INTRO
This week's midlife AF is all about why taking a break and stopping drinking is the most radical act of self care that you can give yourself. In a month where you may be being encouraged, despite your flagging libido to put out, don some itchy undies. After a meal and a card with a bunch of carnations grabbed as an afterthought from the servo, I am going to encourage you to let 2023 be the year you choose yourself for Valentine's Day.
If you're a woman in midlife whose intuition is telling you that giving booze the elbow might be the next right move, then Midlife AF is the podcast for you. Join counsellor Psychotherapist, this naked mind and grey area drinking alcohol coach Emma Gilmore for a weekly natter about parenting, quirky teens, menopause, relationships and navigating this thing called midlife alcohol free. If you're feeling that life could be so much more, that you're sick and tired of doing all the things for everyone else, if your intuition is waving her arms manically at you saying it could all be so much easier if we didn't have to keep drinking, come with me. Together we'll find our group without booze everybody. And welcome to Midlife AF.
MAIN EPISODE
00:01:40
This week I've been talking to heaps of clients and they have been sharing with me why living outwards and feeling obligated to drink or embarrassed about not drinking in friendship groups is keeping them stuck. And I want to go into all the reasons that might come up and how radical self love and having your own back is always the answer.
00:02:13
So let's talk about this. I have clients who come from all different places. So some of my clients are in the early stages. They just want to change their drinking behaviour. They want to take a small break and then see if they can go back to moderating. And some people can.
00:02:43
I always say to clients who want to do that, that moderating is actually quite hard. And chemically you are fighting against your body because of the fact that alcohol is an addictive substance to anybody. And chemically, if you have it on a more than sort of once every three weeks kind of regularity, you are going to be struggling against it chemically trying to make you want more. And so often people internalise and make themselves bad because they can't stop at one or two drinks and often that's what I would say. Most clients come to me wanting they'll be like I just want to. I just want to be able to drink like normal people.
00:03:41
I just want to be able to have one or two drinks. Now. That's what everybody wants.
00:03:51
It's incredibly hard to do because the way that alcohol works with you chemically is it's an addictive substance. And so it's trying to get and it works on all sorts of parts of the brain. The reward system. So your body starts to think that it needs it to stay alive, and that's not people who are in a ditch have lost their families, are drinking out of a bottle in a paper bag. That's everybody.
00:04:28
And so we internalise and we make ourselves bad. I can't drink like normal people. There is no drinking like normal people. There is no normal.
00:04:40
And there's so much in society that's set up to make people think that there's something wrong with them if they can't control alcohol in that way, in that sort of mirage of normality of being able to drink one or two glasses of wine. Now some people can drink one or two glasses of wine but they have to have very very strong guardrails in place and a lot of people who have that have because they don't like to lose control and so their fear of losing control keeps them in the two drink zone. Also some people have had alcoholic parents that might keep them in there, strict religious beliefs that might keep them in there.
00:05:43
But it's definitely a willpower thing because unless you're drinking less than one drink every three weeks in which case you're not drinking enough for the addictive cycle to take place. So you can do it but it's not freedom and you are battling willpower. And willpower as we know, is a finite resource and what tends to happen is people's drinking kind of creeps up and then they have to go back. It's a bit like dieting, you do it for a bit, you're like yeah, I'm doing really well and then something happens and you sort of fall off the wagon, so to speak. And that's why things like AA can be problematic even though they work for a lot of people but because they do that it's like the devil doing push ups outside your door is one of the things they say and you could never drink again and if you have one drink you'll be right back to the start.
00:06:39
And that sort of fear comes from a place of fear deprivation and the approach that all research shows is the most effective in creating sustainable change is not deprivation. It's coming from a place of abundance, coming from a place of compassion and kindness and non-judgment and awareness, observation, inquiry, removing, making ourselves bad. Because when we make ourselves bad we put ourselves in a very vulnerable place. And often I find that the reasons are that people feel obligated to drink in social situations and for some clients of mine it can be a real problem, some the other way around, some it happens quite often.
