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Instagram and Facebook going at the same time. Yay. Hello. How are you good to see you? I'm so sorry for those of you who were expecting me
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an hour ago.
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My Mondays are getting a wee bit crazy at the moment,
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and I wasn't able
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to make that fit, in my typical ADHD fashion of trying to fit way too many Hey, Tanya, way too many things into too many new space of time. Oh, Hi Anne, so good to see you. I'm so pleased you're here. Lovely to see you. Oh, that touches my heart. Yes. So I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit today about I went to see Liz Gilbert talking, which was absolutely fantastic. I absolutely loved seeing her, and I came away with some it was really interesting, because I'd had a really tough day with my kids and not being able to get into school and stuff. And I was feeling really, I don't know, I was feeling angry, I think, and upset about stuff. And so I went to see Liz, and I went by myself. And even though I knew lots of people who were going to be there, I decided that I would sort of just go and mine my own company. Oh, my God, Tania, it was so I cried all the way, snot, right? And those two ladies on either side of me were just like, of course, I hadn't bought a tissue, but it was, it was really powerful for me, because I was having a real like, everything's so unfair, it's so shit. And i i Actually what had happened is I'd lost it at school. And what she was talking about, which I found so amazing, was she was talking about women, and she was talking about or female assigned at birth humans, and she was talking about, I won't I won't take to say too much. I don't want to spoil it, but she was talking about how we need more women who are able to take a moment, who are able to step away from there. She wasn't saying, don't be angry at all. But what she was saying is, you know, instead of being in our reactivity, and she's saying, you know, obviously it's going to be a time we're going to be in our reactivity, because, and many of us, at the moment, particularly in the world as it way it is, have very good reason for being in our reactivity. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with being in our reactivity. But what she was saying is, we in our culture the way that we've been, productivity driven. Very few of us new parents or have had any type of role modeling around
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women who are relaxed and laugh, and she
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wasn't being critical again, because you could take any of these things in any way, right? But what she was saying was, and this, this reminded me so much of those school meetings, and same with us in Australia, with the NDIS meetings, with any kind of systemic meeting, where you are the person asking the system to do different, right, to do better, and what often happens is, by the time we get into these meetings, we are so
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accused, no uncertainty, as
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we've so completely buggered,
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so completely exhausted.
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We've been gaslit, we've been told we're the problem. We've been blamed. We've been no nobody. People are deliberately not linking things together, deliberately keeping people separate so that there's no we can't get the power of community together. You know, there's all this stuff happens. So we get into the room and somebody says something, and off we go. And I found myself like that so many times. And it's, it's she was talking about, you know, the person in the room has the most power is the person who is the most relaxed, the most calm. And I always remember that, you know, it's something I really struggle with. But she was talking about a particular situation where she was putting a book out and it it went down very badly, and she took the touch. Instead of being pushed by everybody to make decisions, to come back, to have an opinion, to to say something, she took a moment. Yes. And then she grounded herself, and she came into her pair and decided to pull the book, for example, that's what she was talking about there. And it made me think she's and she was answering a question from a Q and A, it's very lovely, very relaxed. She was answering a question from
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another lady who was there,
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and it was, you know, she was talking about,
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my brains gone, how perimenopause. A lot of me, she was talking about how, in horses, in the in the world of horses, the horses in is a matriarchal society, and in this matriarchal society, the horses look for the calmest mare, and that's the leader of the group. So interesting. And what she was saying, as we were talking about in this, up, this lie that we've all been taught, that, you know, we're only as women, we're only as happy as our unhappiest child, right? And and what she was saying, and what I loved so much about what she said was she said, you know they get, you know they get, if you feel safe, if you are okay, they'll be okay. And I know that for us as mothers, that puts a lot of pressure, oh, I have to be okay. Well, no, it's not that we have to be okay, but what it means is the world around us, like particularly parents and Tanya will know this, but parents of neurodivergent children who co regulate with us, we have to keep our ecosystem as okay as we can be, so that they can be okay, because their sense of safeties is so acute, and we all work so hard to do the work to kind of process our trauma, so that we're there to be these steady lighthouses for our children as much as possible. Now, given that we're only human, and we will screw up, of course, and we will get angry because things are, you
