing as government assistance. I mean, there still really isn’t any such thing as government assistance in Costa Rica. There’s nationalized healthcare but not like nationalized access to food. You know there’s not nationalized access to shelter if you are a woman or a survivor of intimate partner violence.

09:37
And so my grandmother, from my grandmother, my mom, did learn to not take physical abuse from men, and so my mom very proudly talks about how she would never let as my mom would say, she’ll never let any son of a bitch hit her. So my mom definitely learned that. But the other thing that she learned from my grandma again was this we just stay quiet and keep moving forward. We stay quiet and we move forward. We stay quiet and we work hard. We hustle hard, but we stay quiet. Right, it had to have been incredibly difficult for my grandmother to have kids and more kids, like as she’s sick, maybe had a romance right and then got pregnant and she had to have the kid Right. There’s probably a lot of mental anguish there with the food insecurity and the insecurity of not having a steady home or place to live, but we don’t know that. That’s never been documented, that’s never been verbally said. I’m just making these assumptions because I’m like shit. If I had multiple kids and I didn’t have a place to live, I would be freaking out personally, right.

10:52
And so what I do know, from lack of it being stated, is that my grandmother didn’t talk about anything emotional. She didn’t have anybody to confide in in terms of, you know, her worries and her stress, and so my mom absolutely carried that with her, especially when she came to the United States. I absolutely carried that with her, especially when she came to the United States. By the time my mom came to the United States, typically in these stores called botanicas, which is eventually the type of store that my parents established. So in this botanica, right again, my mom was just by herself in this country. She was staying with her older sister, not the one that took care of them, but a different older sister. Again, there was a lot of them, sister, not the one that took care of them, but a different older sister. Again, there was a lot of them. And, um, you know, no matter what, my mom never talked about anything, right. And so I remember, as time passed and I was eventually born, the only time that I ever heard my mother cry was when my grandmother died, and that was when I was about five years old, so before that, after that, I really never saw my mother crying. She never, ever talked about emotions.

12:21
Now again, putting it in context, this makes sense If you are an immigrant in a country that typically does not like immigrants, right, if you are not here legally, you don’t necessarily need to be talking about your struggles and then trying to seek help. Because where was she going to seek the help from? Right, like, let’s be honest, there really was nowhere for my mother to go in terms of, like letting out her pain. Right when my mother and my father were together in the younger parts of their relationship, there were definitely things that my father did that were not far from angelic behavior. And though my father never laid his hands on my mom, right, like, he definitely had his little good times quote unquote and would sometimes leave on a Friday and not come back till Sunday. Did my mother ever speak up or complain about that to him? No, she didn’t, because she knew that to cause an uproar with my dad would have left her with no place to go Right, and by that time she had already had my sister. So I say this to recognize that the silence that my grandmother had the silence that my mother had. They had functions at that time. Right, staying quiet guaranteed them a place to live. Staying quiet guaranteed my mother access to the United States. Right, staying quiet for my grandmother probably reduced the amount of beatings that she got from her ex-husband. Right, and in my mom’s case, again, staying quiet just gave her shelter, food and a partner at a time when she needed that kind of support.

14:00
So by the time I’m born in the mid 1980s here I am right, at that point my dad had settled down because he was already an older man. I mean, my mom was 45 when I was born, so my dad was 57. So I mean, at that age, you know, he’s slowing down, so he’s not really going out and partying. Being Mr Good time, being Mr Flirt, being Mr Womanizer, like those days are done for him. But right, we still didn’t talk about feelings.

14:27
And so for me, I very vividly remember my memories, like if I were to cry as a child you know in Spanish being told you know, stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about. Right, and I’m sure many of you listening to this can probably resonate with this, regardless of what your family’s culture is. But that whole stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about that very quickly told me to try to stuff my feelings in, yeah, or you know, for me, right, food was my first source of comfort when, say, my mother wasn’t the most nurturing person, right, and so I learned, well, if I couldn’t talk about things, I could eat, right, and so those were some of the things that started happening with me. I remember vividly as a teen. And here’s the thing teens’ dopamine levels are like very low. So I understand this now.

