Speaker 1 0:00
Hello everyone, or you can see my Bunnings box behind me and my towel on the back of my door. That's cool.
Unknown Speaker 0:10
So really lovely to be here with you.
Speaker 1 0:13
It's been a long time. I had to take a little bit of a break. I think I sort of really stopped coming on and doing lives. I stopped coming on and doing lives at the end of the end of September, probably, I was pretty burnt out. And I had not, I didn't just didn't have very much to give, so I decided to give to my family, just putting my lunch cake down there. It's distracted, and look after us. We moved to house,
Unknown Speaker 0:55
which was a lot and,
Speaker 1 0:59
yeah, it's just taken a little bit of time to get back the energy levels and the enthusiasm for creating, talking, being witness. I've still been running my my group, my membership group, be that I have, which is always a joy being with the guys there, and I've been doing some one to one coaching. But other than that, I've been focusing on my family and getting out of the house that we were living in into this new house, which is lovely and feels safe, and familiar. So I wanted to talk a little bit about two things really. One is emotional safety, and two is awareness, or you could call it mindfulness. And the reason that I wanted to talk about these was because I think,
Unknown Speaker 2:05
along with self compassion,
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and I think that self compassion is intrinsic to both of these, I think they're probably the two most important Parts of stopping drinking or reducing your alcohol consumption. And I think there's a lot of different things that come under those headings that we might not necessarily associate with them. So first of all, happy New Year. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm not sure how many of you are doing dry January, if you're already not drinking, or where you are on your relationship with alcohol, but you feel free to let me know in the chat, if you would like to, let's talk A little bit about awareness. First of all, so I've just recertified in my this naked Mind Training qualification, which I do every year. I became a this naked mind coach in it was like September 2020, I stopped drinking in january 2020, and within two weeks, I was so
Unknown Speaker 3:25
incredibly enamored by the methodology that
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Annie and the team at this naked mind used that I decided that I wanted to I'd already, I'd already started training to be a coaching counselor, so I already had That kind of career shift. I was at uni, and I decided straight away that I wanted to train in this methodology. But over Christmas, oh, well, actually, I think they they developed a bit more of the course content from when I originally trained. I mean, like, Annie is always amazing. And what I found so incredible when I was training under her back in 2020, was, and I think I was the second tranche of coaches that went through the snake IN MIND Institute. And I think I was, I think I was probably the first Australian, this naked mind coach. There was another Australian naked this naked mind coach, but I think she stopped coaching. So I would say, let's say I was the first and then swiftly followed, actually, by a whole bunch of other Australian coaches in this naked minds, really good ones out there,
Unknown Speaker 4:42
but I was
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over this Christmas period. I knew I was a bit behind with my recertification, and I also knew they'd let me know from the snake of mine that they had updated the training. And it was really cool. It was great because I. What I've always found with Annie's work is that whenever you've interrogated the research she's done, she's such a clever lady, and all the research is there everything that she what the one of the things I loved when I did alcohol and other drugs as part of my training at uni, from I kept for being a counselor, I cross referenced a lot of the way that Annie did and it all Annie's work all stands up to interrogation. It all comes from heavily researched,
Unknown Speaker 5:31
very evidence based
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methods, and one of the things that she always taught was all change happens on the other side of awareness, and the type of the methodology that they now use and train people in in this naked mind is called effective liminal psychology.
Unknown Speaker 5:55
And liminal basically
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means the
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space between two edges. So the space between the conscious and the unconscious brain the place where and this is where change can happen. So you guys will have heard, there's a quote by I feel like it's
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Franz
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and his and his the quote is basically between stimulus and response is a space, and in that space is where all the transformation comes from. That's not the quote I've quoted. It really badly, but it's something like that. In fact, my supervisor let me see if I can find it. Now,
Unknown Speaker 6:46
Cheryl has it on her email. Sign off,
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see if I can. She used to have it.
Unknown Speaker 6:55
Maybe not so much anymore.
