Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome to this week's episode of midlife AF. And this week we're going to be talking about the concept of flow over force. And often I talk in my groups about the idea of stopping drinking, being about love over fear, and the traditional models of stopping drinking are much more based on fear, restriction, constriction, and they don't work for a lot of people. Definitely don't work for people like myself, who are neurodivergent. I'm autistic. My kids are autistic and ADHD. We're both. We're all ADHD as well. And also, for people who've had any kind of trauma, I
Unknown Speaker 0:50
I'll give you an example so
Speaker 1 0:54
a sort of more neurotypical, or probably not even neurotypical, because I think this doesn't work for anybody, but we have been this is what we've been indoctrinated to believe. Is the way to stop drinking or to stop doing anything, or to change a habit. We've been taught that, you know, I'll give you an example. When I go to this particular exercise class that I go to and there's a lady who's quite new there. She works for quite neurotypical kind of ways. Or what I would suggest is more that more kind of punitive. And so if somebody arrives late to the class, she makes them say their name and do say the exercise that the whole group have to do. And if she repeat, if that person repeats an exercise that somebody else has already, has already used as the sort of introductory exercise. Then everybody has to do a burpee, right? So it's all in good fun, but in reality, there's no way that that person knows what the other people have done. So potentially, she then takes the responsibility and shame of making the other people do an exercise that's perceived to be worse, which is kind of like and the idea being that if you, if they shame you, you won't do it again. And that's very much like our traditional education model. It's all very punitive, right? If I, if I tell you, if you if you do something wrong, if you're not to standard, I will shame and criticize you and punish you. And what we know from neuroscience is this is very counterintuitive, and what it also does, particularly to kind of a lot of brains who don't really like being controlled, most of us, right So, and we don't, and we don't like that hierarchy imbalance of somebody kind of being in charge of us and telling us what to do, it brings out, for those of us who neurodivergent or who've had in trauma, what It can do is it makes us feel unsafe,
Unknown Speaker 3:04
because, in reality, it is a bit unsafe. It's a little bit scary
Speaker 1 3:09
to be somewhat humiliated and ashamed in front of other people. No, this is a silly kind of a silly example, but I was just trying to give an example of something that I've witnessed recently, and I was thinking, gosh, if that happened to me, I think I'd have to go up to her and just say, Hey, I'm not really comfortable with that. You know, I'm pretty fucking glad that I got here at all.
Unknown Speaker 3:32
And we talked about this, about this
Speaker 1 3:33
a lot in in neurodivergent circles around school, and how, you know, shaming kids for being late, when often it's it's very rarely a child that's the issue. And even if it is, the child, shaming somebody or making somebody feel bad for not getting something, getting somewhere on time is only going to make them not want to to be there. You know, not want to, not want to not not want to try, because if you're late, then you're going to be punished.
Unknown Speaker 4:04
Whereas my thoughts are always, it's better to be
Unknown Speaker 4:06
there than not be there at all. Right? And
Speaker 1 4:10
so it's this kind of attitude. And again, I'll use exercise as an example, and I was talking to my group about this yesterday, and one of the things that's really different, and what we do in my programs, and I've just finished the five day alcohol virtual retreat, which was absolutely brilliant. The people in it were wonderful. We got really deep. And I think it was a really I think it was really good experience for the people who were in it got some good feedback. And I know my my method goes against everything that we've been taught to believe is the way of the world. And you know,
Unknown Speaker 4:53
being incredibly critical of ourselves
Speaker 1 4:55
is one of the reasons most of us drink. Right? Might be that we have a narrative in our head, a very critical narrative. It might be that it's a feeling. And some of us don't have a narrative in our it might just be that we experience emotion. And a lot of us, you know, a lot of the traditional kind of
Unknown Speaker 5:15
ways of working,
Speaker 1 5:17
very much about going into battle. And when we go into battle with something particularly inside ourselves, if we're at war inside ourselves, we are in a state of fight or flight or state of shutdown freeze.
Unknown Speaker 5:34
And
Unknown Speaker 5:36
when people get so cross with themselves, because it's like, Well,
Speaker 1 5:41
excuse me. They get so crossed with themselves because they're like, I should know better, right? I know it's bad for me, and I keep doing it, and it's like, well, yeah, you keep doing it because it doesn't feel safe to not do it. At the moment, not doing the behavior feels more unsafe than doing it. So until we can change that sense of safety in ourself, around staying with ourselves when we're having difficulty, when we're feeling tired, you know, when we're when we're when we're when we're really unhappy, when we're lonely, when we're sad, when we're usually a lot of the stuff that we're reacting to with a as a meaning that we're making in our self critical way about ourselves, because we've got this protective part that thinks has been taught, you know, for generations, that, you know, Spare the rod, spoil the child, right?
