On this week's episode of midlife AF I am going to question whether the stock standard gold star tactic that's used in sobriety circles is actually useful for longer term alcohol freedom.
If you're a woman in midlife whose intuition is telling you that giving booze the elbow might be the next right move. Then midlife AF is the podcast for you. Join counsellor psychotherapist, this naked mind and grey area drinking alcohol coach Emma Gilmour for a weekly natter about parenting, quirky teens, menopause relationships and navigating this thing called midlife alcohol free. If you're feeling that life could be so much more that you're sick and tired of doing all the things for everyone else. If your intuition is waving her arms, manically at you saying it could all be so much easier. We didn't have to keep drinking, come with me. Together, we'll find our groove without booze.
Hello, gorgeous humans, how are you?It's been a day for me today, I've had a big cry. I haven't done that in a long time. Or rarely. I've been struggling with just the dichotomy of working with my neurodiverse child, and just that whole system that's built around pushing through and trying and how, how harmful I think that is to us all. And I know I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, so Label the point. But it was just a tough day today. It was a tough day when she was lying in a bed. I'm trying to get her out to an appointment, she literally can't lift her head off the pillow, she could barely open her eyes and she's trying so hard. She physically can't. She isn't burned out, she's exhausted. And yet the powers that be: the healthcare system, education system, expect me and her to somehow push through that and judge us to be failing in some way. If we can't, as opposed to judging your system, which creates a world where neurodivergent kids are dropping like flies. Because this world isn't created for them. It's not created for anyone to thrive. But best of all, you're a divergent kid who you know has high sensory sensitivity like most people that I know who drink. I listened to sensory stimuli for them in a very empathetic, very high alert nervous system. And, you know, it's not helpful, not helpful. And I think the world is changing, and I think we'll be part of the change but being part of the change is really fucking hard. Which brings me on to talk about why I think and it kind of linked, everything's always linked, isn't it synchronicity, or in my book, it's always picked brings me on to something that I think keeps people stuck in alcohol fixation, and that is the very, very well tried and tested to play it forward. I would say pay it forward which is which is a movie with Kevin Spacey. Again apologising for myself because I am in burnout, a bit burned out. My ADHD and menopause symptoms are pre elevated at the moment. So my brain fog and my memory is not what it could be.
But pay it forward like it forward play it forward and I know I talked about the past I've done to other podcasts cause but play it buys into the idea that actually before I start going into it, for those of you who don't know what play it forward is is basically one of the most used tools in alcohol coaching and it is to think about what's going to happen the next day, put yourself in the position of the next thing. And I'm not saying it doesn't have a place, I think it absolutely does have a place, and particularly in that first few days where you're trying to get a break from alcohol, and you're trying to get the call out your system, and you might be needing to use a little bit of willpower. But as we know, willpower is not helpful. And anyone who researches habit change, or transformational change knows that willpower has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's the complete opposite of what we think the situation is. Because we're all brought up to think that willpower and kicking ourselves up the arse is the way forward? Absolutely not. It makes everything so much worse. And one of the main things I focus on when I work with people around alcohol is how do we stop putting all that judgement and recrimination on ourselves? And how do we stop kicking ourselves up the ass to try and fix ourselves and to try and try and try harder.
That's why it relates to what I'm talking about with my kid. And this, you know, navigating autistic burnout, nervous system dysregulation to the point of shutdown. And not being able to do anything because you're so completely and utterly exhausted, the nervous system so overwhelmed. It's got so much to do with that. Because pushing through driving, trying, these are all words that cause me to feel fatigue. Someone started mowing the lawn outside so I hope it is still gonna work. That's all about willpower. They're all about there's a force behind them. And I might have to say, sorry. There's a force behind them. And that requires willpower. There's also scarcity behind them. And scarcity comes from focusing on fear. So focusing on the worry, the fear of what's going to happen in the morning. And anything, in my opinion, that comes from a place of scarcity of grasping or latching is not going to be helpful.