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know, unacceptable at the moment,
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but it was just really lovely. If you're okay, they're okay. You know all this stuff that's going on in the world right now can keep going on,
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and in our home, we love we are
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present. We and it's never going to be perfect, but it's this lovely idea, sorry, I'm getting teary, isn't that? Honestly, it's just this idea of that, all this stuff, all this running around, all this nonsense, all these meetings, all these, yes, they matter, because we need the resources to do the things. So we have to show up. We have to advocate. But at the end of the day, we have to look after ourselves and we have to our power comes from learning and trying as hard as we can to keep ourselves out of that frenetic, insane energy. Hey, Laura, nice to see you. And try as hard as we can to let that shit go, you know, let that forward, focusing go and and be present, you know. But yeah, I found it. It really, really moved me,
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and I enjoyed Liz as well. There
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was a couple of quotes that she gave that I thought were beautiful, but I just wanted to kind of Yeah, share that was there anything else? Yes, she said, if she's, if she's okay, you're okay, yeah. And it was just, there was a couple of words, there was a quote. It was beautiful. Oh, and she was talking about her, you know, having that conversation with herself, of, you know, working through some of the Byron Katie work, you know, is it true? Is it really true? You know, I'm acting like a lot of the time we are like we're about to be killed. I mean, I feel like that a lot of the time, like I'm acting on that kind of level of energy in terms of my reaction to the world, because a lot of the time I am trying to keep my baby safe from very serious danger. You know, bullying, transphobia, people trying to get them to push through when their nervous systems are depleted and they're struggling with chronic fatigue and being forced to go into school when they can't. You know, it's there is a lot of you know, we are fighting. Him for our babies. But also, are we actually, do you know what I mean? And it's like, I'm actually not under attack right now. And you know, coming from that defensive energy, I remember we spent the last two years being having this horrible stalking neighbor, horrible man. We ended up having to get an interventional drought against him, and he was just really crazy person, but obviously very mentally ill, but also was doing a lot of drugs as well, and became quite obsessed with us, and the police weren't helping. And it was just it was awful. We ended up having to sell our house and leave the area, and we still got the court cases are still rumbling on. Why am I talking about this? Completely forgot one. Gosh, this is great life, isn't it? This is the woman who's got perimenopausal or more minutes menopausal ADHD brain has had quite a lot of trauma recently, but it
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it was this, this idea that
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the calmest person in the room holds the power, and we know that, and we know that the systems that want us to fail benefit from us being dysregulated, us not being able to have a conversation. And so this, it's so important that we are able to ground ourselves. It's also important that we get angry and shout and rave when we need to, and are kind to ourselves when we do too. But there's this, this need to ground ourselves, to be to take a moment to say, No, I'm not going to respond right now. And I find that really hard, because my when my fight or flight comes, it always wants to respond quickly. And I loved and she was saying, you know, it's never, you know that when we're in that triggered state, it's never that, if that response is never going to be helpful to us, very rarely, going to be helpful to us, the response that we get from that triggered part don't anyway, I found it very interesting. I really enjoyed it, and it kind of reminded me a lot of why I do what I do, because it was this sort of idea of, and I was thinking back to the reasons when I stopped drinking, why I stopped drinking,
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and one of them was this
