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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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In this episode:

As we navigate the ups and downs of personal relationships, deciding to go no-contact with someone can be challenging. I discuss factors to consider before making this decision. In this episode, we’re digging into what might happen if you choose this path – the freedom it could bring and, possibly, the regret.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:
Hey, everyone, on today’s episode I wanted to talk about the idea of going no contact with people, specifically family members. This came up recently in a conversation with a one-on-one coaching client, because we talked about the fact that I have a brother that I’m basically no contact with, and so we talked a little bit about my decision to go no contact and I thought that it would actually be helpful to talk about that here and also kind of give you all a framework for which to help you think about this really incredibly difficult and personal decision. So, in my case, there were a lot of expectations that I felt that my brother placed on me. To give you context, right, let’s do a little bit of a backstory. We have a 17-year age gap. We were not raised in the same home. He is my mother’s son, not my father’s, and so by the time I was growing up, I was never around him. He was in the military and once he married and had children, I never really was around those nieces specifically my niece and then my sister who I was raised with and you have all heard me talk about her on this podcast. We did grow up together. She was basically like a third parental figure. As she grew, got married and had children, I was already kind of in close proximity to her children or, with her being so much older than me because she wanted me to be around her, she would take it upon herself to fly me out as a kid to go spend and stay the summer with her.

02:00
And so early on there was this investment in the relationship with me for my sister’s part, that I did not necessarily have with my brother and I didn’t think critically of it at all until adulthood, when several issues came up where I was held to an expectation that I wasn’t aware existed. And when I was in my 20s it really bothered me when I felt like I was not doing the right things as a sister. I felt like there were times that I felt short of a standard that was set for me but that I had never consented to, and it wasn’t really until I got sober that I realized that. Oh wait, I’m trying really hard or I’m stressing myself over meeting these relationship expectations that replaced on me that I never agreed to and I’m just going to opt out. And I mean, there’s so much more detail to add to that, which you’re more than welcome to reach out and invite me to have a personal conversation. I’d be happy to flush things out with you if you’re really curious about your situation. But that’s overall what it was, that I was entered into an agreement or an expectation for how I should be acting as a sister when I realized that the only thing we have in common is a common mother, and that was really it. And so I realized with my sobriety that I could not continue to invest in a relationship where I did not agree to the expectations that were being put on me, and so, essentially, we have pretty much gone no contact since then.

03:47
Anyway, the point is is that when you make a decision like that, right, you have to really slow down and think about what. Could the future outcomes be right? Deciding to go no contact with a person is not an impulsive decision that you just make in the heat of an argument, in the heat of the moment. It’s a decision that you make because you realize that this person is not contributing to your life in any way. That’s positive, and, if anything, they are depleting, right, they’re taking away from your life. I mean there’s general circumstances where going no contact would make sense, right? I mean just to kind of name a few. Obviously, if someone is abusive to you, if someone is incredibly toxic towards you, right, like, if they’re being emotionally manipulative, if they are engaging in toxic behavior that is harmful to your wellbeing, you might need to distance yourself, right.

04:48
And again, I have examples of things like that that I went through, that I realized that I was again driving myself crazy, worrying about meeting these expectations that were placed on me that didn’t resonate with me, I didn’t agree to. Or you might have an example of someone who’s, like, repeatedly violating your boundaries. Right, that can be problematic as well, because if you have communicated clearly to a family member what your limits are and they continue to disregard those limits and ignore your needs and ignore what you need to be at peace and happy, that may be a sign that you need to go to no contact. But again, when I say that they’re repeatedly violating your boundaries, a super important question for you to ask yourself is have I actually set them, or is it a boundary that’s in your head that has never been communicated. Because, I always say this, people are not mind readers, so you have to make sure that folks know exactly what your limits are.

05:52
Now let’s see if let’s go into the next part. You might have a family member who is setting off issues of, like, unresolved trauma. Right, if you’re interacting with a family member and you are going into some sort of flashback mode, right, that your mental health is actually negatively being impacted because suddenly you, you are stuck in a trauma response. Right, like you are a flight, right or not right, fight, flight, breeze or fawn. Right, that may be a sign that you might need some distance. Because, also, a sign that you probably need to see a licensed mental health professional. Right, because you’ve got to focus on some healing and sobriety.

06:33
Right, if you are struggling with your own addiction issues and you have a family member who is not supporting your need for sobriety, that can be a sign that you might need to create a boundary and create some distance between you and this family member, right. But again, what I always tell people is have you expressed to this family member how they can support you? Because if you haven’t given them the opportunity to support you properly, how do they know right. So, again, some of these things really do depend on your own communication, like you need to be making sure that you’re verbalizing to your family member exactly what you’re needing or not needing, what you want and don’t want, and if they’re not showing up for you in how you’re explicitly saying so, then yes, by all means feel free to go ahead and create that distance. If you have a family member that you’re always fighting with, I mean, you know it’s fair to create that distance, right? What is there to be gained from living a life of constant conflict with someone? It’s not good for your nervous system, it’s not good for your body, it’s not good for your relationships to constantly be in these back and forth situations. And for what right? There’s nothing to be gained there. So if you really cannot resolve these issues, if you have maybe brought it to like a neutral third party, like a counselor, a family counselor, and there’s still no progress there, that may be a cause to go no contact.

08:00
If you have had someone who is like, repeatedly betraying you, right, let’s say it’s somebody. I had someone one time who had a sister that kept trying to flirt with the different people that she would date, right, and it’s like the first time that it happened, not okay, but they had the conversation and again that limit, that boundary was set that if I’m bringing a guy home, I expect you to talk to him professionally or not professionally, but, you know, amicably but not flirtatiously and the sister continued to violate that. So you know what? There was a need for some space there and ultimately, even in some cases, right Like, there might be some just straight up, irreparable differences between you and a family member that if you are not able to sit peacefully with them at, like, the dinner table because of these differences, it may be worth considering creating some space.

08:55
However, so, now that we’ve kind of talked through these, there’s a couple of things that are super important for you to consider before you cut someone out of your life. Like I said, it has to be a very carefully thought out decision. Because I say this if, in the future, something were to happen to that individual, right, let’s say that person is no longer alive you are going to have to be able to be at peace with the fact that your relationship with that person ended well before their departure from this planet, right Like if you hear news that this person has departed, are you going to be okay looking at yourself in the mirror and recognizing that you decided to stop talking to this individual? If the answer is yes, then that gives you your answer right. But if you know that you would not be able to live with yourself, then you might need to reconsider going no contact before you end up doing something that’s going to be a massive source of regret for yourself and self anger right. But if, down the line, you’re stuck in a position where you are needing some sort of support, are you okay with never going to this person for support whether it be emotional support or financial support right. Are you okay with completely cutting that tie off? For some people, they absolutely are, and for others, they realize that that is not a bridge that they are quite ready to burn, and so these are incredibly important things to consider.

10:39
Anytime that I have made the decision to go no contact because I’ve done it with several people in my life I have made peace with the fact that if something were to happen to them tomorrow, I would be okay with what our relationship Looked like or didn’t look like, because it’s ended right, and I also made peace with the fact that I know that I could be literally on fire and and I will not go to them to ask them to toss a bucket of water on me, right?

11:10
And so it’s so important to have that clarity, and this is such a heavy and difficult decision that I I never recommend for anyone to take it lightly, right? And so, again, whether it’s that you are consulting with trusted people whose advice is Sound advice, whether you are working with a licensed mental health professional, whether you are working with a coach I am a live coach you can schedule a consultation with me, right? Whoever you are working with, make sure that they Are a non-biased third-party person to really help you navigate that conversation, because going no contact can be a great source of freedom or it can be a massive source of regret, and this life is hard enough. We don’t need to be living adding regrets to our daily experiences. So, with that, thanks so much for listening this week and I will catch you next time.

12:07
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 sober calm 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 calm. See you then.

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In this episode:

Navigating the complex emotions of recovery is no small feat, yet understanding the principles of Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements gives us tools to foster peace, self-compassion and clarity. This episode is a testament to the healing potential of these agreements, especially within the framework of sobriety. 

Resources:

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

00:17 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone. So for today’s episode, I actually wanted to Don Miguel Ruiz, author of the four agreements. I’ve had a couple of people ask me recently, like Jessica, what were some of the books that were most impactful for you in your early recovery, and the four agreements was one of those books that really opened my eyes to just a lot of the different ways in which I was making myself really miserable and wanting to drink, and so I kind of wanted to do an overview of what the book discusses. I highly encourage anybody who has not read the book to go ahead and get the book. It’s a short read but it’s incredibly powerful and incredibly impactful and can really help you reflect on ways in which you are the own cause of like half of your own misery. Right, and it’s just a really empowering text. So again, domín Guérd-Ríces essentially he didn’t come up with these four agreements. If you read in the book and read more about him, he’s basically reflecting on ancient Toltec indigenous wisdom, and so these agreements are not necessarily his, but obviously he is credited with them because of the fact that he wrote the text. And so the four agreements are the following Number one be impeccable with your word. Number two don’t take anything personally. Number three don’t make assumptions. And number four always do your best. So first let’s talk about this recovery journey and agreement number one, which is be impeccable with your word, which, to summarize, really it’s about excuse me for coughing, because I have this cough that has not gone away, so you’re going to hear me cough on occasion, and if you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to skip this episode. But being impeccable with your word speaks to speaking with integrity right and really speaking what you mean. Also, it speaks to avoiding gossip and self-destructive speech right and really.

02:11
The big emphasis here is to speak with truth and kindness. I want to emphasize that being honest does not mean being brutal, and there are times where people think that, because they tell it how it is and they just keep it real, that they think that they’re doing some sort of noble act of practicing honesty. You can speak truth without being cruel, and so the example that comes up in the book that I’m going to share with you in a second is a perfect example of somebody speaking how they felt, but it wasn’t honest, it wasn’t true and it wasn’t kind and then it had a negative ripple effect, right? So if you have the book and you go to pages 34 to 35, there is a story of a woman who was intelligent, had a great heart and she had a daughter that she loved. But basically she had a hard day at work. And she comes home and her daughter is singing right, but mom’s got this terrible headache, she’s exhausted and she really just wants peace and quiet in the home. Right, but her daughter is like singing and excited, because that’s what kids do. And at one point her mom just snaps at her and basically I’m paraphrasing from the book right, but the mom basically shouts at her and is like stop singing, you sound terrible. No, she didn’t sound terrible. What mom had was the headache, right, what mom was was exhausted, but mom didn’t communicate her need effectively and what impacted her words have, right, the power of her word, which the author talks about was that it really basically crushed that daughter. Do you think that that little girl ever sang again? According to the text, she never sang again. Right, and so you’re like, just what does this have to do with sobriety, again, a lot of sobriety, especially because we talk about how community is the opposite of addiction, right, we often hear that in a lot of different spaces that you all might be in, and I say that because you have to be mindful of how you speak to other people. When you embark on this recovery journey, you are going to find other people who are struggling sometimes, and the way that you treat them, though, it’s their choice, how they take your words and act on it, but the truth is we do impact others, and so when we are in recovery, right, speaking kindness, speaking truth, pausing before we speak, can have a great impact.

