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In this episode:

This episode is a testament to the fact that the stories we tell ourselves are not just stories; they’re the foundations of our reality. As I share my experiences of transition from heavy drinking to sobriety, you’ll learn how storytelling can be the key to unlocking the chains of addiction and setting you on a course toward self-discovery and true connection.

Through my experiences and a powerful excerpt from Brianna Weiss’s The Pivot Year, we navigate the complex terrain of asking for help, the fear of being a burden, and the importance of reaching out.

Resources:

Book Mentioned – The Pivot Year, by Brianna Wiest

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

00:18 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey, everyone, for today’s episode I wanted to talk about storytelling. It is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I would not be alive and sober today if it weren’t for the fact that I decided to open up. Of course, my version of opening up is an extreme version of opening up. I don’t expect anyone to dive into storytelling by telling their story in a newspaper, right. But connecting to our stories, even if it’s just on the basic level of identifying what is real and what is not real, can be really, really helpful in terms of just navigating decision-making and also freeing ourselves from a lot of painful shit that we put ourselves through. We’ve been talking about it a lot as well in our work in the Luckiest Club. I’m currently teaching I’m not teaching it, my bad I am helping with facilitating small group conversations in the sober life course happening at the luckiest club and we’ve been talking about storytelling. So it’s just, it’s really fresh on my mind, like, obviously, in my bottomless sober offerings, right, like, we can write our story. We can dive into books to make sense of our stories, or we can go through life coaching and one-on-one and talk about our stories Right, and so I just wanted to talk about it in this episode. So I’m going to open it up with a quick reading from Brianna Weiss, the Pivot Year.

01:37
I highly recommend this book. If you have not picked it up, please do. She is wise beyond her years and really just every page has a really, really powerful reflection. So this is from entry 208, and this is what she wrote. You either see endings or, within them, new beginnings. You either see that you’re living the days your younger self once dreamt of, or you’re still waiting on something more. You either see a storm that disrupts your path or one that corrects your course. You either see the hours as long and thankless, or life is brief and precious. You either see the mysterious unknown or an endless realm of possibility. There is what you experience and then there is the story you tell yourself about it. Over time, that story becomes the truth you carry and the other details fade in the distance Over time.

02:38
How you write the narrative determines how you experience reality, and that’s huge, right, like that is heavy and huge and powerful, and I wanted to talk about that, especially with regard to the idea of asking for help and connecting with other people, because one of the things that I feel like I’ve noticed a lot of folks talking about lately is that they really feel like they’re a burden when they’re struggling with something and they need to ask for help Right. And there’s just so many stories that we tell ourselves to block us from contacting somebody, from picking up the damn phone and either sending a text message or just calling or sending a voice note Right. Like there’s so many things that we tell ourselves to keep us isolated and alone and continuing to use maladaptive strategies to cope with the feelings and half the time it’s probably alcohol, but other things too right. And so the next time that you tell yourself, oh, I’m bothering them, I want you to think about maybe, maybe you’re not right, like. I’ll give an example I have a childhood best friend and you know when I was struggling in my addiction, when I got to a really hard point of struggling, you know I don’t even know what the hell was happening half the time. I’ll be honest with you, but you know there were years before my drinking got to the point of me drinking a fifth a night when I could have reached out to her. Right, I could have said hey, I’m feeling lonely, hey, I am feeling frustrated as hell at something going on here. There are so many times that I could have just reached out and been like, hey, do you have some space to talk to me? And I didn’t do that, right? And so if that’s you right, like, instead of telling yourself that by calling, you’re inconveniencing someone, right? Especially if this is a someone who knows that you are on a healing journey, right, if this is someone that you have told that you are working on your sobriety, why wouldn’t you reach out to them? They’re probably hoping that you do so before you tell yourself that you. But they can’t help you if you don’t tell them that you need support. The people that love us. They are not mind readers and they don’t have these tracking devices on them that notify them when you are having a hard time. That’s not their job to figure out. It’s their job to be there for you if you give them the opportunity to do so, right? So again, let’s remember that nobody here is a mind reader. You are not a mind reader and neither are the people who love you and are cheering you on. So if you tell somebody that you’re working on something and you want their support for accountability, use their phone number right. Don’t tell yourself that you’re an inconvenience. Use their phone number right, don’t tell yourself that you’re an inconvenience.

05:48
The other thing that sometimes comes up too is folks will assume and this would happen to me when my sister was. My nieces were younger at the beginning of my struggle and I never wanted to tell my sister that I was having a hard time. Right In my mind I was making up the story that she was too busy with her daughters to worry about me and in a right In my mind I was making up the story that she was too busy with her daughters to worry about me. You know, and in a sense, like my sister and I have a big age gap and I kind of feel like I was really her first experimental child. You know, my, my sister was definitely a mother figure for me and she did that with no problem while I was growing up. So why would she suddenly not want to be there for me now that I’m a woman, right? But in my mind I told myself that she had moved on from caring for me and now had to put her energy into my nieces. And here’s the thing I’m sure she was busy plenty of times. She is a super involved mom, and especially when my nieces were still at home, of course she was like going to any of their activities, et cetera. But you know what, what I didn’t stop to think about was the fact that my sister was also a grown woman who could have told me hey Jess, I can’t talk to you right now. Can I give you a call back later? Or hey, jess, can we make sure to talk tomorrow? Right now my hands are full, you know, et cetera.

06:58
I never gave her that chance. I never gave her the chance to speak up for herself, right Um she? I know how much it hurt her. Now that I’m sober and we’ve talked about it, I know how much it hurt her that I never went to her for help. It really devastated her, especially because I let my problems escalate to the point, as you all know, that I was in and out of rehabs, right Um? Hospitalizations, car accidents, et cetera. So for her to have seen her little sister escalate to that point without having been given an opportunity to even step in and help.

07:33
That was really hard for her and that was really unfair of me to do that to her, because I assumed I told myself the story. I convinced myself that she was too busy being a mom. Well, you know, women aren’t only mothers. Women are also sisters and daughters and friends, right, like we are many things. We’re not just a mom and I just I didn’t give that opportunity to practice being like the big sister that she loves doing, right? And so the next time that you tell yourself that your loved one is too busy with something to take your call, without you even trying to call or ask by text, like, hey, do you have a second? You know, stop and reframe it Right, and like, tell yourself that your you know, friends, sister, loved one, they’re grown and they can tell you if they can’t talk to you. Don’t, don’t make that assumption for them, Don’t speak for them.

08:26
And you know, like, the last example that I was thinking about, too, is is when I would go to meetings, right, and I would get all these numbers, and this was specifically like I would say like in 2020, when I was like really struggling and going to. At that time, I would go to 12-step programs and you know, people were always giving me their phone numbers, a lot of people I was not into. I was definitely not going to call them. But there were a few people who genuinely felt warm and fuzzy and like safe people. They definitely didn’t activate like my creep factor, so I could have called them Right, but I would start to tell myself like, oh no, I’m bothering them, I’m not going to call them. Mind you, they sat there in a meeting with a huge smile on their face, giving me their phone number and literally saying hey, call me anytime, anytime you need anything, call me Right. Like they’re literally giving me the blueprint for how to connect with them and I’m like, no, they don’t know what they’re talking about, they don’t want to talk to me, I’m not going to bother them.

09:26
Right, and these stories that we tell ourselves, they’re so powerful because they feel so true, they feel so rational in our bodies. But of course, it’s like our brain is always going to want to connect the dots in a way that makes sense to us, to also keep us in our comfort zone, right? So if continuing to drink is in your comfort zone, your brain is going to do every single thing possible to make you not call the people who are going to hold you accountable and support you in sobriety. To hold you accountable and support you in sobriety, it’s just, it’s the way that we are. It’s basically, I feel like it’s like the mental law of inertia, right, the body in motion stays in motion while the person drinking stays drinking. That’s what they’re going to want to continue to do, and we have to do something to break that inertia of alcohol, right?

10:11
And so again, the next time someone in a meeting space or in a community space of any kind gives you their phone number and they’re like hey, please call me, please text me, I would love to connect with you, go ahead and do so, right? Like? Ask yourself the question am I a mind reader? How do I like? What evidence do I have that I’m bothering the person who asked me to call them? Right, you’ll realize that you have no evidence. There is no proof because you’re just making it up in your head, but it sounds and feels real because it’s coming from your brain. So you know like you’re, you’re not suddenly a telepath, and I think that that’s so important to remember. And so if you didn’t get anything out of this. I just hope that you walk away from listening to this podcast episode and processing the fact that, one, you are not an inconvenience and two, you are not a bother. Right, you will encounter difficult times. Welcome to reality.

11:10
Whether you’re sober or not sober, or in whatever other kind of path you are, life is going to get difficult sometimes. There’s no immunity from that. There’s no protection from that. Quitting drinking does not protect you from hard times, right? And the story that you tell yourself is absolutely going to dictate if you’re going to go through these tough times alone and miserable and struggling, or if you’re going to go through these challenges with the support of others. You may still be miserable, but at least you won’t have to be alone, and that’s the important thing to remember. So, again, loving reminder, you are not an inconvenience, you are not a bother. Thank you so much. I am looking forward to seeing you on the next episode. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomless, to sobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes, to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation. For that, everything is available at bottomless to sobercom. See you then.

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Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Listen in as I share a personal narrative, starting with my mom’s unwavering lunch routine that travels from Brooklyn to Costa Rica, and how it serves as a launchpad for a larger conversation on inherited beliefs. I tackle the importance of questioning the doctrines passed down by our mothers and consider the influence of societal structures like patriarchy on these generational patterns. The discussion expands to embrace insights from Kelly McDaniel’s “Mother Hunger,” providing a framework for adult daughters to understand and heal from the absence of nurturance, protection, and guidance.

Resources:

Free Worksheet

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

00:19 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone. So for today’s episode we’re going to talk about moms Specifically. What we’re going to talk about are the beliefs and teachings that we get from our moms and the value of stopping to examine those beliefs to see if they resonate with us. So I originally recorded this little anecdote at the end of the episode and then I realized that it makes more sense to just open with it, just so that you can see what I’m talking about. So here, here it goes.

00:48
My mom has a habit. I’ll share a funny story with her. Well, I don’t know how funny it is, but my mom has a tendency of always, no matter like, she has certain habits and routines. Like, she only eats lunch at 2 PM Eastern standard time. She used to eat lunch at 2 PM Eastern standard time the like 30 something years that she had a botanica in Brooklyn, and then a botanica. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a store that sells things like candles and little statues. You know, it’s a very Afro-Caribbean kind of spiritual store. Anyway, she moves to Costa Rica. Costa Rica is usually on central time or sometimes it’s on mountain time, depending on daylight savings, et cetera. Now that she lives in Costa Rica, she insists on eating either at one o’clock her time or 12 o’clock her time, depending on when it’s 2 PM Eastern standard time.

01:39
And I’ve been like but mommy, like, why, why don’t you eat when you’re hungry? And this is what she says. She’ll say well, my mother always taught me to just eat on a schedule. Obviously, she says this in Spanish, right? And I’m like okay, so just because your mom said that, so you’re just going to do it. And and literally like for her, her response is, of course, and I’m just like nah, I cannot live that way. I’m sorry, I don’t care who you are. Just because you’re doing something some way, I’m not going to automatically by default, like copy it, not anymore, old Jess, you know old drinking Jess, sure, but I’m sober. You’re probably sober or you’re working on your sobriety if you’re listening to this, and we don’t have to just automatically do things just because they were told to us. Right, so I will eat when I’m hungry, not on some rigid schedule. No, thank you, I am done with that life. I’ve left that life of like strictly managing what I eat about a year and a half ago. But again, my mom right, who I learned that from. Clearly we see that she was influenced by her mother right, and so who knows what was going on with my grandmother to put my mother on this strict eating schedule that she’s still following at the age of 84 years old. I’m not doing that, y’all. I’m 39 years old. When I’m 84, if I make it to 84, I wanna eat whatever the hell I want to, whenever the hell I want to, and that’s that. I’m not looking at the clock.