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reactivity, and I found in the little I do, month here, month there of being off alcohol, and I found that when I did that, I was less reactive. So I had that space to pause, that space to make a decision, am I going to send that email, or am I going to take a minute and just breathe and settle my nervous system and do all of the different tools that we learn. You know, in this work, there's so many different things. I mean, one, I'll just give an example, just so that I can be give a helpful kind of thing. But if you put your hand on your head like this gently, sort of slightly gently, pull your head over to one side, please do this gently, because obviously, don't I hurt your neck or anything. And then if you look up at the corner of your eye with your eye to the ceiling, and then at some point, you'll feel like yourself do a yawn, or you'll take an in breath, or you'll do a sigh out, or there's some people burp, and that's the nervous system settling itself. And these things are really important because, you know, we know that often, when people are desperate for a drink, is because they need to get they need to be grounded. They need their nervous system to regulate, and they need to get that feeling. You know, we get out of that sort of frenetic energy of the of our heads and into our bodies and into the space that we live in. I mean, I know for me, I really noticed. This morning, I did an exercise class outside, and then I went for a swim in the water was crazy wild, and it was so therapeutic for me. And I this I've spent this weekend really, really overwhelmed with everything that's been going on with the kids and everything. And I realized this weekend I hadn't had a swim, I hadn't been out in nature. I'd just been running around like a headless chicken. So that's for me. It's like, okay, I know, because I know when I'm in the water, there's nothing else I can do. I can't be on the phone. I can't I'm not talking to anyone. I'm being mashed around by and this is, you know, the sun's coming up, and it's just incredible. And that's just, you know, that really settles my soul. Equally for me at the moment, I'm finding doing I hadn't done any vigorous exercise for a while. I've been doing some many more gentle stuff, but actually even finding doing some vigorous exercise at the moment quite helpful for me, particularly because I. I'm quite angry, and it gives me a place to kind of process my anger. That's not my family.
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But yeah, so I just wanted to come on as well talk a little bit like I've got my five day virtual retreat coming up. I run those two or three times a year. It's $47 to join. It's nightly. So we do a nightly webinar. And I mean, I think the thing for me is it's for people who are, I guess I have a different vibe than and then some of the other people out there working in this space I know, and also who's here who and also has the same semester vibe is that, for me, it's not about working with people around alcohol. Is not about, actually, not about the alcohol. And there are so many people out there who are, you know, giving you these top 10 tips, it's going to be easy. Here you go, focusing on the substance and and the biological response to the substance, which is absolutely part of what I do as well. But I have trained with I'm a trained counselor and psychotherapist. I have trained with gab Marte. I have done I've been working using internal family systems, work. I have worked and trained with Bessel van der Kolk. So I'm trauma informed. I'm neurodivergent. I am so so interested in the way the human brain works, and I am so interested in why we drink, and the reasons that keep us drinking when we don't want to be drinking anymore. And so anything that I do, I say to you know, if you're just looking for top 10 tips, if you just want, you know when I if you want to go into battle, mine is not the program for you, because the way that I work, I teach what I call the third way. And it is the opposite. There's no willpower involved. It's all about realizing that actually stopping drinking, reducing or drinking, taking a break for drinking, isn't the hard part. What's the hard part is understanding why we're drinking and then changing our circumstances, putting boundaries in understanding our core beliefs and why things trigger us in a way, understanding why we find it so difficult to be with some kinds of emotions and and just really getting into a little bit more of the psychology, but also the somatic side of things as well. So learning, what do we do? Where do we hold emotions? How do the feelings work, and what, what's happening for us when we, you know, wake up and suddenly we're like, I'm never going to drink again. Why did I drink? And being guilty, being mean to ourselves, and all of that. And then, and then, by five o'clock in the evening, we're in we've sworn off. And then by five o'clock in the evening, we're pouring ourselves another drink and wondering, you know, actually, it wasn't that bad, was I, or, you know, I don't know why I'm bothering with all that and and looking into all of that sort of thing so that we can get to a place where we're really understanding, we're really purposeful, we're really working with a presence, like understanding where we notice experiences in our bodies and why it's making us behave or think or act in a certain way. So yes, my specialism is alcohol, but I always say it's never about the booths. And so I've pulled together from all my, you know, vast amounts of knowledge, experience working with beautiful clients, and I even I've had a couple of my clients in my membership group who've just kind of, one of them's coming up to 18 month mark. Another one's just finished their 12 months and talking about, you know, amazing things that they're doing and and this, you know, this good like talking about how you really get into the second year, everything just gets that little bit easier, those things that were first because I remember, for me, I did a number of months, and then I decided to do a year, and the first year, you're doing all these firsts, and then you go into the second year, you start to realize, actually there's this whole
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other world out there.
