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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of midlife AF. This week's episode is called Alchemist AF, and this week we talk about the concept of Alchemist, the process of taking something ordinary and changing it into something extraordinary. We talk about having everything we need inside ourselves and how exactly to unleash our own Alchemist powers.
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We talk about re parenting and
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leaning into rather than suppressing, dismissing, numbing or rejecting our experience of life. And we talk about emotional hyper arousal, busy brains, and where some of the inner critic, impulsive behavior and compulsive thinking comes from, and how to find peace through self love and self compassion.
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I hope you enjoy it. I really enjoyed making it.
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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 counselor, psychotherapist, this naked mind and gray area drinking alcohol coach Emma Gilmore 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 if we didn't have to keep drinking, come with me. Together. We'll find our groove without booze.
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I lovingly acknowledge the boonwurrung people of the Kulon nation as the custodians of Kurt Baroque. I share my admiration for the Aboriginal culture. I witness the connection that they have for each other and the land and their community. As I swim in the waters and walk on the land, I feel the power of this place. I'm grateful for the Aboriginal people's amazing custodianship, the power, beauty and the healing potential of this place. I wish to pay special respects to the elders of the boon people, their wisdom, guidance and support are exceptional and felt well beyond the Aboriginal community. I honor that this is Aboriginal land and that it has never been ceded. I am committed to listening to the Aboriginal community and learning how I can be an active ally in their journey to justice. Hello everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of midlife. AF. This week we're talking about alchemy.
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It's funny
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that word and its meaning came to me recently one of my tutors, when I was studying to be a counselor, his business was called something Alchemist. Was like the idea of alchemy, it's like turning
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it's like turning metals into gold. It was turning something,
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changing something from something that seems worthless to something that's very precious has value. And I really like the idea of alchemy in relation to alcohol. And I've been working on this particular practice in our group after listening to a Tara brach podcast episode. And if you guys don't follow her, I highly recommend following her podcast. She has a a talk one week and then a meditation the second week, and it's quite often a meditation at the end of the talk as well. But they're always like I literally every time I listen to them, they blow my mind. Her and probably Glennon Doyle's podcast, probably my two most favorite podcasts. I used to love. Laura mccowans Tell me something true as well, and Holly whittaker's quitted, I think quitted. What quitting not quitted? Can't remember, anyway, what was interesting about this practice. It kind of felt quite similar to the practice that I do when I work with clients with alcohol. Anyway, which was, which is really trying to understand what it is that our human about our human experience that feels so unsafe for us to have
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that we would rather
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self harm. With alcohol, than be with ourselves in our distress and trying to understand. So one, what it is that we're trying to get away from, and number two, what it is that we're trying to move towards. And I
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it's interesting because last night, I was talking in my friend Sharon Collins ADHD group, functional families. We're doing talk on busy minds, and we're doing talk on we're talking about the beginning of a busy mind, and how a busy mind an ADHD brain, but not just an ADHD, not just a neurodiverse brain, a sensitive brain, a brain of a child that is perhaps a bit more sensitive than most, or I would say probably about half, or maybe even more of children. To be honest, I
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would say all children. I don't
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know in our society,
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it's just that I think that the trauma of these experiences for children who are more sensitive has a longer lasting impact.
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I don't know. I don't know if that's true or not.
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There seems to be a need for there to be a difference. And I think there is need, there is a difference. But also, I think these things, it's a bit like anything, you know, we say, you know, if we make the changes that we may need to make in order to make neurodivergent children's lives better, we make everyone's lives better,
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but basically part of being In a sensitive internal Nazi element having a sensitive experience of your external landscape, and that triggering your nervous system to be in vital flights, which is how most children certainly are in our generation, I
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think, spent a lot of their childhood in fear
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and certainly making themselves back bad, because our society, intergenerationally, was not, did not condone having big emotional experiences now, kids with ADHD neurodivergent kids, Kids who are a bit more sensitive, empathetic kids, intuitive kids, their experience of the world is greater their you know this, the impact that the world has on them is greater. But not only that, the external way that they then demonstrate that in their emotional response is larger than what has in the past been considered acceptable, and then what happens? Because So, for example, I mean, I know so many clients. We were just talking about some group recently, who, you know, when they get excited, they want to have a drink to calm themselves down a bit, to take the edge of it. Because as children, when they got excited, they were told off. You know, I know, I know kids who were segregated from their classmates who were made to sit outside, who were not, who put out in the corridor for being excited about things, you know. And you know, I've even been that myself, you know, kids are really like, we're really heightened, and you're like, Oh my God, just, could just stop Shush, you know, whatever. But definitely in my parents' generation, in art, the grandparents generation, and this is till very recently, and I still hear people in my generation saying, you know, my kids don't respect me, you know, I've got to teach them to respect into people I love and admire and think are Very woke in many ways, because we've been indoctrinated into this idea that we have to control our children and children are to should be convenient for adults. You know, children should be seen and not heard. And where I'm going with this is, you know, whether it be that you have a big emotional response. You
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feel very sad about things. You feel things very deeply,
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get very upset, very emotional,
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get hurt easily,
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or you get very excited. You're
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very joyful, you're very exuberant, very larger than life.