03:05
So anyway, I’ve been facilitating this book study for the book Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel. The full title of the book is Mother Hunger how Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, protection and Guidance. Right, and she has been in chapter five. She does a really excellent job of reminding the reader of how we’re literally basically like swimming in patriarchy and how patriarchy, which is basically, in layman’s terms, the belief that men are better than women how that underlying belief can impact the way that a grandmother treats the mother, which in turn then treats the daughter right, and we don’t even realize it right. I’ll pull this quote, which is actually so.

03:51
The author, kelly McDaniel, quotes Anjali Dial in her book and I’m reading Anjali Dial’s words here, but just to kind of give you a sense of how pervasive patriarchy is right. And so she wrote patriarchy is evident in the everyday violence against women. It is reflected in the battlements we use or we build to protect ourselves, the little accommodations, the things you do reflexively to keep yourself from being hurt while you walk around, all the subtle ways you protect yourself from being alone with some men in offices and other men in cars and all unknown men in large, empty buildings. Every time you’ve ignored the lewd comment from a man on the street or at a bar or at a party, because who knows what he’ll do if you lash out the quick scan of a subway car when the train pulls into the station to ensure that there are enough people so you won’t be alone if someone threatens you, but not so many people that you’ll get groped without being able to place the hands.

04:46
A thousand transgressions so small and so regular that you never named them to anyone because that’s just the way life is right. And that’s that last part. A thousand transgressions so small and so regular that you never named them because that’s the way life is right. And she compares the way that we are like literally swimming in patriarchy, right, like swimming in these ideas that we’ve been taught without thinking, to the idea of two fish who are just swimming in water and if, like, an older fish tells that little fish like, hey, how’s the water? They’re going to be like what water? Because they don’t stop to think about that. That’s their environment. That’s a quote pulled from John Foster Wallace’s graduation speech.

05:29
So, anyway, the point being that our mothers can often be influenced by, of course, their own mothers, but a lot of times there’s beliefs that they’re carrying that are again embedded into them by patriarchy and other systems. Right, to give you an opportunity to look at those beliefs with a closer lens, examine where might they be coming from and then decide if they are still true for you or if they’re not still true for you, right? So I’m going to pull this specific quote from page 79 of Kelly McDaniel’s Mother Hunger, where she wrote we don’t consciously wake up one day and decide to devalue ourselves, right? It’s much more insidious. We simply swim in feminine constructs that tell us how to behave, how to look and who to love as we grow and develop, and sometimes we learn this from our mothers, right. And again, when we talk about just layman’s terms, right, misogyny, patriarchy, you know, patriarchy is essentially the belief that men, men should lead, or men are better than women, right? And misogyny that hatred of women. And so, again, a lot of what we’ve been taught comes from these basic constructs, right? So, with that being said, kelly McDaniel says that we’ve learned from our mothers, right, how to behave, how to look and who to love as we grow and develop, and so I want to take a moment right To to reflect on that, and so I have a worksheet that goes along with this kind of thought process. So, again, check the links in the resources to this episode in the show notes. You can pull up this worksheet here as well. If you’re on my email list, you’re going to get this email to you as well, obviously, if you’re, if you subscribed or you’re listening to this like after April 14th of 2024, then, yeah, you’re going to definitely just need to look on the show notes.

07:46
But let me get back to the point here. So what I want you to do is I want you to first look at the things you’ve learned from your mother? Slash mother figure, right. But I want you to break it down First, what have you learned from her in terms of how to behave? And, if you’re a man who’s listening to this, what have you learned about how women should behave? Right, number two what have you learned about how to look, with regard to appearance, from your mother, or mother figure? And, again, if you’re a man and you’re listening to this, what have you learned about how women should look? Then, the third one is what have you learned about who to love, or how to love from your mother? Slash mother figure, right? I’ll share, from my perspective, just to kind of give you some examples. So, with regard to my own mother, things that I’ve learned about how to behave I’ve learned to be quiet. I’ve learned to not talk about any of my problems right, and those are two really big ones to be quiet and not talk about my problems.

08:57
If I go to the next column, where did this belief come from? In the first place, from my mother. She was definitely taught that women should be quiet, right. She was definitely taught that women should not be taking up space at all. And I’ll add the added cultural factor, too, that my mom is a Latino woman and she was an undocumented immigrant when she first came to the United States, so she also had that added layer of you really don’t want to be speaking and rocking the boat because you don’t wanna get caught and get in trouble and get sent back home.

09:32
Now the third column of this exercise asks do you still believe this to be true? Why or why not? I don’t believe this to be true. I don’t believe that I still need to be quiet and not talk about my issues. I think that it’s courageous to speak up. I think that it’s important to take up space and for me, it’s worth taking some risks of not being accepted and not having people’s approval by speaking up. So thankfully, I’m not still attached to that belief, but there’s others that I’ve struggled with detaching myself from. So I’m going to move to the next one. Right?

10:09
So for how to look, things that I’ve learned from my mother slash mother figure about how to look include that I should be thin, that I should have straight hair, that I should only have dark hair, that I should be light-skinned. So I would say those are the general things that I would say that I’ve learned. Now, in terms of where did these beliefs come from in the first place? So, being thin, I think that in many cultures, right, being thin, has been a common expectation, and I feel like, again, when we’re talking about, say, white supremacy. Right, my mother? Again, she comes from people who were colonized by Europeans, and so the straight hair was an ideal trait to have, because that made you less of color. The dark straight hair also dark hair in terms of, like, trying to look youthful right, my mother has. She only stopped dyeing her hair about two, three years ago, when she’s 84. So my mom refused to let herself go gray because of this idea that you can’t look old. Right?

11:19
What was the other thing? I should have written these down, of course, I’m just talking through the worksheet, but I didn’t write this one down. I had taken these notes the other day. The other belief being light skin. Going back to, again, my mom comes from generations of colonized people, right. So, again, for colonized people, the wider you looked, the more likely your life was going to be easier and less challenging.

11:42
And so you know, for me, I did come out with brown skin after my father, who was a black Cuban, and I have lots of memories of my mom telling me to get out of the sun when I was a kid because I would get darker and darker and darker and that was not okay for her. I understand now, you know obviously it wasn’t helpful then, but she thought she was being helpful, she thought she was protecting me. Obviously that was not at all what she was doing, but you know, that’s kind of like the logic there. And even then, with the whole, the whole skinny thing, right, like there was a lot of fat shaming that I went through as a child when I struggled with my weight, and my mom’s intention behind that was she was trying to quote unquote protect me so that I could be desirable when I was older and attract a husband and like not be alone for the rest of my life. Right, like you know, these are these wild outcomes that she was trying to make sure that she was manipulating and controlling, um, and at the end of the day, no, she did a lot of damage, of course, like I.

12:38
I, moving into the third column, do I still believe this to be true? Why, or why not, I would say only in the last year and a half have I finally released this desire to be quote unquote, to be skinny, right, and that’s because I’ve had to do a lot of work as to where did this really come from and is this something that really resonates with me? Because, again, I have spent my entire life on some sort of a diet for the sake of being skinny, because my mom said I was supposed to, and so I think that, again, it’s so important to look at these things, look at where they’re coming from, and do they really resonate with us. So then, the last column, I mean the last row of this chart again, when you have the worksheet in front of you, it will come together right Is things that you’ve learned from your mother slash mother figure about who or how to love.

13:27
For me, specifically on how to love, I’ve been taught to cook and clean that’s how you show love and to be quiet and accept any and all bad behaviors. Right? I’ve also been told, in terms of who to love, that I should be with someone who has a lot of money, and my mom has told me that I would be better off with a white person, right? And so, again, where did these beliefs come from in the first place, in terms of the money and the white right? Like a white male with a lot of money. That is totally coming from a colonized perspective, like, well, the closer that you can get to them, to the people who have the power, the more protected you would be right. So that’s totally coming from that. That’s coming absolutely also from like internalized white supremacist ideas.

14:15
However, in terms of how to show love, right, Like the cooking and the cleaning and things like that, I mean, that’s totally just what also has been said so prevalently in Latin America that women’s role is to cook and clean and really that the men should be going out there and, you know, making the money, bringing home and providing. Now, what’s important you know I had a great conversation in the book study about this piece right is that sometimes we do want to cook and sometimes we do want to clean and we do want to take care of the home for our significant other. And I think the important thing to consider here is your power of choice If you’re cooking and cleaning because you feel that the cooking and cleaning is going to keep your partner with you, as opposed to cooking and cleaning because you’re wanting to contribute to your household. There’s a totally different dynamic there, right, if you’re coming at it from a space of obligation and that you must do it. That’s totally different from I want to do this. This is how I’m contributing into the home, and so I think that that’s really important to consider when you’re looking at things like cooking and cleaning. Right, or is it like that only you can cook and clean? I think that’s also important to consider and look at, right.

15:34
But anyway, to move over into that last question with regard to the beliefs, do I still believe this to be true? Why, or why not? I don’t believe that I show my love through cooking and cleaning. Not at all. Thankfully, I have been released from that belief. I really do think that for me, I appreciate a partner who can take on some of that load, because there’s a lot to do for me as a professional woman. I have a nine to five job and I run a small business, right, there’s a lot that I’m juggling, so I don’t want to be doing all the cooking and cleaning. I just don’t. And so to me, it’s love when someone can take some of that off my load, right?

16:17
And then, in terms of who to love, I am not looking for a rich white man to marry to much to my mother’s disappointment. Right Like, at this point, I’m looking for someone who is helping me. I mean, my current partner fits the bill, right, like I’m looking for someone who is going to help me just tap into myself and be genuine and authentic. I don’t need a financial provider because I provide for myself and so also, I don’t need a white person. Like, I’ve dated them, right. My ex-husband was, and Ian, who you all have heard about if you’ve listened to previous episodes, he was also a white person. But at this point, I’m not looking at you because of the color of your skin as a way to like make my life easier or not, right, like, that’s not how I’m looking for my partner, and my current partner is a black American. So, again, it’s just like that. I’m not going after, like, what my mother prescribed to be like the best ways to date. I’m not at all Definitely not taking my dating advice from my mother.

17:12
But anyway, moving forward, the next part of this worksheet right that I want you to reflect on, too, is this is like my favorite part of this activity, which is to pick one of the beliefs that your mother or mother figure passed on to you and rewrite it into a belief that resonates more with you, that you can pass on, right? Like, let this be a belief that you would want others to someday put on a worksheet that they learned from you, right? Something that you’d be proud of people saying, yeah, I learned this from so-and-so. This might be something like, if you’re listening and you’re a parent, maybe this is something that you do want to pass on to your children, right? What’s a belief that you want your children to have that you carry. But really, if you don’t like, for example, I don’t have children of my own, so I just think about who do I influence and who would I want to get this thought from me, right? So you know, I’m an educator, so I think about the students I work with. I also have nieces. I have my partner’s son, right? So, like, what would I want them to take away from me? That’s a belief, right? Something that a future generation could learn from you. So take a moment and sit with that and reflect on that.

18:25
But anyway, thank you all so much for your time with me. I’m looking forward to seeing what you all come up with. Feel free to reach out and share anything that you do with this worksheet. Thanks y’all. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast. But also go to my website, bottomlisttosobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.

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Link to Spotify

In this episode:

In this introspective episode, I dive deep into the core of our desire to please others. Is this drive a subtle quest for control, or is it rooted in age-old survival tactics? I challenge you to consider the possibility of deeper truths lying beneath the surface of people-pleasing behaviors. Before you cast judgment on yourself for seeking approval, pause and reflect with me: “What else could be true?”

This exploration isn’t just about understanding why we act the way we do; it’s an invitation to view ourselves through a lens of compassion and curiosity. Welcome to a space where self-discovery and empathy converge.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

So for today’s episode, I wanted to have a conversation about the idea or the importance of asking ourselves the question what else could be true? The reason why this is coming up is because, you know, probably a few weeks ago, both in conversations and meetings that I was facilitating, but also in my email list that I write, you know, I was reflecting on the idea of people pleasing in particular, right? So I’ll kind of use people pleasing as an example as to why we should always ask ourselves the question what else could be true? Right? Basically, you know, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, dr Nicola Pera, on her Instagram account and probably her other social media accounts as well account, and probably her other social media accounts as well she wrote that at the end of the day, you know, people pleasing is about ourselves and not wanting to feel uncomfortable emotions and working with people. There’s always an aha moment when someone understands that they’re not really people pleasing, that they’re actually controlling, they’re trying to control how someone perceives them and how they feel right, and that once you understand this, you can start to break the pattern of people pleasing. That did resonate with me, right.