Speaker 1 7:01
Here we go between stimulus and response. There is a space in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and offer by Viktor Frankl, and for me, awareness, oops, just turn the volume off there. Awareness and mindfulness. They, they, they kind of go together, and they are the key, because there's two different types of awareness. Really, there's hundreds, right? But let's talk for now about awareness in this context. So awareness is we learn new things about the world. We learn new things about ourselves, and Annie would always say all change happens on the other side of awareness, which I think is 100% true. And when you start off in your relationship with alcohol, you're happy as Larry, and you think it's the best thing since sliced bread, and you're like, I love drinking and then, and that, in this naked mind terminology, we have kind of four phrases, four phases for that, asleep, aware, awake and alive. And asleep is, you know, where you've got no idea. And then aware is when you start to think, oh, actually, I'm not sure that this is working for me. And that is probably the most painful part of changing your relationship with alcohol, that particular area where you kind of aware you've got both caps on one side as you've got this, got this. One side of you wants to drink, the other side of you doesn't want to drink. And those parts of you are in cognitive dissonance or in arguments, in battle
Unknown Speaker 9:00
with each other.
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You probably don't see them as two parts yet, but it one of the most painful things about that part of stopping drinking or reducing your drinking is the fact that you have these two parts of you that are in argument with each other, and that kind of brings us into the emotional safety piece. But I won't go there yet. But so awareness very different. I think, the way that the snake in mind
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works and the way that I work
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in that
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there's not this kind of, this is the way you do it, and that's the end of the conversation, a little bit like what I imagine alcoholics, and honest, a bit more like. So these are the steps you kind of don't question them. And you go about, you do them, and then you go to your meetings, and you get your chips, and then. And whenever you have a data point or have a drink, you end up going back to the beginning again, and there's a whole load of shame and blame and
Unknown Speaker 10:09
guilt around that.
Speaker 1 10:11
And this snake of mine works quite differently. And the alcohol experiment, which I run three times a year live, although I have got my self paced version, which is available for anybody to start at any time. The goal for the alcohol experiment isn't to stop drinking. The goal for the alcohol experiment is awareness, which is great because it feels like it's so much easier to be successful in achieving that goal, right? And so if the goal is awareness, it's very difficult for you not to succeed, because whether you drink or whether you don't drink is irrelevant. And one of the things that in my Lighthouse groups, and by be the lighthouse group, is a membership group, and it's for people who are wanting to stop drinking longer term. So they want to stop drinking for three, 612, months or ongoing. So it's a little bit different from the earlier groups that I run, like the five day alcohol reset and the Aussie alcohol experiment, or Great Aussie alcohol experiment, if you're doing the live version, which I ran in March, because there's often people are like, I don't know whether I want to stop drinking, cut down, or just reduce my drinking, or just carry on as I was. I just want to take a break. It's all this kind of like, we don't really know. We're just working it out. Whereas be the light has this, like nine I definitely know I want to take a break, an extended break, or I might decide that that would I want that to be a lifestyle choice so there's less of the Will I won't I is alcohol, okay? Is it not? It's more like, Okay. So we've made the decision. How are we going to do this? So, slightly different vibe. But with those guys, one of the things I say to them, in order to be part of the group, it's absolutely fine to have a data point. Good data points are exactly as they say on the tin. Their way to get information, what I do request that people do, if they are part of the group, however, is bring awareness to that data point so that it's not just another way of just drinking. So, you know, a data point means you actually are mindful. You you pay attention.
Unknown Speaker 12:35
And I think probably for me, when I stopped drinking,
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even when I was doing the sort of months here, months there,
Speaker 1 12:45
the thing that I really remember was just becoming less reactive. And we know that reactivity is is probably one of the main reasons we drink, one of the main reasons we get ourselves into trouble in our lives. And look, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with being reactive. There's nothing wrong with anything that we do. Most of the time, we have reactions for good reasons, usually, though, they are based in our survival. You know, the survival part of our body, as opposed to the growth and transformation part of our brain, so they're usually unconscious reactions. And I thought one things I thought was really interesting that I was learning while I was redoing the content for the snake in mind was that we feel an emotion, an emotional response to an experience seven seconds before our thinking brain comes online that are really interesting. So most of the time, we're having an emotional reaction based on experience, and that emotional reaction is, it's kind of keyed into us, so it's it's unconscious, it's rote, it happens without us thinking about it.