00:07:52
And then after they've had a really good stint, they'll come home and they might drink then and we can talk about that another day. So that's sort of a slightly different thing. Mainly people who drink, I would say my experience is that highly sensitive people are neurodiverse, highly sensitive, very attuned to their environment. They take on the vibes of the people around them and that can be a really, really good thing in many cases but it can also be really really hard. And whether that comes from trauma, neurodiversity, sensitivity, it doesn't matter. But most people I know who drink have that as part of their makeup.
00:08:41
And often that attunement to other people comes from some kind of big or little trauma. In our backgrounds, we might have many people I work with who have the situation whereby somebody rejected them as a kid, so they were rejected from a friendship group. That definitely happened to me. I lost my best friend. I've told you guys this before when I was eleven she decided that she didn't want to be my friend anymore, she wanted to be somebody else's.
00:09:15
And I never really understood why and it left me feeling like there was something wrong with me and that's a very common tale in people who have stopped drinking.
00:09:29
Other things that can happen is if you come from a big family. And often people find that they've struggled with resource scarcity and needing to not want to be missing out on things. And often as well it can come from a place of neglect if our parents not because they were bad or any other reason, but if they weren't able to give us what we needed in times of crisis say if we were bullied at school or something else or they just weren't emotionally available for us or all sorts of different reasons. But we can feel very alone. When we were young we could feel very scared and alone.
00:10:20
And so as much as human beings connection is incredibly important and incredibly healing.
00:10:30
When you have come from a place where you have been hurt or felt excluded or been hurt from an attachment perspective with your parents as much as regular human beings who haven't been through that, connection is important.
00:11:04
And being good, being polite, being liked, not letting people down, giving outwards paper, placing all of the things that are so common in drinkers is fear. Is that that person may be left alone. And that is a terrifying thing for a little child.
00:11:36
And often in our dysregulation, we are little children. And so the fear of being rejected and the fear of being alone and the fear of being unloved sounds really heavy. But it can be especially if you think if there's an internalised “I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough. There's something wrong with me.”
00:12:06
I have to be a certain way in order for people to like me and if I am not like that I will be rejected and I will be alone. And going back to the limbic system, the old part of the brain, I will die. And I talked about this before because as human beings we haven't evolved at the rate that the world around us has evolved. So our brain is still thinking that we're a nomadic tribe of people who are wandering the earth in our family packs and being excluded from the gang means that we don't survive. And so our brain goes into complete fight or flight over the idea of being different.
00:13:04
And especially which is the stuff that we can get really mad about because getting angry about stuff can be really helpful in this journey. We get angry about the way that we're being manipulated by the big alcohol companies, by the government who gets huge taxes from alcohol. This whole idea of drinking responsibly, which is just such bullshit where they're putting all the onus on the individuals and taking no responsibility themselves for getting people drinking addictive, you know, one of the most addictive substances in the world and one of the most harmful substances in the world. And I'm sure I've told you this before, but the Imperial College London did a study and it's recently, I think recently opiates have become more dangerous. I think just recently, but until recently, alcohol was considered the most dangerous substance in the world.
00:14:10
Addictive substance in the world because of the damage that it does, not just to the human beings, but to the families and to society as a whole. And because it's so widespread.
00:14:24
And that's why it's really frustrating that we are given this big lie about normal people being able to control their drinking, normal people being able to have this to drink thing. It's just not true. It's so much more the exception than the rule that people can manage their drinking in that way. And it's certainly not what I personally think is my preferred route, which is not drinking at all because you can get rid of that internal battle all the time. And like I said, it is something that is doable and I do work with clients on it, but I always say to them you can do this, but it is going to be hard.
00:15:17
And it's not freedom. It's not freedom because you're ingesting a toxic addictive substance, And your body's reaction to that makeup is such that it will make you want to drink more and you will become tolerant to it and want to drink more on a regular basis and it will start having an impact on you and what you do and how you experience the world. And so the reason I wanted to talk to this at the beginning of February with the lead up to Valentine's Day is this whole idea of us suppressing our own needs and putting everybody else's needs first. And I just wanted to talk about, first of all, why that can be such a big deal for people, why being different, doing something against the grain.