01:32
And there was a discussion that I had when I was reflecting on back when I was secretly struggling with alcohol addiction. There was a time that I spent the winter holiday break in a treatment facility and literally nobody knew, because school was closed so I wasn’t absent, right. And when I had come back from that winter break, I was sitting in a faculty circle and I had this abrupt moment of just tears flowing down my face and nobody understood why I was crying, right. All I could say was all that I felt safe to say or comfortable to share with my colleagues at that time was I had a really hard break, but there was no way in hell that I was ready to say oh, actually I had been hospitalized because I’m addicted to alcohol and I needed to go to rehab over winter break. There was no way that I was going to admit that, right. And so when I connected that story back to what Dr Nicola Pero was sharing on people-pleasing, it was true for me I was ashamed of being addicted to alcohol, right, and I also wanted to keep my addiction to alcohol a secret because I couldn’t bear the idea of being viewed differently in the eyes of my professional colleagues. You know I was a teacher at that point. I was already the state teacher of the year. So if I’m the number one teacher in the state and I’m battling an addiction to alcohol, I couldn’t put the two together, like the two couldn’t exist at the same time as truths in my heart. And so there was no way that I could allow that to be spoken out into the universe and for other human beings to think that or know that about me as well. And so I needed to control the narrative and therefore I kept quiet in that faculty circle when I could have potentially opened up and said what happened. But my truth was I didn’t, because I wanted to control that narrative. And, going back to Nicola Pera’s point, I wanted to be in control.

03:36
Now there’s other times that I hear people talking about people pleasing and how people pleasing can be a manipulative act. Right that very often, when we hear people talk about people pleasing, we make it sound like it’s such a selfless thing. Well, I just want to make everyone happy and I just want to make sure that other people are uncomfortable or are comfortable, even if it is at my own expense, right? We hear that a lot, and oftentimes that is shot down by well then you’re trying to be manipulative because you want everyone to think that you’re such a good person, because you want everyone to you know, just think that you’re you’re the bee’s knees, that you’re just so self-sacrificing and so kind and so loving when you’re. When you’re not, you’re just trying to control that narrative.

04:21
I was really leaning heavily into that, and I recently received an opportunity to ask myself what else can be true, and really just a strong reminder of needing to ask that at all times that just because I see something in so-called you know, like pop psychology, social media I mean Dr Nicole Appiah. I love her and I adore, like everything that she puts out. I really enjoy her content, but obviously there’s only so much that you can capture in a social media post, right? And so I think that that’s what’s important for us to remember. As we look at things that people share, as we look at ideas that are shared in meetings, as we look at anything, all we’re getting is a snippet, right? We’re never getting a whole picture when someone is just tossing an idea out there casually, no-transcript, take what we need and then also ask ourselves what else can be true, right? Because here’s the thing I am in the middle of facilitating this book study, which is still open for anybody, any woman who’s interested in learning about how her relationship with her mother has impacted her, right?

05:30
We just started reading Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel and there was this part of the book that really jumped out at me and so I’ll read it to you. It’s from pages 85 to 86 of the book and I’ll just kind of jump around and pull a couple of quotes. But Kelly McDaniel wrote that appeasing behavior for women may just be less risky, right, than fighting or running. And so, as children, many of us learn, say, to appease our mothers, you know as a harm reduction tactic and you know, pleasing and appeasing that it’s similar to a trauma response and it’s an automatic, unconscious reaction that can become an ingrained personality trait. And so I pull this to in honor of what else can be true, right?

06:20
I share this to highlight that the same behavior in one person can have a totally different origin, story and purpose that it serves right. So maybe one person, to be fair, they might be wanting to control what other people think of them and that they think that they’re amazing and these martyrs, and they’re doing all you know, doing it all for everyone else. But for some people, right, depending on the individual, depending on their identity, depending on how they grew up and things that were happening to them over time that were out of their control, for some of these individuals they may have been working on people pleasing, on appeasing others to be safe. And that’s what is so important to remember here about the people pleasing thing that people pleasers are not automatically like these controlling, manipulative assholes which can sometimes be what is made up on socials, right. That people who people-please or might automatically fall into those people-pleasing tendencies. They may have had to learn to people-please at a certain point in order to adapt. They may have learned people-pleasing behaviors from, say, their mothers or the people before them, right? Because those people before them had to people please in order to create safety for themselves and for their loved ones. And so, again, the next time that we hear someone talking about people pleasing and how you know, maybe they’re like shitting on themselves for being people pleasers or shitting on people pleasers I think it’s important to slow down and be like well, you know what else can be true. What else do you know about this situation? I’ll give you a couple of examples.

08:09
So in the book, specifically mother hunger, the, the people pleasing, right the appeasing others for the sake of creating safety is brought up in the context of women having to protect themselves. Content warning for sexual assault. So I’m going to pause for a second. So, if you need to like, stop listening, you can. But in the context of sexual assault, kelly McDaniel writes that some women comply, so to speak, with someone who is sexually assaulting them because to fight back right, especially if it’s someone who’s already in your home to fight back can create a massive backlash from the person committing the sexual assault, especially if it’s a man, right, and so, like they may be, risk getting beat.

08:58
They may risk having their children get hurt, right, they may risk getting kicked out of their home. There’s so many things at risk when it comes to that power dynamic that sometimes the safest thing to do is to please the other person, even if it’s without your consent, right, even if that’s not what you want to do. So that was the example of people pleasing that came up there. Another example of people pleasing was, say, if you have a home where you have a man and a woman in the home and there’s children and again maybe it’s not specific to sexual assault, but in this case it’s towards physical abuse and intimate partner violence and again, that the woman in that home may be choosing to please and to appease the abusive man in the house, not because she wants to, not because she doesn’t want to fight back, not because she doesn’t want to flee right Like fight or flee. Those trauma responses aren’t an option for her because she might be protecting her children, right and so to fight could risk her getting beat, the children getting hurt, and to flee could risk unstable housing for her. And so what’s the third option here? The third option is to appease others.

10:07
Now I wanna move out of that and I want to move, and I can speak to this from experience as an individual of color. Right, my mother was undocumented when she first came to the United States and one of the biggest things that I was taught by her and my father was, no matter what the police are doing, to always be super kind and respectful to them, because in theory, they can just snatch you up and take you away, right, like that’s our experience as a family of immigrants that the police can easily come, snatch you up and then you away. Right, like that’s our experience as a family of immigrants that you know the police can easily come, snatch you up and then you’re gone and we like, never see the person again. Because we have had a few family members get deported right now and I’m obviously the family members who got deported, I’ll be honest, they weren’t doing great things and so I recognize that. But there is that fear there, right, and there is that fear in a community that in communities of color, that police can be massive sources of harm. Right, I don’t have to ask you to Google. You know news stories from the last couple of years, right, for for that to be like a fact for us in our experience. And if, if you’re listening to this and you’re bothered by what I’m saying, I invite you to unsubscribe. If you’re listening to this and you’re bothered by what I’m saying, I invite you to unsubscribe.

11:23
But, with that being said, so for communities of color, right to people, please, may mean having to create a sense of safety in systems where we can feel like we are targets, right, and so people pleasing can be ingrained in us, also in terms of just behaviors that maybe our parents or the people before them had to do to create a sense of safety. It may involve eye contact, it may involve how you speak to authority figures, how you speak to people in uniform. Things like that we are taught. And it’s not because, again, we’re not trying to control the narrative here, we’re not trying to be manipulative assholes, right, but this happens to create a sense of safety so that we can stay alive, so that we can stay in our homes, so that we can stay with our families, right. And so, again, it’s so important to just talk about this people-pleasing concept and ask ourselves what else can be true, because the person who is appeasing others may be doing it to control the narrative, right?

12:24
Again, my example of me being that classroom teacher who was addicted to alcohol and didn’t want to talk about it. A big part of that was controlling the narrative. I didn’t want to be seen as an addict. I didn’t want to be seen as a so-called alcoholic. That was not the story that I didn’t want to be seen as an addict. I didn’t want to be seen as a so-called alcoholic. That was not the story that I was ready to be out there about me, and so I had to be in control of that.

12:44
But there are times, like when my mother learned to be quiet, right. When my mother learned to not stir the pot, she was doing that so that she could stay in this country, right, and so everyone has a different purpose behind why they have people pleased, and so for you bringing it back to you and your opportunity to like, reflect and sit with this right, I have a couple of questions for you to think about in terms of your possible people pleasing. So like number one, if you did used to appease people, to protect yourself or others, and you’re noticing that, like, you’re still doing that today the honest question that only you can answer right is are you still in need of protection, right, like, is this still protecting you from something from, like a real threat? And, with that being said, what threats are you facing, right? Are these threats real or are they perceived? And that’s an important question to ask yourself? And then I’m going to add how might your identity impact this right? So I do want you to think carefully about this one, because people from historically marginalized groups they do face real threats, right, and so sometimes the people-pleasing behavior is a method of survival, a method for safety. So again, I want you to think about it Like if you are a woman and you are dealing with people-pleasing. Well, there’s probably some history there that things that you saw with your mother or family of origin, right as to where that came from. But the question is, whatever you saw, say, in your family of origin, is that still the case for you today?

14:22
Question two if you used to appease people, to control others’ perceptions of you, what was the story that you want to live in other people’s minds about you? So, let’s say, maybe you were the one that wanted to just control that narrative, right, and you wanted to control how others viewed you. What was that story that you’re aiming for others to carry about you? And the follow-up to that is what’s the worst that could happen if that story falls apart, right? What is the worst that could happen if you allow yourself to disappoint these? So, is this the worst thing that can happen? Is this something that you can live with, right? Like, let’s say, if you do disappoint other people because the story that you want out there about yourself, if that falls apart, can you live with that right, and would you be safe if that story were to fall apart?

15:42
So, again, I really want to bring this back to a sense of safety and if you are noticing that you are safe, but mentally and emotionally you don’t feel that way, I would encourage you to maybe speak with a licensed mental health professional at this point right, because we might be talking about some trauma that is ingrained in your body that you might need to work through.

15:47
Again, an excellent resource is Bessel van der Kolk’s. The Body Keeps the Score, but if you’re noticing that, as you’re like reflecting or journaling on these questions, that you feel genuinely threatened and your threats are perception only, that would be a great opportunity to bring that to a licensed mental health professional. So I just wanted to put that out there. So, anyway, so curious to hear, like, if you stop and sit with these questions and anything comes up for you, like send me an email, reach out to me through social media, I would love to hear what has come up for you. But, yeah, thanks so much for listening you all. And again, just remember, just remember, always ask yourself what else can be true, what else can be true, what else can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.

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In this episode:

I’m minding my own business when suddenly, my sister sends a bombshell text reminder – apparently, I got married 11 years ago. I forget I have lived what feels like 100 years in less than 40 years. So, in this episode, I reflect on the lessons I didn’t learn from the time I was married and how it took me getting sober to understand what I needed and how to seek it in love and relationships.

Please note there was a weird audio issue with this episode, so if you don’t like it, please skip it because I was not going to re-record.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Six-Week Writing for Healing Program – Reduced Registration Through March 31st!

Transcript:

00:19 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, there are some weird audio things going on with this episode and, to be honest, I wasn’t going to go back and rerecord because I don’t go off of a script, so my apologies. If you don’t like the way the sound sometimes goes out, totally welcome to skip. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Hey everyone, so fun fact, I got married like 11 years ago, and I would not have remembered it if it wasn’t for the fact that my sister sent me a text message and was like I just had shutterflies send me memories from 11 years ago, and I was basically like well, what happened 11 years ago? Ha, I got married. That goes to show you, I have lived so much life in my 39 distance that things like an entire marriage don’t even like register on my brain. It’s like I promise you, I forget that I was once like a married person, right, Like I have to really think about it because my life is so drastically different. Was then right, like 11 years ago, that I completely blur, like blurted block, so I could have gone through the wedding anniversary and I swear I would not have remembered it if it hadn’t been for my sister’s text message. But anyway, the reason I’m bringing up my marriage is because what I have learned from it, now that I’m 39, right, is that there were lessons that the universe, god, there were lessons that I really could have learned and taken away from my marriage and subsequent divorce that I didn’t, that I continue to face in my years after my divorce and even in like very early sobriety when I first started dating. That would have made my life a whole lot easier if I had learned the lessons and applied them Right and I feel like my love life in my existence, this iteration of my existence on this planet, um, just really goes to show that if you don’t apply the lessons that you learn, you’re going to continue to get hit with them, like it’ll be like a little pebble, a little hint, like hey, you might want to learn this, and then it just gets bigger and bigger, you know, until it feels like you’re getting like hit by a truck with this lesson being learned Right. And so I just wanted to share a couple of lessons that I should have learned in my marriage that I didn’t, with the hopes that maybe some of these lessons might be helpful for you as you navigate your personal romantic relations with other people, and not even just romantic, it applies to anything that is a connection that’s with another human being, honestly. So the first one that I want to talk about is this idea of not begging.