Unknown Speaker 14:14
And nine times out of 10 is based on a story,
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a story that we have in our again, our system, our patterns of behavior that are this happens, and I feel like this about it. And so this means that I will do this. So for example, one of the things we do with mindfulness is and with awareness is, we like, we try and witness how that experience. You know what the actual physical sensations of that experience are like for us? So how is our breath? You know, what's our heartbeat like? And you know, this can be easier or more difficult, depending on what you're intraceptive and your. What your levels of alexithymia are, which often as neurodivergent people, they can be quite extreme, either on one side or the other. So either we feel everything, or we don't feel we feel like we're a bit disconnected from our feelings, or probably more common as we find it difficult to describe what we're feeling in terms of words, but often we can describe the sensation in our body, not always, but one of the things about interoceptive awareness, which is our ability to distinguish between something that's happening in our body and the action that we need to take for it. So for example, noticing when we're hungry, noticing when we're we need the toilet, those sort of things, we can actually train ourselves to become better at interoceptive awareness, and the way that we do that is through forms of mindfulness. So really paying attention. The really cool thing about awareness on mindfulness is that the act of being aware, and we know that awareness is there's so many different definitions for it, but it's really sort of being in the present moment and accepting it okay. So if, for example, one of the things that I do with my clients to relax, then before we start to kind of get out of the, you know, emotional story narrative of our experience of living is we do a grounding session, and one of the things that we do in that grounding session is I ask the participants to notice what their feet feel like against the floor, and I ask them to wriggle their toes and notice how their toes move. Really pay attention. One of the other things that we often do is hold your hand, scrunch your hand up really tight in a fist, and count to 30 seconds. Really paying attention to what it feels like, where your thumb is, where you can feel stretching, and then you open your hand for 30 seconds to really pay attention to the sensation of your webbing between your fingers. And you can do the same with your feet as well. And one, this was one of the things that was taught to me by a lady who specializes in interoceptive awareness, an autistic lady as well. And Dr Emma trying to remember her surname. I can't remember it now, but basically, any time that the brain is focused on a physical sensation of something, it cannot be in fight or flight, because just the very sense of the it's almost like when you notice your breath going in and out of your body, if you focus on where it comes into your nose,
Unknown Speaker 18:09
these take these
Speaker 1 18:10
things. Take You Out of fight or flight. Take You Out of survival brain and into that kind of more evolved brain, the brain where we can we, where we have an opportunity to pause before we because we're not dealing with everything as if we're in you know about to be attacked by an alligator. So it's really important. And I think one of the things that drinking definitely gives stopping drinking definitely gives you, even if it's just a short break, is much, much less reactiveness, which is so good for your family, because I don't know what you it's like for you, but living with people who are very volatile is so hard on our nervous systems. And again, you know if we're going to get into emotional safety, emotional safety, which is absolutely vital for I think, being alcohol free, because in order to not need to escape and control, we have to feel emotionally safe. Most of us as human beings don't feel emotionally safe in our selves. A lot of that is because we have either, and I'm very careful about this, because not everybody has an inner critic that speaks to them in words. For me, for example, I don't get a lot of chatter, but I know most of my clients, do most of my friends? Do I get a very strong sensation, like a very strong feeling? It might be shame or guilt or
Unknown Speaker 19:52
regret,
Unknown Speaker 19:58
but basically, I. Uh,
Speaker 1 20:01