15:15
But you know, teenagers, teenagers, boredom is like a death sentence to a teenager, and I mean, I know this from being a teacher, but there’s like actual science behind this. Like dopamine levels are lower in teenagers. So when they are bored, it’s like incredibly painful for them, like it’s just like hell on earth. And so think about it, like when you first get sober, if you experienced anhedonia, I feel like that’s probably what it’s like to be a teenager who is bored, and that would happen to me. And when I got bored like that, I would actually start crying.

15:46
And you know my parents would be like what the hell are you crying about? And they couldn’t connect my sadness or my feelings. They couldn’t make sense of them, not connect to them. But they couldn’t make sense of it because for them I mean, my father was a Cuban refugee and my mother, again, like she was a kid, going from home to home, city to city, sharing a bed with multiple siblings, right, and to them they’re like, what the hell are you sad about? Like you have a stable house, you have your own bedroom, you have food, you have clothes, you don’t lack for anything. Why are you crying? Right, Like that was basically what my parents were like. Their minds were boggled with. Like why the hell are you crying?

16:25
And so, again, I was taught to just keep the feelings to myself, like all right, well, if I’m crying, if I’m letting this stuff out and my parents say this to me, then maybe I need to just be quiet. But here’s the thing when I started to drink and the drinking became problematic, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t think that I did, because I believed that I was just supposed to keep everything quiet into myself. And here’s the thing I needed to differentiate my situation from the situation that my mother was in to the situation that my grandmother was in, because I was born here in the US. I’m an American citizen. By the time my drinking had become a problem, I was also a teacher with benefits, so I easily could have gone to the doctor. I easily could have gone to a therapist. There are lots of resources at my disposal that I just simply didn’t feel safe going to because of the fact that I thought I had to keep things quiet. Right Again, alcohol abuse and drug abuse in my family is nothing new.

17:29
There’s lots of family members that I have seen with issues with alcohol or drug use, but nobody talks about it Not in depth. At most they’re just called un borracho. They’re depth. At most they’re just called, you know, they’re called drunk or they’re called lazy bagel and that’s that. But there’s no conversation about, yeah, like what, what could have caused this? How, how could we get this person help? There’s just the labeling of the person and the accepting that they are how they are and there’s like no hope for them, right? So again, I didn’t want to talk and then be labeled in that manner, right?

17:59
But the game changer for me was when I finally realized that the silence was deadly, when I realized that the silence was suffocating me and that I needed to speak, that I needed to open my mouth in order to save my life, because recovering from addiction you don’t do it alone. It’s very hard to recover by yourself. Right and again, if I looked at my life in context for me to speak, no one was going to physically come and hurt me for openly stating that I was struggling with an addiction to alcohol. But I I didn’t understand that, I just knew that I had to be quiet. So once I finally started opening my mouth, right when I finally quit drinking, that made a huge difference, because then I became willing to do whatever I needed to do in order to get sober. If I was willing to say I am struggling with this to a doctor, then I can get access to medical treatment right. If I was willing to say I am struggling with this to a doctor, then I can get access to medical treatment right. If I am willing to say to other human beings this is my struggle, then I have the opportunity to connect with other human beings and get that emotional support and not feel alone and not feel isolated and break down the shame that comes with years of addiction. Break down the shame that comes with years of addiction.

19:21
But I had to be willing to break the cycles that I was in from my family. I had to be able to look at this trait that I had inherited right, this silence that I had inherited, and be like does this still serve me or is this something that I can let go of? Silence absolutely served my grandmother. It absolutely served my mother. It protected them, it kept them alive, but it wasn’t doing the same thing for me, and once I recognized that, that gave me the opportunity to stop and make a change.

19:50
So, with that, on this Mother’s Day, I am incredibly grateful for everything my grandmother did to survive, for everything that my mother did to protect herself, and I’m also grateful that I am finding what I need to do to survive and that I am finding what I need to do to protect myself, and it doesn’t look the same as what they did. And future generations, hopefully, they will recognize that to always look at what you got from the people before you and practice the freedom of choice. Does this serve me or can I let this go? And if you can let it go, let it go. So, with that, thank you all for listening, wishing you a blessed day, sending you all the love in the world. Thanks so much.

