Something in the comments. Hello, hello. That's difficult to do. Sorry, guys. I'm just playing around with my technology. So
I'm trying to do things on phone and on the laptop at the same time while in the car park
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tweet tweet.
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Welcome, everyone, how are you?
So glad to be with you. I'm playing around a little bit, trying to have my phone and the
laptop going at the same time, and it's a little bit trickier haven't quite got it sorted properly. See if I can do it like that. Okay, I just have to live with it as it is.
Okay, so I wanted to come on today and talk about the question, which is kind of a theme of my month, that month of May, which is what if it was easy. It was very interesting, I was talking to one of my clients this morning, about the weight, the heavy weight of not drinking, you know how we've been conditioned to believe that it's hard that it's going to be hard to not drink, we've been conditioned to believe that it's going to be miserable. We've been conditioned to believe that we're going to feel restricted, that we're going to be bored, that we're not going to have any fun. So all of these beliefs are just that they're just beliefs, they're conditions that we have been conditioned to believe. And they keep us stuck. Because what we believe we look for, and we look for all around us. And what we find is what we seek, so if we think it's going to be hard it will be if we think it's going to be easy, it will be it's all about perception. And that's what I'm going to teach in my master class, which is on Wednesday, the 22nd of May, I hope you will jog on and join us on Zoom, I will put the link actually the link in is in my bio. And I will also put the link in the comments under,
under here.
But it's a really interesting thing, we think that we start off life we're born. And gradually, we get imprinted with information. And a lot of that information, particularly around things like creating change. we internalize the idea that if we're going to do something, it's gonna be hard. We're gonna have to pull our socks up, we're gonna have to really knuckle down, you know, we're going into battle with the wine which and we're craving is going to be awful. And it's just this whole negativity, you know, even the words that we use around stopping drinking, you know, so bad is a heap of meaning in that word, right. So we've got the word sober, we've also got get the idea of giving up. So giving up means that we're giving up something that's a value to us a terrible, awful, it's been giving up that amazing elixir of life. So we've got giving up.
We've got, what other words
are there around it. I don't know, absolute periods of abstinence. So just trying to think of them. But whatever it is, we're basically saying this is going to be shit. And this, my experience was not that. And I think one of the things that I found most exciting when I started so I've been I was on this journey for quite a long time doing, you know, the dry July, so October, and every single time. They felt awful. They felt like I was missing out. Hey, Deann
Good to see you.
I felt like I was missing out. They felt like I was having a really hard time. And, you know, the more we tell ourselves something, the more it is. And what I want to teach in the webinar that I have on the 22nd of May, is I want to help explain how it just doesn't have to be that way at all. It really doesn't. And how we enter into things can change entirely AR experience. And so in the webinar will reframe so many different things that, you know, we really come into this as if we're training a puppy, rather than slaying a dragon. I think any. Anytime we are going into battle with ourselves, something's not going to work, it's not going to work, you know, we can we can go into resistance, we can go into battle. And eventually our willpower will, will, will evade us because what will happen is something will happen that triggers us, and we'll go into fight or flight. And when we're in fight or flight, our monkey unconscious is in charge. And we make decisions based on our conditioning, as opposed to the thinking part of our brain. And that can mean that we make decisions that aren't necessarily what we would want to do. And then we afterwards we berate ourselves. Like, what was I thinking? I know that I and we were laughing last night in group and saying, Look, I don't know, it's not a laughable matter, but it's never the fear that stops us doing the thing, right. It's never the fear, you know, it's not the fear of cancer that stops us drinking. It's not the fear of it's not those things that stops us drinking, what stops us drinking, or enables us to reduce our drinking, is understanding that we want something. So we move we move. Life is always about what we're moving towards and moving away from, right. And so we move towards things that feel good, not things that feel awful. And so, but a lot of the time, and this is one of the things I'm going to really challenge in the webinar, is we've been conditioned to think that, you know, something's going to be hard. For it to be worthwhile. We've been conditioned to believe that stopping drinking is a deprivation. And in fact, the opposite is true. Taking a break from drinking, it doesn't have to be like this at all, it really doesn't. Yes, we might find in the first couple of days, we're getting over for most people. And again, just to reiterate, you know, there is it, there is some danger in stopping drinking. So it's really important that if you are going to do that, and you are, you do feel like you're drinking a little bit more than, you know, what might be considered to be, you know, the sort of recommended amount of alcohol, you know, it's worth touching in with your GP, letting them know that you're going to do that and just keeping an eye on yourself, because it isn't, you know, it doesn't completely innocuous. But