Speaker 1 0:00
Everybody. It's pretty warm today, my office with my fan going. I hope you're all well. So today I wanted to talk about the the idea of fierce self compassion, and why I think that being fiercely alcohol free is a is absolutely imperative at the moment with what's going on in our world. So just to talk a little bit about self compassion, something that is pretty hard for a lot of us, we it hasn't been something that's been in our conditioning, our cultural conditioning, and it's absolutely, in my opinion, one of the fundamental pillars of being alcohol free, but also of living a life that you don't want to escape from most of the time, given that part of being self compassionate is understanding that we are not perfect and that we screw up, and that we are human and loving ourselves anyway.
Unknown Speaker 1:23
It's, you know,
Speaker 1 1:26
it wouldn't be something where I'd be, like, you have to do this in order for this to be, you know, for you to be okay, because it kind of goes against the premise of self compassion. And I've been working in my membership group be the lighthouse going through Christine left self compassion workbook for the last what chapter are we on? Hi Kylie. We're on chapter 14. I think so for the last 14 weeks. In fact, probably 15, actually, and it's very much in line with the work that I do anyway. But it's really nice to look at it in its in its own right. And Kristen Neff has been around for a long time. She's done a lot of work. She works very closely as well with other people that I like who influence my work. And I definitely think that self compassion and her self compassion work. It's good to see you. We're talking about self compassion, fear, self compassion,
Unknown Speaker 2:24
self compassion work
Speaker 1 2:29
has heavily influenced a different approach to being alcohol free, and it doesn't necessarily have to be about alcohol. It can be about anything that we're using as a way to cope with our feelings and often what I would say the, you know, a huge percentage of the human beings that I work with have a very difficult time internally with the voice, the negative voice that might not be a voice for you. So I'm talking about negative self talk, rumination, self judgment, all the shoulds, and you know what we call busy brain half the time. That's why people drink. They drink because they just want to shut off the noise, all the reminders of all the things that we haven't done and we need to do, and the things that we should have done better, and all the ways that we should have shown up better, and all the ways that if we could just do this, then everything would be Kay, and all the worries about everything that's about to happen in the future, and all our catastrophizing. We know that all of these things are there for very good reason. They're there to keep us safe, but they can make life very, very hard to live, and they, they are very, very, a very high reason why people drink. And it's interesting, because I talk about drinking, but there's such a we still live in such a stigmatized world around alcohol. Use that as the minute someone mentioned alcohol, half of the room takes themselves out of the equation, because in this our society's kind of view, the only people who should be even considering altering their relationship with alcohol are the people who, quote, unquote, have a problem or consider themselves to be an alcoholic, which is absolutely the opposite of the way that I work with people. And I would suggest that it's a it's a really scary and again, you know, it digs into a lot of this sort of, the reasons why these sort of beliefs and these these cultural conditioning are in place is for a very good reason, and they definitely don't serve the human beings who are struggling with whatever coping mechanism they might might need. But this whole idea that's been perpetuated. COVID by the alcohol companies and the drink responsibly campaign, which is funded by the alcohol companies, which is basically to make it to be shameful to be questioning your relationship with alcohol. And you know that we all participate in that by saying things like, you know, there's two types of people, those that can drink and those that can't drink, and more than I would suggest perhaps any other area. Yeah, thanks, Kylie. I thought you right. More than perhaps any other area is the self flagellation, the self criticism, the deep harm to self, the deep battle with himself than in the relationship with alcohol, right? Because we've been so convinced to think that this part the problem that we have is something to be ashamed of and something that's, you know, only for these bad people that are over there and being judged as such, whereas, in actual fact, pretty much anybody, I mean, alcohol is an addictive substance, and anybody who drinks enough of it over enough time will become addicted to it. It has absolutely nothing to do with and, you know, there is an element of genetics to it, but again, it really is same as anything it's like, if you know, if somebody who doesn't have that genetic Yes, you might have a higher propensity to become addicted to alcohol if a certain set of circumstances come into play, but equally, if that same set of circumstances come into play for anybody, they will equally be as likely to become addicted to alcohol. And the main reason that people become, and I hesitate to use the word addictive, because it has such connotations. But you know, in reality, addiction is really when you, when you when you want to not do something, and you find it difficult not to like so you can feel compuls to do something to make you feel better. And then when you, when you when