Return to Podcast Directory

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Join me as I candidly share personal experiences, answering powerful questions from a recent Q&A that touch on self-confidence, sobriety, moderation, and the complexities of dating without the influence of substances. It is a conversation that celebrates the small yet significant choices that forge the path to reclaiming not just sobriety, but also the self-esteem that addiction often corrodes.

Resources:

Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts June 3rd!

Book Study: It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn

Ngl Link – Get folks to ask you questions anonymously.

Transcript:

Hey everyone, for today’s episode, I wanted to share some of the questions that I got asked at a Q&A that I had recently on Instagram. I thought the questions were really powerful questions that would be helpful for anybody listening to the podcast as well. So I’m going to go ahead and go through those questions and just talk about them, because I think that asking questions and feeling safe to ask questions is so important. So if you ever have a random question, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by email. You can find my email on my website, bottomlesstosober.com, but my email

01:17
So, with that being said, the questions were basically kind of, I would say, in four different topics. So we had relationship to self, sobriety, marijuana and moderation. I had some questions about dating and then also about being in recovery in the workplace, right. So the first question relating to relationship to self I was asked or this was the person’s question. This was also, by the way, anonymous. So there’s a really cool link and I’ll share it in the show notes where you can ask people to ask you questions anonymously.

01:52
So this first question was I have zero confidence in self-trust. How do you have it Right? And wow, what a great question. But I’ll be very honest, I had no confidence to begin with either, and there’s still times today where I have to kind of like remind myself of who the hell I am. You know what I mean, because it’s very easy to slip into old patterns of questioning myself, doubting myself, thinking that I’m not good enough. You know, these are things, these are thoughts that I would say have been core beliefs for me, and so I’ve had to do a lot of intentional work to counter them.

02:30
You know things that help usually, when you stop drinking, you have very low self-esteem because of the fact that you have been living a life of addiction. So you’re probably doing a shit ton of things that you are not proud of, and that is okay. Right, that is the nature of addiction. You’re going to do things that don’t make sense. You’re going to displease yourself, displease your family, right? You’re not like. You’re not like on top of the world by the time that you decide that you need to change your relationship with alcohol and other drugs, right, like, let’s be honest. So it’s totally fair that you don’t even trust yourself, because you’re like, if all of my decisions were fueled by this addiction, how the hell am I going to make a good decision? Right, it makes total sense, I hear you. And so what helped me to build some confidence was doing little things every day that I knew that I could accomplish. Right, Again, being addicted will have you convinced that you cannot make a single good decision, because you don’t make good decisions when you’re under the influence.

03:30
Right, you don’t make good decisions under a life of addiction. But the first solid decision that you can use as evidence to start building that self-trust with yourself is the decision to change your life. Maybe you’re not totally sober yet, right, like, you might be listening to this episode and you’re, you know might be on, like your 10th of day, one which I hear you, I used to have many day ones. I always tell people I decided to stop drinking in September of 2019. And my last drink was November of 2020. That’s 14 months of trying to stop. So if any of you are sitting there like, oh my gosh, you know, I don’t know if I’m going to stop you will, you just have to keep going. If the second you stop trying, you’re done. But if you keep trying at some point, this is going to stick right.

04:13
So the first solid decision that you can lean on as evidence of I so-and-so can make good choices is the choice to start to make your life better. So if you’re ever doubting yourself, lean on that. And then any little day that you can add onto that day, that is evidence of good decision-making. The decision to go to eat some ice cream as opposed to drive into the liquor store that is evidence of good decision-making. The decision to get on a meeting and listen as opposed to go drink some wine that is evidence of good decision-making. So, literally, look at your daily choices, your hourly choices, and that is where you will find the evidence that you can make good decisions, and that is, little by little, how you build confidence and trust in yourself. It does not happen overnight, and if you struggle to identify this for yourself, find someone who’s going to help you do it. Does that mean you need a therapist? Does that mean you need a coach? Does that just mean you need a good friend? Whatever you need, go find it If you can’t generate these ideas for yourself. But you should not be sitting there thinking that you are this living being that cannot make a single good choice, because that is not true. There’s absolutely counter evidence to that.