for most people, there's Yes, there will be some physical effects initially, you know, you might not sleep as well, or you might be really tired all the time, you might you might get some headaches, you know, some people get some headaches. But generally, and you might feel a bit grumpy. But generally, once you get through the first few days, it's really emotional. So our most of the connection that we have to alcohol is emotional. It's because we believe it gives us something. And that's why we do it. You know, we don't do things for no reasons. And I always say, you know, with alcohol, everything that we do we do for a reason. And usually it's a very good reason, right? It's a very good reason. So we were talking last night in my group around perception, so how other people perceive us. And often we are as human beings in this world, we are desperately trying to create a perception of ourselves so that we fit in, we be accepted by the world. And that is in neurodivergent terms, we would consider that to be a mask. So it's what we do in order to fit into the world. And what we do know is that masking is exhausting. So masking is very, very tiring for us. And when we're tired, that's exactly when we make decisions that perhaps we wouldn't be making if we were less tired. So we might be likely to have a drink if we didn't want to have a drink when we're tired. And a lot of that can be around creating this perception of what we want the world to think of us. So sometimes when we are stopping drinking or taking a break from drinking or reducing drinking, we do actually have to look at the reasons why we're drinking in the first place. So yeah, we can come on and we can do five days and we can or we can do 30 days and we can you know we can stop drinking, we can put drinking, drink up in the corner and pretend it's not there and use willpower. But that's not going to move us towards the freedom that we truly desire. And the freedom that we truly desire is not being controlled by our impulses. unconscious impulses. What we truly desire is to be able to be in flow, to not be in restriction to not be trying to control. And that's what I want to show in my webinar, my master class on the 22nd of May, is all about how do we how do we make this easy? You know, what if it was easy? What would it look like? So what makes what what in our minds? Let's ask this question, and please feel free to, you know, share your, your experience and your perspective on this. But what makes stopping drinking hard for you what makes taking a break hard for you. And I knew for me was the idea that I couldn't do something. It was the idea that I was being controlled, which is really funny and ironic. And often we do a lot of work around turning around some of these beliefs in these perceptions. Because again, it's about the way that we look at the world, isn't it? So if we believe that somehow rather, stopping drinking is this shirt that we should be doing in order to be healthier, and it's then it starts to sit with all the other shirts now, shoulds aren't things that we've come up with ourselves. shoulds are what we believe society needs us to be in order for us to fit in and be acceptable in the world. And so they always feel very, very uncomfortable. And what's really funny about stopping drinking is generally people are trying to cut down on drinking, because they know in their heart of hearts, that it's not serving them. They know in their heart of hearts, that, you know, life potentially would be better if they drank less than they do. And that's not usually to do with the cancer thing. It's not usually to do with any of those things. It's usually to do with I think it's a feeling of integration. Because what happens when we drink is that we Hi, Jen, good to see you. Hope you well. Jennifer, sorry, I know it's not Jen, nice to see you lovely. But one of these things when we're drinking is that we get into sort of this argument in ourselves, you know, we've got the, what some people would call the wine, which I don't anyone who works with me knows that I call it the wine savior. Hello, because it's always trying to keep us safe. It's always trying to keep us safe from discomfort, right. So when we have a craving, it's because we haven't, it's a message to us saying there's something that we're at, something's uncomfortable for us. Something feels uncomfortable, and we need to numb control, suppress it, we need to distance ourselves from it a little bit, we need to get a little bit of space from it. That's why we have a we have a craving because we're feeling discomfort. And that's why I always refer to the part of us that comes in and tries to get us to drink in those circumstances as our wine savior. And again, with my work. It's always about gentle loving kindness, it's never about going into battle. So you know, if the Savior comes along, it's not about I've got to ignore him and go for a run and distract myself, distract myself distract myself, whilst that can be handy in some circumstances. I know, one of my greatest teachers, and when I first started taking breaks from alcohol that started to work and feel really good. He was he said you are where you put your attention. And I think that's a really true, that's really true you are where you put your attention, you know, so if you're paying all your attention to not drinking or to trying to stop drinking, that's where you're gonna retried to stop drinking. If you put your attention on doing something fun and exciting and something that you want to do, then, you know, that's where you're going to start putting your attention. It doesn't take long usually for you to move from one place to another. But what's really interesting is in most traditional, and this is what I'm going to teach you in my master class. And in my five Hi, Marcia, good to see you, as always very lovely. I'm trying to go from Instagram to Facebook, so you have to excuse me while I wobble my head from sides.