you want to stop you can't it's like, or you find it really, really, very, very difficult. So it can apply to anything. And it's very interesting, because when you listen to people like Gabon mate, which I know he can be a controversial figure, but his work in addiction is very, very good. And you know, he always says it's, you know, he never uses the words the substances in addiction, because it's not about substances. It's about coping mechanisms and the things that we use in order for us to escape the discomfort that we feel. And please feel free to ask me any questions if you want, as we go along this little route. But we have in our culture such ingrained kind of toxic. I even, you know, we talk in group about, you know, people saying to other people when they're saying, I'm going to take a break or I'm going to cut down my drinking. Oh, you don't need to do that. You don't have a problem. And it's just so unhelpful, because it's like, really, do we all have to wait until we're in the gutter? We've lost our houses, and we're, you know, our marriages are broken, and is that where we have to get to in order for us to start taking a look at stuff? Or can it just be that waking up at three o'clock in the morning feeling shame and being embarrassed by our behavior and our and, you know, and feeling like we're not, we're not at peace with ourselves and feeling like that, we're out of integrity with ourselves. Can that not be enough? But of course, you know what happens? Because as a group, we so want to be part of the tribe. You know this idea that people might judge us as having a problem and then being part of that group that's so ostracized and othered, you know, that prevents so many people taking a break or reducing their drinking because they don't want to be judged by other people, right? And it's all part of the same thing, and it feeds into fierce self compassion. And it feels into be, into being fiercely alcohol free, you know, because we talk about self compassion. So why is self compassion important? Self Compassion is important because it has such high rates of success. So we've all been brought up to believe that if something's wrong, if we want to change something, we need to kick ourselves up the ass. All of the science shows us that the opposite is true, right? So it shows us that actually, the way to change, create sustainable change, is through loving ourselves, you know? And I would say that if you speak to any alcohol coach, and I know I say this every time I come on and that you got to ask them, what's the reason why most people stay drinking,
Unknown Speaker 9:43
the answer would be because they feel that they're the problem.
Speaker 1 9:45
And we all know, well, I talk about it a lot, that the reason why human beings make themselves the problem is because then it feels like something they can control. It feels safer for them to be a problem, the problem rather than the. This, you know, potentially as children, it's a it's a belief most of us take on board, because it's easier to believe that we as a child of the problem than that our caregivers are not doing their job properly, or that the world is a really awful place sometimes and really shit things happen to people. So rather than that overwhelming belief for children, we choose to believe that we are the problem, and because if we believe that we are the problem, then it's within our control to fix it. And the problem comes with alcohol is that then we don't seek help, because we believe we're the problem. We're ashamed of being so because the society and big alcohol and the drink responsibility campaign have made us believe this myth, which is that there's only two type of people, those that can drink and those that can't drink, the dances and the Yeah, the haves and the have nots, right? Which is nonsense. And we all perpetuate that because we all start othering because we're like, I don't want to be part of the other group. So we all start othering and dehumanizing people with problematic alcohol use, and so why is Why is self compassion, passion so important? Because it's it's perfectionism and judgment and fear that keep us stuck drinking longer than we mean to be because thinking that we are the problem and administrating ourselves and flagellating ourselves for every screw up that we have is a complete distraction, and it's so harmful because of nervous system. Our nervous systems are stuck in a state of fight or flight, not just because of what's happened to us and being in the world that we live in, but because we've also made it a battleground inside our own bodies, right? So we've made it a battleground inside our own bodies. And so what the the difference is, instead of being this, because we know, you all know, right? I was talking about this in group last night in the amplitude experiment, we know that if somebody tells us not to do something and is mean to us, we'll run the other way, right? So you know, if we are telling ourselves not to do something because you're saying that we can't do something, we will automatically want to do the thing, right? Because we hate being told, because it's restrictive, it's our demand, and it deeply embeds the concept that actually we want to do the thing, which is why it's so important to start changing these perceptions, and when we can come to things with compassion rather than judgment, instead of getting our nervous system all activated and going into fight or flight because we're in danger from ourselves and potentially our view, because a lot of the time it's about protecting how we look to other people, even though we don't realize most of the time that it is. It's like, when we're in that