05:34
So, moving on to the next question, which so now I’m kind of moving into topics of sobriety, marijuana and moderation. So this next question that I was asked was what would you say to people who can’t imagine living in the world without numbing with some sort of substance? What did you do? What do you do now? To be in the place that you’re in? It just sounds impossible, honestly, and I don’t think about living in the world forever without some sort of substance. I just have to get through today, and when I was early on in my journey, that was literally all that I needed to worry about. I just needed to make a plan between now and going to bed so that I didn’t have to numb.

06:22
I also wanna recognize that numbing takes many shapes and forms. So again, if you found me, if you’re listening to this, chances are that your version of numbing involves alcohol, maybe other substances, right, but I wanna recognize that, like people numb with food, people numb with shopping, people numb with sex, people numb with, like, serial dating, people numb with the internet, right, there’s lots of ways to numb. But since this question is with regard to a specific substance, right, I just tell myself I just had to get through today. I cannot tell myself I’ll never numb myself again and I still don’t play around with the nevers. It’s just not my thing. I don’t like putting the word never in my vocabulary.

07:04
I don’t think that I am this higher power that can determine outcomes. I don’t determine outcomes, I just put in my best effort on a daily basis, right, the outcomes are not up to me. So, even with sobriety, I just say I just need to not do this today, and I know that that might not be the most exciting response to that question. But if I start to think about the future, that’s not even here, right, because for some of you who are worried about oh my gosh, what if I never drink again? Let’s be honest you don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know if we’re going to be here tomorrow. So, rather than taking our energy and stressing about a tomorrow that might not come because we don’t know what the future holds, let’s just keep it simple and let’s just worry about today. That is the treasure that you have today. Tomorrow, we don’t even know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And then every day, the days add up, the time passes. Also, I’m going to be honest Earlier on, there was no way that I was going to and this is my personal experience and not medical advice but earlier on, there was no way that I was going to get through my early sobriety without the assistance of a psychiatrist and medication.

08:20
I had been living my life with no clue that I had bipolar two disorder. So to go from self-medicating with alcohol forever to suddenly not having it and not yet having been taught coping skills to deal with my emotions and just kind of like out there, like raw dogging life no way, I was not going to do that without medication. So I want to recognize that also, I had tools, and so for those of you who might need to explore your toolbox, this is a great opportunity. Do I need to see a physician? Do I need to see a psychiatrist who knows a little bit about addiction and how to treat it? Right? That was fueling my drinking or other drug use, right? These are really important questions to ask yourself.

09:07
So, if you have stopped and the world feels like this absolutely intolerable place to be I want to share you don’t have to sit in intolerable feelings. You shouldn’t be suffering for the sake of getting sober, and so don’t hesitate, talk to a physician. I did, and it completely changed my life. Eventually, I learned how to use coping skills. Eventually, I learned how to regulate my body. So I don’t take medications anymore, and I’m not saying that’s going to be your story necessarily, but what I’m saying is that if you break your leg, you’re going to need a cast, and you’re going to be your story necessarily. But what I’m saying is that if you break your leg, you’re going to need a cast and you’re going to need some crutches, and then eventually, those can sometimes come off. Typically they do Right. So, likewise, if you need something to assist you through this early period. There’s no shame in that. Like I said, I openly talk about the fact that I use meds all the time. No shame, no problem with it. Wouldn’t have done it any other way.

10:09
So the next question what are your thoughts on marijuana? Are people in alcohol recovery okay with others using marijuana? So how other people recover really is not my business, and I hope that you surround yourself with people who also aren’t trying to tell you how to recover. Everybody has to find their own right way to recover, right? With that being said, I will not use marijuana. I will not use other mind altering substances.

10:39
But again, I just finished saying that I was using psych meds to help me with getting sober in the beginning. So who the hell am I to say that my chemical is better than yours? Right, like, I chose my substance to help me get off of alcohol. For some people, they do use marijuana to help them stop drinking. That’s, that’s on them. You have to make whatever choice. You are going to sleep well at night with, right so like. If you go to bed every night and you sleep like a baby, knowing that THC is helping you quit drinking and that works for you, go for it. Right, that was me with my psych meds. I was so grateful to have these tools to help me stay sober.