00:16:21
And I know that one of my favourite quotes is Mark Twain. “If you find yourself on the side of the majority you need to kind of be a bit worried.”
00:16:36
But that's not for people who've got trauma in their background and for people who are very it might not even be conscious. But that sort of concept of being liked, being part of a group can be more important. It's like this whole idea that Gabon Marte talks about of attachment over authenticity, the need to belong the need to belong to a parent, to a group, to a tribe is why we take on all the affectations that we take on in terms of creating a personality that fits in with the mod and imbibing addictive substances and just anything that makes us feel like we're part of the gang. And I know in Brene Brown's beautiful book, Atlas of the Harp she talks about the difference between fitting in and belonging. And to me, this journey is a journey back to authenticity, is a journey back to a place where you're not broken.
00:17:43
There's nothing wrong with you. You are whole. You belong just because you are. You are worthy just because you are. And it's about building back that relationship with yourself so that is more important.
00:18:00
And you get to a place, I think, and particularly in Midlife where you've been nurturing the hell out of everybody. Your oestrogen is on its way out. Your nurturing ability is also on its way out and you just don't have the capacity to do it anymore. And you're finding more and more women are finding themselves in burnout because they're using alcohol to allow them to push on through their exhaustion, allow them to tolerate the intolerable, to put up with people not treating them as they should, to put up with having to do things that they don't want to do. And alcohol and hormones keep us doing that for a really long time.
00:18:59
And women wonder why when they stop drinking or take a break from drinking they're so fucking exhausted. It's not just because your body is recovering from years of putting a toxic substance and mucking around with your whole physiology but it's also because you've been working your ass off for years and years and years and suddenly you're starting to feel what's actually happening in your world and what's actually going on for you. And this is why for me, taking a break from or reducing your alcohol consumption, becoming aware of what you're drinking or stopping drinking entirely is a radical act of self compassion and self love. And we and particularly, I think, Australians and I think British as well but find self love incredibly hard and I know some us people do as well. I think it's very difficult because, again, societally, as females we are brought up to think that being selfish and not being, you know, doing all of the things, keeping a tidy house, having all the stuff. Rest is selfish, rest is lazy.
00:20:28
And that is how this patriarchal capitalist society gets us working. But it's leading for so many of us now to having breakdowns and burnouts. Our kids are struggling. My kids are struggling with going to school. Anyone who's neurodiverse. That's why one of the reasons why neurodiverse people drink so much is this extreme awareness.
00:20:58
This extreme sensory overload is having to escape from this fact that we are actually different. And how difficult standing up for the difference is for us and how difficult it is to come to terms with the idea that choosing ourselves doesn't mean that we're going to end up alone. And it's so interesting because actually from my experiences, the opposite is true. The opposite is true. Because once I started choosing myself and I think there comes a point where it gets to a point where you're sort of like, I'm either going to learn how to do this or I'm going to grit my teeth.
00:21:53
And tighten my put up my pelvic floor and grit my way through the rest of this life absolutely freaking exhausted and resentful. Or I'm going to learn to do this, and I'm going to learn to and my needs are going to become a priority. Because it's by that that we actually teach our kids how to love themselves as well and how to look after themselves. And my hope is that if we can empower more women to take care of themselves, to do the things that fill their cup, to take breaks, to prioritise their time for themselves so that they're not so exhausted that they're having to drink to manage their nervous systems. That's so often what's happened, because people are like, oh, you're not fun unless you're drinking.
00:22:58
Well, fuck you. I don't have to be fun for you. I'm not a performing fucking seal.
00:23:09
And we internalise it. And I hear that so often it's like, oh, I just wanted to be able to be fun and just carry on and do all the things and have the party and have the people around. And I know how hard that can be. That happens in my house as well. Often we have people around.