state, we cannot make good decisions because our our brain is offline, right? Our cognitive brain is offline. So it's like, you know, when children are afraid, or they're scared, or, you know, for a lot of children who are struggling at school at the moment, you know, a lot of the a lot of the work that's being done to change the way that things happen is that it's about creating places of safety for children so that they want to be at school because it's a safe place for them to learn, rather than a place that they're going to get told off or shamed for, you know, not being able to do things in a certain way, or wearing the wrong socks, or being late, so, you know, all this kind of stuff. So we need our bodies in order to make good decisions. We need our bodies to be as regulated as they can be. Now, of course, we're not always going to be regulated, because shit happens, and sometimes we need to be dysregulated. And there is a place for that. There really is. And so this objective is never to be and this is part of the other problem is people think the objective is to be calm, the objective is to be regulated. The objective is to be happy. And the objective is to be none of those things. The objective is to be able to cope with all of those different you know, whether we're happy or sad, whether we're grieving or celebrating, is for Arnold, for those, for those emotions and the physical experience of those emotions, to feel safe in our bodies. So when we're being mean to ourselves and when we're being harsh with ourselves, and we'll be so much nicer to other people, because again, you know, the same thing we're born. And then people start making judgments about our same mean things to us, and we start to create this, this armor, this space suit of personality, you know, I even got to the point I was talking to a friend the other day and wondering whether actually, extroversion is a protective mechanism based on the fact that that's what we have been conditioned to believe that the society wants us to be, and so we all play. Out extraversion, and because it's we've been told it's what people want to be. We want, we want to be it too. So when we when we stopped drinking, we like, Oh, I really missed that part of me. I was so gregarious. And it's like, Actually, hold on a second. Let's look at whether that was really, actually you, or whether that was just alcohol, and also our societal conditioning, that that's how people acceptable people are, you know, and maybe it's time instead, to kind of reach back to the child that we were before we started to find, you know, different ways to make ourselves more acceptable, and start to encourage that person and let it be okay for that person to be in the world. Let it be okay for the slightly shy person, the person who doesn't know exactly what to say, the person who is rightly going into a room of strangers and thinking, this is a bit of a scary environment for me, but we've been so conditioned to thinking that we've all got to go in, in walking in life and soul of the party, welcoming everybody else at the expense of our own nervous system, and we drink to it in order for us to be to feel safer. I've been talking to clients this week talking about, you know, the reasons we put off. Put off, I don't want to stop drinking until x, y and z. And when you inquire about it, it starts off like, I don't want to stop drinking till my birthday. I don't want to stop drinking till this, that and the other. And it starts off because I don't want to miss out on the thing, and it's going to be a wonderful experience. And then when you dig into it's like, okay, so what would it be like for you if you went to that thing and you were alcohol free? And then you start to get the real story of why people are wanting to drink and they don't want to stop drinking before that thing. It's like, it could be other people's judgment of me. It could be, you know, I can't I don't find myself like a pleasant I don't enjoy my company. I think I'm boring. I don't want to be out in socially. I don't enjoy going out social, it could be all different reasons, right? And everybody's different, usually is a similar sort of theme. I don't want to miss out on the experience of community. I don't want to feel left out. There's a lot of that, you know, it usually comes back to sort of, I don't want to be on my own. I don't want to be left out. I don't want to be I don't want people to perceive me badly. But they all link into the same stuff. And so what not being compassionate does is it in the self flagellation. Oh my god. What's wrong with me? I can, you know? How come everybody else comparison? How come everybody else can do it? And why do we get comparison? We get comparison because of fear. Fear is there to keep us safe. Why do we compare ourselves with others? Because we think if we do and we judge ourselves harshly, then we'll be better. And then we and then, and then we'll finally get to the validation, and we'll get, finally get to the love that we're looking for outside of ourselves. So it all comes down to the same thing. We're looking for somebody to fill the hole, and it might be wine, who many of us just got to, you know, consider to be our best friend and or it might be other people. It might be whatever it is, right? But it's not coming from within, coming from outside. And we keep looking outside of ourselves, dancing so fucking hard, hoping someone's gonna go, it's okay. You can stop now. And the only person who's ever gonna do that for us is going to be us, because nobody else really cares enough, and I mean that in the kindest and nicest way, and nor should they. They've got their own shit going on, right?