most of us, most of the reasons why people drink is to do with our internal and external experience of living. And one of the questions that I like to ask my clients when we're working together is, what is it that you were afraid to feel that meant that you wanted to, wanted to, chose to drink. So whatever it was, was really, really scary if you don't want to drink, I'm not talking about so data point work is really for people who are wanting to cut down or stop drinking, and so where we want to get into this awareness piece is when, if you don't want to drink, if you decided not to have a drink, and then you end up having a drink is it's understanding the reason why, and coming to that from a place of self kindness, as opposed to self judgment, and it again, it wrapped up in self compassion, because awareness allows us the opportunity to see so I'll give an example, since I've gone through a bit of tough, tough few years, number of different things and so, and I'm, you know, been working them through with my therapist and my supervisor, we had a stalker who was really horrible to our family. We ended up having to move house, which is why I moved house to here, and we had a lot of issues being believed by the police and kind of by by by people around us as well neighbors and such. And
Unknown Speaker 21:54
alongside that, we've also had,
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for me personally, a late diagnosis, autistic ADHD human but also my children. One of my children experienced extreme, very unpleasant bullying, and the other child has had autistic burnout or chronic fatigue, and has been pretty much bed bound for about three years. And along that process, dealing with schools, dealing with medical community, there was a lot of people not believing our experience, people making us the problem, and me, Me particularly the problem. So there's a there's an element of trauma involved in that. And so I know that I haven't 100% managed to clear that, and I probably never will, but I have done, I did some really good EMDR sessions with my supervisor, which were really, really helpful for me. And what EMDR is,
Unknown Speaker 22:58
it's a type of therapy. It's to do with the eye movement.
Unknown Speaker 23:03
And what it does is it kind
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of puts
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a trauma that happens. Instead of you going about your business and seeing everything through a trauma lens and having that reactivity, it kind of puts the trauma back where it should be, you know, like a line in a memory, in a whole load of other memories, rather than taking up a huge amount of space and knocking you off kilter all the time.
Unknown Speaker 23:37
Why am I talking about this? There you go, menopause, brain. I
Unknown Speaker 23:44
bear with me a second, guys.
Speaker 1 23:48
Oh, okay, yeah. So what I have found with myself since the kids got sick and various other different pieces, it's been tricky holding friendships. With other people, not experiencing the same and having no experience of it
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either, because it's just been, probably been a bit triggering for me to listen to other people kind
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of going about and living normal lives without all this stuff.
Unknown Speaker 24:28
And so to a certain extent, I have
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had to make the decision to kind of take myself out a little bit, because one of the things that I am trying to honor myself. To do is not to
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defend or explain myself to people anymore.
Speaker 1 24:53
And so it's, you know, the friendships that I have a very conscious ones, and I'm trying. Very hard to make sure that the people I surround myself with, the people who want to be in my company, just because it's not helpful to me at the moment to kind of go out there and be brushing up against people who are perhaps less inclined to Hello Lisa, perhaps less inclined to have an open mind about some of these things, and may end up making me feel a little bit less than and so. And of course, we know that, you know people can't make you feel anything, but when you are a bit sensitive and you're feeling like a bit of a sensitive soul, then you know better, not sometimes to put yourself in those situations if you can avoid it. And that's one of the things I've kind of said to myself, This is what emotional safety is about. So emotional safety for me is not putting myself in places where I'm going to be triggered, you know, not intentionally, kind of going into places which are going to be triggering for me, but also, you know, part of that will also be that if I am triggered, then I can see what's happening. I can witness when I'm being triggered. So I'll give an example. I was swimming the other day, and one of my friends who I hold very, I hold very closely.
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I swam up to her, and she wasn't, didn't seem very pleased to see me.
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And look, there's a million different reasons why that could be, and this is part of the work that we do. Isn't here. It's like, you know, what story are you telling yourself? So she was busy, she was doing something else. Wasn't of no concern to her.
Unknown Speaker 26:48
But for me, my little inner child was like, Oh,
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that's weird. I would have expected her to be more friendly towards me, because I I was excited and delighted to see her, but
Unknown Speaker 27:04
she didn't seem to feel the same way about me.