11:19
Now are there some people who are going to be judgmental? Yes, so, with that being said, understand that whatever decision that you make A it’s your business, but, b when you put it out there, believe me that people are going to chime in with their opinions, right? So you’ve got to recognize that, if you’re going to talk openly about, say, using THC as a part of your alcohol recovery journey, be confident in your decision, because I promise you, someone is going to talk shit about you. That’s all I’m going to say, right? So when you make these decisions, be mindful of what are you keeping private. What is between you and your physician, right? So when you make these decisions, be mindful of what are you keeping private? What is between you and your physician, right? What is between you and your therapist? What is between you and your coach? And then, what are you sharing with others openly? Because, again, people like to be judgmental. People are humans. We’re flawed. We are flawed, beautiful creatures. So just know that there’ll probably be some smoke if you no pun intended. I seriously didn’t mean to say that, but there will be comments made if that is a part of your recovery journey.

12:25
But again, like we anybody who’s been addicted to alcohol and is working on quitting we’re just trying to get to experience this life and be freaking, happy, right and free from that addiction. Again, it is not a part of my. I used it briefly in my time of active addiction. Wasn’t for me, so definitely I had zero interest in using it in recovery Again. I just stuck with a plain old, plain old prescriptions with the doctor and that worked for me. But great, great question. So kind of feeding off of that.

13:01
The next question I got was what are your thoughts on moderation? And I’ll tell you straight up like moderation is not for me, absolutely not. Moderation is a nightmare. The few times that I tried it was because I was in denial about my addiction to alcohol and I thought that if I could control it, that I could somehow prove to myself that I didn’t really have a problem and I would only try and do it, just to end up crashing and burning, crashing and burning. So no, thank you, not my interest.

13:34
I would rather just not drink, and I mean I even remember when I was in my active addiction. Right. If I would go to a happy hour, say, with my colleagues, I wouldn’t even drink, because you know they’re all sitting there and they’re nursing their one drink because they just drink like people without addictions. So they just have the one that they sit for like an hour and I knew that I would just want to scarf mine down. So I would rather drink nothing than have one drink. And you know there’s in 12 step spaces.

14:03
I’ve heard the saying it’s one is too many and a thousand is never enough. And let me tell you that that is such truth right there. Like AA is not my thing. I’m not a fan of 12-step programs. For myself they do great for other people it’s just not my thing. But man, if you ever had a more powerful saying that one right there, is it right. So no, thank you.

14:27
And here’s the thing I didn’t drink for the taste, right Like I drank to obliterate my consciousness. And so you know, like one of the funny things that I see, or like my reaction say to how nowadays, you know, like mocktails are so popular and people love their alcohol-free wines, I don’t want any of that shit, to be honest, because I never liked, I never cared how alcohol tasted anyway. So you know, I’m the sober person that just drinks a lot of water and coffee because I don’t really care for mocktails. I never, I never, wanted something that tasted good and yummy. I just wanted to, like you know, stop existing mentally for for a while, for the rest of the day. So, yeah, I, moderation is a big no for me.

15:16
I have seen, you know, I used to work at the reframe app, and the reframe app is a community that offers an alcohol-free version and then like an alcohol-free track and then a moderation track, and I have seen people who have successfully moderated. With that said, I don’t know what it’s like to walk in their shoes and I don’t know if they’re like white knuckling it to just keep it to the one to two drinks. Or, you know, if you are successfully moderating, were you really addicted in the first place, right? Those are great questions to explore that I don’t have time to have a conversation about, but food for thought. If you hear of people who say that they decided to change their relationship with alcohol and they’re now moderating, I want you to consider that maybe the extent of their problems with alcohol may not be as extreme as yours, right, and so recognizing that, again, everyone walks their own path and how other people recover is their business, not our business. So again, if that works for them, great. But again, this question was asked to me. So no, I will not moderate and I will not consider it. It is not an option, it sounds like hell. So no, thank you, all right.