might look a little bit silly.
What was I saying? Remember now like I've gone on, I've gone on a little tangent, but I think we were talking about cravings. We were talking about the wine which and you know, as I said, I like prefer to call him the wine savior, because he's saving us from discomfort. And what we find that we have is that we'll have the part of us that's going the should part the judgment part. I shouldn't be drinking. And then we've got the part of us that's trying to save us from discomfort the why and savior and they're having this great big argument. And so many of my clients say to me, you know, it's I don't anyone cares about the drinking, I just want this argument inside of me to stop. And that's when I'm talking about truth and integration. And the thing that makes stopping drinking easy, or taking a break from drinking or reducing drinking easy, is to get to the truth, to shine a light on the stuff. So if I'm feeling discomfort, why am I feeling discomfort, and actually, instead of avoiding it, and trying to get some distance from it, through drinking, what I actually need to do is spend some time with it and allow it to be and allow myself to feel it, to understand where it's coming from, to understand its source, to integrate it, so that I can let it pass through me. And there's so many different things. And this whole idea of perception is really, really interesting. Again, we were talking about this in group, you know, a lot of the things that we do, we do in order to be perceived a certain way, you know, we want to be respected, we want to be thought of as good as reliable as you know, somebody who's not going to let the side down who's always going to be there, you know, and any situation whereby it might be that we're having to quite often we find we're having to push ourselves in order to perform these roles that we think we need to perform in order to be accepted in society in order to be loved. Because at the end of the day, most of the time, we're looking to be loved unconditionally. That's what we're looking for. That's why we do this stuff. You know, we when we drinking to fit in, because we want to drink like normal people, even though we know that drinking is harmful to us and hurts our souls. We do it because the urge to want to fit in and want to belong is so strong. And the reason we want to fit in and we want to belong, is because we want to be loved. And we haven't yet learned that. It's an internal job. We haven't yet learned that. I'm talking in my book group this week, we were talking about, you know, what is it? What's a tree's purpose? What's a tree's purpose. And everyone was psychiatry's purpose grew into oxygenate. And then the answer is no, the
trees purpose is to be a tree.