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Now, being a person with ADHD and autism, I, I do have a rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, a little bit so I'll be more likely to be
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like, a little bit like, Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 27:23
Well, I think most of us sensitive folks are a little bit like that. But what's different for me now is, whereas in previous years, now that there would have been some years where I wouldn't even have given a shit, noticed or anything like that, because I went through quite a long period of my life, I think of being quite disconnected and just fairly like fine and robust and not really, really
Unknown Speaker 27:46
bothered. I think
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that was probably a protective mechanism. That was probably a mechanism that I put in place in order to keep myself safe at a very young age, but in this particular circumstance, and the boys and where's why, some wherefores are largely irrelevant, but
Unknown Speaker 28:13
I
Unknown Speaker 28:16
I noticed, and I felt sad. And
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one of the things about compassionate,
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self compassion is that we, instead of being like, Oh, you're silly, you should pull yourself together. Oh, my goodness. Why are you making such a big deal about this? Or what a baby all that kind of stuff that you might get as chatter, or you might get as a sensation of shame or guilt, or, you know, one of the other ones.
Unknown Speaker 28:46
Instead of doing that, now, I recognize what's happening.
Unknown Speaker 28:51
I see that
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that part of me, a little part of me, is wounded and is in his sad and a little part of me wants to be loved as much as I love by the people that I invest my time in and and that's okay, you know, it's okay to be sad. It's okay to feel like that. There's nothing wrong with that. And one of the cool things about for me, self compassion and awareness is that sort of holding ourselves, oh, yeah, that was hard. You were expecting to feel like that. And it's so interesting because it's a bit like, you know, we talk about this with children and Molly coddling, and we find that this scientific evidence actually shows that the more a child is pulled inwards, as in, not forced away from their family too early, the braver, more resilient the child would be in the long term, because they built their sense of self. In community, in CO regulation. That's where we build ourselves. A sense of self comes from our CO regulation with others, and then once we are regulated by our CO regulation with others, then it's safe for us to leave the nest. And you're often taught, when I talk with clients, often hear stories of kids who are, you know, made to do things way too young, forced to go and, do, you know, just silly little things like go to the shop and pay for things before they were ready to and how much of an impact that had on them and how sort of shaming and and for a lot of us, neurodivergent. I mean, we know that neurodivergent kids mature emotionally at a slower rate than your neurotypicals. And I would say that my kids, for example, who are beautiful human beings, but are at least three years behind emotionally
Unknown Speaker 31:02
in their executive functioning as well
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from their peers, but it's
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when we are sensitive people. One of the most beautiful things that we can do is to hold ourselves, and this is why reparenting is really what this whole thing is about, to me. And it was so interesting listening to Annie talk. It was like, oh my goodness, we're so aligned. And yet, when I first learned the content of the course, it was a lot more science based, and a lot more, you know, probably substance based. But now, really she's got all the documentation there and the evidence to kind of back up more of the sort of implant, internal family system side of things, and really understanding a lot more about the mind body connection and how important the nervous system is, and how important it is to be regulated, and how, you know, the wounds that we experience while we're children. And by that, you know, I just mean perhaps not being held in the way that we needed to be, or being loved conditionally, which many, most of us are, because most of us had to be good, good children, because that was what our parents thought their job was, which was to, you know, teach us how to to conform, to fit into society, and teach us how to not cause a fuss and to not take up space and to not make other people uncomfortable. And now we know we kind of learned it's it's really the other way around. But I think one of the things that has been so useful for me. So in this particular instance where I felt sad, what I did was I helped myself, and I recognize this is a younger part of me. She's feeling sad. She wants to feel like and another thing that, while I was going through it, it was really interesting, because I started to think, Gosh, it's quite interesting how I how many relationships I have whereby I am trying harder with the people that they perhaps try with me.
Unknown Speaker 33:21
And it made me think
Speaker 1 33:24
that's interesting, isn't it, and probably some work to do there around again, the sort of hustling grasping has been a theme for me in my life, trying to convince other people. And I think one of the lessons of the last few years has been around this sort of letting other people be wrong about you, and around
Unknown Speaker 33:55
not coming from a position of defensiveness.
Unknown Speaker 34:00
You know that whole
Unknown Speaker 34:03
hustling for our worth, you know?
