When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Abraham Maslow Numbing strategies like food and alcohol enter our lives long before any deep and deliberate education about how to feel our feelings without losing our grip on happiness, reality, ourselves or our most important relationships….
Tag: sobriety
How I gave up alcohol for a year – advice if you’re quitting for a while
In 2018 I slept badly. I was awake for 2-3 hours every night. On many of those nights, I would lie in the dark with my phone in my hand, googling, “am I an alcoholic?” and taking online quizzes to try and convince myself I was fine. I did “dry January” and “sober for October”…
Day 99: Lesson 14 from quitting booze and sugar. There is a point where you’ll think you’re failing. You’re not.
There’s a concept I train in corporate workshops. It’s called ‘The 4 Stages of Competence’ and although I understood how it was useful in helping adults understand what they’d go through when they learned a new skill at work, I hadn’t thought about its relevance to me and things I would need to learn as…
Day 98: Lesson 13 from quitting booze and sugar. You can’t selectively numb emotions
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” Brene Brown That pretty much says it all, really. I think this is partly why it’s so easy to get stuck in the cycle of numbing – because we never feel good enough to stop doing it. I…
Day 96: Lesson 11 from quitting booze and sugar. Sobriety reduces social anxiety.
This one is a head scratcher. If you’d have told me on New Years Eve that I’d be writing this today, I’d have laughed. One of the things I was most afraid of was socialising without alcohol. I didn’t want to be the boring one on the outside of the group. In fairness, on the…
Day 95: Lesson 10 from quitting booze and sugar. It’s not supposed to be easy.
Imagine this: You’re in a town you don’t usually visit and you go into the bank. You usually bank online but this day you go into the bank. While you’re in there, the bank is robbed and you are shot in the arm. Nobody else is hurt. Were you lucky or unlucky? This scenario is…
Day 94: Lesson 9 from quitting booze and sugar. Some days are shit.
I feel shit today. There’s no reason for it. I just do. It’s my birthday today. The first one of my adult life without alcohol and the first one of my entire life without sugar. That would be the obvious reason for feeling low but I don’t think that’s it. Nor is it about getting…
Day 93: Lesson 8 from quitting booze and sugar. Never ‘should’ on yourself.
Oh God! The agony I caused myself about what I ‘should’ do or ‘should’ be able to do! It was excruciating! I should be able to eat healthily without ending up with my head down the toilet. I should be able to have one glass of wine without wanting a second glass or a third…
Day 90: Lesson 5 from quitting booze and sugar. Exercise self-compassion.
My goodness! What a difference this made! I used to think that the harder I was on myself, the more likely I was to succeed. As much as I hated the mental beatings, they felt like a necessary evil. How was I ever going to get anywhere if I went easy on myself? I had…
Day 89: Lesson 4 from quitting booze and Sugar. Start where you can start.
I’m an all or nothing person. Or at least I was an all or nothing person. I’d set myself these crazy, lofty goals based on something I read in a book or heard in a podcast and tell myself, “If they can do it, I can do it.” More times than I care to admit,…
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