And why is that? Because, and this is where it's this, our purpose isn't what we do. Our purpose isn't what we create our purposes and tidy house or skinny body. It's none of those things. Our purpose is we are our purpose, this amazing human being that was born, the true side of us, not the mask that we're trying to portray, to show the world that we're okay. Not this being like everybody else, not this adhering to the standards of behavior, which is killing us or like, if more of us came online and did us, you know, silly dance and wore no makeup rather than, you know, coming online and having you know, our photo shoots and us like we'd all be living a real life. And we'd all be seeing reality and go and you know what, they're just like me, instead of going oh my god, look, they're all fancy and I'm not anti shit. You know? It's, it's this, all this pretending that goes on is so harmful to us, is pretending this performing. And nine times out of 10 when we're trying to pretend to perform, we can only do it for so long. Because actually what we're not doing when we're pretending and we're performing is we're not looking after ourselves. We're not loving ourselves, we're not caring about ourselves. We're not nurturing ourselves. We're putting everybody else's opinion of us ahead of our own self. And so we're pushing through a lot of the time we're doing things that we don't necessarily want to do. We're really really tired. And a lot of the time we don't even realize it. Yeah. So one of the things that I talk about a lot is you know, this whole concept of trying and I remember hearing Gabor Ma Tei talking about the concept of trying and he says you know, you can't try to stand up you either stand up or you don't stand up. And I always love to quote the wonderful Yoda with this you know there's no try only do and this is the same with and this is part of no and I'll give really really clear indications of exactly what to do in the master class but part of it is this while we are in resistance while we are trying, while we are coming from a place of lack were trying is almost like it's a bit like a maybe it's like you know, if you're going to when you're drinking I always say to people, if you're not stopping drinking, make the decision. Make a decision. You either are drinking or you're not drinking. I'm either not drinking or I am drinking. I'm not maybe if I'm a maybe I'm a yes. Yeah, if I'm trying, I'm not succeeding. Yeah. It's like an the clarity of just doing something is so different to the, the enmeshment. The friction of trying. I know for me like reflecting back on my children in the mornings when we are struggling with school. Because as you guys, many of you know, I have two autistic children with ADHD, one of whom, or at least both of them actually really struggle with getting up and out to school in the morning. One of them's had chronic fatigue, but the exhaustion of trying, and the energy of trying. It's why most people fail at these things. Because it's so exhausting. We haven't even but God, they've just got the idea of trying. Whereas there's a clarity to just doing, like, I'm in it. I'm in it, I'm doing it, I've made the decision. It's not this heavy weight of burden of expectation of shirts I'm carrying around with me, it's clear, I'm leaning in, I'm being authentic, it's truthful. It's truthful that I, you know, if I have a big emotional, I'm going to be with it, I'm going to experience it, I'm going to let it happen, I'm going to lean into it, I'm not going to resist it. Because what we resist persists. So it's like we say, you know, just because you don't feel an emotion, because you choose to numb and suppress it by using alcohol doesn't mean that the emotion is not there doesn't mean that the emotion is not going to come back, it's always there, nothing happens, all you're doing is pressing pause. And so one of the greatest things about taking a break from alcohol is not only do you get all the Amazing Health Benefits of taking a break from alcohol, and giving your body a bit of a break from all of that processing of toxins that it has to do, whenever you have a dream is you also you get to do some of this work, you know, because part of this journey is is choosing us. In fact, it's probably the most important part is choosing to love yourself unconditionally, and choosing to put yourself first. And by that I mean so if you're tired, not, you know, going and over committing yourself to something, you know, not saying Oh, yeah, no problem. I'll do the bake sale as well. You know, because that gives you endorphins, he productivity gives us endorphins gives us you know we get some dopamine from productivity. That's why so many of us get caught in the busyness trap busyness. Hello, Melanie, how are you? Good to see you. So many of us get caught in the busyness trap. And one of the things that you can find with people when we're stopping drinking is often we're just we're just fill our time with busyness. And many of us as human beings do that anyway. Because if we fill our time with busyness, then we don't have to think we don't have to be with ourselves. We don't have to experience what it's like to be in an emotion, what it's like to be part of what what's going on for us in our lives. And I mean, we all none of us are perfect, right? We all do this all the time. Yeah. How many of us don't do this right? Try and fill up our time I do. I'm terrible for it. I have to literally be like super strict with myself and say, no, no, when we're walking today, we're actually going to leave our phone behind. And we're going to stop picking up this and we're going to stop thinking about that. And we're going to actually try and be with how I'm feeling today because it's tough, right? I don't know about you guys, but certainly I know in the neurodivergent world, you know, feelings, feeling our feelings is not the