03:04
I remember when I met my ex. We’re going to name my ex spouse John his name was not John, but we’re going to go with John, um, cause, honestly, I have no hard feelings and John, you know, and I have not crossed paths in years, so there’s no need to like throw the name out, et cetera. So when we first met, I was in my early twenties and I had just had my gastric bypass surgery, like months before we met. So when I met him, I was adjusting to a body that was changing rapidly in a way that I mentally was not really prepared to. So think about a 24 year old version of Jessica who has lost about 70 to 80 pounds and literally doesn’t know what to do with herself because her entire life she’s been called, you know, fat shamed by her family. And as I’m hitting this new body, I’m slowly getting hit with the reality Like holy shit, like I’m losing a ton of weight and I don’t feel any different. But was I seeking any professional guidance? Of course not. Was I having reflective conversations with anybody? No, all I know is that I was rapidly losing weight and my outside was changing quickly and it was becoming, it was, accommodating what I was always told I should look like. But on the inside I wasn’t feeling any better about myself. But people were looking at me differently and John who we’ll talk about, you know, was this educator at the school that I was teaching at.

04:43
He was a year younger than me and also brand new, you know, pretty much right out of college. And when I met John he was, you know, tall, very fit, athletic, good looking white guy from the Midwest, from Louisville, kentucky, and I remember thinking he was really cute and I remember thinking he was so different from the New Yorkers I had always been around, right, like you know, people I dated throughout college from New York, brooklyn, the Bronx, et cetera. He was just kind of like sparkling and shiny and new and so different Again, me being from Brooklyn back then meeting someone from Kentucky, a world of a culture shock, a world of a difference, especially like me being a first to like Latino parents, right. So he definitely caught my eye and John was a sweetheart, just an absolute sweetheart, and I expressed an interest in John and I remember being really scared to, but John like called me beautiful. You all, and I’m telling you like if only I could remember, have noted, like calling me beautiful does not make a person good enough for my attention. But you know, I had been so starved of being called beautiful. I had been so starved of being told I was worthy that any time a fucking man would call me beautiful, it was just like, well, let me roll out the red carpet for him. And that’s exactly what happened here with John, right.

06:15
And so John and I were really good friends with really intense feelings for each other. Really intense feelings for each other and like he flew me out to Kentucky to meet his family, right, like I was completely out of my element, like this Brooklyn girl in like Louisville, kentucky and going in the woods. And I did like my first camping trip, miserable and uncomfortable, but I was so happy to do it with this guy because he was good looking and he called me beautiful but wanted and was rushing was that I wanted a boyfriend because I wanted to get married. Why did I want that? Because that’s what I was told that I was supposed to want, right the examples laid before me. You know my sister married fairly young. At the time she was still married to her partner her ex-partner. You know my mom always emphasized how important it was for a woman to get married Right and, being an immigrant, that was one of the big things. It was just like we needed. Like we needed security and security for us as these like American girls was going to school but finding someone also to marry Right. So it’s like double security. And so I really wanted to get married at that time because I felt like that was what I should do.

07:32
I did not have the opportunity again to have reflective conversations with anyone and really examine if this was the right time for me to get married and who would make a good husband right. What would make a good life partner? These were never things that I had explored at all, were never things that I had explored at all when I was like 23, 24. I just saw tall, handsome and not a New Yorker, so had to be better than what I had grown up with and the fact that he had called me beautiful and that he like gave me attention. So when it was time to be like, hey, can we like be boyfriend and girlfriend? I mean, we’re spending all this time together, time to be like, hey, can we like be boyfriend and girlfriend? I mean we’re spending all this time together. Like I met your family, he wouldn’t call me his girlfriend and he, he was very adamant about not being ready to be my boyfriend. And y’all do you know what I did I waited. I completely ignored anybody else who would have given me attention. I completely just focused in on this person who blatantly told me what he wanted and didn’t want, right? He told me he was honest and said I don’t really want this. And I was like, well, I’m going to wait till you’re ready. And and I did that. And I waited for almost a year and then finally, almost, john said all right, I want you to be my girlfriend. And at that point we, john and I, were together for seven years, right? So this was a long, a long time that I gave to this person, but the only reason we lasted that long was because I was sitting there like this little I don’t know, like a sitting duck just waiting patiently for this person to say that I’m worthy of their time.

09:24
Flash forward to when it was time for us to get married. We had moved to Louisville together and but we hadn’t gotten engaged yet. And there was one night that I cried and I was like I can’t believe that. I moved all the way over here and like you haven’t proposed to me. So, like the next day, john takes me to the water, to the river, and proposes with like no ring, and proposes with like no ring, nothing. And I’m just like, okay, sure, right. But on the inside I felt sad again. You, whether or not you need a ring, that’s something to be determined between you, you and your partner, et cetera.

10:05
But here’s the thing there was no conversation, had my. I had never expressed my wishes in terms of like what I wanted it to look like, and so I just said that I wanted to get engaged, right, I just wanted the label. I wanted, you know, to move, move, move so quickly towards that marriage part. So he, he gave me the breadcrumbs, right. And so I walked around, I went to Macy’s, I got myself an engagement ring so that I could look like I was engaged because I cared so much about what everybody else was thinking, right, but I was just accepting breadcrumbs. And so, as we approached our wedding date, his mother, who was like an angel on this earth, she pulled me to the side and she was like Jesse, are you sure he wants to get married? And I was like, yeah, he does, he does. He just shows his enthusiasm like this. But those were all the signs that I needed, right, like someone’s own mother coming to me with love and affection and being like hey, like I don’t know about my son right now, and me completely being insistent and pushing forward anyway. And what did I get?

11:22
We ended up having a difficult marriage, right, we had a marriage where, you know, I started drinking more, where I would drink in secret. I was forcing something to happen that really probably didn’t need to. Obviously it to, so to speak. I mean, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. But you know, I was really forcing a situation that didn’t need to be forced. And eventually things did fall apart, and a lot of that was my alcohol use. Right, because I was not happy I wasn’t getting my needs met, right, you don’t get your needs met when you’re constantly trying to force something to happen. These relationships, they have to be reciprocal, and me forcing John to try to give me everything that I wanted, it just wasn’t going to work.

12:09
Now, fast forward to sobriety. I don’t beg right. I mean now I’m with my partner, but I vividly remember an experience about two years ago, when I had started dating. There was somebody that I was dating dating again a nice guy and we had been seeing each other for about two months and at that point I felt like I knew him fairly well and I was comfortable with the idea of, you know, being exclusive. So I said I’d like to be exclusive and he turned to me and he said well, I’m still, you know, I’m not there yet.

12:46
And what I’m so proud of myself for sobriety is that when he said that, I was like, okay, well, if you aren’t there yet, then I’m going to go ahead and move on, because I know what I need and you’re letting me know that you can’t give it to me, right. But I’m so grateful for that and I’m so grateful that I could actually say what I wanted and just speak to it and then move on, right. But when I was younger, the lesson that would have been nice to have learned when I was married would have been, from the first part, like from the beginning you don’t beg for people to be with you, you just don’t. And so, again, a lesson I didn’t learn when I was younger, but the important part is that I know it now, right, like I’m not even 40 yet, and today I understand that I don’t beg for people’s company. So I still have many years ahead of me of not begging for people’s company, and for that I am eternally grateful.

13:41
The other thing, the other lesson that I want to talk about, is, um, that expectations really do create resentment. However, it also doesn’t mean that you don’t have standards right, and so you, you have to be. It’s not black or white. So, going back to my ex-spouse, going back to John, right, one of the big things that we often struggled with in our home, for example, was, just say, cleaning.

14:19
I would get resentful at John because John wouldn’t clean up, and so I was always the one cleaning up, but we, I would just like expect John to figure it out that I needed help with certain things, and then I would get really, really resentful because I didn’t like specifically ask for help with certain things Right. So, for example, if I went on vacation to visit my family in New York and he stayed home, I expected him to like clean up the house while I was gone so that I could come home to a clean house, cause I’ve always liked coming home to a clean house but instead what would happen was I would just come home, the house would be messy and then I would get pissed. So then we would have like this sort of like big old argument where I would be like, well, you should know by now that I like a clean house, so why would you leave the house so messy when I’m, you know, when I’m gone, um, but other things, going back to say that engagement piece, right, or that marriage piece, there were a lot of expectations that I was putting on him that, to be honest, he wasn’t expected to meet. But if I had known that he wasn’t interested in say, giving me those things, I could have gone somewhere else where I could have had those standards met, right, those needs met. But instead I kept trying to force things. And so one of the big things that I learned from my relationship with John, right, it’s just that expectations, that whole mind reading thing that’s going to absolutely create resentment. But you do need to have your standards met and so you do want to have that clear communication. You do want to be able to feel safe to voice what you need, what you want, and the right person is going to meet those needs. The wrong person won’t. But you won’t know if someone is the right or the wrong person if you don’t verbalize what you need. You have to speak up, you have to be authentic and let the wrong people fall to the wayside and let the right ones come up and step forward, For example, going back to now or flashing forward dating time.

16:25
I would always let people know that I, who, at about two, three months, I was like I’m, I’m ready for a relationship. In that case, I let him know exactly what my expectations were. I do want a long-term relationship. I do want something steady that can build into something more. And when he wasn’t able to meet those, I understood, I didn’t take it personally and I moved on Right.

16:51
And then eventually, I did find my partner who, when I said those things that I was interested in something long-term and serious, he that was something that he also wanted, and so he was willing to reciprocate it. So I think it’s important to remember those things right. That, as opposed to what I did when I was married, right, like, I want something long-term, you don’t want to give it to me? Well, I’m just going to sit here and wait and wait and wait until you give me what I want, but I’m going to get resentful as hell towards you because I’m being stubborn, it’s like no, we’ve just got to learn to let those things go. And then the last thing is, it’s really also not up to us to fix and save others right or solve their problems. To fix and save others right or solve their problems when I was married um, you know, I hope John has figured out what he’s wanted to do with himself, say, professionally.

17:41
But you know he went through several transitions in terms of, like work, work situations, and you know one role wasn’t happy with it and then would switch, and so you know, I found myself as the primary like, say, the breadwinner, so to speak, with a more stable work. But I always was kind of waiting for him to like figure things out, or me trying to like step up and take care of like all the bills and things like that, so that that way. You know, he would have time to figure himself out. But John was like that even before we got married and I remember I didn’t like it and it was a concern for me, but I just turned that blind eye to it and I was like, well, I’ve got this. You know, like John can go and figure himself out, but I’ve got this.

18:32
And I was really more focused on John’s potential as opposed to like what he was offering me. And you know he wasn’t necessarily offering me stability, right, and he wasn’t offering me a sense of that. He was happy and comfortable with himself. And so, you know, one of the things that for me, it’s really important now is to not try to rescue someone. If someone is going through a tough time because we’re going to our partners are going to be humans, right, our partners are going to have difficult moments, but we have to recognize that it’s not our job to fix them. We can hold space for them, we can ask them is there anything that we can do to support? We can let them just talk and unload, right. We can offer advice if they’re interested in receiving it, but it’s not our job to pick up all the pieces after them, always just because they’re struggling, and that was the thing with my ex John.