16:23
Next question oh wait, sorry, and I had another thought too, on the moderation part. If you are genuinely addicted to alcohol, right, and you keep trying to moderate because you realize, like if you don’t drink anything you feel like you’re dying, call a doctor. Alcohol withdrawal is actually incredibly dangerous and it can be deadly. I’m not playing around like, look it up on Google. And so if you are having these very wild symptoms, like if you’re feeling like your heart is palpitating and you are shaking uncontrollably and like your stomach is turning into this knot, that cannot undo itself, please, please, please call a doctor. If you’re not even sure, just call a doctor. It is much better to withdraw from alcohol safely and under medical supervision than to try to do this on your own and potentially risk hurt. Again, not medical advice, but I am telling you to get in touch with a medical professional.

17:24
Anyway, the next question that I got was about dating and it was where did you go to meet people and did you only look for sober people? So I met my current partner on Bumble. So, yay, go Bumble, and we’re, I guess, a solid year and a half in moving into two years soon. I was not about going outside and trying to meet people. I’m just going to be honest, like I mean, yes, I go outside and say to the salsa events, but that’s actually not where I would want to meet like my future partner at. So that’s, that’s that. I was just like no, I will meet people online because I’m not going out to meet people and I work on a college campus, so most people are either way younger than me or they are already like married, et cetera, and I and actually I met my partner before this job. So I’m digressing, but anyway. So I use Bumble.

18:20
And when I first started dating, about a year after I got sober, I’ll tell you how my mindset about dating shifted too. So initially I was like I’m not dating anybody who’s in recovery, because I was like the only person who I’m trusting is me. But again, if you all know my story right, like I had a partner who passed away from his own addiction as a direct cause of his addiction. So in my mind I was like hell, no, I’m not subjecting myself to that shit again. And I was like I will not date anybody who’s in recovery. I will only date somebody who has like no addiction history, right and um.

18:57
So then as I dated people, you know, I found a lot of people who do consume substances, but pretty much most of them are balanced, et cetera. Like maybe a drink here on occasion. Um, I went out briefly, like on a couple of dates, with somebody who smoked a lot of marijuana and I was like, no, like this really is your life Like that. That’s not going to work for me. Um, but I eventually landed with my partner and my partner pretty much is a non-drinker. You know, again, we’ve been together a year and a half, knocking on two years, and literally I have seen him consume two drinks this entire time and they were like little, not mocktails, they were cocktails, like when we were like once on vacation and once on his birthday, and like that was it. And you know, I was like why don’t you want to have more? Once on vacation and once on his birthday and like that was it. And you know, I was like why don’t you want to have more? And he’s like I don’t like how that makes me feel Hilarious, right, and what a novelty. But anyway, yeah, I I, by the time I met my partner, I will be honest, I was more open to meeting someone in recovery, but I feel like I would have to feel that they were very steady in their, in their program and whatever program they were doing for themselves in terms of, like their self-care, their community, like are they actively engaged in community, et cetera.

20:10
But I ended up not with another person in recovery and that works just fine with me. And the reason, like I said, that initially I was sort of anti-dating people in recovery was because I was afraid of someone else relapsing. You know I had seen how much I relapsed and then I had my partner who relapsed and passed away. So I was like, oh hell, no, these relapses, they’re guaranteed. I’m not dealing with someone else’s relapse Now. I don’t feel that same way. I have enough evidence to counter that belief. I know enough people in long-term recovery to know that people really can, you know, recover and stay away despite like life doing the most horrid things to them. So you know, if I ever were single again, I would be open to dating someone in recovery, but they would definitely have to be like a solid, steady person, definitely not someone in early recovery. Hell to the no.

21:00
If you are in early recovery, run from relationships, just run. Or you can read my story and learn from my experience. Don’t date in early recovery. That’s my personal tidbit. Again, life will teach you Otherwise. If you don’t want to follow my suggestion, you go for it and you’ll see what life will teach you.

21:29
But anyway, my next question that I got pretty similar. Just, this person was worried that they’ll never be in a relationship with a person who’s in recovery because of their own experience. But then they also worry that they can’t have an intimate experience with a normie, a person without an addiction, because they could never understand. And again, I pretty much addressed a lot of this. But I do want to say if you are entering the dating arena and you are in recovery and you’re kind of like, I don’t really want to date another person in recovery, I just want to share, it is your right to date whoever the hell you want to date, right Like you, don’t owe the recovery community anything by dating only within the recovery community, right? Like there’s no obligation, there’s no contract that you signed upon getting sober where you have to be with other sober people. Be with who you want to be, period, that’s it right. And give yourself permission to change your mind also Right. So if you want to go in with kind of like a specific mindset, just give yourself permission to change your mind, that’s all right.