04:38
Another really important point that is brought up in this chapter is avoiding gossip. When you’re in recovery, a lot of the time, you are going to be joining different communities, right, so you may be participating in different meetings, and it’s going to be so important for you to not engage in shit talking right Like there that maybe an old habit and so many of us will thrive off of, like the feeling that rushes through our bodies when there’s gossip being talked about. However, the author argues that basically talking about gossip is like ingesting poison, in a sense, and then you get wrapped up in uncomfortable conversations, you get accused of things, and then suddenly you’re feeling uncomfortable showing up to a specific meeting that you previously enjoyed because you participated in gossip right, and therefore now you have a risk or something threatening your recovery because now there’s a meeting that you don’t want to go to anymore. So, again, if you are starting to see people engage in conversations that are not healthy, if you are starting to see people in your recovery space engage in yeah, gossiping, shit talking, however you want to call it, feel free to call them out on it or feel free to remove yourself from the situation. You don’t need to engage in gossip in order to be a part of right. Those are old behaviors that we may have engaged in. Those are old behaviors that we probably learned, especially in like elementary, middle school, high school, right To create a sense of belonging, let’s, let’s belong to each other by shitting on someone else, but that’s really not helpful. And so, again, being mindful of your language and the language that you allow yourself to surround yourself with is going to be imperative to your recovery. So that’s kind of like my version of being impeccable with your word.

06:27
So the next agreement excuse me, is the second agreement. Don’t take anything personally, and I want to say that between agreement two and agreement three, don’t make assumptions. Those to me are like the cornerstone of my mind being blown in early recovery and being like whoa, I don’t have to take things personally. That completely blew my mind right as a concept and so to essentially kind of paraphrase what this agreement means, it’s basically saying that whatever other people do, be it their actions or the words that they say, they’re a reflection of the reality that that individual is in and it’s never a personal attack. Even if it’s directly said to you right now in your face, it still has nothing to do with you and everything to do with that individual who is taking those actions or saying those words.

07:19
Right, by you not internalizing any external event and taking it personally, you can really free yourself from a lot of unnecessary suffering and really experience some emotional balance, which, of course, is going to help you with a recovery journey. Right, like if you can see things falling apart, if you can turn on the news and see politics and not take it personally, if you can have a bad interaction with someone in a meeting and realize you know what that person’s probably going through something that can be incredibly freeing to you and really help you with that urge to drink or numb in however other way. You might do that Right, freeing yourself from taking things personally really allows you to focus on your own happiness and growth. Right, again, when you can recognize that others actions are a reflection of them and their experiences and it’s not a judgment on you, it’s not a reflection on your worth. This can really just help you reduce that risk of feeling discouraged or overwhelmed when things are going wrong. And again, I’m talking on both like a micro level, like on individual levels, with your colleagues, your family members, your friends, people that you are in recovery with, and support groups. But I also mean you know it’s an election year here in the United States. So, however you feel about politics, I really want you to take this agreement and apply it to society as a whole. Right, don’t take things personally when people make laws that don’t resonate with you, when public figures speak things that hurt. Don’t take it personally, and that can be huge in helping you stay sober when the world feels like it’s falling apart. Okay, so just a couple of things that popped up in the text, right, I would totally recommend in the book, reading pages 53 and 54.

09:21
But here’s a couple of quotes that I pulled just to kind of share with you. So the first one, in terms of not taking things personally, is if they tell you how wonderful you are, they’re not saying that because of you. You know you’re wonderful. It’s not necessary to believe other people who tell you that you are wonderful. So I like this one, right, because it’s kind of twisting. It’s like well, why can’t I take a compliment? I mean, of course you can always be gracious and take a compliment, but again, right, whether it’s external validation or external stress, if we are the ones who determine our state of, like, mental balance, then we’re not getting super thrown off when people give us some indelible compliments, but we’re also not getting thrown off when people attack us or say things that hurt us, right?

10:08
The next comment that I pulled, or quote that I pulled from this section is don’t take anything personally. Even if someone got a gun and shot you in the head, it was nothing personal, even at that extreme. And I know that example can be wild and people will be like what the hell is this author talking about? If someone shoots me, of course it’s because it’s me. No, again, if you look at people who become violent, it’s usually something having to do with them is what the author would be arguing, right, and so when people talk badly about you, when people betray you, when people backstab you, a great example that I would say I see a lot say with like clients and one-on-one support is like, if their partner has been unfaithful, right, at the end of the day, a partner being unfaithful has everything to do with them and nothing to do with you. They’re the ones making that choice.

11:03
The last point that I loved from this chapter is even the opinions you have about yourself are not necessarily true. Therefore, you don’t need to take whatever you hear in your own mind personally. And again, this is super important in recovery, because in recovery, especially early on, we might be coming into this work with extremely low self-worth, right, we might feel horrible about ourselves, we might be still carrying a lot of shame, and so it’s important to recognize that those stories that we’re telling ourselves about ourselves are not always true, right, and so question your thoughts. A Cartoli in the Power of Now. He talks about looking at the thinker, right. So this is where you can give yourself the gift of separating yourself from your thoughts and recognizing that just because it’s a thought that’s in your mind doesn’t mean that it’s true and you can get curious about it. What is it trying to tell you? But you can recognize that it’s not necessarily true.

12:00
So, moving on to the next agreement is the third one. Don’t make assumptions, and it’s usually followed up with ask questions right, and this one you know. To basically paraphrase it is see clarity in your communication with others by asking questions right. Avoid misunderstandings by communicating openly and honestly. Don’t sit there and be pissed off at somebody who didn’t call and check in on you if you never expressed the need that you want to be checked in on right. People are not mind readers, and that is something that is so important with this agreement that if you are getting upset and you are finding yourself resentful towards somebody because they fell short of your expectation, here’s the question Did you communicate that expectation to them or did you just expect them to suddenly have common sense and show up for you? Because, again, people don’t have common sense. People don’t read minds. So it’s our job to make sure that the people that we need to show up for us know how to right. But again, when it’s in the case of receiving communication from other people, if you are not sure, it is absolutely your job to ask questions right. It is absolutely your job to seek a decrease in misunderstanding by getting curious right.

13:27
In the context of sobriety, avoiding making assumptions can really, really help you because if you are clear between you and another person, or you and your group right, then you can have clear expectations, you are able to not be confused about what to expect from other people and then again you’re giving yourself that opportunity to experience peace because you know exactly where people stand on things. You know that you have communicated where you stand on things. When you’re leaving things up in the air because of poor communication, you’re creating the space for conflict, you’re creating the space to feel let down, you’re creating the space to feel resentful and, of course, for someone who is still struggling with their substance use, whether it’s alcohol or other things, when we set that up, we’re going to want to drink right, we’re going to want to numb if we have all this turbulence between us and others because of miscommunication. So that clear communication is important and, yes, it takes a lot of courage to ask questions because sometimes you might hear what you don’t want to hear. Right? Let’s say that you’re dating someone and it’s kind of going into that little you know that term situation which is you’re acting like a relationship but it’s not officially one. Sometimes you don’t want to ask the question what are we? Right, because you might hear what you don’t want to hear. But giving yourself the opportunity to hear what you don’t want to hear gives you the clarity to decide if you want to stay in that ambiguous situation or if you want to break free from it because it’s not meeting your needs. Right, and so that gives you the opportunity to create space for what you want to receive that’s going to meet your needs. So super, super important to help you bring clarity into your life, to bring peace and opportunities for solid decision making, not making assumptions. Asking questions and making sure that you are communicating your needs directly to other people will absolutely set you up to be successful and find some peace. And I’ll pull this quote from the text he wrote if others tell us something, we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something, we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and replace the need to communicate, even if we hear something and we don’t understand, we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions. We have agreed in our minds that it’s not safe to ask questions and we have agreed in our minds that if people love us they should know what we want or how we feel. But again, the people who love us are not mind readers and that is an incredibly unfair expectation to put on others. Have the courage to say what you want, have the courage to ask for what you need and if someone falls short of that, then use that as data to inform your next decisions about your relationship or connection with this individual.

16:23
Okay, moving on Agreement 4. Always do your best. So the fourth agreement always do your best is super important in the recovery journey because there’s a solid high correlation of people in recovery journeys who seek to do everything perfectly right, whether it’s I’ve got a streak of continuous sobriety where I’ve never slipped and never had a relapse. You know, there’s a lot of markers by which people measure success that could sometimes fall into that area of perfectionism which can be difficult for people to deal with. Right. And so the principle, the agreement of do your best recognizes that your best is going to look different every single day for every single individual. So if on Monday you got a good night’s sleep that night before you had a good breakfast, you didn’t have any conflict with anyone and maybe you go into your job and you have a solid day’s work, right, that’s your best that day. But maybe Monday night your child was sick and so you barely got sleep and then you got a flat tire on the way to work so you had like that stress on you. Your best on Tuesday is going to look absolutely different from Monday. But the point is that on Tuesday you try your best and whatever that actually ends up being, that is perfectly fine, right, that is absolutely acceptable because you recognize that best looks different every day. Best looks different from individual to individual, right? And then, when you know that you gave it your best that day, even if your best was just showing up and clocking in, right, maybe you didn’t work on any projects, but you showed up and that was the best you can do you can at least give yourself the peace of that day of knowing that you tried your best.