19:28
There were a lot of things that John was struggling with, including some identity issues, and I just kind of kept dancing around everything just so that he can be comfortable, but at the end of the day, I was just growing really resentful, right. And so it’s so important that, when you are with somebody, that you ask yourself if you are okay with them exactly as they are today, or are you hoping that they change? Are you hoping that they become more secure? Are you hoping that they become more stable? And so you’re dating them now with the hopes that they turn out a certain way, because we do not control outcomes. Right, we can always put, in best faith, effort into anything, but we don’t control outcomes, and we especially don’t control other people, and we don’t control how other people turn out. We might be able to influence them, right, but we don’t control them, and so that was a huge thing that I did not learn with John.

20:29
I really thought that I can help him figure himself out, and that was not my place, that was not my job, that was not my role, and so, with that being said, I just kind of wanted to share those things because, again, it’s it’s wild that I was married 11 years ago, right and, and that was a marriage that lasted for four years. Um, my drinking definitely negatively impacted that relationship and I definitely drank to cope with the fact that I kept pushing something to exist that probably really didn’t need to exist, right and. So, um, I’m grateful that we were able to separate and move on with our lives. I hope John is well, wherever John is on the planet and whatever John is up to. But that was all. I just really wanted to reflect a little bit on that.

21:25
And so if there’s anything that you get from listening to this episode if you’re still listening at this point it’s remember what you’ve gone through serves as a learning experience. Seriously, even if at the moment it feels really hard, and even if at that moment it feels like it’s never ending, or you just don’t get why you’re going through something, or if someone that you love just throws you a huge fucking curve ball and you’re like, whoa, where did this come from, just remember that it’s all getting filed away as life experience for you. That will help you in the future when you get presented with a similar scenario again, or it’s going to help someone else when you open your mouth and communicate with another human being, to create connection right. So just keep those things in mind. So with that, I hope you are well.

22:19
Thank you so much for listening and I will catch you on the next one. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomless to sobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomless to sober.com. See you then.

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Link to Spotify

In this episode:

This episode isn’t just about recounting childhood memories of me stealing money for food; it’s an exploration of how writing can serve as a potent tool for healing. I discuss the cathartic experience of writing about one of my childhood stories and how it helps untangle the deep-rooted issues that often lead to substance abuse. By embracing the lessons of our past, much like the Sankofa tattoo on my arm symbolizes, we can pave a way for genuine recovery and a brighter future.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Six-Week Writing for Healing Program – Reduced Registration Through March 31st!

Mother Hunger Book Study – Starts March 30th

Study: Greater self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism in severe alcohol use disorder

Study: Children’s Proneness to Shame and Guilt Predict Risky and Illegal Behaviors in Young Adulthood

Study: Drinking Too Much and Feeling Bad About It? How Group Identification Moderates Experiences of Guilt and Shame Following Norm Transgression

Transcript:

00:19 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey, everyone, for this week’s episode, I actually wanted to share a bit of some writing that I started and abruptly decided not to finish just because I felt like not using it anymore, and I’m giving myself permission to just kind of randomly share it. However, this piece of writing was definitely cathartic for me, and so for any of you who are just looking for opportunities to do storytelling of your own, I encourage you to sign up for my six week writing for healing program. We are starting back up in June and I have discounted pricing through the end of March, through March 31st, before the prices go up to full price. So please sign up. If this is something that you have been kind of sitting on and hesitating to do, I hope you take this episode as an opportunity to be like oh, maybe I should go ahead and write. So, anyway, I’ll go ahead and now read what I have, and I hope that you resonate with it in some way, shape or form. No one is looking.

01:18
I thought as 10 year old me pulled $3 bills from the envelope mommy used to hide cash. I snuck into my parents’ bedroom and quietly dialed Waming Kitchen’s phone number. Waming Kitchen was the quote unquote ghetto Chinese spot in the neighborhood I grew up in. The chicken wings were to die for and everyone in the community crowded inside to place orders from behind bulletproof glass. I, however, was too young to be allowed to go out on my own, even across the street, so I had to sneak in my delivery orders and a loud Chinese accent. I heard a woman say you know, hello, waming, how can I help you? My voice quivered as I whispered in response hi, can I get chicken wings and french fries with hot sauce and ketchup? I then gave our address, snuck down the stairs and waited for the lady’s son to show up on his bike with my delivery. As if it were a drug deal, I slipped in the money, hoping that none of the neighbors saw this illicit transaction. Then I crept back upstairs to my room and rushed to eat so I wouldn’t get caught. Once finished, I sealed the food in a plastic bag and hid it until I could throw it out in a trash can, far from my mother’s sight. I felt like shit Stealing from my mother just to get some food. What kind of person was I?

02:39
I continued these same behaviors, though, over the years, and eventually they transferred over from food to alcohol. I remember, in 2020, battling my addiction hard after my boyfriend’s death by overdose, and sneaking out of my sister’s house to grab a secret booze delivery, then trying to hide the bottle so I wouldn’t get caught drinking in her home, after she explicitly had asked me not to do so. I was lost. But here’s the thing everything has a point of origin, right, and the timing of my addiction to alcohol goes back to Brooklyn in the 1990s.

03:15
Drinking, or any addiction for that matter, has a root cause that is outwardly shown, obviously, by the individual’s abuse of a substance. But, honestly, addiction itself is a symptom of something more profound. We can address the symptoms as much as we like. We can make all the attempts to abstain from alcohol, drugs or other problematic behaviors. Still, if we keep ignoring why we are escaping life in the first place, we’ll never be able to fight our addictions.

03:41
When we stop drinking, many of us are often left with the question what now? You need to look at your past before you move forward. I have a tattoo on my arm which is a rendition of the Sankofa symbol. Sankofa originates from Ghana and the symbol is a bird that is moving forward while holding a piece of its past in its mouth. The idea is that successful movement into the future requires taking a part of the past with us In recovery. Our past does not define our future, but coming to terms with the root cause of our drinking in the first place and taking that knowledge with us is what will let us fly forward as the Sankofa does.

04:25
This notion of looking back and digging deep is also counterintuitive for many of us as people with complicated relationships with alcohol and other drugs. We flee from memories and feelings to function by drinking or engaging with other mind-altering substances. We force the memories of our past far away from our stream of consciousness, often because they are so painful. We become masters of compartmentalization and we lock away the parts of ourselves that we find inconvenient to face. We fail to realize that if life will keep putting us in situations that will repeat themselves until we gain and apply the knowledge that we’re meant to acquire, I’m going to repeat that we fail to realize that life will keep putting us in situations that will repeat themselves until we gain and apply the knowledge we’re meant to acquire. Until we do, we will fall into things like the repetitive cycle of relapse. I know because my own relapses led me to be hospitalized eight times. I was hospitalized eight times for stays ranging from three days up to five weeks because I continuously avoided addressing the core of my symptoms.

05:34
As I previously stated, the root of my drinking is in my childhood. I will not sit here and state that I had a terrible childhood because overall, I didn’t. For the most part, everything, or a lot of things, were fine. Everything was not fine, but most things were fair enough. Most days I remember them as uneventful or routine or structured. I had hardworking immigrant parents. I was raised in a two-family home in Brooklyn alongside my sister, sophia, who’s 12 years, my senior. Growing up, I did well in school and I never got in trouble. I never lacked any essential needs. My housing was always stable. We always had food.

06:15
Some of my favorite memories include my dad, who was not a reading and writing fan, taking me to the library weekly. I would go inside and select all sorts of books that would stand out from the shelves, and I loved books like Goosebumps and Sweet Valley High. But I also grabbed some educational content because my mother liked to review everything I would read and I wasn’t allowed to only read for fun. She wanted me to read for academic purposes and I want to read for fun, so together we made it work. I was into sharks history, and so I mainly borrowed nonfiction books about marine life, biographies and wars yes, I know it’s incredibly random, and occasionally I would grab something in Spanish to maintain my literacy there. And again, my parents did the best that they could to take care of us and listen. I say this often because it is critical for me to not reattach myself to old pain that I have already worked on releasing. I have to remind myself that I am always healing from this part of my story, because the thing is that as I grew my relationship with my parents, especially my mother, it did fuel my strengths, but it also birthed the void that I would desperately try to fill throughout my life.

07:27
As I wrote earlier, I did well in school. I was a model student, both in conduct and academic performance, which definitely made my parents happy. I loved seeing how I could lift their spirits whenever I brought a good test score home. I would beg them to attend parent-teacher conferences, just so that I could see my mom’s face light up as my teachers told her all about how great I was. Their praise lit a fire in me right when my parents had something good to say after a parent conference. It would just light me up, and so doing well in school was the perfect means to that end.

08:03
My education was a non-negotiable to our family. My parents could not access adequate schooling in their respective countries, contrary to what is commonly taught about Cuban education. My father and my mom, though she was great at math, she didn’t go past the fifth grade in Costa Rica. So I was their American dream, and at an early age it meant being the best student. I loved praise for the work I did well at school because it would spill into our home life. I would hear my parents talking about how smart I was whenever they spoke to a family member or friend on the phone or in person. Everything was lovely about the recognition I got from my parents.

08:41
Until now, as an adult, I understand that that was the only thing about me that I ever got affirmations for right, and so as a kid I put the two and two together not consciously right, but just sort of subconsciously that my measure of value and worth. It was conditional and it required me to put up a performance of being a model student, which I took that with me into my womanhood, and being a model employee, right, the teacher of the year, et cetera. Like I learned at a really young age that many benefits come from good performances, and so my perfectionism was born. And what’s even wilder is and I’ll put this in the show notes that recent studies show that individuals with alcohol use disorder can display perfectionism as a trait which made perfect sense right as I became that high achieving professional. Once I was no longer a student.

09:35
And here’s the thing for all the praise I received for being an excellent student, I received an equal amount of criticism through fat shaming for my weight. I was an overweight kid, so much so that I remember when my third grade teacher had to measure each student’s height and weight in our class in third grade, when she saw how much I weighed because I was over 150 pounds this woman chuckled and she said whoa, you’re a little heavy, aren’t you? The fact that I am 39 and writing this today shows how I will never forget how uncomfortable that made me, and after that moment I swore I would never make anybody else feel that way and as an educator, I have vowed to never make a single student of mine feel how that teacher made me feel in that moment. But then here’s the thing right. Like in my family’s culture, being direct or outright mean was acceptable, no matter how painful it was for the recipient to hear this critical commentary. Also, being fat was something that nobody wanted for their daughters, so my parents, especially my mother, did their best to quote unquote help me by continuously fat shaming me. Right, but like here’s a news flash, you can’t shame people into changing their behavior.

10:51
In my mother’s eyes, I always ate demasiado, meaning too much. Right. Whenever I was hungry, she would get so outwardly angry at the fact that I wanted to eat otra vez. Right Again. In Spanish, I can’t tell you how often I heard por eso es que está como está. Right. In English, that means that’s why she is as fat as she is, which is something my mother stated whenever I served myself just about any portion of food or dared to have a snack. I hated family gatherings and still resist them in adulthood, because my weight was always the first thing that relatives commented on and my parents did nothing to defend me. My father stayed quiet and my mom actively joined in the conversations about my body. I got so confused whenever someone in my family had something to say about weight in my food, right, I couldn’t wrap my mind or my head around the fact that, like I enjoyed food, but at the same time, I was getting in trouble almost every damn time I wanted to eat, I developed shame for the first time, but I didn’t understand what it was that I was feeling. As a grown woman, I know what it is right.

11:57
Brene Brown states that shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love or belonging. Right, so, and here’s the thing with shame Shame, it’s a powerful feeling that can be tied to drinking. Right, I mean, there’s several studies that link shame and drinking. There was a study done in 2015 that actually showed that there was an increase in shame. That increased shame in fifth graders led to earlier drinking as teens. And then, if you look at college students, there was a different study that showed that students who experienced shame when they thought that they drank more than their peers would actually then go ahead and drink more as a direct result of thinking that there was something flawed with them. Right and again. I’ll put these studies in the show notes.

12:45
So the fat shaming really led me to think that I was not worthy. Because I thought that I was not beautiful. I had internalized this false belief that I was less than everyone else and I always felt that if I could just eat less and get a little bit smaller, that I would be more acceptable to my parents and my family. My mother, maybe more boys would like me at school or I could get to wear nicer clothes. But I could never manage to eat less and as time passed I ate more, but in secret. From the age of 10 until last year, as a 38 year old, I have literally spent my entire life on a diet of some sort and I vividly remember you all.