What I hear clients talk and using words like temptation, using words like I feel so good the next day, but in the moment. And what I really want to do and what my programs do is all about questioning this idea that in the moment, alcohol has something to offer you that is good. Now I don't buy good. I don't mean a moralistic good or bad. I just mean that actually, it feels good. Because I think we do that's what we think it's we think it's that we think it has something for us. And to a certain extent it does, like everything we do we do for a reason. There's nothing wrong with it, we think we do, right. And I often say to people in my groups, it's very understandable that people keep drinking. Drinking is a really, really, really good tool to escape. What is happening for us, and for many people is actually safer. And this is controversial, to stay drinking than it is to be with whatever we're drinking to escape from. And we might not be ready to deal with that. We might not be able to deal with that. We might not have the resources to deal with that, you know, talking from a place of privilege. That may not be a great resolution.
So, again, taking all of those things into account. For me, the change came when I started to realise that the person I was escaping was me. If the person I was escaping was me in distress. And as I escape me in distress, I abandon myself. And as I abandoned myself, I abandoned myself, I abandoned my essence, I abandoned my potential. And that is not to say that if you do that, that's bad. Or if you don't do that, that's good. There's, if we could just take morals out of so much in our lives, you know, comes down to whether or not we think we're bad or good. And it's so frustrating for me, and people who work in alcohol, who know that anybody can become addicted to alcohol, because it's an addictive substance. And we have a society that perpetuates exactly what I'm seeing them trying to do to my kid pushing through when we're exhausted, ignoring, suppressing our needs, being on such high alert and pushing our self down constantly. Because it works really, really well for everybody else. And we think we're living in such a modern society, we're not, we're so not I speak to so many women who are not living in a modern society at all. And I'm not just talking about the way that work is factored into the way that, you know, division of labor is factored into our households. And that can be really fucked up anyway. But I'm just talking about, you know, some really basic stuff here, around what's expected. And what we're expected to do as women. And addressing some of those things, is really scary. A lot of it's got to do with relationships, a lot of it's got to do with our beliefs about ourselves, you know, some of us come from trauma, you know, there's trauma. But I really want to advocate for getting away from the idea that escaping that is the solution
Because everything new, I know from research from all the reading that I've done, which is heaps because I love it, one of my core values in my hyperfocus is setting learn about how this works in order to grow in order to move forward and I don't mean grow as in the car become enlightened or anything like that. I just read in order to move forward to stop being stuck, to stop pushing ourselves down to stop producing our potential to stop and start trying to cultivate this life and this love affair with ourselves beautiful essence of human being was born and put on as well be all that contain you know, that part of us 1000 little paper cuts, suppression and repression of saying our needs don't match being hypotheticals on everybody else, because we're in fight or flight because we are how we are intergenerational intergenerational, we've been persecuted, you know, not gonna take it that far back. But our nervous system is built to be on fire to finally walk down that street the other day in the dark and I'm looking behind me guys walking behind me. And we're always like this. It's women. It's Oh, yeah, ya. Good every time I drink we are walking away from ourselves. And that for me, is the gold. So once it turns away from this warm honey, escape, so many reasons why we drink. So much of it's to do with productivity and to do with getting a rest from our minds. Yeah, of course, we're gonna rest from our mind.
Cause we want to be able to cut those costs we want to unit fit in and all those other things. But there's no bad thing about this. All of our reasons for drinking make sense. Really good. But escaping ourselves avoids or feeling a void in the situation that we're in, not caring for ourselves. And by that, I mean, so many of us have been taught that our emotions are bad, but we shouldn't show them that we should suck it up, we should just get on with it that we shouldn't, you know, make a fast take up space, all this stuff. And so many of us, it's so ingrained and that we find ourselves drinking whenever we're in that situation, because we don't want to put our head above the parapet. good reasons, a lot of the time, for pretty good reasons. But what I want to offer you is this idea that it's actually suppressing us. It's actually keeping us small. It's this that that escape from ourselves, is stopping us in our tracks. It's keeping us small. It's keeping us who might be keeping us safe. I don't think it's keeping us safe in the long term. But it might be keeping us safe for a while. And that's okay, right?