Unknown Speaker 6:38
So my way of working is very different to that, and
Speaker 1 6:46
basically comes down to two parts, which is the first part is understanding what our triggers are, why we want to drink, and Working on the beliefs that we have about ourselves, society as a whole, and our beliefs about alcohol. So we work on that, and in the Aussie, Great Aussie alcohol experiment, which starts on the second of June, which is next Monday, we meet for 30 days. You don't have to come every day, but you're more than welcome to so we have live coaching for half an hour or half an hour to an hour, depending on the size of the group and the needs. You don't have to stay for all of that. Do? You don't have to have your cameras on. You don't have to be dressed. You I mean, you obviously have to have your camera on. But you know what? I mean, you don't have to be, you know, you can be in your gym, jams in bed, and I'm very relaxed. I never, very rarely, wear makeup. I might put a bit of lippy on for something, but most of the time, I just show up as I am. And I and I hope to encourage other people to do the same. So we do that. But the other piece, and I think is probably the most important piece, is that we learn how to be with ourselves when we're having a a big emotional experience and and we also so so we practice, Get Growing our interceptive awareness. And it's really important, I think, for women because, well, for female assigned at birth humans, and also neurodivergent humans, particularly, but because of masking, because of having to suppress, and this, you know, this goes back into generationally, having to suppress our needs in order to be safe in the world. And you know that can can be, you know that we have dieted because we want our bodies to look a certain way, because they we want to be perceived as being X, Y and Z, or we want to perceive ourselves as being x, y, z, this thing that can fit into this, this idea that the world has of what An acceptable human being is like and so when we've restricted our appetite, when we've restricted our you know, because most of us go through life, masking quite strongly. Masking is very tiring, not saying what we feel, not saying how we are, not saying what we want, not not allowing ourselves to experience any difficult emotions, because we haven't been taught how to and so there's an awful lot of suppressing and masking that goes on. And I think alcohol is a primary source of of masking. It allows us not just to make things easier socially emotionally, but it also allows us to ignore our nervous system and push through beyond our capability, and it gives us permission. Permission to stop doing when we cannot give ourselves permission because it feels unsafe for us to do so. Anyway, the last couple of weeks, I've been meeting
Unknown Speaker 10:12
I've been meeting lots of different people. It's been really interesting.
Speaker 1 10:16
But II recently went to lunch with some neurodiverse, neurodivergent mums of neurodivergent kids.
Unknown Speaker 10:24
And what became very, very clear
Speaker 1 10:28
to me was the incredible need for this work in my community of neurodivergent mums of neurodivergent kids, because often the proportion of look, it's relevant for dads and and people who are not assigned female at birth as well, but it tends to be the majority of
Unknown Speaker 10:57
is very, very common that
Unknown Speaker 11:01
neurodivergent mums. Of neurodivergent kids end up on their own
Speaker 1 11:10
for various different reasons. So they end up kind of holding
Unknown Speaker 11:15
and again, there's of there are men in that situation as well,
Speaker 1 11:21
another gender identifications. But primarily it seems to be that it kind of sits with the mum, when, when stuff, when stuff gets hard and and the mum has no off button, because they're constantly being needed to co regulate and support and look after and advocate for their children. And I get this completely because I'm in that situation at myself at the moment, and
Unknown Speaker 11:55
there is no off button,
Speaker 1 11:58
and there's such a difference sometimes in our
Unknown Speaker 12:04
kind of gender,
Speaker 1 12:12
our gender kind of roles, Our societal gender roles in that, you know,
Unknown Speaker 12:22
I notice that
Speaker 1 12:28
men can walk away, and I don't think that women feel that they can, and
Unknown Speaker 12:33
I'm sure that will be very controversial, and people will
Unknown Speaker 12:37
discredit me for it, but it's been my experience and my
Speaker 1 12:43
what I've watched happen. And so what happens is there's also this sort of sense of, I don't have any choice. And I know, you know, we all have a choice, up to an extent, but to a certain extent as well, that that sort of implies a level of of privilege,
Unknown Speaker 13:04
but I'm seeing more and more
Unknown Speaker 13:08
beautiful, intelligent women
Speaker 1 13:12
needing to step down from their careers in order to stay at home and look after their kids because their emotional needs are such and they're not safe at school. And I think this community really is goes to drinking so much because it feels like the way to get space when there's no other way. It feels like the way to turn off when no one's letting you turn off. It feels like the way that you can be present without actually having to be present, that you can get some space when there's no space to be heard.