13:25
The first time someone called me beautiful, it was my sophomore year of college. I was sitting on the floor of my friend Stephanie’s Columbia University dorm room. I went to Barnard. Barnard is a part of Columbia University. Well, I dropped out. You know, spoiler alert alcohol in college not good, but anyway.

13:43
We were getting ready to order, you know, some burritos when this guy named Earl, who was this incredibly handsome friend of mine. At the time, he just abruptly turned to me and said you’re one of the most beautiful people I know. I mean you all. I was stunned. I just quietly smiled and said thanks, but inside I thought what the hell are you talking about? Growing up, my parents, especially my mother, never said such things to me, so why would I suddenly believe those words from someone else as a young adult? At that time, the only thing that made me feel good about myself was my academic performance or food. Alcohol had not yet entered the chat, and so if I couldn’t be beautiful, I would be smart, and when things felt heavy on the inside, food and eventually alcohol would be there to provide some temporary ease. And so that’s pretty much where I abruptly ended it. Again, it was. This was just a draft of something I was starting to like reflect on, and it was really cathartic to get this out, and so, again, I just wanted to share it with you.

14:51
A reminder my six week Writing for Healing program will be on Monday night starting in June. Early registration discount is offered through March 31st, so I so hope to see you in this class If you’re interested in a book. Also, I am starting the Motherhunger book study, starting on March 30th as well, so check out those opportunities. And, of course, as you know, I always have life coaching available as well. So thanks so much for listening, sending you all the love and appreciate you for your time today. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomlessdeseobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.

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Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Recognizing that engaging romantically can be a massive trigger for those on a healing journey, I sought the guidance of Eliza Boquin, a licensed psychotherapist, couples therapist, and certified sex therapist for this episode. With notable features on platforms like Bustle and Cosmo, Eliza brings a wealth of expertise to the table. We dive into the delicate intersection of healing and romance, mainly focusing on the challenges faced by women in recovery. Join us as we navigate the complexities of dating for our single listeners and share insights on managing relationships for those already partnered while undergoing a healing journey, such as recovering from addiction. In this empowering episode, Eliza Boquin shares her expert advice, including touching on creating intimacy while sober, creating a supportive space for all listeners to navigate the often tumultuous landscape of love, intimacy, and recovery.

Resources:

Recommended Reading: Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski

Follow Eliza on Instagram

Now, find her on TikTok!

Learn More About Eliza’s Houston Based Practice – Flow and Ease Healing

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

00:18 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone. So this week we have a really special treat and really a podcast episode that I think is going to be so, so, so helpful for you all. So I invited Eliza Boquin, who is a Houston based licensed psychotherapist. She’s also a couples therapist and she’s a certified sex therapist and she’s the co-founder of Melanin Mental Health. And I invited her because I’ve been following Eliza’s work for some time, and last fall I actually had the pleasure of being in her program called Pleasure is my Birth Right.

00:49
It was an eight week program geared towards women of color, but we had some really powerful conversations about love, relationships, self-care, boundaries and sexual health, right. And so I really wanted to bring her on here because, really, for anybody who listens to this podcast and is in a healing journey, especially women in recovery, one of the biggest things that I know from personal experience is that the way that we engage with other people romantically can be huge, huge, huge triggers, right. And so I thought, like who better than to have a licensed mental health practitioner and relationship expert here to kind of get some advice on how to navigate the lovely wide world of dating and relationships while, you know, being on this healing journey, such as recovering from addiction. So, Eliza, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for coming on, so happy to have you.

01:37 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
I’m so happy to be here and thank you for inviting me, Jessica.

01:40 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yes, thank you. So I guess first can you share just a little bit about yourself and how you found yourself doing this work.

01:48 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, so yes, my name Eliza Boquin and my private practice is here in Houston, as you mentioned, the Fluanese Healing Center. And you know, I just I’m so committed and I think a big part of it is just my own journey around empowering women, right Like empowering women and ensuring that they have the information, the resources, the education so that they can make really wise decisions about their relationships. You know, finding themselves in inequitable relationships and advocating for their needs. And I found myself doing this work, really, I think, just on my own healing journey, right Like seeing the impact that being self-serving, self-sacrificing had on the women in my life you know, the elders in my life and my now ancestors the impact that it had when women put everything and everyone ahead of themselves, how they truly suffered from that. And I think, just along the way, sort of wanting to have the answers and learn the answers for myself. You know, I think, like so many of us who become therapists, we kind of get here trying to find those answers.

03:09 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah. So it’s one of the things I just finished reading the Body Keeps the Score and one of the really like big green flags that you know Bessel Vanderkoe talks about is like in a therapist you always want to look for a therapist who’s done the work themselves right, like somebody who’s been through that work, as they’re guiding you. So it’s definitely comforting to hear you say that.

03:30
So yeah so I guess the first question that I have that I know a lot of people always have is like at what point in your healing journey or a sobriety journey, is it safe for somebody to put themselves out there, right, Like what might be some questions that a woman might want to ask herself to kind of gauge her readiness to date.

03:52 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I think it’s such a personal, you know, like person to person decision. So I don’t really believe in you know generalities, so to speak, in terms of determining if we’re ready or not. One, I think, no matter where you are in your sobriety journey, and even if we don’t struggle with it, like not knowing when we’re ready, I think knowing when we’re ready has a lot to do with knowing what our vulnerabilities are, what our limitations are in our ability to, or rather our willingness to get support, ongoing support around that, and also being very intentional about the work that you know. How much work have I already done to really understand what my vulnerabilities are, what my relationship patterns are and what triggers them, right, like, what triggers maybe like the more maladaptive behaviors that we have? So I think a big part of this is awareness.

04:54
I don’t think we have to be perfect, right, like to go into a relationship. I think a lot of times we hear that’s like you have to be. We get this idea that we have to be 100% healed. Well, I don’t think anybody’s ever 100% healed, but I really think it has a big part to do with our willingness to embrace, acknowledge, be aware of our limitations. And what are we doing to make sure we are getting support around those limitations, and also what are our intentions about around a relationship? One of the things that I talk a lot about is undoing what we’ve learned about relationships, and I call it the Jerry Maguire syndrome of you complete me, finding someone that’s going to complete us, and so I would say that’s one of the biggest red flags. If you’re going into a relationship or pursuing a relationship, thinking somebody is going to complete you or somebody is going to be that person that sort of makes up for deficiencies in your life, I think that’s a really big red flag.

06:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
You mentioned about undoing things that we’ve been taught or have learned about relationships, and I guess, like my question sort of is how does someone know that a desire or an intention that they have is something that is genuine versus something that’s been taught? Because I think for a lot of us, like, let’s say, your classic, the classic wish list right, is like okay, be married and have kids by X age, and then I think sometimes we just really don’t stop and think about that. So I guess, how do you know that’s really what you want versus that’s just what you’ve been like programmed with?

06:38 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, that’s a great question and I think it can be both right. Like, not everything that we were taught or that we’ve kind of taken on as beliefs for ourselves has to be something that we have to throw out. And I think, where in your life are you experiencing distress? Are you in distress because you’re in your 30s and you’re not married yet and you thought you were going to be and you thought you were going to have the kids and the white picket fence and all that, and that’s causing you distress, or that’s causing you to maybe feel pressured or you feel like a failure. Something that’s making you feel less than or in distress.

07:22
I think really requires our attention. So where does this idea come from? Do I really want, is this what I really want? How do I know that I want it? Right? And a lot of the times we’ll say, well, isn’t that just what you’re supposed to do at this point in your life? Right, like that’s just what you do in your 30s or your 40s or what have you. So I think like writing down even a list of like what are the reasons you want to be in a relationship? Where did you get the message that you were supposed to be in the relationship. How much of that do you believe to be true? I think a lot of this work is ongoing work and self-reflective work and again, I think if you are in distress, if you are feeling bad about yourself, if there’s guilt, if there’s shame, if there’s regret, that’s an indicator that you got, that it’s worth looking at what the belief is. It’s causing you this distress.

08:18 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Okay. So because in a sense you could want these things but not be feeling all these negatively charged emotions and that might just mean that you want it but it’s not like because there’s like this force or external force or pressure to do it.

08:31 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, I think anytime we get really fixated on something, whatever it may be right, because you know and I think sobriety really sort of reinforces this message is our attachment to things right, like how attached we become to ideas or how attached we become to people and how we struggle. You know, when it doesn’t go that way, how we struggle when things don’t go our way, because life doesn’t always go our way, life doesn’t always go as planned. So how much do you struggle when life doesn’t go as planned? Right, if it’s something that you want, it’s a preference to do. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Again, but if you’re feeling super charged and I don’t even think like you have to be super charged to really sort of reevaluate from time to time, like what do I want, why do I want it, what’s motivating me?

09:25 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
But yes, especially if you’re having some distress around these desires that aren’t being met, yeah Well, and I like the point that you make that it’s good to kind of just check in from time to time, and I think that that also gives us permission to change our minds about like anything right, like we can want something at one point and then maybe a year or two later, life has given us circumstances that make us change our minds, and that’s okay too, so that’s really helpful, so like, let’s say, with the women who start to date.

09:53
Another common question that I get is suggestions or thoughts for gauging when to share that you are on like a recovery or healing path, like I know I was, and I remember I shared this in your group. I was like I was just an open book, like as soon as I was meeting people, because I didn’t even want it to be an issue later. But I know that that’s not the case for everyone, and so I’m curious, like, what your thoughts are.

10:18 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
I love that you had gotten to the point where you owned your story, right Like, because that’s what it sounds like to me is that you owned your story and you were in control of the narrative. And so, again, I think it really does depend on a person to person basis. But if you’re struggling, like, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re struggling to share about your challenges, you know, and you’ve been dating somebody for some time, like, let’s say, you’re like a month in or so, not that there’s any like you know, magic number, like I think that’s a clue to kind of like self explore. What is it that you’re afraid of? Right, like. What is the fear afraid of? Are you? Do you have support around? You know, when you do reveal this to people, like, who can you go go back to in case you don’t get the, the response that you want? Because I think just humans in general, we don’t like rejection, right Like, we don’t like rejection.

11:24
But I think the like, the intensity of like, maybe like your anxiety, might be an indicator of do I still need some support around this? Have I come to terms with where I am in my journey? Because I think that’s the biggest thing about relationships and entering a relationship is how is your relationship with yourself Right, like, how, like? What are your feelings? What is the narrative you have around? You know your sobriety. I think that’s really the key to be on top of and to and to really be able to embrace where you are at. And if you’re still struggling with that, that’s okay. Who are you going to for support? So I do think it’s a personal journey and I think a lot of us kind of like hide these parts of us that we think are not going to be accepted by people. Right, that we fear that if people knew this about this, they may not want us, but it’s such an because it’s such an important part of who you are.

12:28
Not everybody deserves to know our stories. That’s the other piece, right, like, not everybody deserves to hear our stories. So if you know you’re getting to know somebody and it doesn’t really seem like they would really honor your story, you know by what they’re saying or you know something just feels off. So much of this is learning how to trust ourselves. So beginning to know, like, who deserves just to know what our stories are. So maybe you have a list of like, like things that you ask somebody like in the first date, to give you an indicator of what type of values they have, what type of how open minded they are, what their habits are like, right. So find out what would make somebody feel trustworthy, like what determines a person that is trustworthy and a safe person to share your journey with? Would might also be something that you can like sort of rely on, versus just like when it feels good to you.

13:24 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I love that kind of having questions to sort of gauge because, especially for someone who is still feeling very tender about their sobriety journey, yeah, like that might not be what they want to lead with, but if they are starting to really care about someone or just starting to like feel a good connection or good chemistry, having some sort of way to gauge if this person is trustworthy is super, super important.

13:46 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
And you know.

13:46 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I love that you mentioned the self trust, because I think, like for a lot of for me in the beginning, I feel like I was often told, and a lot of mainstream recovery spaces kind of talk about like well, your best thinking got you here.

13:59
So there’s kind of like this element of like we can’t trust ourselves because of our addictive pasts.

14:05
But you know what I always tell folks in recovery it’s like well, your best thinking is getting you help now Right.