Speaker 1 18:29
And I'm not saying that people shouldn't, you know, be nice to other people or anything else, but it's like this stuff comes from within. We heal our wounds so we are whole, and then we look outside. And so why do we need this? Because so many of us are sleeping through our lives at the moment, and we use alcohol to suppress the fact that we're having a bad time, and we don't talk about our bad times because we're not allowed to have them. And we've been and we and we drink them away because we've been not been able to we've not been taught how to hold them. We haven't been told how to hold them, because that's how our society has been conditioned. Because our parents didn't allow us to have our experiences. We had to push through and everything, you know, everything was about being compliant, and we were compliant, and we did the right thing and we were good so that we got the love right? So it's very, very evolutionary and even, and this isn't a blaming parents. None of this is about blame. It's just about our experience. And, you know, the blame doesn't go to the people, right? The blame goes to the society, the societal conditioning. That's things like, you know, if you love your children or you hold your children to go to sleep, you're Molly coddling them, and yet they won't grow up to be independent people when we know and the science has shown since the 1950s and even before that, that that's not true, that actually the most securely attached and the children who are most attuned to by the adults, are much more likely to be able to leave the nest. We. The security and the safety of knowing that they are loved unconditionally, right? And so this is really important, because what happens is, again, it's a bit like self flagellation, a bit like it's all about, oh my God, I want to bring my parents. It's all drama. And by drama, I don't mean, you know, looking down on it, but it's this sort of, it's a distraction from what's actually going on. What's actually going on is most of us are drinking to escape the fact that we're having a really hard time. We're not happy. We're in discomfort, and we don't know how to handle it. So part of learning how to handle it, we've got the somatic part. We've got learning how to be with ourselves in our bodies. We've got learning how to identify, and this is all really hard for some of us because of our, you know, from you know, for very good reasons, we are separated from our bodies. We are not in touch with our bodies. We're not in touch with our with nature, and we're very in our heads.
Unknown Speaker 20:58
And that's subject for another day. But, and
Speaker 1 21:03
I won't go, I am going to do a lot more on this, and I'm actually going to do a particular workshop in it, as part of I'm working with Philly, and I'm trying to remember, is it mark and Philly? Yeah, their functional medicine group. Going to go and do a talk on them. So if any of you are interested in that, check them out in a lot more detail. But we drink to suppress escape and numb our experience of life. We drink so that we can push through. We drink so that we can put up. And what tends to happen is we have all these gross colored glasses around alcohol and how it's this wonderful our best friend, the only non judgmental friend that we have. Yes, thanks, Kylie, I appreciate you. We have all this, this stuff going on. But in reality, we we get caught all up in this and in the drama of self flagellation. We get caught up in the drama of blaming our parents. But none of this stuff is actually useful. What's useful for us is to look at what's happening, to understand what we're doing, to look at the data behind the reasons why we're doing things and and taking a bit of time to do that like literally starting a five minute grounding practice. Because what we do when we ground, what we do when we do a body scan, is we just start to notice, right? And the most important thing is we start to show ourselves that we give a shit how we're feeling. And so it doesn't matter if you can't feel anything. Most of the time I can't feel anything from the chin down. This is why it's so important for me and for other people. I think that we start working on these interceptive practice, mindfulness practices, things that connect us to our body, things that connect us to our heart, to our soul. And we need that because we need to be able to be on the fucking ball like what we all know, what's going on in the world right now, and it's really, really scary, and it would be a very easy thing to drink our way through, but instead, what I suggest to you, what we need to do is to really, really, really learn how to regulate our nervous systems and keep ourselves as grounded, keep ourselves in the present moment, stop catastrophizing, love ourselves and up our people fiercely. But the fierce part of self compassion is the is so you've got sort of two parts. You've got the sort of Yin and the Yan of self compassion, and the Yin is like loving, nurturing, comforting, soothing, validating, right? So it's all the things that we get taught as parents. I remember when I was training to be tuning into teens facilitator. We know that emotional attuning, it's developed by the gotmans and heaps of other people before that. If we validate our kids emotions. If we sit next to them, we don't offer solutions. We hold them in their distress. We get them to name what's happening for them, where they feeling it, and then we give them the knowledge. And this is the big bit, the knowledge of somebody who's been through it before, that it will end, and we can hold them through it, not to dismiss it. And which same if you hold this, it'll pass look for the gift. It's not about that. It's about actually sitting with them and saying, hey, hey, I'm with you. I see you. It must feel really hard to be going through that right now. Yeah, it must feel really