Speaker 1 34:09
And this is why I think you know, a lot of time when we drink and we didn't mean to it's not because we don't know the science. We don't know that drinking is bad for us. That's not what it's about.
Unknown Speaker 34:24
It's about the fact that not drinking
Unknown Speaker 34:33
sorry for us than drinking.
Speaker 1 34:39
And so that might be that it's less safe for us emotionally, in our in ourselves, in our bodies, because of our emotional reaction to whatever it might be. Now, a lot of the time it could be how other people perceive us. A lot of the time it could be we're being so horrible to ourselves internally that we've made it you know, what do we say? They come. Be peace when there's an enemy within which, again, shows and, you know, backs up the data, which is just kicking ourselves up the ass, being awful to ourselves, making ourselves the problem, is one of the biggest reasons why people stay drinking, and that is across the board, everybody who works in this area, who works in the same sort of methodologies, rather than the guilt show and blow ones, understands that the people who are most likely to stay drinking and have problematic drinking for longer are the people who cannot let go of the idea that the problem lies with them and not the fact that they're a human being is having a very human reaction to an addictive substance, and this being awareness is what awareness is and why it's so important. Is it? It allows you to it's when you're looking at something without attaching a load of drama emotion to it. You're looking at something from a data perspective, and when we look at something with a data perspective, we don't, we can see the facts right, and we can, and then we can understand, we can understand why we're doing the things we're doing. So the good thing about awareness is, so, for example, if we have a data point, if we have a drink, is that we can look at that and go, Okay, well, what was happening immediately? Because lots of times you say, Why did you drink me? Like, I don't know. No idea something about myself with drink in my hand. Well, we do that because it's unconscious. And it's an unconscious reaction, like we say. We don't get the thought part of our brain working until seven seconds in. It's an unconscious reaction based on a story that's going on in our body. It might not even be our story. Half the time, these stories are stories that parents have given us and caregivers or society, and it's the story that we make about the situation. So a lot of the time when I speak to people, we talk about loneliness. You know, a lot of the time with loneliness, it's the meaning that we make about being lonely. Hi, Tanya, it's the meaning that we make about being lonely that is causing us the distress. And then, you know, one of the biggest issues is, is always the resistance. And so our resistance to feel the experience that we're feeling nine times out of 10 is why we end up drinking. And so a lot of the time, it's about with awareness. It's like, okay, so where am I feeling this in my body? If I'm feeling I'm feeling loneliness, I'm feeling it in my tummy. I'm feeling it in my chest. I'm putting it in my head. I'm feeling it in my heart. My eyes are heavy.
Unknown Speaker 37:46
I'm
Unknown Speaker 37:50
so we're just talking about
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awareness and mindfulness in regards to taking a getting that space, that bit of space in between an experience that we might have and the response that we have, and awareness being for me, like identifying that that little person, that reaction that I'm having to a friend not greeting me the way that I perhaps would have liked to have been greeted or would have greeted her, is Coming from a much younger part of me. And instead of being an asshole to that part of me and going, Oh, you shouldn't feel like that. You should, you know, all that stuff, it's like, Oh, I see you. I see your little heart hurting, and that's really hard. And yeah, would it be nice if she'd been more friendly to you and, you know, so a lot of this work, and, you know, I think this is about across the board, but particularly with alcohol, a lot of this work is about building the self compassion with ourselves. It's like, how, how can we, instead of berating ourselves when we don't do things the way that we would have liked to have, if we can, instead, kind of offer ourselves gentle, loving kindness and understanding, you know, because when we're berating ourselves, we cannot understand what's happening. Oh, hi, Belinda, good to see you. We can't understand what's happening because we're too busy caught up in the drama of the emotion and the trigger. And so, awareness, mindfulness, whatever you call it. I mean one of the greatest things when I was working for this naked mind in their path program, which is a year long program they do as part of that, and I often do with my three month clients as well. They did three months of that year wasn't even about stopping drinking. It was like what's called the pause, which is where you you keep drinking, but you do it mindfully. And we do that because then it takes away, because people get into this whole where you we make promise to ourselves in the morning and we break it by evening. We just didn't. Relentless, awful cycle of beating ourselves up and then vowing and then beating ourselves up, and it just stepping out of that for a little bit and just allowing yourself to be and saying, Well, okay, well maybe I'm not ready for change just right yet. Let's stop this, because it's obviously not working. People get very upset about it, and I remember many times I've talked to people about the pause, they're often like, What do you mean? How am I ever going to stop drinking unless I stop? It's my not my it's my bloody fault. No one else poured the stuff down my throat. And it's like, well, yeah, and we
Unknown Speaker 40:42
don't drink for no reason.