18:22
Drink thing with recovery, right, for someone who is working on quitting their drinking. Maybe in one month they did not drink for 29 days and one of those days in that month they had a slip and they had like a couple drinks and then they immediately got it back together and went back to being totally abstinent. Prior to that, they had been drinking every single day one or two bottles of wine. Right, let’s talk about how great they’re doing. Let’s celebrate the fact that they have made such a drastic improvement, right, and so giving it your best every single day is going to look different, and in a recovery journey, right, the key here is to focus on that continuous improvement.

19:04
Right, you hear in some spaces you’ll hear that term progress, not perfection, and that’s the important thing here to remember in our sobriety journey right, that in sobriety, it’s about giving our best effort. Every day we acknowledge progress and we have to be compassionate with ourselves during difficult times. As someone who took 14 months to finally stop drinking because I kept relapsing and getting hospitalized because of my extreme alcohol abuse right, if I had been able to practice compassion with myself, I may not have spun out of control as much as I did, but I believe that I was basically a failure for drinking again after a period of sobriety. So as soon as I had the first one, I would say you know what effort. And then I would drink until I had to be hospitalized, right. And so there’s a lot that compassion can do for you when you’re struggling.

19:58
And so, again, that always do your best piece is just so important, so important to a recovery, and so I wanted to pull a couple of quotes with regard to the fourth agreement, just to kind of share it with you. So I’m pulling first from pages 75 and 76. And so the author, dominique Ries. He wrote under any circumstances, always do your best, no more and no less. Keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time. So your best will sometimes be high quality and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you’re healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. Your best will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy or upset, angry or jealous Right.

20:54
And then, on page 84 and 85, he shares this piece and he says we don’t need to know or prove anything. Just to be to take a risk and enjoy your life is all that matters. Say no when you want to say no and yes when you want to say yes. You have the right to be you and you can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best, you’re denying yourself the right to be you Right. So give yourself that self-compassion and understand that sobriety is not a perfection journey and it should never be a perfection journey. Good for the people who make zero mistakes, but, to be honest, all of us fall short at some point or another of our different goals, and so it is absolutely okay to be a human, it is absolutely okay to be imperfect. And so with that I’ll just close out again.

21:56
I highly recommend reading the four agreements. I think that that will be a great read for anybody who is looking for something to read to help them with their sobriety. Quit Lit is great. A lot of people like it. I’m actually I’m not that into Quit Lit. I love more of the neuroscience than just general self-help books, and so I would say the four agreements, is a solid, self-help slash, personal development text that I highly encourage anyone to read at any point in their recovery journey, but especially early on when you have so many emotions trying to like hijack you. So, with that being said, thanks so much, and I will see you in 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, bottomlesstosober,com, 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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In this episode:
CW: pregnancy loss and death by overdose

This episode touches on the unlearning that happens when “doing the next right thing” is overshadowed by life’s most painful moments. I discuss how recovery has taught me to handle the hard things, including navigating a miscarriage—a topic often kept silent yet desperately needing a voice.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:
Today’s episode is going to have a content warning specifically for conversations around pregnancy, loss and death by overdose, so if those are things that you do not want to hear about, then don’t listen to today’s episode. Otherwise, thank you for joining. So it’s my birthday, the time of this recording. It is Sunday, february 4th, and today is my 39th birthday, and normally I would be feeling more excited, but it has been a hell of a week and I’m honestly just living in a lot of pain right now, and two things can be true at once, right. So I am living with a lot of emotional pain right now, while I’m also experiencing a lot of gratitude for several things. I’m absolutely experiencing a ton of gratitude for how I have handled myself this week with the loss that I’ve been dealt, and I’m also really grateful for the people in my life who have shown up for me. I don’t think that I realized how loved I was until things started to go wrong this week and the amount of support that I have had on all sides, like from people at my day job to my colleagues at the luckiest club, to the people in my personal life, right Like I have really been so loved and supported and for that I am so grateful. But, anyway, what I wanted to do for today’s episode, I actually wanted to read the reflective piece that I wrote. I always like delivering content in different forms and I think, like some people are readers and then some people are listeners, and so for the folks who I connect with here on this world, who like to listen to the things that I share, this is really for you and I’ll probably, you know, add love a couple of things. But I did want to share this reflection because it means a lot to me in my journey that I was able to put this together. So I titled this piece when doing the next right thing wasn’t enough, and I hope that if you know anyone who has dealt with pregnancy loss themselves and especially is navigating the walk of recovery, I hope you’ll share it with them. I think a lot of people really don’t talk about miscarriage like at all, and it really does a disservice to folks when they go through it and they think that they’re the only ones right, and so I’m speaking up because I hope that this helps someone else feel a little bit less alone, and I also speak up because it helps me feel better to share. So, with that being said, here is this piece that I wrote this week when doing the next right thing wasn’t enough.

03:04
In the social media realm, sobriety related posts present enticing promises to people who might want to quit drinking from promises of glowing skin and better sleep to weight loss in the prospect of a life so fulfilling that the idea of escaping to drink seems unimaginable. Appealing as they are, such promises are only true sometimes, especially the ones about loving your life so much that you won’t want to escape it. In my early recovery, I subscribed to the belief that doing the next right thing would shield me from the unknown future, that getting my addiction under control would end my suffering. The bulk of my suffering was caused by drinking when, out of desperation for companionship, I found myself repeatedly entangled in relationships with men who feared commitment. When one of them did offer me commitment, it turned out that he struggled with opiate addiction and, ignoring it, I trusted that love alone would conquer it and, as no one likes to admit, love was not enough, while on the pain of the pandemic and the world being shut down, and he was driven back to the needle. I saw him for the last time, bluish, before the coroner wheeled him away, just before his relapse and death. We had talked about what it would look like to build a family. His rough, calloused hands carefully held my face as he gently whispered you are my family, and I shared with him that I wanted to have a baby. Not a week later, in what felt like an instant, he was gone. Instead of seeking help, I dove into every possible bottle to avoid the pain of losing him. My dreams of a family were shattered. I felt I would never find a partner, fall in love or become a mother. That year, isolation and grief landed me in eight alcohol-related hospitalizations that lasted from three days to five weeks.

05:07
When I finally got sober in November of 2020, I needed to believe that I had paid my dues of emotional suffering due to a life of alcohol addiction. I had to hold on to the hope that if I could stop pouring this poison into my body, that everything would go just right. Surely, sobriety would bring me peace in life. I would want to embrace, rather than escape, a belief I carried until recently. In December of 2023, I was in a new, healthy, long-term relationship and finally felt safe enough to consider actually trying to get pregnant.

05:46
On a chilly afternoon, I went to the grocery store and filled my cart with snacks, suddenly, strolling into the family planning section Like a teenage girl with a secret, I glanced around to make sure no one was watching and I snuck a box of pregnancy tests into my shopping cart. My stomach fluttered with excitement as the cashier rang up my total. Rushing home to use the bathroom, I ripped into the box and tore open the test packaging. A faint pink line came up, eyes wide, my chest tightened with anticipation as I pulled out another test and waited. I was pregnant. Grabbing the third test, I waited again, I was still pregnant. After years of not trusting myself or my partners, I rejoiced Finally, I get to be a mom.

06:39
On Christmas, I told my partner the news, the joy of which was the best gift I could give. Weeks later, we confirmed the pregnancy with an ultrasound and upon hearing the heartbeat, we beamed at each other and right with excitement. We shared the news with our loved ones and colleagues and I started to write notes to the baby in a collection of random thoughts titled All the Things I Wish I had Known. The joyous anticipation abruptly extinguished during a routine checkup on January 30th. The ultrasound delivered the heartbreaking news of a silent miscarriage. I’m so sorry, jessica. The sonographer said quietly the baby is gone. Looking at the screen, trying to make sense of her words, I listened for a heartbeat that was not there. On the screen was a misshapen sack. My heart sank, my eyes watered. My partner squeezed my hands tightly as the room spun out of control.

07:44
Despite my beliefs about recovery, life had shattered the illusion of sobriety as a shield against pain and loss. About one out of four pregnancies. Don’t make it, it’s not your fault. My doctor explained there’s no reason. As I wept silently in my partner’s arms tears in his eyes too my heart felt that familiar feeling of shattering and my thoughts raced. Will I ever become a mother? Do I have the courage to try to get pregnant again? What if I never become a mother? I’ve been through enough already. Why do I have to go through this? Haven’t I done all the right things?

08:30
That final thought right, that final reflection is precisely where I got things wrong about recovery and I had some serious unlearning to do you see, recovery? It’s not a guaranteed dispensary of desires earned through time and effort sobriety, it turns out. It doesn’t equal immunity from hardship, but rather it equips us with the tools to face life’s challenges. And in the face of this loss, I went ahead and I revisited a note that I had written to the baby. And the note said this difficult times come to reveal something about you to yourself, something that you would have never known otherwise. How could you know how strong you are if you never had something to overcome? Don’t seek hardships, but when they come, say hello. What are you here to teach me? Right, like here’s the thing Recovery. It doesn’t exempt us from life’s tribulations, but it does transform our ability to navigate them.

09:46
When I read that note and I contemplated this loss, I realized that I had to process the lesson that recovery owes me nothing. Right, it has armed me with the means to handle life’s challenges without needing to escape when my partner passed away in 2020, isolation and alcohol those were my coping mechanisms when I miscarried this week. I immediately leaned on others for support. I accepted offers of food and companionship, I took time off work, I cleared my calendar, except for one thing that I couldn’t figure out how to clear and I sought refuge with my sister after having surgery to complete the miscarriage. Like you know, on Tuesday I found out I was miscarrying and then I had to turn around and have surgery on Thursday. It was fast, right, but, simply put, I have allowed others to take care of me and I have changed the narrative of how I respond to hardship because of my recovery. And again, it’s my birthday weekend. Today is my actual birthday and I basically canceled the entire celebration, right, because of my broken heart. Like, I feel like shit. I don’t feel like being a social butterfly, and that’s okay, but you know what? I’m still choosing to stay sober and I’m choosing to sit with this inevitable pain that is coming with everything that’s happened this week.

11:11
During the support group meetings that I lead with the luckiest club, one of the things that we do is we always close out those meetings with a reading of the nine things. And so the nine things. If you’ve ever read Laura McCow and spoke, push off from here. She basically says that the nine things are exactly like what she has always needed to hear during her hardest times, right and so, and that these are things that she needs to hear. Excuse me for my cough, but these are the things that she needs to hear in her daily experience. Right, and I realize when I listen to the nine things it’s almost like they’re applicable beyond sobriety, because I feel like I need to hear these damn nine things to help me recover and start this process of healing from the miscarriage as well. And so I’ll go ahead and I’ll read the nine things they say.