hard. Where do you feel it? Do you feel it anyway? Can you say, are you feeling your body? If you don't, that's totally fine as well. How's your breath, how's your chest, how's your heartbeat. And then we bring in some mindfulness. Where do you feel your feet? You know, there's all these different techniques that we can do, and I've got millions and millions of them which I would teach, but it's also that kind of whole. Putting them through and the knowledge that this will pass. Because what happens if we've never been taught that, which is what most adults walk around with, is if I feel this discomfort, which was made bad, particularly for women, and anger, most of us were not allowed to be angry, or we saw really, really scary bursts of anger that we didn't understand, didn't make any sense, came from nowhere seemed really huge in comparison to the situation, and so we became terrified of them. So we've conditioned ourselves suppress our anger, suppress our anger, yeah, and so so many of us are walking around with suppressed anger, and we're drinking because we don't know how to express our anger, because we've been told expressing our anger is bad, wrong. So we feel these emotions and we don't know what to do with them, and we think, if we lean into them, which is actually what we need to do, that they'll take us over. We'll be carried away with them, and there'll be no end. It will just we'll just dissolve into this huge, big emotional puddle. It's like chaotic and again, anxiety means that we try and control this stuff, so we stuff it down and we smile, and we go, No, everything's fine, and when it's not. And so sort of the ying part is that we hold ourselves through that, and then the Yang part is the other part. This is really important, and particularly for us pupil pleasers, because, you know, we tend to put everybody else first. We find self compassion really hard anyway, because we need to blame ourselves because of our trauma. But the Yang part is, is, is. This is the protective part. This is the mama bear part, and this is the boundaries. This is how we, you know, we motivate ourselves. We get the fire in our belly. We get cross with the fact that people, like the big alcohol companies and like the drink responsibly campaign have duped us all into thinking that the problems with us, when, in actual fact, they're just marketing the hell out of us. And they've convinced us all that drinking is cooled and rebellious, when actually it's controlling us and making us ignore all the stuff that's going on in our lives. Nurse, this is getting that bit of fire in our belly, getting a bit of, you know, no, you know, no, we're not going to do that anymore, and stating our needs, you know, this is developing stuff most of us don't want to have the difficult conversations. Half the reason we drink. Don't want to have a difficult conversation with somebody. We don't want to, we don't want the confrontation, because we've been taught, haven't we, you know, nice girls don't get mad, and often, we haven't been taught how to get mad either. So we tend to get mad. And then we when we are mad, we but we, we shame ourselves. And I know I do that all the time. It's such a part of condition, I have to keep holding myself. Hey, hey, I know why you're feeling shame now it's not because you did anything wrong. You're feeling shame because you've been conditioned not to ask for what you need. You've been conditioned not to state your needs. You've been conditioned to just put up and shut up. You've been conditioned to think that the people in charge have got your best interests at heart, but they haven't. And so now, if you're going to keep yourself safe and your family safe, you have got to be fierce, and we have got to be fierce. And so it's this two parts of self compassion. It's not only you know, it's caring enough about ourselves to say, I'm exhausted, I need to rest now. It's caring enough about ourselves to say, Fuck you. Mr. Counselor, telling me, Mr. School Counselor, asking me how my self compassion is and how my self care is without providing the supports that I need in order for me, my children to be safe at school. You know, it's, you know, putting the, there's that whole self care thing, putting the onus on the person who's in struggle, as if that's another fucking thing that they're supposed to do. And it's like, Oh, how's yourself? Oh, well, that must be the problem. Must be the mother's self care. That must be what's broken, you know, all this nonsense. So we need to get fierce. We need to call this shit out, and we need to start taking action, because what is happening in the world right now, if we let this Harriet happen, we are fucked. And I am literally saying that not to scare us, but we need alcohol free, clear headed women who are not being driven by their trauma. We need women out here when female assigned at birth, men, any gender, it doesn't matter. But what we don't need is a is women drinking to make it all go away, because that's not going to happen. And there's a bunch of people out there who don't have our best interests in heart and who will keep getting us to turn on each other. Turn on poor little trans kids. Turn on anybody. Turn on people of different color, turn on anybody. Rather than notice that they're manipulating us for their own cash, and it's not going to do any of us anyhow, any good. And I remember listening, I listened to Liz Gilbert recently. I remember listening to Liz Gilbert back in COVID, and she said, more than any time in the world, we need women, clear headed women. Right now, we need. And by women, I mean whatever gender you identify with, but people who are fighting for women's rights. By treasure, it was so nice to have you on here. Thank you so much. I
Speaker 2 30:32
so appreciated your company. Lovely to lovely to be with you as well. Kylie,
Unknown Speaker 30:38
but we need that right?