22:29
Again, if you date someone in early recovery and like you’re in early recovery and they’re in early recovery, it’s a recipe for disaster. I promise you that. That is all I will say. It’s not, it is. There’s so much that can go wrong and I would hope that things go right for you and I would love to be proven wrong. If you’re listening to this and you have some opposite evidence to show me, please do. Please counter my belief, because my belief is pretty set in stone that two people in early recovery don’t usually have a great start. I know eventually things can change for them. But yeah, feel free to send me an email and counter my belief with your beautiful story. I might even want to have you as a guest on the podcast, right? So feel free to counter my belief.

23:14
But, moving on, I have last two questions and they’re both related to recovery in the workplace. So the first one is does it make you nervous to talk about addiction so openly while being in education? Because, again, my day job, right, I work at a university with college students, very closely with them, and the answer to that is I’m not nervous about it at all, right, when I interviewed for my current role, I was asked my why, why are you applying to work here? And I literally opened with the fact that I’m in recovery. My drinking started in college and I want to work with college students to make an impact where I didn’t have that adult who was openly out in recovery. That’s that I would hope that any educational space would see me as an asset. However, if someone, if a hiring, if an HR department, were to look at me and then Google me and see all that I do and be like, oh no, we can’t have her here, then fine, right, Like, if an employer hires me, they hire all parts of me. If they want to hire me and then expect me to like not talk about sobriety, not talk about recovery, et cetera, then I don’t want to work there anyway. So I do speak openly because I do want to repel the people that don’t need to be around me and I want to bring in and attract the people who want this kind of energy. So if an employer, if a university is like, oh no, no, we can’t hire her, bye, that’s fine, I don’t need to work with you anyway.

24:44
And then my last question was would I ever go back to the classroom like a K through 12 classroom, because I used to be a middle school teacher. So to be clear, right, I am in education, but at the collegiate level. But no, I would absolutely not go back to K through 12 teaching, not at this point. I would say I did good work. I taught in public schools for 13 years, busted my tail, I did damn good work and there’s nothing left for me to prove by going back Like I’m good, I’m done. You know that was when the worst of my drinking happened and that’s when some of the best work that I ever did happen as well. And I don’t need to rewrite that narrative there. I’m good.

25:28
I also think, like you know, I live in Florida and there’s so much at risk for just opening your mouth and speaking some truth here, where I would not last like probably a couple of weeks in a in a Florida classroom. But even in Kentucky, where I used to teach, or New York, I just I don’t have an interest in going back into a profession specifically K through 12 teaching where teachers are villainized so much. Now I don’t have that battle in me. You know like I would go back if I wanted to go back in and be like fighting for change and affecting change and things like that. But you know, one of the biggest things that has helped me with staying sober is realizing that a lot of the system is fucked up and it not that it’s just me, like a thousand me’s can make a difference, but I have to also really be careful with my energy. You know what I mean and I know that there are a lot of people who are mobilizing and fighting good fights and the way in which I’m supporting those good fights today might look like donating money as opposed to showing up physically and fighting those fights. I feel like if I were in a public school setting, I would probably be wanting to show up physically to fight these fights, right, and I don’t have that in me anymore and I recognize that I used to like in 2018, 2017, even 2019, like I absolutely was a teacher helping mobilize and like run protests up on the state Capitol and all this stuff, and I don’t have that in me anymore. So, no, I know, I know what my limits are and that is not it.

27:10
So with that, I hope that you got something out of this Q and a. If you have any other questions, reach out to me, please. But yeah, I will catch you on the next episode and again, sign up for the book study. Sign up for the writing class. You don’t have to envision yourself as a writer, a good writer or anything right Like come and freaking, get that story out off your chest. Amounts of paper. But yeah, I will catch you all on the next episode. Bye.

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