Speaker 1 40:45
There's always a jolly good reason why we drink, and there's a million different reasons why that why that might be but a nine times out of 10, it's because there's something happening for us that we don't know how to manage another way. So even, you know, we don't even realize a lot of the time when we're drinking, because we often think it's, you know, half the time we don't even realize until you stop drinking that you don't like so, like, some certain social occasions, like, for me, I thought I love these things because, But I had to drink to them, you see. And then you start to realize, well, actually, maybe I don't love those things. And then there's a whole other piece that comes along of like, I What does it mean about me that I don't like those things? Because societally, we've been conditioned to believe that we should be performing Hello, Miss Henny Penny, that we should be performing these caricatures, masked up human beings, being the extrovert, being gregarious, the life and soul of the party. And what does it mean about us if we're not that person? So a lot of the time, you'll find people stop drinking and they say, I really miss the person. I really want to go back to being that fun, Emma, I want. And when you look into it, Hey, Lisa, how are you when you look into that fun? Emma, actually, she's not really the little person who used to only for me. I only started to pull that persona together as I got a little bit older in my childhood. But when I was, you know, before kind of a lot of this stuff, I was very, you know, quiet, introverted kid who liked reading my book. Didn't enjoy having people in my house. I didn't enjoy having to but as I got older, I started to believe that I did, because things would happen and I'd read, I'd realize I'd taken the data, okay, so that that Emma's not acceptable. So then we perform the Emma that's sociable. And as you know, I found friendships often would be very confusing. Suddenly a friend would break up with you wouldn't know why. And I always just used to think, well, you know, that there must be something wrong with me, so I turn into more and more of the persona that our society tells us is how people should be. And I think you know this is particularly true for neurodivergent human beings. But what's really interesting is when you often, when you do this work, we're actually you realize that that person isn't us at all. It's a, it's a it's a human being that we've created in order to fit into the world. And what we're mourning and what we're feeling sad about, is the fact that without alcohol, we can't be that person. And then what we think is going to happen is that we'll be rejected and we'll be alone and but what actually happens is we we have to learn how to be with ourselves, because it's not normal to go into a room and everybody be drunk and bursting with enthusiasm, with no insecurities at all, because in reality, evolutionary wise, of course, we're suspicious of people. We're careful and we're cautious. We don't want to put our beautiful hearts out on the tray for anyone to chop into them. But we but we forget this. And so we know all of us that we're like, oh, I'm socially awkward. It's like, well, no, again, it's another survival piece and anxiety. What does it mean if I make the mistake, you know, how do I we're just trying to look after ourselves. We're just trying to protect ourselves. And so with all of this stuff, it's like, how do we come to ourselves with beautiful, loving, self, compassion and kindness? Because everything we do, we do for a reason, and we are 100% not to blame for any of this. So for me, under having aware. And starting to look at what we do, and I do these awareness worksheets where you know if you are going to it's a really good idea, and you know whether or not you want to stop drinking, take a break from drinking, or just cut down your drinking, to start getting curious about the reasons why you drink, the triggers that you have, the things that you are afraid to feel without having alcohol. I'm afraid to feel nervous, I'm afraid to feel alone. I'm afraid to feel the meaning that we make about, you know, somebody being crappy with us, feeling overwhelmed, all the many different reasons that we might have, but getting curious about those and understanding what were the events that led up to me feeling that I would rather escape myself. And a lot of the time, sometimes it's external stuff and sometimes it's internal stuff, which is why I think creating boundaries, and this is a big subject matter, because most people who drink are we tend to be people pleasers. We tend to have it's been a way to keep us safe in the world, and so we tend to be very attuned to other people's emotions. I have definite double empathy. So I feel other people's experiences. I feel a lot, especially when people are aggression, aggressive, especially after having this horrible stalker man