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None of those things.
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Uh, we're acceptable for children to be, and so what they get told off for that. And as children, you know, our biological function is that we want to please our caregivers so that we are loved. And you know, it's, I'm not saying that, you know, parents didn't love their kids, but from a children, child's perspective, we want to please our parents, yeah, because they are actually, from a biological perspective, we need them in order to survive. And so what happens is we start to change ourselves. So SUNY is pretty much born with sensitivity gene, and we have big emotional reactions, or we cry too much. You know, as a baby we're like we're crying, we're needing, a need of comfort. I know my second child was very much like that, if you needed to be held all the time, like so I would have her in the sling in order to be able to function.
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And I just did shake around in it
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all the time, just like
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breastfeeding underneath it as well, which is totally not what I expected to be like I was. I was always imagined myself as a bit of a tough ass. I had this idea of what I was going to be like as a grown up, as a mother. I was going to be working mother, my children were going to go to school, they were going to go to nursery, and was going
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to take all the drugs the child birth, and
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you know, the actual opposite of
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what I ended up doing, like life,
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it's often got ways to teach me
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that about my foolishness.
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I don't know why I wanted to be that badass.
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We can have it all
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working too far. What a way to make living working girls idea.
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But yeah, so
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children. So what children start to do is they start to build up this armor. And as a beautiful writer called Amos, who've written a book or a whole philosophy of, I guess, self improvement, spirituality, something like that. He's someone who's heavily influenced GABA Marte,
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and he talks about,
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you know, the parts of us that get hurt, and he talks about them as being holes. And we hear this a lot in in talk about, you know, addictive behaviors, or, I know, and I don't just mean alcohol, the things that our society frowns upon. You know, it might be dieting, it might be exercising, it might be cleaning, it might be working, it might be it might be alcohol, it might be binge eating, it might be, whatever it might be, but basically, we get these holes in us from the treatment that we have as very young people, and nothing out of the ordinary. You know? I mean, of course, there are much worse and much more common than we think, experiences that people have, but even in your average family,
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average family, right? But
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even in your average families, this is impossible to live in our civilization, where it's very difficult for families to live without. You know, people working, and we don't have the extended family around. And so is it very impossible for us to meet any child's needs fully, and a sensitive child's needs even more so. And you know, we have been told, and we were laughing last night about the word, you know, Molly coddling. And, you know, spare the spare the rod, spoil the boy. And I remember Gabor talking about, and he was talking about, I think it must have been Native Americans in Canada. And he was talking about, sort of Ben, I think it's Benedictine monks, or some kind of monks who came over with the colonizers, and writing, it might not have been Benedictine monks. Don't quote me on that might be making them out to be worse. But basically writing home to England and kind of going, you know, these, I.
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Are indigenous people.
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They never let their children, you know, they're always cuddling their children, always picking them up, always cuddling them.
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They never tell tell them off. And
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they were like, that's one of the first things we need to change. And you know, again, it comes back to this idea of original sin, and that people are bad at heart, which is the kind of, really kind of basis of some of that Christianity,
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you know, trying
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to think is the right word for it. Now I can't remember,
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but basically the original sin, that's the word I'm looking for. And funny enough, I was just listening, actually, to Clementine Ford talking in her book, I don't, which I'm loving. And she was just talking about, you know, the story of the Garden of Eden, and how, you know, the woman is made out of the rib of the man, and
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She tempts Adam
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to have the bite of the apple. And then she gets told that she's, you know,
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now going to be kind of like Adam's slave, and
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it's just all this stuff that comes down, you
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know, you know, through,
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I mean, I guess, through to true Christianity, to certain extent, this isn't really about that. This is about patriarchy, I guess, and this kind of concept of patriarchy, and I think capitalism, it's like sort of controlling everybody, and the belief that people are intrinsically bad, and unless you
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keep them under strict
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control, they will be able to behave themselves appropriately, which is the opposite of what I believe to be true, and what I believe that research and science shows,
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which is that people are basically good.
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Want to be good, want to be loved. And then the world comes along and tells them all the things that are wrong with them, and so they try and change themselves and mold themselves to fit into the world. Because
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for a child, the idea that the world is
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unsafe for them and their caretakers are perhaps not valuing them is so much more of a scary concept than the idea that, you know, there's something wrong with them and that they try and fix it. And so we were talking about how then, sort of this big emotional experience that we have as a sensitive human being, then also becomes, you know, very heavily on the you know, inner critic, the reminder to do things. The What do you call it? The ruminator, the you know, all of those different parts of us that are there to keep us safe, but are in overdrive, and are coming from a place of fear, usually around us, you know, fitting in, being acceptable, being okay, being loved, being
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worthy, not being left alone.