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And it really is a journey of self discovery. For me, it's about finding out who you really are, because, and I talk about this in the virtual retreat is a lot of the time, the person that we think we are isn't actually who we really are. It's a personality that we've constructed in order to keep us safe in the world. And it's only when we start taking alcohol out of the equation that we can start to sort of really understand the human that we are underneath. All of that, and especially for those of us who many of people who are drinking because there's such a correlation between it, because of so many different reasons, which, again, I talk about a bit in the in the in the virtual retreat as
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well, is,
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you know, we, there's so many different reasons why we instinctively try to move away from discomfort, and it's understanding what that discomfort is. So like, for example, I had a conversation with one of my clients, and we were talking about, she was saying, I need to get better at handling discomfort. I need to get better about handling discomfort, because she was in a very hot room with a group of people doing something you didn't really want to do. And we were talking, I was like, oh, maybe it's not that you need to get better at handling the discomfort of the hot room and the people. Maybe it's that you need to get better at the discomfort of saying, Actually, I'm not going to be in this room. I'm going to leave. And it's that sort of thing that we talk about in my group. So it goes a lot, lot deeper. But so my client, who has gone for the 18 months, and she was saying that, you know, she got to a point where she says, now she's She describes herself as someone who doesn't drink, and she said she got to the point where she's finally giving away like the posh bottles of wine that she had kept in her cellar, just a case, you know, and because she knows that it holds absolutely nothing for her. And you know, it's the India is so many different things about, you know, when you stop or you take a break or reduce your drinking, you find that people who you thought were really good friends aren't it. So it's a lot to to work through, and it's not necessarily. You know, the easy part is actually stopping drinking. The hard part is learning to be with all the reasons why you were drinking in the first place. And most of the time we don't even realize that we're drinking for a reason. But everything we do has a reason behind it, and we have to bring awareness and curiosity and not judgment and shame. None of it's about, you know, going into battle. None of it's about resistance. It's all about, actually, the opposite. It's about opening. It's about letting in. It's about letting go. It's about accepting it's just it's just so different. Everything we've been taught about alcohol is a lie, and actually, the opposite is true, but it requires a certain type of person. You know, this is it's a brave world to be different. We all want to fit in and be part of the crowd, even if it means not being true to ourselves. And so my the method that I teach is, you know, the human being has to matter the most. We have to care about ourselves enough. You know, we have to care about ourselves more than anyone else in order, anyway. So if you're interested, I've got to go and pick my kid up from school. I will be running the virtual retreat next Monday to Friday, at 7pm
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Melbourne, Sydney time,
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it will go for an hour, and there will be questions. It'll be on Zoom, and there will also be replays. So don't worry if you miss anything. And it's really about, you know, if you want to, if you had enough, you just want to start you said, I've had enough of waking up and feeling like shit. I don't want to feel guilty anymore. I want to see what might happen if I took a break, reduced my alcohol consumption, see what happens. And I'm interested in understanding why it might be that I think that that alcohol is
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a solution to my problems,
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because what what I've found is that alcohol allows us to stay stuck not making any changes in the rest of our life. Because every time we anesthetize ourselves, it doesn't mean the situation changes. All that happens is we suppress
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ourselves a little bit more.
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And you know, with everything that's going on in the world, I just feel like as female, assigned at birth humans. We need to be present. We need to be in our bodies. We need to be here for our children and for our families and for ourselves, and we cannot afford to suppress. Rest as shit. So hopefully, if any of you are interested, wherever you are in your journey with alcohol, doesn't make any difference to me. I'm not like, Oh, you've got to stop drinking. I'm just saying, there's a different way of being around alcohol, and what we've been taught is normal, is, is, is very far
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from helpful for us.
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Alright, my darlings, you take care. It's been lovely spending time with you, and I hope to see you at the at
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the federal treat next
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Monday, if you're interested the links in my bio, or if you type retreat into the chat or in send me a DM, I will send you the link. Take care. Lots of love. I better go get my kids. I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
