In this episode:
I talk about the physical warning signs I ignored while drinking, including my experience with alcoholic liver disease, and the stories I told myself to keep drinking. I share how sobriety forced me to actually listen to my body instead of overriding it with fear, minimization, or control.
Resources:
Watch Jessica’s TEDx Talk – What’s Success Without Self-Worth
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone, welcome back to Bottomless is Sober. I needed a little break, so it is good to be back here with you all.
Jessica Dueñas: Today, I want to talk about this message that I feel like so many of us grew up with, and the message basically sounds like this, right? If you have enough to be grateful for, you don’t get to be sad.
Jessica Dueñas: Or, maybe on the flip side of it, it might be…
Jessica Dueñas: you’re depressed, what do you have to be depressed for? You have a job, you have a roof over your head, your basic needs are met.
Jessica Dueñas: Right? Something along those lines. And I want to start here, because…
Jessica Dueñas: Again, I feel like this belief is so common, and it’s really harmful, especially if you are someone in recovery. So today, we’re talking about gratitude, pain, and honestly, the lie that says that we can only feel one of them at a time.
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Jessica Dueñas: So, where the message began for me…
Jessica Dueñas: I’m a first-generation American. My mother, at one point, she was undocumented, she was from Costa Rica, and my father was from Cuba.
Jessica Dueñas: And I share that not to kind of, like, make it all about where they’re from, but to give you all context as
Jessica Dueñas: to regard to the home that I grew up in, right? So, in my house, pretty much emotions, if they weren’t some sort of an expression of joy, they were pretty much shut down. I’ll never forget, there was this moment in high school where I just kept crying. Like, for some reason, my dad was home.
Jessica Dueñas: and my mom was working, and I couldn’t just get over this heavy sadness that was coming over me. And honestly, it was probably the beginning of me struggling with my mental health.
Jessica Dueñas: But I just didn’t have language for that yet, right? And my dad looked at me, and he was very genuinely concerned. And he was like, que paso, you know, what happened?
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Jessica Dueñas: And when I told them that I was just sad.
Jessica Dueñas: he really took it to heart. You know, he, you know, he had responded to me in Spanish, but basically, you know, saying, like, I’ve sacrificed so much for you to have everything I didn’t have in Cuba. You have a house, you have clothes, you do well in school, you’re safe. What more could you want? And…
Jessica Dueñas: at that moment, I learned something very clearly and very quickly, that my range of emotions, they were not meant to be shared.
Jessica Dueñas: And for a long time, especially earlier on in my sobriety, I would blame my parents for a lot of my struggles with drinking. I mean, just listen to old episodes of this podcast, and you will definitely see, some of that perspective and that blame still there, right?
Jessica Dueñas: Today, both of them have transitioned.
Jessica Dueñas: And the more that I reflect, the more that I can also hold compassion for them, right? When I think about where they came from and the context in which they lived, they were coming out of survival mode, right? They were living in places and experiencing circumstances where expressing emotions wasn’t
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Jessica Dueñas: wasn’t a luxury they could even access, because that wasn’t what they needed to survive. My father, when he asked for permission to leave from Cuba, from the Cuban government, this was in the late 60s.
Jessica Dueñas: as some sort of a punishment, he would explain to me, he was sent from Havana, being a city boy, right, into Oriente, which is, like, the kind of, like, the countryside in Cuba, to go cut sugar cane without pay for 2 years. And then he was released to go to the U.S.
Jessica Dueñas: What that means to me is that my dad didn’t have the space to be talking about his feelings, because he had to make sure that he was cutting sugar cane and cutting it without cutting himself, right? My mother, on the flip side, was a single mother with several children, and she could barely put food on the table, and had to go from place to place, finding places to stay with her and her kids.
Jessica Dueñas: Right? And then she made the decision to come to the U.S,
Jessica Dueñas: leave my older siblings behind, and again, work really hard to just find any dollar she could to put food on the table back in Costa Rica. She did not have the space to be talking about her emotions.
Jessica Dueñas: the way that I am privileged enough to do so, right? For both of my parents, they did not have time to pause and reflect. There was a lot of work that they had to do, like, literal labor.
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Jessica Dueñas: And they had to find safety, they had to maintain that safety, and there was pretty much a never-ending pressure to keep moving. The concept of paid time off.
Jessica Dueñas: non-existent for my parents, right? Just embedded days off, no, a day off meant a day without pay. There was no sick leave for them, right? And so.
Jessica Dueñas: In their context, emotions were definitely a luxury, right?
Jessica Dueñas: And… The flip side of that, though, come to me, come to my generation, is that
Jessica Dueñas: I have to recognize and express my emotions. It’s not a luxury, right? For me, it’s an absolute survival necessity. I have to. If I don’t express my emotions, they’re not going to magically disappear.
Jessica Dueñas: Right? Essentially, for me, unexpressed emotions, they go underground, they’re gonna come out sideways, and they’re gonna find alcohol, or they’re gonna find some other behavior, or some other distraction with which to come out.
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Jessica Dueñas: And that was a big cycle that I had to break, and that was a big table that I had to turn, essentially.
Jessica Dueñas: Now, I do want to pause for a second and recognize that gratitude
Jessica Dueñas: It is backed by research, right? And gratitude practices, they do support mental health. And I always teach my clients, my coaching clients, that gratitude is a practice to help maintain sobriety.
Jessica Dueñas: However… When gratitude is used to shut someone down.
Jessica Dueñas: and say, no, no, no, your pain doesn’t matter because you have all of this that you need to be grateful for. When people do that.
Jessica Dueñas: Harm is caused, right?
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Jessica Dueñas: Someone is silenced. Someone feels alone, someone feels isolated.
Jessica Dueñas: Gratitude does support healing. Silence doesn’t. And what we need to understand is that gratitude and pain, they can absolutely coexist.
Jessica Dueñas: You’ll always hear me saying, two things can be true at once, and this is definitely one of them. I can say the truth about how I feel, and I can still be grateful.
Jessica Dueñas: It means that I’m being honest, it means that I’m finding ways to stay regulated, and it means that I’m figuring out a way to stay sober.
Jessica Dueñas: So, I’ll leave you with this reflection question, which is…
Jessica Dueñas: Take a minute and think, what emotions did you learn that were not allowed growing up? And how might honoring those emotions today be a part of your healing journey? You don’t have to choose between gratitude and your truth. You’re definitely allowed to hold both spaces.
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Jessica Dueñas: And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs permission to feel what they need to feel.
Jessica Dueñas: And if you’re navigating sobriety, recovery, emotional healing, and you are looking for additional support in the new year, I am opening back up to taking on new clients, so feel free to check out my website, bottomless sober.com.
Jessica Dueñas: And, hopefully I’ll see you. Take care.
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