11:58
One it is not your fault. Two it is your responsibility. Three it is unfair that this is your thing. Four this is your thing. Five this will never stop being your thing until you face it. Six you can’t do it alone. Seven only you can do it. Eight you are loved. And nine, we will never stop reminding you of these things.

12:30
And so, going back to that note right, that I had written to my unborn baby don’t seek the hardships, but when they come, say hello.

12:40
You know what are you here to teach me? Yeah, like hello, you fucking hard times. I’m not grateful for them, but I am thankful for how I have learned to handle them, and that is a true testament to my sobriety, right when I, when I met with my therapist yesterday, she brought up the point that in recovery journeys whether we’re recovering from different substances or behaviors, whatever we’re recovering from in this life because we’re all recovering from something that we go through phases of having to hold onto certain beliefs to get us through certain windows and then letting go of those beliefs. And so in the beginning of anyone’s sobriety journey, right, we have to latch onto that belief that sobriety is going to be this ticket to a happy, healthy, beautiful life. We’ve got to hold on to that because if there’s no hope in sobriety, then why the hell would we stop drinking?

13:42
But eventually, right, and I almost feel like this is my official transition from the early recovery into I don’t know, I don’t know what you call go beyond early recovery, regular recovery, long term recovery. But I think that this to me feels like it’s the big transition where I have finally let go of the pink cloud, right, like that’s definitely gone, and I absolutely recognize that I’m not immune from the pain of this human existence, but I get to handle it totally differently from how I would have handled it in my drinking days. And I think that that is the transition from early recovery into, like, the rest of recovery. And, who knows, like I might have other revelations in time but I really do kind of feel like that’s my big, big takeaway that in the beginning I needed to believe that everything was sunshine and rainbows. I needed to believe that you could have fun sober, and I needed to believe that sobriety was all this rah, rah, rah. And now I understand that sobriety isn’t all those things, and that’s okay. I don’t need to believe that anymore.

14:53
In order to stay sober, now I just know that sobriety equips me with the tools to handle whatever comes my way, and for that I’m grateful. And, like I said at the start of this, I’m also just really grateful for all the love that I have received. I don’t know if I’ll get to become a mom, right, like one in four pregnancies don’t make it, and that’s crazy that that’s not talked about enough, right, I’m getting older. Today is my 39th birthday, mind you. My mom had me at 45, so, and she had me naturally. So there’s hope, right, but I just don’t know, and I have to find and seek that radical acceptance that I just don’t know. I can only control what is in my control, what’s in my power, but these outcomes that I seek, they’re not, they’re out of my hands, right and it really hurts to face that reality.

15:53
So, anyway, thank you all so much for your time. Thank you for listening. It would mean the world to me if you shared this episode, or if you go to my site and share the blog entry. Share it with other folks who might need that support and, yeah, I will see you in the next episode. Take care, 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 bottomlessdeseobercom. See you then.

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In this episode:

I dive into a heartfelt exploration of the complex dance of forgiveness, boundary-setting, and finding community that accompanies recovery with fellow sober traveler Dana White-Guerrie, owner of the Yarn Consolery LLC. We highlight how forgiveness sometimes involves crafting the space we need to heal rather than rekindling harmful ties. Listen in to learn about where we go to heal when we need to distance ourselves from those who hurt us.

Resources:

Follow Dana on Instagram

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

00:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey, everyone, on today’s episode I have a guest. I have Dana White-Guerrie and she is the owner of the Yarn Consollery LLC and really for today, we’re just going to have a candid conversation. Dana’s got some questions for me, actually, and we figured why not go ahead and have an opportunity to sit chat? I can answer questions about sobriety in life in general, and then we’ll go ahead and make it into an episode. So, hey, dana, so nice to have you.

00:45 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
I think I told you I found you or saw you on the sober summit with Maggie and I was drawn to you. I told you this I was drawn to you just because you were so forthright. You had a no BS attitude and the thing that really struck me is you didn’t really sugar coat forgiveness and the need for forgiving others to bring your sobriety to the forefront. So that’s a lot of what I wanted to talk to you about. I know you’ve talked about forgiving yourself, but I love your stance on kind of how do we forgive others, or is it necessary or kind of moving on from the past to really live a life of recovery?

01:35 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I love that you bring that up, because I would say that definitely my stance on forgiveness it’s. I definitely am not a forgive and forget type of person, and what I mean by that is that I will not continue to put energy into something that caused me pain that another person did to me. However, I’m going to absolutely make the decision, if I choose to, to go no contact with that person, and an example of that would be I have a brother on my mother’s side. I mean, he’s probably about 17 years, my senior, and so we did not have the opportunity to grow up together. So you know, by the time I was born, I think he was on his way out to the military, and so we just never were together.

02:18
But what I did find was that he was placing these expectations on me for how I should be as a sister, and because, again, he’s 17 years older than me, I kind of just automatically throughout my life assumed that whatever he was expecting was the right thing for him to expect. And then you know later on him and his wife and it took me getting sober and getting clarity of mind that I didn’t want to be told how to show up for another person for me to finally be like. You know what I’m going to just end this entire relationship. And so you know, like my mother’s aware, my siblings are aware that I’ve made the decision to go no contact with him, and I realized that I just didn’t want to be told how to show up for other people like I really wanted to determine that myself.

03:04 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So I guess my question for you there is how do you handle almost the peer pressure of what do they call them, the flying monkeys, right, the people that are sent, you know other family members that are sent to tell you to forgive. You know that if we don’t forgive someone else, it’s like drinking poison and wishing, you know, someone else to die. How do you, how do you kind of come in, come to peace, more so, with holding your ground, not giving in to kind of the peer family peer pressure to forgive someone because that’s just how they are, or you know that was 10 years ago or they’re. They’ve changed now. How do you kind of get your mind around that?

03:51 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s a great question. So I’ve got to say I’m pretty fortunate that my family there’s many of us who are siblings, and nobody has pressured me to maintain a relationship with him. And I think that, at the end of the day, everyone knows how bad things got for me in terms of my drinking and if this is what’s working for me and my sobriety, I think it’s pretty clear. We’re not questioning whatever’s keeping Jessica sober, and if she’s making this decision to keep herself sober, then it is what it is. Other things that I am mindful of you know I do my best to say not complicate family situations. So since my decision to go no contact with him.

04:26
I’ve only had to see him one time and it was very simple. I was very cordial, you know. I saw him and his wife and I said, hey, how are you? And that was it. And I just went to another part of the room. It was like a family get together and I just did not engage with them. So I had to be in the same space. My mom was there. I had not seen my mother in over a year, so it was an opportunity to see my mother as well. But I just pretty simply I said hello and then I kept it going. You know, I wasn’t going to get into an argument.

04:53
I, if they had approached me with any type of conversation about the past, I was not going to have that conversation, and I still won’t, because I’m pretty firm in my decision.

05:03
You know, when we make certain decisions, right, it really helps us to look at our future self. And so if me in 70 years or maybe not, so I don’t know that I’d be around in 70 years, if I’m when I’m 70 or when I’m 80, would I look back at this decision and regret it? And my 80 year old version does not. My 80 year old version is firmly okay with still being no contact with this individual, and so that’s what I use to kind of anchor myself in a decision. That can be a tough decision, absolutely, but I know that future me won’t regret it. And you know and I’ve run the gambit of possible scenarios, right, because when we decide to go no contact with the family member you know we’re essentially saying that if one day we needed help, we are letting ourselves know that that person is not an option for help. Right, I’m giving myself permission to understand that I’m cutting off a possible source of help in the future and I’m okay with that because I’m that resolute with my decision.

05:58 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
And I love. I love that because that was sort of the major things that resonated with me. As you said, you know, a lot of people this day and age are talking about inner child, this inner child that you know, work with our past selves. But you said, really, you know, looking forward to that older person, what am I doing to ensure that they have a good life?

06:16
And I guess that kind of leads me to wonder this might be more of an existentialist question, but how do you know if someone’s changed? I mean, maybe they’re, maybe their words have said they’ve changed, but even if their actions are changed, like how many chances do you give someone right? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Or you know I don’t want people to hold me to all the, you know, hard things I did when I was using you know. So I want to. You know I want people to forgive me. Of course, hand over fist, but I have a hard time forgiving others. And so how do you know? How do you kind of determine when you give a second chance, third chance, or if they’ve changed? Or is that more of like a gut feeling for you?

07:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Are you more logical or I think I’ve definitely become more logical. I think the more sobering and the more logical I get, and so I think everyone ultimately has to make that decision for themselves. Right? When I’m working with a client one on one, I’m never going to tell someone you need to let this go, versus you need to, like, hold on to this, etc. But what I ask myself, or would ask another person, is are you okay with this happening again to you? Right? So, because again, someone can change and work.

07:29
People and humans backtrack sometimes. Right, it’s human nature to be imperfect, so are you okay with whatever that imperfection was to happen to you again? If you are by all means like, let this person back in your life, right, if you know fully well that you can handle whatever disappointment it was that this person brought to you. However, if you know that your nervous system could barely tolerate that event and you know that it’s just something you wouldn’t want to deal with ever again, then this is where you let that person change and evolve and show someone else how great they are now. Right, like, you don’t have to be the recipient of this person’s new version of themselves. They can absolutely be their new self and give that to someone else, right, whether it’s a romantic relationship, a family member, a friend, you, it’s totally up to you. But I that’s kind of like my question that I used to measure that am I okay with this happening again? If I can handle it happening again, sure, let them back in. If not, they can go exist somewhere else.

08:28 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So what do you think of the phrase? You know, if someone shows you who they are, believe them.

08:34 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I think that it’s it’s a great phrase and I think it’s a very true and spot on these right, and I think that a lot of times we we want to see the good and other people right, and sometimes we have those rose colored glasses and sometimes we’re attracted to red flags, right, Like sometimes somebody who screams drama and chaos seems reassuring to us because that’s all we’ve ever known Exactly. However, I do think that, yeah, like when someone shows you by their actions what they mean, what their intentions are with you, if you choose to ignore it again, don’t be surprised when the following things happen that you know, perfectly aligned with exactly what they showed you. And then again, you, you can make that decision. Do you want this to continue, yes or no? And if you don’t, then you have to make a decision in terms of keeping this person in your life or not.