14:12
So like, if you need any evidence to trust yourself, it’s the fact that you’ve made the decision to stop drinking, to stop using and to like work on yourself. And so you know, I always like tell people you can trust yourself, it’s okay, like yes, and also like addiction is not like a morality thing either, you know, which is like the other piece of it too, but yeah, I think that that’s super helpful. So now let’s talk a little bit about women who are already partnered, because that also comes up as an issue, and I feel like one of the biggest things that I noticed when women work on their sobriety and they are already partnered is they’re worried about the potential friction that can come up with their significant other. And so I guess, based off your experiences, what might be some of the challenges that women might face when already partnered and they decide to start working on themselves, whether it be sobriety or any other, just kind of like big recovery path.

15:08 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah and it’s actually something that I will tell my clients at the beginning of therapy is that you should know that this is going to change your relationship, and that’s because, even if just one person changes in the relationship, the relationship will change. And so, although we set out to do, you know, therapy or other healing, you know paths that we might take. We set out with the best of intentions and then we may even have the people in our lives rooting us on like, yes, we want you to get well, we want you to get healthy, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it’s still. You will often find you don’t always get maybe the support that even they thought they would be able to provide you, because the reality is you are changing the status quo, you are changing the dynamics of the relationship and, for example, maybe you struggled with boundaries before, maybe you were a people pleaser and now you’ve started to say no, now you’ve started to place limits on what you are willing to do and not willing to do. Maybe now you are holding people accountable, holding your partner accountable. Maybe before you did an express yourself, you wouldn’t say when something was bothering you, and all of a sudden you’re bringing up those things right, even though that’s in your best interest, and it really isn’t the best interest of the relationship, your partner may not know what to do with it. So I really think that doing even couples therapy, you know, is really important, because the dynamics of the relationship have shifted and changed.

16:47
I will always, I often tell people relationships go one of three ways, right. So one way is that we are going in the same direction, maybe not exactly at the same speed, but there’s not too big of a gap between us. That’s the ideal version of us. We’re changing, we’re growing, we’re evolving, but we’re going in the same direction. The second is that one person starts to grow in one direction and the second person says, sort of like what are you doing? You’re making things uncomfortable. And so that person who really wants to grow in one direction will find themselves holding themselves back because it’s uncomfortable, they don’t have the support they need and because they’re scared. They’re scared of losing the relationship. This limits them and it often leads to resentment, right, and so there’s disconnect in the relationship or people grow apart.

17:42
So the reality is you’re not the same person that got into that relationship. Your partner may or may not know what to do about that. It’s going to require a lot of communication. You may have to again see a couples counselor, a couples therapist, and reassuring your partner that may, even though you’re not that same person, you still want the relationship. But I think we have to be really honest with ourselves that things will shift. They may or may not shift in the direction we want, and that’s why it’s also so important to have support around the changes that we’re making, be it a therapist, be it a group that we’re in, be it friends, people that are going to help us when things get hard. Now that we’ve made changes.

18:27 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and that’s so important to point out because we really we can’t predict outcomes, right? I feel like you know, I’ve spent so much of my life trying to manipulate outcomes and like doing all the right things, expecting things to go a certain way, and then like the universe just throws me a curveball. And so I think I love that point about you have to have support that is outside of your significant other, because you never know when things might go left. Hopefully they don’t, but if they do, you want to have a soft space to land and that’s going to be whatever your support group or system looks like. So that’s that’s super important. And I know that you have done couples counseling, so, and I know that couples counseling, you know, can help couples come back from like the darkest and the worst of spaces. In situations like these, what might be like possible indications of points of no return, like can someone who is in recovery be with a significant other who is still like drinking heavily, things like that.

19:27 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, and just to add, you know, because I kind of before I answered that also yes, things may shift and it may be hard for a while. But if you can also think of that sort of transitional time as things sort of leveling out, right and this doesn’t mean that you’re you’re, it’s all doom and gloom either it just may be that there’s an adjustment period. That has to happen because you’re learning each other, you’re learning each other and the reality is, even if you, we don’t struggle with sobriety, this happens in our relationships because we are hopefully continuously evolving and changing, evolving and changing, and so it requires regularly for us to reevaluate our relationships also. But to your point, in terms of point of no return, I think we have to be really clear on what we value most, right, like I often do this work with folks around our core values. What are our core values? What do we value most? What is it that at this point in your life is most important to you? You’re non-negotiables in a relationship, right, and our core values are so important for us to know, because it’s when we stray away from our core values that we suffer.

20:50
And so, being really clear on what your core values are and then, what are your partner’s core values? Right? Like we don’t have to agree on everything. We may not see eye to eye on everything. In fact, what the research tells us, when science tells us, is that 69% of topics couples don’t see eye to eye on but that’s like the small stuff. That’s like how you load the dishwasher right, like that’s you know, I’m a morning person, you’re an evening person type of situation.

21:22
But what they do focus on are the issues that have solutions. They focus their energy on that and I think that is really rooted in our core values. When we compromise or we negotiate our core values, that’s when we suffer. If our work is not aligned with it, if our relationship is not aligned with it, I think that’s a red flag. If your core values are not being supported in your relationship and your partner has rigidity around that, or if their core values are in direct opposition of yours, that’s a red flag Because it’s very hard to somebody’s going to have to then negotiate their core values and like again, that’s when we suffer, when we’re willing to compromise on what matters most to us.

22:10 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know, and I can totally see that becoming a challenge, like, let’s say, because a lot of times you know when, I know from when I was drinking so heavily, I had no idea, in a sense, like really who I was or what really mattered to me. I was just kind of like operating like on this rigid schedule of just like work, drink, sleep, work, drink, sleep. But once the fog clears and you start doing some personal development work, you know you do get a solid sense of what matters to you. And that can really cause some conflict if it happens to be like you said, that like your significant other just really does not care for, like what your core values are and they’re not supporting them. Right, because I’ve seen couples successfully where one has stopped drinking and the other one still drinks.

22:55
But maybe the one that still drinks is like well, I know it matters a lot to you, so I won’t do it around you or only on a special occasion and I’ll limit myself. And then there’s the other ones who are like well, I know that your sobriety matters a lot to you and I’m still going to drink like a six pack a night, which probably is an indication of their own possible issues with the substance too, but I think that that values conversation is a really, really important point. Now, what are what are like green flags, like? What are signs of hope that a relationship, even if it feels scary to someone, right Like, let’s say, you, you’re going through this journey and your significant other is showing some resistance? What are signs for people to not panic and freak out and kind of like keep going that this is just an adjustment period?

23:41 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, I think it’s willingness, right, like willingness to do the work, willingness to have the conversations, willingness to change, willingness to explore if we can, you know, resolve our differences. And just because something is uncomfortable doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing, right? I often say there’s a difference between discomfort and danger, right? Like there may be some discomfort about this space that we’re in, there may be some discomfort. And just because your partner is uncomfortable or doesn’t know where, he’s confused or is unsure, is adjusting, that doesn’t mean they’re resistant. It just means, like they don’t know this version of you, they don’t know this version of the relationship. But if there is a willingness and that there is accountability and there’s honesty and there’s curiosity, then I think work with that, right, you don’t have to have all the answers, and I think that’s the beauty of a relationship and sort of why we sign up for it is because we say I don’t have all the answers, but maybe we can come up with some answers together.

24:53 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I mean I love that there’s a difference between discomfort and danger, because I mean, I swear, sometimes there have been so many times where my body registers discomfort exactly as that as danger, and I freak out and I panic and I’m gasping and I’m like already catastrophizing everything when maybe it was just a genuine, like simple disagreement, but I’m already like jumping to the worst case scenario. So I’m so glad that you pointed that out, because even that could just be like something that I could see people writing on a sticky note and putting it like right, like there’s a big difference between that. Yeah, danger.

25:31 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Well and you made a great point is that our body doesn’t know the difference right, and so this is also why it’s so important, I think, to really better understand how to regulate our nervous system, how to, like so many of us, exists, disconnected from our bodies, you know, and when we struggle with sobriety, we are so disconnected from ourselves, from our body, from all the things.

25:59
And so really being able to, like, recognize what happens to me when I’m under stress, how does that manifest in my body? Does my heart start beating really fast, my hands, you know, maybe they start to sweat, I get really tense. That’s important for us to know as well, especially like around communication and disagreements, is because all of that can be happening, and what happens is the part of our brain that can do the rational, rationalizing, the logical thinking, starts to shut off, because our body is like this is a dangerous situation. Let’s get you to you know, let’s get you out of here, or let’s get you fighting, do whatever we need to do to overcome this. So sometimes, just even having that reminder, like, is this discomfort, is this danger? If it’s, if I’m not in danger, right then if you really were in danger, your body is going to take over. So let’s just say that. But if it’s not danger, it’s discomfort, learning techniques such as, you know, breathwork and slowing down our breathing and how to ground ourselves so we can get back to the problem solving piece.

27:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, no, that that’s super, super important and it brings me back to like I just finished reading, the body keeps a score and yeah, the whole, like the emotional brain basically taking over and the rational brain shutting off and and all of that. That that makes total sense when we’re triggered and so kind of like settling the body, reminding the body that it’s safe, so that then, like you said, we can go back to like thinking so no, thank you, that’s super helpful. So I wanted to also talk about repair, because one of the things that a lot of people realize the tough way I was one of them is that you know, sobriety, getting sober, is not a linear process, right, like people sometimes think it’s like one straight shot, but oftentimes there are relapses, there are slips, whatever term people prefer to use. And I remember from when I was in a relationship in early recovery which, you know again, I would never advise it to anyone listening. But one big thing that I remember experiencing was when my partner, who he struggled greatly, I remember when he first relapsed. I took it like a betrayal and the interesting thing is I’ve heard other people in relationships experience similar responses from their significant others that if they have had a slip, if they have drank again or consumed other substances again, that their partner felt pretty much as betrayed, as if they would have gone out and cheated. And I was curious if you can kind of speak to that and maybe how someone can come back from that.

28:36 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, you know, because it feels so personal when our partners let us down, right, Like it feels so personal when somebody does something, because we have this idea that if people love us, they’ll never do anything to disappoint us or hurt us, right, and so I think we really have to have a better understanding around relationships and what relationships, how they can really serve us, and understanding, like, how each of us has our own journey right, Like, yes, you’re absolutely right, Subriety is not linear, because healing is not linear, right, Like that’s just not how humans do life and there’s so many different things that can happen to us that make us more vulnerable to going back to whatever our coping mechanisms may have been. So I think a lot of the times you know is, if the other person has slipped up is to go back to this, knowing that I can’t control anybody, nobody can control me. Go back to the knowing that knowing of like we’re all really just trying to do the best, that we know how we’re all trying to just like. I think a lot of times we give ourselves that grace that we know that we are doing the best, that we know how and we’re not perfect, but we forget that our partners are not always perfect and if you’re the one you know that slips up.

30:06
I think it’s so important, especially when we’re dealing with sobriety and struggling with it, is the shame that can come with it, right, Like the shame is just poisonous and it will tell us that we’re unlovable because of our vulnerabilities, because of our shortcomings.

30:26
And so I really think accountability, boundaries and understanding like where do I begin and you end? And understanding that even the people that we love are gonna let us down. Even the people that we love are gonna let us down at some point. You know the level of letting me down is another conversation, right, but even the people that we love are gonna let us down because they are imperfect, just like we are, and I think we have to understand that, you know. But I think in all of these questions, sort of the that you’ve asked me in this conversation we’ve had, is that if I feel that I’m losing myself, if I am more concerned with your well-being or my well-being is at risk you know, emotional, mental, spiritual, what have you? Physical then that cost is too high. The cost is too high. If I am losing myself in some way in this relationship, the cost is too high.

31:27 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, that’s a really, really important point to really drill into this conversation, because I think that you know, I’ve seen people who will stay and drink for fear of losing their significant other, and I mean, everyone’s entitled to make their own choices. But when we go back to that well-being point right, there is a lot to risk in this world is when we are struggling with addictions to alcohol. You know, I mean just the rate of women, especially women at younger ages, having, like alcoholic liver diseases and things like that just the outcomes.

32:07
There’s a big price to pay when you choose someone else over your own well-being, so I think that that’s a really important reminder too.

32:16 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, but if the cost is you right, if the cost is you, the cost is just way too high. Like that is there’s nothing that you know where we say well, the cost is me, my well-being Again, my mental health, my spiritual health, my physical health. You know, the cost is too high. If I’m losing myself to keep you, the cost is too high. I’ve already lost myself.