We don't have to stop drinking. Didn't have to do anything. Do it when it's the right time for us. But don't kid yourself that that 20 minutes is anything good? Apart from abandoning yourself, leaving yourself, do you think your precious little self is saying I'm overwhelmed? I'm exhausted? This doesn't feel right to me. I can't do this anymore. You know, listen to what you've got to say. What is that is the thing for me about a craving, and I was talking about this in my groups. Because I really, and I know I've talked about this before, but I really hate the terminology, the wine, which, to me, that part of ourselves that's coming in to save us with wine is wine saviour. They think that part of us, it's usually a fairly young part. It hates to see us in distress. Because of the time at the top, it shouldn't be distressed, you know, shouldn't make a fuss, we shouldn't cry, we shouldn't be over exuberance, which should be too much. When how many of us have heard that. We shouldn't interact, we shouldn't be excited. We shouldn't, you know. And that one saviour. It's like we feel discomfort because we judge ourselves by the judgments of problems as judgement and the blind saviour. Judgement comes in. And it likes to punish us. It likes to tell us with bad it hurts us tell us we're wrong. And again, don't be shitty with it. That'd be shooting with any of these bits. They have all good bits. They've all got a purpose. They're there to protect and keep us safe. They just need redirecting. Don't make any of these bits bad. The wine which is no wine, which is just part of you saying I'm feeling like shit.
And the wine saviours coming in and going. I'm going to save you with wine. That's what we do. We've always done that makes you feel better. You don't have to feel the thing. But what different approach could you have? If you're feeling the feeling? It's coming up strong. And instead of trying to save you from it, you repurpose your whining Saviour so that he listens to you. Because half the time that's all we need, right? Today. Somebody listened to me, cried my eyes out, cried my eyes up, somebody listened to him but deep to me about what was going on with my kid. Rather than judging me rather than making me or my kid bad, they listened. And they believed. That is all we need, after all a craving need to stress stuff back and listen to it.
The craving isn't about having alcohol. The wine safe is about having alcohol is trying to take you away from it. And it's taking away from it's not being with the craving that causes the problem. So we've got two things happening. Our precious soccer saying I want to be heard. Something's not right. I'm not happy. I'm frustrated. My kids drive me bonkers. I have to take my boss's maths. Nobody cares. Whatever. A wind save it's like okay, how are you poor thing? Let's get him to have some wine. It will be okay. We find it All right. I've got pockets by the way, my hands do pockets. I hope you can see these little figures that I might pretend. Got. Anyway, I digress. The wind savers. So what if we set the blind side we said instead, that sucks, man, I could see why you'd be so shitting to be feeling undervalued, and then we can get into the, I'm feeling under that. I'm feeling put upon feeling overwhelmed. I can't stand them why? And then we can get into what's the belief that's behind that. So often when they're feeling undervalued, I was talking to a client the other day we were going into so you know, if you're letting your boundaries be crossed, night, for example, often that my boundaries been crossed. And it's a real, it's a real work in progress for me. Because I have very many, I have very porous boundaries, especially as drinkers highly sensitive and people, we have a very good reason, a lot of the time we need to be aware of danger. Just keep ourselves safe.
We need to be very porous. So hyperfine that system, so it leaves us depleted like my poster baby, stop. We really named when we're in the states of high anxiety is somebody to listen and comfort. The inner child enough was crying out to say, I've had enough I just want to scream, just want to shout. What does it want to say? Let's it. Let's listen to it. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay to take up space. It's okay to be loud. It's okay to have to be upset. It's okay to have a bad day. We don't have to smile and be like oh, it's all great. No. No, like Stepford Wives. Pretending everything's fine, but sounding like it's really not.
But then we can get into the beliefs. So what does it mean about you? What are you making it mean about you, that somebody doesn't respect your boundaries, that somebody takes advantage of you, that you're feeling undervalued? That your husband treats you like shit, that your kids are really annoying, and don't pick up after themselves?