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And we were talking about, you know, the whole concept of, you know the idea as well. You know that when children are left cry as and are not comforted in their distress, then you know that also leads to that feeling that the pain will never end, and part of our role as adults going into, you know, becoming the adult in our lives that we needed, and helping ourselves through our experience of life, by showing up as the adult and holding the part of us that's afraid and the part of us that's bringing you know, shame and judgment and you know, or even impulsive behaviors, unhealthy behaviors, but holding that part and saying, I see you, I receive who you are, and I love you unconditionally, and I understand why you're frightened, and we're grown ups now, and I'm going to hold your hand, and we're going to walk through this together, and it's going to be okay, and I've got you, and no matter what happens, I will always have you, and you will always come first to me. And that to me is the I mean, it is an alchemy in itself, isn't it? Because it's like we turn these broken these children, which we're all walking around as these children who are seeing everything through the lens of, i. The hurts that we've had, you know, in history, and projecting all this stuff into the future based on, you know, fear,
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our fear of the future, fear of the
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idea that if we lean in to our pain, if we lean into our wanting, if we lean into our desire and understand what it is that we will lose control over it when we've never had control over it in the first place. This is a fear to lean into the experience, because if they think it's going to overwhelm us because we we've never been taught, we've never been held properly through our distress, and we think it's going to be overwhelming. It will never end. No one's ever going to come and make it stop. And the role of reparenting ourselves is to hold ourselves in our distress, validating ourselves, but also taking on that role of that sort of responsible adult being there before and knows that this will come to an end, and we'll be there with each other to get through it. And the idea of the alchemy part, which I thought was so interesting, and I really like the name I gave it, but tarabach talks about the wanting, so we're always looking wanting, wanting, wanting to fill the hole, wanting to fill the wound. There's nothing wrong with that. Of course we want, course we want those things. But what is it that we're really wanting because we're filling them with okay? I want to feel connected. I want to feel because often we think that if something like alcohol makes us feel connected, actually alcohol disconnects us from self and disconnects us from others, but we're one the feeling of connection. And if people talk about having a drink alcohol and feeling the warmth coming into their body, and
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people talk about that ah
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moment, and that is the body searching, searching, searching for something. And the alchemy practice is when you lean into what it is that you're searching for, and you allow yourself to imagine receiving it, to fully imagine feeling it in your body. What
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does it feel like? You
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know, we talked about it in my group on Monday. Last Monday, be the lighthouse, and we've seen I was talking about, like, feels like going into a warm bath and feeling the water like come over your body. For me, I was like, it was like, just having treacle poured all over you. And that sounds really that now sounds a bit weird and a bit erotic. I didn't mean it like that, but that sort of like warm glow of just lusciousness and
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just, you know,
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not feeling the hurt, not feeling the pain, just feeling the sort of like beautiful, not feeling the stress, not feeling the so it's, first of all, it's like, lean into the feeling of it. So he's like, Oh, I'm too scared. If I do that, I'm going to want to drink. Well, no, that's not true. What's actually going to happen is you're going to show yourself that you are the alchemist, and that you can create that feeling for yourself, and that there's nothing wrong with wanting that feeling, but everything that you need you have inside yourself, right? None of this external stuff is ever going to give you is always going to keep you hungry for more, until you realize that it's that it's creating that safety, that emotional safety inside yourself, so loading into the parts of you that have been beating you up and making you feel like shit, making you want to escape yourself, and holding the hand and say, Hey, little one, I get you.
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Get that your friend.
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Get that your friend, of course, you're frightened. Perhaps you don't believe I'm going to be here for you, and rightly so. I haven't before I've pushed you away, I've dismissed you,
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but I'm here now,
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and I'll hold your hand, and we'll get through this together, and it will end because you're not a child anymore.
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Amazing, right? I'm
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interested to hear what you guys say. So look, I've got some cool stuff coming up.
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We have, I should actually
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got some really excellent stuff coming up.
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We've got five days of freedom, virtual retreat.
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So exciting,
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ninth of September to the 13th of September.
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Then I've got a master class coming up
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on I think it's the because I'm going away. I'm going to do some dancing, going to dance in the Northern Territory, ecstatic dancing with 19 amazing women at an event called grounded to do that from the 16th to the 22nd and so the week after that, the Wednesday after that, I'm going to have a master class. I'm. Which will be about how to stop drinking the easy way. And then it's a bloody time for the bloody live Aussie Apple experiment.
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I can't believe it, that's crazy.
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I am also going to, and I hope that by the time I have got this made into a podcast, I'm going to be writing a download on because, you know, when most of my clients come to me, they always want to be able to drink like normal people want to be able to have two drinks and stop. And so I'm going to do a download on that, like I said, like a downloadable one sheet that you can download and have a look at, kind of like, six ways which the six ways to do that, if that's what you want to do. So those are the things I have coming up and as and when they're available, I have definitely got the virtual retreat ready to put the link in here, and it will be in the show notes, and then I'll add the masterclass, and I'll add that free download as well. So that's what's coming up. I look forward to seeing you all soon. Thanks for joining me today. It's been a pleasure to be with you and have a wonderful rest of your day. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of midlife AF with Emma Gilmore. If you enjoyed it, please share on Instagram for your friends and tag me at Hope rising coaching. If you want to help me grow the podcast, please review the episodes for me on Apple podcast 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. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