32:46 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and it’s definitely not worth it. Not worth it. But it takes a lot to understand that, because I mean, I remember there were so many times when I was younger and while I was drinking that just holding on to the person meant more to me than anything else, you know. And at some point in my recovery the switch flipped, or whatever the term is, but at some point and I’m so grateful the light bulb went off and it was just like no, like if I tell somebody that I’m in recovery and they have a problem, they can walk out that door like without a moment’s hesitation, and I’m very grateful to really feel rooted in that belief, even like still to this day. But you know there was a really long time that that was not the case at all.

33:33 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to get there, you know, and again kind of like really better understanding what our ideas are around relationships, what our ideas are of love, because I do think that, like movies and media and all of that really support this idea of love being this thing where you get lost in love, being this thing that you know you lose, you lose yourself right, where it’s really the opposite it’s. I want to be in a relationship where I can be all of myself, like we want to be in relationships where we create enough space for all of you and all of me, right, and that neither of us has to really self sacrifice in the way where it’s detrimental to our well being over the long term.

34:30 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s just doesn’t sound as romantic, that’s just.

34:32 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
You know, that’s not what they do.

34:38 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Because I mean you’re you’re totally right. I mean that that is the thing I feel, like people myself included in the past Like if it didn’t make you feel like you were gonna go throw up, then why bother? You know, if it didn’t make you feel like risking it all, why bother? If it didn’t create this wild emotional charge that would also be like equally as stressful when things went wrong, why bother? And and I think you’re right, it’s really put out there in the media and you know, and I think I’ve seen you post something about like love not being so much the emotion but like a conscious decision and an action, and I totally, totally agree.

35:16 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, because, you know, kind of speaking to to to what you were saying about this charge, that’s a trigger to right like often we only think of triggers being negative, right Like, oh, I was, so you know, overly angry or like, overly scared. But when we get on grounded in this way, even though it feels good and it’s fun, we’re being triggered. Also, a lot of the times what’s lighting us up are really familiar Relationship patterns and a lot of the times those relationship patterns are actually sort of like our problematic Relationship patterns. But the reality is, our brains light up when it recognizes something familiar. Sometimes what’s familiar to us is dysfunction, but that doesn’t show up as dysfunction, right Like, it won’t show up in that way It’ll.

36:13
It’ll look like, you know, you know somebody who is sending out their representative, right, but there’s something familiar about this Relationship that lights me up, and so that’s another reason why we have to be so aware of what our vulnerabilities are in Relationships, because we will mistake it for love at first sight. Well, we just like I feel like I’ve known this person my whole life because you have, you know, it’s probably a repeat. It’s probably a repeat of previous partners and your relationship with your caretakers. Yeah. So, again, there’s so much undoing and unlearning that we have to do, and so self-awareness we’re not gonna figure it all out, but we have to be aware of what our patterns are, because we will repeat them over and over.

37:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know, and I Listened to a talk recently where the person’s sharing was saying that like the universe can send us a lesson, first It’ll be like a soft feather and if we don’t listen to the soft feather then they’ll throw us like a little pebble. But then if we don’t listen to that lesson and they’ll like send like a whole train, it’ll run us over.

37:25 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
And we’ll learn yeah and yeah you’re so right.

37:30 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
We will repeat the same situations until we learn what we’re supposed to. Not just learn, but learn and apply it right, because we can Also have an understanding of something and still choose to do otherwise.

37:40 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
That’s right. That’s right. And again, we love the familiar, where there’s comfort in the familiar, the unknown. Even if the unknown we say to ourselves, well, that’s probably in my best interest, right, it’s still the unknown. And our brains registered the unknown as a threat, like danger, danger, and this is why it’s often so hard for us to break, you know, habits and patterns, even when we know they’re destructive. Even when we get to the point we’re like this is actually a problem. It’s very difficult to do, because this is, this is what I know, and we feel more confident and more secure and, ironically, even safer in that which we know.

38:24 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah. It makes a lot of sense even just applying it to sobriety, like the decision to stop drinking like whoa, for me to face the world without alcohol and have only sober thoughts and feel everything. That’s really scary. It’s super, super.

38:38 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
It is. It is scary because, because you know, to I often say, like living your life with an open heart Sounds great, but it is. It means that you are willing, you have the courage and You’re going to sign up for feeling all of what the life experience is, and life is filled Not just with the highs but also with the lows. Right, but I think, especially in our Western world, we have the tendency of labeling everything as good or bad, and even our emotions. Which emotions are good to feel, which emotions are bad to feel, versus like really getting to the point where we can just Understand that if we’re going to live this life fully, we have to live all of it and the parts that are difficult. It’s not about us staying stuck in them and them either. That’s why we do this work is to Learn the skills, learn the tools, make the connections and learn how to learn how to work through those dark times.

39:47
But I do think that, like it’s reinforced in the messaging that we receive that things aren’t supposed to hurt. If it hurts it’s bad, right. If it hurts, take this pill for that. If it hurts, you know, do this to zone out, scroll over here or have a drink or what have you, and we have this idea that life is only supposed to feel good all the time. But the reality is it doesn’t always feel good. But if we don’t know what to do with our emotions, if we don’t know what to do with them, we will suffer, and we will suffer greatly. Yeah, yeah.

40:22 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
And you know I wanted to go back to you made a comment earlier about when people struggle with their sobriety, that there’s this Disconnect that they experience with their bodies, and I wanted to bring it back to kind of like my last question for you, which is about intimacy, while sober right, sober sex is like Fresh for so many people as they enter recovery, and so I was kind of curious what you know you might suggest or offer to say a woman who is easing her way into intimacy after maybe years of just using mind, altering Substances in order to be intimate with another person, like how does someone even start to navigate that world? Yeah, I would say first and foremost.

41:07 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
I think a lot of cisgender, especially heterosexual women, struggle with this, even when they don’t struggle with with sobriety per se, but struggle to be present during sexual Intimacy and to be in their bodies. And there’s so many reasons for that. And I think first and foremost is because most of us don’t receive the explicit or implicit permission to Be sexual, to embrace that part of us, to see it as something natural, healthy, wonderful. So many of us either, you know, this was taken from us unwillingly, maybe like at a really young age, via abuse, or we were shamed around our bodies, we weren’t giving the proper comprehensive sex education to understand our bodies and and and and Having an ongoing conversation to make really informed decisions. I don’t think we’re given the permission. So what I would say is where we even have to start is by giving ourselves permission To be, to embrace this aspect of us right, because we are also sexual beings, right and really being able to, to define what that means for us. You know, sometimes, especially again in in heterosexual relationships, a woman’s pleasure is not necessarily even part of the conversation. Many times what I and I find this again with women in heterosexual relationships to gender women in heterosexual relationships is where it’s. It’s about their partner. It’s about their partner feeling good. They don’t even know what feels good to them. They don’t know what feels good to them. They don’t know how to communicate it, or maybe it’s dismissed or it’s not even considered.

43:03
So I would say it’s starting with giving yourself permission To be somebody who even enjoys sex, to define what that means for you. If you struggle, you know to be in your body. What is that about? You know? Is there some history of disconnect? Is there a history of trauma? Is it because you don’t have the information? You don’t know where to begin?

43:27
And I would say getting like some solid education? So many of us are misinformed about sex, like we’re expecting to have certain Experiences and the reason that we have those expectations it’s really based on miss, on misinformation, and then when we don’t have those experiences, or our bodies don’t do what we think they’re supposed to do, or we don’t enjoy what we’re so we think we’re supposed to enjoy, that can cause a lot of shame and confusion also. So where, if I was going to start anywhere, I would say is how do I give myself permission for this? And if I don’t feel like I am deserving of pleasure or I’m deserving of sex. That needs some exploration.

44:10
Is it Cultural, is it religious, is it political? What’s adding to that? And the other piece I would say is getting some solid education. One of my favorite resources that I often recommend to people is the book come as you are by Emily Nagelski, who I Think everybody should read that book and can really start to give you some more insight about all of the different factors that might contribute to us having really great sex or really bad sex. So I would start there permission and education.

44:44 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I love that and I remember you recommended that book when we were in group with you and reading that book, one of the biggest takeaways for me was kind of like and we talked about it too in the group was removing like the end goal pressure, like that you had to climb and if there was no climax that it didn’t count, and just kind of like giving yourself permission to experience pleasure at the different entry points, right. So the intimacy it’s not always about just like climax, climax, climax. And I remember and I mean me being I’m 39 now, you know being like wow, this is my whole life I’ve gone like not knowing that, and kind of really wow, like I have been kind of like cheated from some really simple knowledge there.

45:26 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
We’ve been 100% cheated from so much information and just even care. You know, like, even the care that we receive, women’s sexual health is not a priority. Sadly it’s not a priority, and that and that’s indicative by, like, how little research there is around it, how often we’re dismissed even by our physicians around it, and so it really is something that I am, like, so committed to helping women get the resources, get the education, learn the skills to be able to embrace and to make the decisions that are right for you right, like, what’s right for you may not be right for somebody else and vice versa but really better understanding and having all of the access that you need to make really informed decisions about this aspect of your life.

46:18 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I know that you just finished your course, but if folks follow you, they’ll be able to see when you have like your next pleasure as my birthright, collective opening up as well, right.

46:31 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Yeah, so my plan is I will probably open up the course for people just to have access to and download, until I start to add on the groups again. But I did create a framework, the pleasure framework for and this is created specifically with black and brown women especially in in mind, because there’s so many different things that can impact our ability to just feel good in our bodies, you know, be that during sex or just even non, in non sexual ways. So I created a framework to really help them, you know, go pillar by pillar and address these different aspects of their life about what might be serving as blocks, and then also giving them the resources that they need to make those informed decisions that I mentioned.

47:16 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah. No, I like your class was incredibly, incredibly helpful for me, and so I would definitely recommend it for anybody who’s listening, to check out at least on you know her resources, at least on anything else that you feel like you would want to share with anybody who might be listening who is a woman going through a healing journey of any kind.

47:39 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Self compassion, self compassion and grace.

47:42
I think we are so hard on ourselves.

47:45
We are so hard on ourselves and when we, a lot of times when we have struggled again, we can hold a lot of shame, we can hold a lot of guilt around our struggles.

47:57
But I part of why even got into this work is because from a very young age, I understood that if somebody, if their behavior, was problematic somehow, I just understood that there was probably a reason, there was something going on, and that that reason was rooted in some sort of pain.

48:19
And and so that is one of the beliefs that I have around people is that you know, we will struggle with pain and we manage and cope with that pain in ways that sometimes are as harmful to ourselves or to others. And so, if you have found yourself really grappling with that, I would encourage you to really develop some compassion for yourself, meaning you know, a lot of the times it’s easy for us to not want others to suffer, but we can’t always extend that same knowing to ourselves. And so, cultivating practices to develop that self compassion, it doesn’t mean you make excuses for yourself, it doesn’t mean that you let yourself off the hook, that you don’t do the hard work. It just means you stop beating yourself up while you’re doing that work, and learning how to give yourself grace is going to be so important and such an important part of your healing journey.

49:17 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, no, thank you. That’s. That’s super helpful, because the self compassion piece, it’s just yeah, we were doing the best that we could given the situations that we were in and the tools that we had. And for so many of us, you know, we, we are taught so little for how to like, how to live, how to deal, and so, yeah, the now that we know better, we get to do better. So, yeah, yeah well, Eliza.

49:42
Thank you so much. This conversation was so powerful and so helpful. Again, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing and giving your time to the space.

49:54 – Eliza Boquin (Guest)
Thank you. I love this. I love this conversation, so I appreciate everything that you’re doing. I’m always so inspired by the work that you do, by the way you share your story, and so thank you for doing everything you do to support people.

50:08 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey, thank you. And so for anybody who’s listening and wants to follow Eliza, you can find her on @elizagboquin. I’ll put the links to her socials. Her website is flow and ease, healing.com, and, yeah, I’ll put I’ll put those links, including the link to the book, come as you are, for anybody who’s interested in reading that. But thank you everybody for listening and I will see you on the next one. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast. But also go to my website, bottomless to sobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes, to one to one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomless to sobercom. See you then.

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