Because what the people do isn't the issue, how we interact, what they do, that's the issue, and what we make that meme about us, that's the biggest issue. And if we can get into that. So for example, if people don't value you, does that mean that you're a person who doesn't deserve to be valued, and who's a person that doesn't deserve to be valued? Personally doesn't matter? The person who's not worthwhile, a person who's unworthy. So that's where you get to the belief that's underneath. And then it's like, okay, so yes, I can transform somebody. But sometimes it's just a matter of knowing they're there, and separating ourselves from them somewhat. So I am feeling like this, because at some point in my life, I took on the belief of, I'm not worthy, or I don't matter, because the person who's supposed to be my caregiver, or a teacher, whatever, didn't reflect back to me my value. And so I've taken this on board, because it's easier for me as a child to take on board the fact that there's something wrong with me than to believe that the world is screwed, and people are assholes. I say that current cheek way, but it's actually really true. And so it's those is what we make the mean the meaning that we give to the field. So say, for example, I was talking about this in my group, let's say I'm on my fun, under fun. So I know fun, is the reason why I drink I drink because I want to be fun. And so I feel a strong urge to be fun.
So it's, it's a kind of not about that. And yeah, we can break up the idea of fun. We can do like some kind of natural thinking around that. But is it true? Is it not true? What's an alternative belief that we could have? But in reality, it's not really about that. It's about what does it mean? What does it mean if I'm not fun, or something? mean about me? What am I making that mean about me? Does it mean I'm unlovable? Does it mean I gotta be alone. I mean, these are the sort of things that sit behind all of our core plugins. And this is where the work is. And this is where we need to understand that the trigger the craving, is not coming from anything that's happening. It's coming from something way back in our past.
And it's coming from a belief and interpretation of a feeling, which is why when I work with clients, we really focusing on what's the core of motion, not the interpretation, not the narrative that we give to the situation. Because that, in a way, in itself is a way of escaping from the real emotion. And it's in the real emotion that we get the information for how do we fit it in our body? When was the first time we felt that? Did we were we able to share that with anybody? If the answer's no. What would have been helpful for us in that moment? And nine times out of 10 is for somebody to say you mess up you just because ah you're worthwhile just because you are. What is your need? I needed a big hug and cuddle I needed someone to tell me I was loved. There's someone to tell me I'm not alone. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm great. Amazing assets of South and I got all these beautiful bountiful potential wells shipped by me. But underneath it all I'm still too fat in there to stop abandoning me. Stop leaving me and my distress. And listen to me because I've got shit to say to you. Live on that note. So for me, you've got to be live but I've had that been all sorts of characters has been voices. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I'd love to hear your feedback. It's a really juicy area.
But I think it's really key. To believe in there is nothing for you. In alcohol, knowing you may want to escape yourself is fine. Yeah, that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. Again, no morality here at all. It's a substance, a chemical, right? Just chemical stuff to us and makes us want more of it. Nothing to do with being good. Nothing to do with being bad. That's all society and stigma. That's all bullshit. That's all shame doesn't help anyway. I'll leave you with that microns. Please, please try and cultivate a relationship with yourself and stop leaving yourself. In your distress. Find out what the fuck is going on? What are you stressed about? What do you need to listen to? Perhaps it's just about listening. If somebody asks you for advice, or somebody comes to you with a problem, they start giving advice telling you how to fix each one. So I'm asking you to listen to yourself and stop demonising yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. Everything that you need is inside you can do this.
Alright thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of midlife AF with Emma Gilmour. If you enjoyed it, please share on Instagram for your friends and tag me at @HopeRisingCoaching. If you want to help me grow the podcast please review the episodes for me on Apple podcasts that really helps. If you would like to work further with me please go to my website www.hoperisingcoaching.com for my free and paid programs or email me at [email protected] sending a massive cuddle to you and yours for me and mine and remember to keep choosing you.