09:24 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So this if I, and if I start to go too far out there, you know, bring me back down. But what about your idea on almost like ancestral wounds, you know, do we pay the price? This you know, as children of you know parents, or you know grandparents or great grandparents who had issues in the past. Do you think we pay the price for them? Or I mean, maybe that’s a karma kind of question, you know, and maybe that’s, you know, the trauma factor. How do we move on from those kind of ancestral wounds?

10:02 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I would say I don’t know that. I would say that it’s karmic in that we automatically like it’s something like a debt to pay, right, like that. It’s a tit for tat sort of thing, like our parents, this. So now we deal with this. But what I do think happens is that these are learned behaviors, right. So if our grandparents went through something, they learned how to survive it a certain way, whatever, whether it was some sort of system of oppression at the time, any specific type of laws, any specific you know, depending on their identity and where they lived, right, like it could have been a straight up like surviving genocide, whatever the case may be right.

10:37
That definitely imprints itself on folks and if anyone, researches, say epigenetics, we do understand that we do carry the trauma of those before us.

10:46
At the same time, we, with like tools that we have, you know we’re definitely and as a generation, like anybody who is alive right now, in 2024, what we’re very fortunate for is that there are a lot of resources and there is a lot of understanding and there are a lot of conversations about personal development and taking care of yourself, because I think, for example, my mother’s generation, they never would have had conversations about, like reflecting on your behaviors and thinking about where your emotions are coming from and what your emotions mean and how something that happened to your ancestor may be impacting you today, right, so my mom really didn’t have a lot of tools to help her with her excuse me, with her behavior, so to speak, and her mindset and her thoughts and her emotions. I, on the other hand, can go online. You know, there’s tons of resources online. There’s tons of books to read, there’s lots of safe spaces that are being created to facilitate these conversations about our emotions, our state of well-being, the things we’ve gone through, so that we can actually empower ourselves to break the learned behaviors that the people before us had to use to survive, so we don’t have to operate in the exact same manner.

11:55 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So do you think where do you stand on, feeling as though you almost need to go back and educate people who have wronged you, like maybe your brother, you know, or your mother, or you know, whoever we have in our life that you know isn’t as elevated, or have that you know, consciousness that we have now? Do you feel, I mean not that it’s our job to teach them, you know, I don’t need to teach a grown, grown ass woman how to behave, you know. But at the same extent, how do we kind of educate others? Or is it kind of like, hey, that’s you, you’ve done your thing and I educate, going forward to like my children?

12:37 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I mean I don’t, it’s not my place. You know, if my brother were to ever be curious and want to have a conversation about it, we can have the conversation about it. But you know, everyone is walking through life through their own lens and their own perspective. So I’m sure he thinks I’ve done a million things wrong. Right, and it’s not my job to convince him that. You know, his perspective is one way and my perspective is another. I just know, in my reality I did not want to be told how to show up in this relationship and so I removed myself from the relationship so that way there was no more drama about being told that I’m doing the right or wrong thing. You know, whatever he thinks is going to be, whatever he thinks, all I can do is just show up authentically.

13:16
And then, yeah, in terms of educate, right, there’s opportunities conversations, just like on this podcast, that anybody can sit and listen and kind of have opportunities to reflect. When I’m facilitating meetings, right, I work with the luckiest club. I previously worked also with the reframe app, you know. When I’m having conversations with people in recovery who are reflecting on their own journeys, right, these are the opportunities that I have to kind of share my perspective on, say, forgiveness and interacting with other people who have hurt us, or choosing not to interact with other people who have hurt us. And then if I were to have a kid, of course, you know, I would definitely pass this on to my children, right, and give them the option of knowing that they don’t have to be forced into any relationship that they don’t want to be in, you know. But yeah, I don’t. I don’t believe that it’s my job to go teach other adults how to, how to live and how to think and how to act.

14:07 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
I’m making all these notes over here as you’re telling me this. I’m like note to self what about? And then maybe this is switching gears a little bit how are you when you’re working with a client, how do you work on like the forgiveness of self? So maybe we can forgive people because they did the best with what they had at the time or you know, that’s all they knew. Like you said, your mother wasn’t equipped, she didn’t have the tools you have, that she did the best she could. How do you kind of decide how to forgive yourself? You know I can be hard, you know, hard nailed to not forgive her. I have a brother to that. I have some strange relations with. You know I can, I can definitely keep distance between us. But how do you kind of determine? You know forgiveness in yourself, how do you, how do you work with that?

14:55 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So when I work with clients one on one, you know, first it’s kind of like defining just some basic terms, right, and it’s like I feel like the big one is what is guilt versus what is shame? Right, and I think Brené Brown does a really great job of explaining that like. I think she says something along the lines of shame is a focus on ourselves, right, that we think we are bad and we think we are not worthy because of whatever it is that we did that we regret having done, versus guilt. That’s not personal to ourselves. We can feel guilt for having done something that is wrong, quote unquote but even then, diving in deeper, like, let’s say, if someone is feeling guilt right and they’re they’re like, well, I feel bad about having done something wrong Then the question goes deeper into well, what do you define as right or wrong? Because you know, for ages, you know society will say something is right or wrong that is actually wrong, but then it’s legal, right, like segregation was totally legal, but we know it’s wrong, right. And so when folks are managing guilt and shame towards themselves, it’s like we have to kind of peel back the layers and go back to what do you believe is right or wrong for you? Right, because when you are feeling guilt about something, first I want to make sure that the person is feeling guilt about something that actually is out of alignment with their values, and then that’s fair, like, okay, if you, if you feel guilty because you took money from your mother to, you know, go buy alcohol, right, like you pickpocket at your mom or whatever, and it is not in your values to take other people’s belongings, then absolutely that makes sense, that you should be feeling guilt for that, right. And so now let’s go to let’s, let’s peel back those layers.

16:33
But some people feel guilt or shame over, say, their body size. Right, like their, their body is not a small body and then they’re feeling guilt and shame about their weight and it’s like, okay, where did you learn that there was something wrong with your, your weight? Is this actually in your true value system or is this something that was adopted and absorbed from outside sources? So we have those conversations to really determine if you are feeling badly because of something that you actually did wrong, according to what is your internal measure of right or wrong, or if it comes from an outside source. So once we know if it’s coming from an outside source, then it’s like alright, let’s, let’s tap into what do you really believe, and usually coming into what someone actually believes is right or wrong can help a lot.

17:21
It doesn’t happen overnight, because nothing ever happens overnight, but just recognizing that if you start to feel bad because you’re a couple extra pounds higher than what you think you quote unquote should be examining where that belief comes from, can really help alleviate some of that emotional like discomfort that you feel when you like step on a scale because you’re like oh wait, I’m worried about that because this is something that I was taught but I don’t really like. For me, there’s nothing actually wrong with being the body, in the body that I am in today. So that’s a lot of the work that I would do in terms of like the self, the self forgiveness piece, right. And then I think also it really helps like providing clients with resources in terms of like connecting what your feelings are telling us so, for example, like when they are experiencing, you know, shame. Again, bernay Brown is a great resource on like shame and shame resilience and really that when we’re feeling shame about something, the greatest way to break down shame is to actually talk about it, right.

18:19
And then the question is well, where do we talk about these things? Again, when it’s specific to alcohol abuse, right, especially with alcohol addiction, you know where can you talk about your drinking so that you feel safe and you feel seen. So typically it’ll be. I’ll refer people to different communities where they can go in a meeting and share, right, I mean talking to like a coach helps, but maybe they’re not ready to put it on their social media. Totally fair, not, that’s not a requirement, but you’ve got to talk to someone about it. So who are you going to talk to about it, where you can be safe in that experience? Like massive consequences for talking about whatever you’re ashamed of? So things like that are really how we target, say, self forgiveness work. I love it.

19:00 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So what about You’re saying have someone speak to other people about it definitely working with a coach, but what would you say about, as far as someone, the difference between speaking to like a therapist or a psychologist, versus a community? Because I work with a lot of people and they say, well, I already have a therapist, I’m good, I don’t need to go to meetings, and so I think maybe differentiating between the two. A therapist is good, a coach is good, but what makes having a community so much more impactful than just going to your therapist? I mean, you pay them to listen to you, technically right, so that’s a bias there, and maybe they don’t have what you have, maybe they’re not an addict, so maybe there’s a difference there. A coach again maybe there’s a hierarchy. What does the community aspect do? Or how could you even convince? Not convince, but how could you encourage someone to go to a group and share? Because that’s a hard thing to do.

20:01 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, excuse me this cough. It really is a hard thing to do to show up in a community and tell all these people, right, like that, you have been struggling. The way that I get folks to go is just that reminder that their shame is fueled by their isolation. And I basically break down the fact that if you are struggling with an addiction, we talk about it. How are you drinking?

20:25
Most of the time, most of my clients are drinking in secret. They might drink a little bit socially, and then they wait to come home and drink more. They wait till their kids go to bed and then they drink. Right, they wait till their kids go to school and then they drink. Like there’s always this part that’s hidden, and what I let them know is that they deserve to be seen, and the best place to be seen is in a community where you have peers who are going through the exact same thing as you.

20:52
Because, for example all right, let me slow my breath down, okay, for anybody who’s listening I’ve had this weird cough and it’s just been really annoying and life goes on. But because here’s the thing, when you’re working one-on-one with someone again, you made a reference to the hierarchy you have the therapist, you have the coach, and even if the coach is still someone in recovery. The point is, there is this implied hierarchy in that dynamic between the person providing the service and the person paying for the service, as opposed to when you go into a community, everyone is equal and you don’t have to feel like you’re less than or more than or anything, because you’re literally on the same playing field, even if you and your coach have like the exact same amount of sobriety, there’s just still this dynamic between the provider, the service provider and the person receiving the service that is done away with in a community setting.

21:48 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So what if you’re in a community and you’ve only had you’ve only stacked a couple days, a couple weeks, and you go to a community meeting and everybody there is long timers. They’ve all had years or a couple months, or how do you kind of I’m having a hard time thinking of the word, but how do you kind of come to terms with I wrote down? Shame is fueled by isolation. How do you not compare yourself to other people that are in recovery?