easiest thing. And many of us have issues with alexithymia. And my brains just gone blank interoceptive awareness. I mean, I certainly do, I have always been on the sort of less the lesser side of that, you know, I've always struggled to know, you know, when I need to go to the loo because I'm hyper focused on something. So I'll be like, you know, and I've struggled to to know when I'm supposed to eat and all that kind of stuff that really I struggled, my interoceptive awareness is low. But there are great ways that we can work on that and great ways that we can encourage ourselves to increase that. And then the other side of the coin is, of course that we have, you know, people, many of us have an incredibly, incredibly massive experience of the world. So when we have an emotion, it completely overwhelms us is huge. Now, some of us have a huge, you know, have high sensory input. You know, some of us can even hear electricity. I mean, this is the stuff that goes on with us. But I particularly think for women, when we have children often, you know, that as well just takes up space, you know, suddenly or things that we were doing to hold ourselves together. You know, we could do and it was just us and suddenly we've got these other humans and they relying on us and we can't take a break and we can't go and put our headphones on sit in the corner. We've got to just keep going. And that's when alcohol starts to come in. Yeah. When we're having to keep going. We're having to was through, you know, so many times you come in door from work if you work externally from home. And you know, it'll be like, Oh, I've got all these chores to do. I've got to tidy the house, I've got to make the lunches, I've got to get everyone to do them to where's my glass of wine. And that's why I always say we don't drink for no reason we drink for very good reasons. We drink for very good reasons. And so then it's about unpicking some of that stuff and doing the work on Well, what needs to change in our lives. But as you say, Yeah, I hear you. I've developed a list of non negotiables that I aim to do each and every day. These practices help me negotiate everything else. Yes, exactly. Breathing and hydration. I know, right? On the same and the mind can wax and wane as well. And not picking up alcohol. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes, indeed. It's so interesting, isn't it? Like I can go through like, I have periods where I'm like, so on it with my things that I do every day, like I'm walking, and I'm gonna swim every day. And that's what I do. And I'm like, Yeah, I read it, and I'm really on it. And then I'll have like, a week where I'm like, what's going on? That's the other thing. I just want to encourage, you know, we're all human, we're all doing our best. And it was funny, I was talking with my group last night, we were talking about data points, which is what I call when you have a slip up with alcohol. And, you know, so many different methodologies really like no, you know, we don't talk about that. But in the way that I work with people, and for me, it's always about Yes, we do talk about everything. So we were never sort of avoiding talking about things. If there's, if we're avoiding talking about things, if we're avoiding focusing on things, there's usually a reason why, and it's something to be looked at. So, you know, if we have a data point, as far as I'm concerned, a data point is just something we haven't learned how to do yet. We haven't learned how to be with ourselves through an experience yet. It's safer for us still, sometimes to pick up a drink than it is to be with the experience that we would be numbing, suppressing or avoiding, which then gives us information. Okay, well, we've got work to do there. So this is where it's so important not to be bracing ourselves, beating ourselves up being an asshole to ourselves. Because we're just human beings.
We're just trying, we're just trying to go I got there I am using the word. But yeah, so I just wanted to come on have a bit of a chat about this, I think it's a fascinating subject. But I truly do believe that is an easy way to drink less, it doesn't have to be hard. It is all conditioning. And I can show you, I 100% find this out founders. For me, it was a number of different changes of perspective. Like Melanie Jane was saying there, you know, putting some structure into our lives, making sure that we've got those things in our lives that help us stay more regulated, but also looking into you know, when we are reacting, what's going on for us, we were talking in group about, you know, having a bit of road rage and saying, you know, what was going on there? And we were talking about, you know, the idea of being disrespected. And for all of us, you know, there's always a reason why we have trigger. And so when you're disrespected, what does it mean about you to be disrespected, it means I'm XY and Z. So those are the triggers. So then we start going, and once we shine a light on these things, we start looking at them. That's why it's so important that we don't stay in this avoiding ignoring, pretending something doesn't exist. And that's why in my groups, it's always about, we're totally talking about alcohol, we're fully in it. We're working on cravings, we're leaning into them, we're not fighting them, we're not ignoring them. We're not pretending they don't happen. Because if they're there, they're there for a reason. So I invite you to come and join me I've got a free masterclass Wednesday, the 22nd of May. How to Drink less, the easy way. See you there. Take care, my lovelies, thank you for everyone who's joined me today. I really appreciate it. And I'm gonna go back to the gym now. Lots of love. Take care bye. She says I'm trying to go to the gym at least once a week. Just end that live and that beautiful
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