Speaker 1 13:57
Yeah, it's difficult one, but that's why I think it's really a really big deal. Because for me, I know as a mum of neurodivergent children, how hard it is on your nervous system, and I know for me, I'm often incredibly depleted, because, like a lot of neurodivergent mums, I I sleep with my kids. I'm I'm at their beck and call 24/7 because I want to give them the opportunity to have that really secure attachment so that as supports that we build around them enable them to
Unknown Speaker 14:46
enable them to be
Speaker 1 14:48
the human, the human that they are in a safe way that has an impact. And that's that's not a problem, that it has an impact. It. It does. And I think the way that our society tricks us into thinking that alcohol is the solution to our problems, when it is a solution, I you know it is the solution to our problems. We it's not when we look at it, the the the lens through which I see it is that
Speaker 1 15:28
it alcohol isn't the problem. It's the solution to the problem. But what the one of the problems is that we've been sold alcohol is the solution to the problem,
Unknown Speaker 15:38
and that our society
Speaker 1 15:40
really, really, really encouraged by the alcohol companies, has been
Unknown Speaker 15:48
tricked into to believing that
Speaker 1 15:53
alcohol is the Savior, alcohol is the and alcohol is a lightweight, fun thing and doesn't have the impact that it does and the impact that it does, yes, it has a whole load of health impacts, but more than anything, the biggest impact for me was it's my disconnection from myself. And, you know, whatever we might think, and this isn't to be critical, because, you know, I have all of my own shit as well. I never sit there looking down my nose at anybody. But if we are drinking to escape, we're not present. And it's, how do we be present? The question isn't, isn't, how do we escape? And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be escaped, but it's, how do we make it bearable to live in the world? Now, some of that bearability is going to come out down to the, you know, the things around us, the changes that we need to make to our environment, the, you know, noticing one of the things we talk about in my groups, we need, we need to start realizing that we do actually have needs, and we need to start feeling, not stop feeling shame for having needs.
Unknown Speaker 17:09
And so that's part of the work we do.
Speaker 1 17:13
But yeah, so basically, it works out that we, you kind of do we do the 30 day alcohol experiment, which is videos and some teachings around the science, the neuroscience, which are great, but the where the rubber hits the road is in the evening. It's at seven o'clock most evenings, apart from Monday, which is at eight. And we get together on Zoom, and we go through a grounding, a introduction to how to be with ourselves when we are feeling distressed, and an introduction to tools around interceptive awareness, and introduction to the fact that not all brains are alike, understanding a little bit about alexithymia where we can't it's difficult for us to name our emotions or connect the feeling that we have with an experience, and just doing some work around that, and then doing that in a really safe way, slow way, gently but really adding that self compassion and teaching people to notice when those negative voices or that negative feelings are coming in, shaming, blaming, being at war, but coming to the from this place of of this gentle choice, choice being you, and the work that I do, I I call it the third way you matter, method. And it's about, you know, we we think there's only two ways to cope with alcohol. This is what we've been told by the world, what we've been told by the alcohol industry, what we've been told by the recovery movement. We've been told that there is only
Unknown Speaker 18:46
there is only sorry, I'm
Speaker 1 18:52
finding it difficult because somebody's texted me and I need to get back to them, which means I need to finish. It's so annoying, but the two ways are so just because human right? So the two ways are that we stop drinking and have shit time and feel rubbish about it and wish we could drink, but know that we can't, because there's only two types of people, the people that can, the people that can't. And if you're in the can't, then you're a bit shit, and you can feel a bit bad about yourself and just always be looking through that window at the people who can, but kind of wishing you wishing you were. That's one way. The other way is the we carry on drinking as we are everything, pretending it's fine, and knowing in our soul that it's not. But the third way offers a different thing, and it's not about fixing ourselves. It's not about coming from the broken paradigm. It's about coming from a place of choice, about coming from a place of of wanting to stay with yourself, of wanting to learn how to be with yourself in distress, so that you can model that for the people around you, so that you can learn to have your experience of of living and not have have to suppress it all the time and be. It and go around in the world, going, I'm fine. I'm fine, masked up to the nines and absolutely exhausted and on your knees. It's a different way, very, very different way. It's about training a puppy, not slaying a dragon. It's very much about learning you know what your needs are. It's about learning how to how to how to identify, how to experience felt sense, how to link them to what might be going on with you, what meaning you might be making in your beliefs. And it's also then, it's also about then going through each and every single one of those beliefs that we think. And so it's very much about coming from the perspective of it's leaning into, you know, what is it that you want from drinking? What is it that you feel that you're going to get from it, and let's work out how we can create alchemy, which is what we do in the program the alchemy so that you can create that for yourself without having to use a substance that's harming you, disconnecting you from yourself and disconnecting you from the people that you love. So if you're interested, we start on the second of June. I'll be doing a free masterclass this Wednesday about the five reasons why taking a break from alcohol is effortless, and it really is about stepping into flow. It's about making a decision. It's about and I'll teach you all of this as part of it. So come along join us. The link is in the show notes. Alright, my lovelies, take very good care of yourselves.
Unknown Speaker 21:15
Lots of love. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