22:26 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I mean, we’re humans. We’re always going to compare ourselves to other people. The question is, what do we do with that comparison, right? Do we walk into the space and compare ourselves and then think badly of ourselves and think that we’re not good enough and we’re never gonna get there? Or can we use this comparison to fuel motivation? So we walk into a space and we see folks who have been exactly where I am today and see them doing the damn thing for months or years and say, okay, there is an opportunity for me to maybe get to where some of these folks are at. And the ideal would be that in a community space, if they don’t have newcomers meetings, that the people with the experience are welcoming and ushering people in and excited to see these brand new, fresh faces when they’re appearing, so that somebody who is coming in with a day sober feels welcome and feels safe in that space.

23:23 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
And do you almost think, and sometimes I feel this way I’m coming up on four days I’ll be three years sober from alcohol. I’m about gosh three years in a month from cocaine and two years in March from marijuana. And I almost like to be around people who are new quote unquote to sobriety. Maybe they’ve been having a go at it for some time but it kind of the fire in their bellies are there. They’ve got more invested, whereas kind of I think as you get along you can kind of have the fuck it button is kind of lingering.

24:00
You’re thinking and then you kind of get into that can I moderate You’re, maybe I’m cured now. I mean I know I’m never cured and I can never go back. But that addict voice sometimes pops up and says, oh, come on, dee, you’re cool, now just have one. Or you get around those, the family members or peers, that say, oh, you’re fine, now, geez, babe, you could probably just have one, or maybe just have a puff and you’ll be cool. And so I almost was curious if you thought that maybe it is good for old timers to be, and not that I’m an old timer, I mean, three years is not much in the span of how long I was using, but to be around people who are starting out because they are ready to go. They have a lot to teach us too.

24:40 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I mean I will always say that the newcomer is absolutely everybody’s important in a community. But your new folks are golden because, especially for folks with time under their belts, the new person reminds you of exactly what it was like in the beginning, right, and it can be that very powerful reminder that we might need to be like you know what. Let’s stay put. Let’s not have that one right, because a lot of times the newcomer comes in and there’s a lot going on, right, you typically don’t walk into recovery on like a winning streak. It’s usually because something really rough happened that you’re like holy shit, I’ve got to stop, right. So when that person gets to the holy shit, I’ve got to stop, point, and they’re walking into a meeting or logging onto a meeting, whether it’s online or in person, you know they have so much to offer because just their experience on that day one is so important to remind everyone else of how beautiful it is to come from that you know to push off from that point.

25:41 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
I’m making notes, I’m just I’m going to feverishly over here like love in this system, speaking about golden. What is talking? Kind of jumping back to shame. Do you think if you’re a person who drinks Kind of like you said, it’s ice shame is fueled by isolation that you need to get that on a shirt, like that could be your like theme theme mantra? I’ve never heard anybody say that before and I almost was. I’m curious if you think that people who kind of drink in private it’s harder for them to seek help, maybe because they haven’t hit a rock bottom, quote-unquote Whereas like the hardcore part of your, if they get to you eyes, they go to rehab. You know bad, they almost die, they want to take their lives. Maybe that’s like an imposed bottom, whereas if you’re drinking in private and nobody really knows, you’ve got to determine when you go for help.

26:37 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I would say that was definitely my experience, right Like I was so outwardly successful in drinking so much in secret. I didn’t want anyone to know my secret, not even my doctor, who was like sworn to secrecy because of HIPAA, right Like even that wasn’t good enough for me, and so I would go to my regular doctor and lie about my alcohol consumption until the one time that my blood work came back and it was glaring the obvious that I had been drinking because I had alcoholic liver disease. I couldn’t hide it anymore. But you know, before that point I never wanted to open up because I didn’t want anyone to know that side of me.

27:11 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
Yeah and I wonder if and that’s a lot of the the people that I see now in different groups that they really nobody knows and they just want somebody to see it. They just want somebody to pick up on it and go, hey, do you need help? And I think that I mean in theory. I would hope that it’s getting easier in today’s society. You know, you can follow people on insta. Like you said, there’s tons of groups to go to. But making that first step and we talked about, you know, going to a group and really talking about how the people can be seen and another great one you said was Comparison really fuels that motivation. How would you get somebody? You know maybe they’re googling, am I an alcoholic? Maybe they’re starting to see, you know, these kind of red flags coming up. How do you get? How do you encourage someone to make the leap to get help?

28:09 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, it’s so tricky because when someone is in that situation of doing everything in secret, they almost they want to recover in secret too, right, like, because you know it’s almost like, well, you want to treat your recovery the same way that you were about your alcohol. But if, in this case, if you were very secretive about your alcohol, it’s like well, how can you ease this person in right you a recovery space so that they can feel safe and they can feel anonymous and so and, like you said, if they’re super successful and they’re everything, you looks great and wonderful on the outside and they don’t want anybody to know.

28:43 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
So, and almost think you know I can do everything else, like I’m a hardcore, independent woman, like nobody’s gonna help me. I’ve got this, you know, and so maybe would how I’m sorry I cut you off, but that was I was thinking of you saying, like I’m a successful woman, like this is how you know I’ve got, I’ve got this almost a facade of how great I’ve got it handled. How do you know? How do you read, how do you know? And then how do you reach out?

29:11 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I think, like for the person who is drinking in secret, you know, if the first thing is needing to ease into a space, you know, I would say an online community is going to absolutely be like your best bet to start, because you can go on there when you sign in to zoom, you don’t even have to use your full name, right, you can turn your camera off and then slowly start to build that trust with the community space. And as you build that trust, then maybe one day you can challenge yourself and turn your camera on right, or maybe.

29:38
Challenge yourself and use your voice and maybe keep your camera off. But I think like that’s going to be the best way for someone who is so attached to the secret life of drinking To transition into a recovery space where there can be in community and start to see that they’re not the only one, because as soon as they were to share that hey, I’m so and so and I drink in secret, I would be confident that like half the room would say, oh yeah, that was me too, right, right, right right and even if you’re not the person who drinks in secret, eventually, even if you’re a hardcore party or hardcore user, you start doing things in secret.

30:13 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
You know, eventually it starts to get to a point where you’re, you know, pulling the wool over eyes at some point. You know, and even I was, I was pretty much out there, but when my family would go to bed I would. I would continue, you know. So, although I was, I was not hiding anything per se. I did, you know after, after the sun went down. You know, gosh, I know we’re coming up on time.

30:36
I guess there is one other question that I had for you, and so we’re going to kind of encourage people to get into a meeting, get into. How do we find meetings and groups? If I’m not really in the community, I can find. I know everybody, right, and we all know everybody. We think we know we go to the sober summit. How do you find somebody if you don’t want to go to AA, because you might go in there and somebody would recognize you Right? Or you know Bill sees you not I hate to use Bill because that’s right, the AA thing, but you’re walking down the street and they see you go in how do you find people if you’re not looking?

31:16 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah. So I mean I think like your first best bet. I mean, you know, in terms of online communities, the first one I would recommend is the luckiest club. That’s the one that I work with. We run meetings. We have about 60 meetings a week. I would absolutely recommend that they have a free seven day trial.

31:34
I recently finished working at the reframe app. The reframe app is good for folks who are also considering moderating. Even though it does not work for me, it works for some folks. So the reframe app does support people who are quitting and people who are moderating. You also have smart recovery. I believe they have online meetings as well.

31:55
If you are a woman, she recovers also is another option for women. If you are an African American woman, the sober black girls club is a great option. So for women of color, that is an option. They are also now hosting meetings for men, so I believe they also have like an option for men there. So, yeah, I would say those are really good communities. And then, in terms of say, like online, like yeah, if you use Instagram, if you don’t want to use your personal Instagram, you know you can create like a little anonymous one just for following a bunch of sobriety accounts and I mean, just hit those hashtags. You know hashtag sober hashtag, sobriety hashtag sober women. You know hashtag sober women of color. You know, whatever you want to look for and you would be able to find find folks that way as well.

32:42 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
Awesome. I’ve been doing a lot of work with the Sober Town podcast and they they’ve got a great website. They do a lot of work with Erica Spiegelman she does rewired and I’ve also been working with Ola Sober, which they have an Ola Sober for men as well. And what do you think about? This is my other little question here what do you think about like a tracker? I started on the I am sober, like it’s like a tracker on your phone and then you can, you know, count your days, and then you they have a community there and I think there’s what sober buddy they kind of count days.

33:16 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Did you count your days in the beginning, or I let the app do it for me, okay, so you know, I mean, I have a couple of apps that keep track of, like you know, my sobriety date that I’ve just put in there, and on occasion I’ll like open up the app and be like, oh, it’s been this much time. You know, I definitely I pay attention to my anniversary and at this point that’s really all I pay attention to. I kept an eye out for my 1000 days because Comic club, yeah, the comic club.

33:45
So I did pay attention to when that came. And then, yeah, I really just pay attention to the anniversaries, and after that it’s just a day at a time really, so I would not be able to tell you how many days I have right now like off the top of my head. I can’t tell you, I would have to look it up.

33:59 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
Well, can you look it up and tell us what about, um? Do you? Did you give yourself little gifts as you reached milestones? Or do you celebrate on your anniversaries? Or I know you said you don’t moderate. What do you think about people who do moderate? I mean, do you work with people who do moderate? Or are you kind of like, hey, you know, if you’re doing a dry January, it’s like, oh, I’ve got, you know, 10 days left and I can get hammered, you know, whereas if someone’s going, hey, this isn’t for the long haul, you know, um, and that’s a little bit easier than doing one day at a time.

34:34 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, so in terms of moderating, um, I do actually not recently, but I have had clients who have wanted to moderate, because it’s not my job to tell you what your goal is, right, okay, the client to decide what, what they’re working on and what their goal is. So I have worked with a few people who have tried to moderate and I have seen some of them do better than others, and the ones who really have struggled, um, you know, with them I have said, you know, like I think this is an opportunity to really explore being alcohol free, right? So with regard to them, um then, in terms of your other question, I can’t remember what the other question was- Do you celebrate milestones or do you encourage that?

35:17 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
Or, like, you know even your anniversary, like do you buy yourself a cake, or I don’t know if you love sugar, but, um, you know, do you buy yourself gifts as you hit milestones. Like what do you think of that?