Unknown Speaker 46:27
trying to kind of harm our family for a long time,
Speaker 1 46:33
I feel other like I could feel him, even though he wasn't in the same property as us. Just I could feel whenever he was about to do something. I could sense it. And I've always been like that was one of the reasons I used to drink was to kind of drown out some of that over empathy for everybody else in the room. But, yeah, we, we have a lot of this, but it was really interesting once you start getting to the site. Oh yeah, okay. Well, the reason I have that is because, and again, it's a bit like the, you know, the wine, which the reason I would never call other wine, which I always call them the wine savior, because they're coming to save us, coming to save us from discomfort, coming to save us from distress. And so it's about befriending those parts of us, the one trying to save us with our car with wine, or the one who's trying to stop us from drinking wine, they're trying to protect us, but they do it by being mean to us and judging us and kicking us up the arse. Neither of those roots are helpful, surprisingly. So if there's any questions, I'd love to hear them, but otherwise I will finish up. I could talk on this particular subject matter forever, because there's so much involved in it. But I think one of the ways to create emotional safety is is first of all, to get mindful, to get awareness. So when am I feeling unsafe? So for me, that situation, so I have made a bit of a vow to myself this year. To start, I'm not gonna,
Unknown Speaker 48:09
I'm gonna try a little bit less to COVID running after people,
Speaker 1 48:14
and I'm gonna try and surround myself with people whose eyes light up the same way as mine light up when I see them, and I always give people more, you know, more chances and stuff, but it's just worth. It's
Unknown Speaker 48:28
just worth. I think
Unknown Speaker 48:31
this is what self compassion is about. It's about
Speaker 1 48:36
prioritizing yourself, and that's not selfish. It's about loving yourself enough to treat yourself well, loving yourself enough to put boundaries in so that you do not accept other people not treating you well. And by that doesn't mean that you're trying to change another person. What it means is there are rules for you, which you so for example, when you set a boundary with someone, it's not about saying you can't do this to me. It's about you saying, These are the things that are okay for me. These are things that are not If you do something. So for example, for me, it will be if you lose your temper with me no questions. Just want to say, Oh, thank you. Thank you, Tanya. It's lovely to have you on here. I'm always I love your work as well. So thank you very much too. It's such a there's so much crossover. I think being a mom of two neurodivergent kids, one in burnout with school, can't there's so much crossover between this work and the work around just our self work that we do anyway, don't we? Just so that we can, you know, function in a world where, you know, it's all very performative. And I. And there's a lot of systemic there's a lot of systemic things that are there that are all about us performing and behaving in the way that society expects us to do. And a lot of the reason why women drink, the women that I work with, drink, is because they had to comply as children, and they had no choice, and their feelings weren't weren't welcomed. They were either told they were too much or too too little, and and then, of course, so that then we become a suppression of self, and we know what happens with suppression of self, it's got to go somewhere, right? And that might go into shutdown. It might go into fight or flight. But a lot of the time, why people are drinking is nothing to do with alcohol. The behavior is symptom, not a
Unknown Speaker 50:58
not the problem.
Speaker 1 51:01
Anyway, it's been absolutely beautiful for being here. Thanks Tanya for staying with me. I really appreciate that. Thanks everybody else who's here as well. It's been lovely to get back on, back on. I'm going to make this into a podcast episode as well, so I'll get back into doing my podcast couple of, couple of months off from that, but I look forward to engaging with everybody again. All right, take care, my darlings,
Unknown Speaker 51:22
lots of love. Bye. No thanks. Lise,
Unknown Speaker 51:29
lovely to be with you all. Really appreciate you. I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