00:23:24
And for me, that's not my comfort zone. I prefer to go places, then I can leave when I want. But it's about this starting to have the difficult conversation, starting to put yourself first and learning how to do it in a non reactive way. And that's why in a lot of my programs, particularly my Be The Lighthouse program, we talk a lot about having your own back and how to have those conversations so that you are treating yourself as if you met her. So that you and whoever else you're talking to in the world are coming from a place of same saying as opposed to a place where one person is holding the other in contempt or we hold ourselves in contempt.
00:24:08
And I know for me, I held myself in contempt for a long time and it broke my heart, it broke my soul, it broke my spirit. And it's really interesting because even though I felt like I was having to acquiesce all the time and this comes up in so much work, the research that I've done around intuitive eating, the research that I've done around alcohol. The research that I've done around eating disorders, suppression of one's needs is one of the most damaging things that we can do for our mental and physical health. And so this is why choosing ourselves is a radical act of self compassion, including not putting toxic substances in our body and allowing ourselves to feel the pain of that suppression and finding a way to change it, be that there may be many different options for that. And in some ways we can't change those things and we have to make serious big decisions.
00:25:31
But it does come to a point in most women's lives, I think, where it has to be, it's either me, I'm either going down or I'm going to start looking after myself. And by looking after ourselves, we show our kids that that's what can be done. We show our partners and our friends how to treat us, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, that it's okay for us to put boundaries in, and the people who give a shit about us will still be there, and the people that don't are fair weather friends. And I know this is hard when you are trying to hold on to people because you think if you don't have them, you'll be alone. But believe me when I tell you, you won't be.
00:26:22
And being on your own as a whole person who loves themselves is a downside better than being in company where you are constantly holding yourself or being helped in contempt. And so I really want you guys to think about 2023 as the year that you choose yourself, because this is what it's all about, choosing yourself. I choose me. I choose to be substance free. I choose to go to ecstatic dance.
00:26:59
I could choose to swim in the sea. I choose to go for walks. I prioritise my health. I prioritise my wellbeing, I prioritise my relationships where I spend my time. And I don't do everything perfectly.
00:27:15
Sometimes I become a gremlin. Sometimes I don't clean my teeth. Sometimes I'm in my pyjamas for four days. Sometimes I just stay in bed because that's the right thing to do. But I prioritise myself because I show my kids that by prioritising me, they can prioritise themselves.
00:27:36
And I teach the people around me how it's acceptable to interact with me. Now, as I said, far, far away from perfect. But this is the work that we do in my programs. And I got some cool stuff coming up. My great Ollie alcohol experiment is launching this February, and so we are going to be opening the doors to that on the 20 February 1 March start.
00:28:13
It's such a cool program. We get a relatively small group of women in midlife and we do daily coaching on Zoom and we really get into beliefs. So that's what we work on. So it's like all the reasons that you think you like to drink, that's where your limiting beliefs around alcohol are. And that's what we work on in the group.
00:28:35
It's powerful, it's emotional, it's community, it's joyful. And doing an experiment, 30 day experiment, is so much fun. And it totally changes the narrative around stopping drinking being something awful that you're deprived of missing out on. And it celebrates the fact that it's the absolute most beautiful thing you can ever do for yourself. And it can be joyful and wonderful and hard, but that's life, right?
00:29:06
All right, on that note, I'll let you guys go. Have beautiful days. Let me know, if you can, what you're going to be doing. Send me an email to [email protected].
00:29:19
I'm interested to know how you got to choose yourself in 2023.
Just before you go. I'm running a three day virtual retreat between the 21st and 23 February. It's called change Your Relationship With Alcohol in Just Three Days without Stopping Drinking. Honestly, you've got nothing to lose. Here’s what's included: you've got daily live coaching from me, a private Facebook community to connect with others, in depth transformational content, and some work examining your beliefs around alcohol, the things that are keeping you stuck, the things that will help you find freedom.
00:30:08
There will be accountability and daily reflections. All of this for just $7. Don't forget to sign up. The details are in the show Notes or on my website, www.hoperisingcoaching.com. See you there.