35:26 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So, yeah, I do celebrate my milestones, but I don’t really do anything like crazy for them. I think it’s more just like I make sure to always, on my anniversary, share. You know, I make sure to post about it and share about it because, again, I do think it is important for that visibility, for people to see, okay, this person has not drank or has not had alcohol in this much time, and so for those reasons I do, um, but I mean, I don’t personally like have a cake or do anything like particularly special now.

35:55 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
Okay, well, I figure you know that’s kind of that. Oh, I’m going to buy myself a present when I hit milestones, and you know. So I’m kind of thinking well, you know, maybe I just want to there, I changed addictions. Right now I’m a shopping, shopping and sugar fiend over here. But, um, I think I know we’ve got a wrap soon, because and I probably just hit you with more questions than you can tolerate for today Um, what else? Just wait to when, as I wake up at three in the morning like, oh my gosh, I should have asked Jessica that one.

36:30 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
It’s funny, yeah, I mean I don’t really have anything else just off the top of my head. I mean I think the topic of forgiveness is a really important one for folks to really reflect on, whether it’s for themselves or for other people. And again, there is no one right or wrong way to do it. Like you have to decide that you are doing it how it feels right for for you and that that’s the end of it. You know, other people can insert their opinions and it’s up to you to you can listen to them or you cannot. I find life a lot more peaceful when I’m not like letting myself be flooded by other people’s opinions and just following what feels right for me. I love that.

37:08 – Dana White-Guerrie (Guest)
And I really like the idea that you know I can forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I have to let you back in my life.

37:14
You know, and just kind of coming to terms with what you need and what’s best for your recovery. I think that’s amazing. Yeah Well, thank you for all these tidbits. I’ll I’ll get the shirts made for you for but it’s been awesome and I so appreciate just letting me get your knowledge and I know you’re doing amazing things and you don’t. You don’t need me to stroke you and how incredible you are, but your brilliance is touching a lot of people, so I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.

37:47 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Thank you, dana. That means a lot. So it was. It was my pleasure. Thank you so so much. 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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In This Episode:

Let’s explore the complex emotions that come with the turn of the new year. This week, we reflect on self-forgiveness and the often unspoken struggle with guilt and shame, particularly when it comes to our New Year resolutions. With wisdom from Brené Brown, and Brianna Wiest, I break down the distinction between feeling bad about an action versus feeling unworthy as a person. Together, we’ll ask the hard questions about our feelings and whether they truly resonate with our values or if they’re imposed by external standards.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Hey everyone, happy new year. At the time of this recording, we are officially one week into 2024 and, oh my goodness, I see so much stuff on the internet of people constantly dying to change themselves, and so I figured that I would take some of the content from my prior New Year’s Eve workshop and kind of make it into a podcast episode, because I really feel like there’s a lot of energy that I see online of people just really being hard on themselves, and so I just thought that maybe having some conversation, a one-sided conversation around self-forgiveness, might hopefully be helpful to someone listening. And so first I want to kind of talk through some terms, and I really really the big one that I want to talk about is the difference between guilt versus shame, and I’m pulling this from Brené Brown’s work, right?

01:12
So when we’re talking about shame, shame, according to Brené Brown, is a focus on yourself, right? Guilt is more so focused on behavior. So if you experience shame, it’s essentially like you’re saying I am bad, I am not worthy of connection, right? Like I’m a terrible mother daughter, I’m a terrible parent, terrible friend versus guilt is you’re separating yourself from the behavior and you can recognize that the behavior is not in alignment with your values, right. So you can say I did something bad, I made a mistake, and you can feel guilt appropriately regarding that behavior. But shame is when you put that all on yourself and that can be really heavy and that can really separate you from wanting to connect with others. And then you’ve even got, say, feelings like resentment or anger towards ourselves. And really, Nedra Glover Tawwab, when she talks about anger in her books that boundaries find peace, she’s defining anger as a feeling of hostility or annoyance, right, and that it can be expressed either inwardly or outwardly. So when we’re talking about what that might look like towards ourselves, maybe we engage in self-injurious behaviors, right, maybe we are returning to habits that we know don’t serve us, returning to people we know don’t serve us. You know that the way that we’re living is hurting us and we just continue in that direction because we’re angry at ourselves and we don’t think that we deserve anything better.

02:37
And so, you know, I would invite you to take a moment and think about what area of your life, you may be feeling some of these complicated feelings towards yourself. Right Like, where might you be feeling shame towards yourself? Where might you be feeling guilt or anger? And then sit with that for a second, because I’m not saying that these feelings are necessarily bad feelings to have. What I am going to say, though, is that these feelings are definitely providing you with a lot of valuable information, which I’ve said in the past. Right Like, you can absolutely get curious about any feelings that you have, especially if they are uncomfortable, because by uncovering what they’re telling you, you can probably move into action and work to maybe change the situation, or it might give you the opportunity to move into acceptance. Right so, like, for example and Brianna Wiess, her book the Mountain is you, is a really excellent resource on how to interpret emotions and what our different emotions are telling us, and so kind of pulling between her book and also some of Bernan Brown’s work.

03:43
First, like, let’s talk a little bit about guilt. Right so, guilt’s purpose is essentially just our body, letting us know that we did something that doesn’t align with our values. Notice, I’m not saying right or wrong why not, jessica? Because right or wrong is subjective. Anybody can see that something is right, and then the person next to them will say that it’s right. And there have been things deemed legal by governments that today most people would say are wrong. Right so, for example, segregation, it was legal, but was it right? No. So just to kind of give you that example.

04:21
So when can guilt become problematic for us? Right, guilt becomes a problematic emotion for us when we have not slowed down to determine what is right or wrong for us. And so we are sitting around feeling guilty about something that we never actually thought was wrong for us to do, but we were just taught that it was wrong for us to do. And so we’re here feeling guilty over some sort of basically social programming that we adopted, without actually determining if it’s something that does or doesn’t align with our values. So I mean questions that you can ask yourself, right, when you are experiencing guilt, like, hmm, is there something that I can admit to having done wrong based on my values, that I can correct moving forward, or is it something that I actually didn’t do wrong? Right, like, those are good questions to slow down and ask yourself and like, especially if the behavior completed does not fall out of alignment with you, can you give yourself permission to reframe this narrative around your feelings? Right, moving on to shame. So shame, right Shame.

05:39
Brianna Wiess talks about how it’s like a dark side of embarrassment. Like embarrassment, if you feel embarrassed, your body’s letting you know that you did something you’re not proud of. Right, you might feel like a little sinking feeling in your stomach. You might feel tightness in your throat. It depends on every individual is different, but when it turns into shame, shame is problematic because it makes us falsely believe that we’re not worthy of connecting to others. Right, and, like I said earlier, we take on this mindset of I am bad, I’m not worthy, etc. And that’s that’s hard and that’s heavy on the heart. And so if you are experiencing shame, right, like what are some questions that you can ask yourself?

06:20
Again, kind of going back to the same guilt question am I feeling shame about something that doesn’t align with my values, or is this something that I was taught that was wrong but it actually isn’t right? For example, addiction is a great one. A lot of people who struggle with addiction carry around this heavy shame that they are, you know, not worthy of love, not worthy of getting help, because they have believed the stigma that was passed on to them without stopping down and slowing down and thinking well, it’s actually not my fault, maybe there isn’t anything really wrong with me, right? So just something to think about. Another question that might be helpful to ask yourself let’s say you did do something that is actually outside of your values. What if you recognized it and took accountability for what happened, right?

07:14
Brené Brown talks a lot about this in terms of the shame resilience piece, and a part of that work that she says is that you, basically you own your shit, right? What if you owned it? What if you owned your shit? And if you do choose to own it, do you have a safe space to reach out to somebody else, to another human, and talk about this experience, right? How would you treat a loved one who was in this situation? Could you? Could you practice that love that you would show them, but turn it around and practice it towards yourself?

07:49
What about if you’re experiencing some sort of resentment towards yourself, right? Or anger towards yourself, right? When you’re feeling that kind of emotion internally towards you self-directed, I mean, your body is basically letting you know that you’ve set some sort of unrealistic expectation for yourself, right? And when the expectations we set for ourselves are not immediately attainable. We’re breaking trust with ourselves, right, and so we’re hurting our own relationship with ourselves. And so questions you can ask yourself.

08:20
I feel like I said yourself a lot, but whatever, what expectations did I have for myself? Were my expectations reasonable and within the scope of my control? If they were within my control, can I break this goal down into something that I might be more confident in achieving in smaller increments? And then let’s say, this thing that I want to achieve is outside of my control. How can I practice acceptance, say, for example, in my case, when I was younger I used to run a lot and I’ve hurt my knees. I’ve had like six knee surgeries, like in my twenties and early thirties, and I can’t run anymore. I honestly I’m pretty confident that if someone held a gun to my head and told me run or die, I would probably have to die because I literally cannot mechanically run, like it’s just not a motion I can do anymore.

09:10
For a time I became resentful at myself and angry at myself because I had hurt my knees, but honestly, back in those days I didn’t really understand what was going on with my body. I was not caring for my body in any way, shape or form. To be honest, and at this point, like I feel that resentment or I feel that anger because I want to run, like I would love to be able to get on a treadmill or go outside on a trail and run, just run. But I can’t do that anymore and so this is outside of my control, and so the only option that I have is to practice acceptance and have peace over the situation. Or I can be continuously like feeling the pain of being resentful and angry towards myself, and that’s not going to be helpful. But I wouldn’t have this self-awareness if I hadn’t slowed down to kind of talk this through and ask myself is running within the sphere of my control and it’s just not right.

10:14
Same thing, going into more specifically anger right, like anger is when we experience it like, let’s say, towards another person. It’s typically because they have violated a boundary that maybe we didn’t even know existed, or maybe we did know it existed and the boundary still was violated. But you know what? We can violate boundaries towards ourselves as well. We might violate our own boundaries, and so when we feel angry towards ourselves or anger towards ourselves, we’re learning that maybe there’s something that I need to take action on. Maybe there’s something that I actually really care about that I need to work more on.

10:49
Right, you can ask yourself what are my core values? How did my behavior violate them? How would I treat a loved one who made the same mistake? Right? What limits do I need to set with myself moving forward, and what support might I need? Right? And so, just kind of using these reflection questions to look at these different emotions, we can move from the narrative that these are just terrible emotions to have and gosh, how can I numb them, how can I escape them? Oh, I’m such a messed up person. Why am I angry and resentful at myself? We can move from that narrative to okay, what information can I pull right? What can I do now that I know this about myself?