Speaker 1 30:40
We cannot. We cannot let this shit just just happen. We can't let this shit happen. We need our Mama Bear, and we need to do it for ourselves. We need to do it for our kids. So first of all, we need to develop self compassion for ourselves, because it makes such a big difference. The stats on the efficacy rates from self compassion, it's extraordinary, and it's and it's and it's not hard, right? It's taking a moment to notice yourself. Every day, ask yourself, How am I feeling? You know, if my feeling had a voice, what would it say? What does it need me to know? And then when somebody's coming in, and they're doing something like, for example, for me, if somebody's in my house and they are behaving in a way that's unacceptable for me and is upsetting the nervous systems of my children, they don't get to do that. I don't let them do that, and I don't take my kids in to see professionals that I don't know, and I don't know what their attitudes are going to be anymore. So I've been burnt so many times. I just don't do that because I'm a fierce mom and bear, and I will continue to be a fierce woman bear, but I'm a FISMA and bear out myself as well. It's, you know, it's and it's and I'm not perfect. None of us are. And this, again, is part of it. It's the human as we know that self compassion, right? Is, you know, having that compassion and realizing that we're not alone, realizing that we're just a human being, and everybody's so many other people going through what we're going through, feeling the way we're feeling we're not alone. It's human and just, you know, because the worry that we have with self compassion is we think that self compassion is going to mean that it's like this whole idea of original sin. We think that self compassion is going to mean that we are going to, you know, be lazy, be you know, go back to bad habits, you know, sit on the floor, drink. I mean, I was laughing in my group saying, sit on the floor drinking wine and smoking cigarettes to our hearts content, but actually that doesn't happen, and it's a bit like kids in school. It's like that kids do well when they can. Human beings do well when they can, and the way that both kids and adults do well is when they're an environment that feels safe. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we cannot use our brains when we don't feel safe, right? So fear, self, compassion and living fiercely alcohol free, is all part of the same thing. It's creating the conditions. And first of all, we start with ourselves, and then we by starting with ourselves, we show our children, we model that it's okay, that that that is a way that they don't have to push through beyond their limitations, that they can stop, that they can rest, that they can honor their own needs, that they can ask for what they want. They can say no to people if they don't want to do something. Yeah, and this is where we start, and then that becomes intergenerational, yeah. And we, we just it. Being with stuff can be hard, right? But it's it's real. The other way is not real. The other way is just pressing the eject button. We weren't put here to do that. We were put here to learn how to love ourselves, enough to sit with ourselves in our distress, enough to care enough to give ourselves some time of day, enough to make our needs more important than the needs of the rest of the world, or the comfort of the rest of the world, or The emotional experience of the rest of the world. And we mama bears, we need this because we are all running around in fear. We will talk about our busy brains. Our busy brains is all about fear. It's all about being afraid. We've got to be on high alert all the time, just in case, scanning the room for danger. We can't be like that. We need to be able to get ourselves down so that when we actually have danger which is coming potentially, we have the energy to fight. Because when women stop drinking and they stop doing all this, we are so fucking tired because we've been. Using it to push through, push down so press for so long. All right, my friends, it's been a pleasure being with you. Lots of love. Take care. You.
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