11:36
And so I say all of this because it’s January 7th and you may be listening to this and you started on some sort of a goal and it’s already not happening and you’re a perfectly fine human, exactly where you are. But especially if you’re feeling some frustration about some of these goals, I invite you to like get curious, just there, right, like why are you trying to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish. I always ask people that where did wanting this goal come from and is it in alignment with what your values are Right, and if you’re finding that you have these complicated feelings coming up, then dig deeper, get more curious. But again, if you are feeling frustrated with yourself, if you’re feeling like man, I already broke my trust with myself, then maybe break down that goal just a little bit more. And also just so you know, not all goals, I don’t know what the goals are that you’re thinking about, right, but maybe some goals are meant to be like left alone for a little bit and you can focus on just doing one thing and doing that one thing. Well, there’s always the people that like, try to do 50 different things at the start of the year and none of them get done. Well, so you know, don’t hesitate to make those kinds of decisions.

13:00
But anyway, with that being said, I hope that you have a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening. Again. January 27 starts my bottomless to sober book study, so I hope that you will join to check out the body keeps the score, and you can sign up for that on my website bottomless to sobercom. Thank you so much and take care. 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:

I explore the emotional toll of navigating the holiday season while staying sober—a beautiful yet daunting tightrope walk. We talk about the importance of reframing the experience of guilt, so it’s more tolerable and discuss looking ahead at 2024 including a new book study opportunity!

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Real Self-Care by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Transcript:

00:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I’m Jessica Dueñas and this is Bottomless to Sober, the podcast where I talk about anything and everything related to life since my transition from bottomless drinking to a sober life. Hey everyone, happy, awkward week between Christmas and New Year. Hope you are doing well and, if you’re listening to this, well after the holiday season, hello. So first, I’m actually really excited to share that I am going to be having a new offering, and that is that I’ll be hosting a book study. This one will specifically be five weeks long, starting January 27th, for the Body Keeps the Score. The Body Keeps the Score is such a powerful book that really breaks down what the hell is going on in our bodies after we have been through some really hard times. However, the book is really difficult and the book can be really triggering, right, and for a lot of folks, the story is they pick it up, they read a couple chapters and they put it down and they never go back to it. So if you have ever been curious about reading that book and you feel like you would benefit from the accountability of basically taking a class on the book, you should totally sign up for this book study. The cool thing is that you only have to pay for the sessions that you choose to attend. So all of that is outlined on my website, and here’s this. The starting price to join is only $4.99 for the Body Keeps the Score, so go check it out on my website, bottomless-to-sobercom.

01:33
I am really excited for this opportunity to teach and I hope that you will be a part of it. And speaking of teaching, I will also be hosting my next round of the Writing for Healing program. It is a six-week writing program where we dive into the writing process from planning to publishing, all embedding also just wellness strategies in there. You get opportunities for feedback from peers, opportunities for feedback from me, including a one-on-one with me, so that we can really dive into your writing. For any sort of short narrative piece that you have been wanting to work on. Highly recommend it. Folks really enjoy the class that is also on my website, and that’s $125 for the six classes plus a one-on-one with me and feedback, so please check those out. That is actually starting on January 6th, though it will be here before you know it.

02:19
Anyway, moving on to what I actually wanted to talk about, though, which is I wanted to do sort of like an end of year wrap up right, not so much like a personal wrap up, but just an opportunity for us to sit and reflect together, wherever you are, as you’re listening to this, right, because I feel like this week between Christmas and the new year, it’s almost like a recovery period. There are a lot of people who are working on their sobriety, right? They have spent so much time and energy gearing up to survive Thanksgiving and gearing up to survive Christmas. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, it’s just the fact that the world is celebrating Christmas that still impacts you, right? So it’s like, whether you voluntarily are a part of it or you’re not, you’re still impacted by freaking Christmas and for a lot of folks, they had just gone through sort of like their first rounds of probably holding some boundaries, setting some boundaries and holding some boundaries, and chances are, those were really really hard moments in individual people’s lives. And so, if you’re listening and this this is you the first thing I want to say is that I really hope you’re proud of yourself for holding whatever boundary it was that you set this holiday season, and I hope that you’re giving yourself grace for any feelings that have come up as a result, that sit heavily on your heart, right, as a result of you setting these boundaries. So I hope you are proud of yourself. If you are not quite proud of yourself, I am proud of you because setting boundaries is so important. If you don’t look out for you, if you don’t watch your back, who is going to watch your back? Right, nobody, at the end of the day. It is beautiful to lean on other people, it is beautiful to be in community, but if we do not care for ourselves and if we do not take responsibility for our journey, no one else will.

04:13
And so if you just went through this period of setting boundaries, saying no to folks, deciding to stay home, whatever it looked like, and you’re reeling from it, you’re recovering from that? I hear you. It is hard, it is absolutely hard and it will get better, right, women? It’s just like you just have to think that guilt that is still sitting there because you said no, because you. Another thing you may have done was opt to not engage in an uncomfortable conversation topic, right? Or maybe you’re the parent who typically goes above and beyond for your kids and this time you did a little bit less right? I again just want to really drive home the point that you did Nothing wrong. The guilt that you’re feeling still does not mean that you did something wrong. It’s just like, at the end of the day, you’re not used to choosing yourself and so your body is reacting as if you’re doing something wrong. And if you join that book club and read, the body keeps a score. You will understand that your body will send you signals that are incorrect because of past experiences, right?

05:26
So anyway, speaking of books, I actually wanted to share a passage from Dr Pooja Lakshman’s book Lakshman sorry, I said her name wrong from her book called real self-care. I’ve talked about it a lot. If you are in any community where I have hosted meetings, you’ve probably heard me talk about her book. Real self-care is a really wonderful read. Especially her target audience is women, but really anybody can benefit from the content of this book, and so I’m going to read this passage from pages 100 and 101, where she’s talking about guilt, and I’ve made reference to this before, but I really wanted to like put it here in today’s episode. She wrote I frequently see women struggle with guilt.

06:06
Tolerance Facing guilt requires accepting the fact that we cannot control and are not responsible for the emotions of other people. To effectively say no. We must learn to tolerate other people’s disappointment and trust that it is not a moral failing on our part. Right like I’m gonna pause there that we have to learn to tolerate other people’s disappointment. For anyone listening who is a people pleaser, how painful does that sound? It sounds like torture, right? However, that’s what you have to learn to tolerate and handle. If you want to say no and set boundaries, you’re gonna have to be okay with disappointing others. I’ll continue. Because many of us did not develop this muscle growing up, it is not unusual for it to feel uncomfortable when we start setting boundaries as adults.

07:02
So much of the suffering I see in my practice is in women trying to get rid of guilt or avoid feeling guilty. They see the guilt as a giant red flag that they need to drop everything and attend to so it will go away. But this doesn’t work. In order to avoid feeling guilt, or fighting with your mind to stop feeling that way, you are still engaging with guilt and letting it, or the avoidance of it, control you. The goal is not to stop feeling guilty, but instead to turn down the volume and not let guilt control your decisions. It means seeing the guilt not as a giant red flag, but as a faulty check engine light, something that’s always been there but operates primarily in the background. You don’t want to let it take up extra energy or have you running to the mechanic in a panic. Sure, it means something, but it doesn’t mean everything. In other words, guilt does not need to be our compass. It can just be a feeling in the background While we learn to reframe the discomfort as a signal that we’re taking responsibility for our own emotions.

08:28
Guilt is pretty much always there. It comes from outside us, from the contradictory expectations that are put on women Sorry if you’re a man listening to this by a culture that asks us to serve others without taking up any space of our own. That feeling of chronic guilt is a way for women to dismiss themselves and make their own thoughts and feelings small. So, again, I highly recommend, if you’re like well, what can I read in the new year, I highly recommend reading real self-care, honestly, because I think that for anybody again who is still reeling from the holidays and setting these boundaries and saying no and, you know, changing these uncomfortable conversations and refusing to engage, refusing to drink when someone offers you something, and now you feel like shit as a result. Again, like the author, dr Pooja Lakshman, says, you are fine. Your body just needs to be retaught. How to interpret this sensation that is so uncomfortable, and eventually you’re gonna get there. You’re just not used to choosing you, that’s all.

09:33
And so, now that we are in this awkward space between Christmas and the new year, I did want to take a moment to invite you also to think about what on earth you’ve got coming up next. Right, it is completely fair game If you have completely not even thought about the fact that next week is the new year. That’s fine Again, for a lot of you. If this is your first time trying to have a healthy holiday season, you probably haven’t really busy with just surviving. Right, you’ve been in survival mode, and that’s okay.

10:10
But now that there’s a pause, now that there’s a chance to breathe and slow down, I do want you to go ahead and reflect a little bit, right? So first I want you to think about how you feel about the following areas in your life and feel free to adjust any of these areas to something that might be more applicable to your situation. But you know, how do you feel about your relationship with alcohol and other substances? Where is that at today? How are you feeling there? How are you feeling about your career? How are you feeling about your education? How are you feeling about your own personal growth? Slash spirituality, right? And again, note when I’m saying spirituality, I’m not meaning religion or connection with a specific organized space of beliefs, right? I’m just meaning in terms of your connection with yourself, right, your connection with yourself, your connection with others. How are you feeling about that development?

11:23
How are you feeling about your finances? Because that’s always a tough one, right, it has definitely been a tough year for folks’ finances. So how are you feeling about your money situation? How’s your health? Now, let’s break that down. How’s your physical health and how’s your mental health? Right? How are your personal relationships with your family? How are your personal relationships with your friends? And also, let me go back and scratch family and say family or family, you choose, right, because not all of us are even in contact with our family of origin. So I want to recognize that.

12:04
And then, how are you feeling about romance? Is that even something that you care for, right? Like, have you thought about it? Is that something you want, or is that something that’s not even on your radar? And then the last one that I have for you is how are you feeling about, like, your sources of pleasure and fun, right, that are not mind-altering? So, again, not alcohol and not other substances, but things that you do that bring a smile to your face, things that you do that brighten up your spirit just a little bit. How are you feeling about those things?

12:42
And, if you’re curious, some of these areas that I’ve pulled, they’re pulled from different wheel of life exercises that you might see in different coaching programs, different personal development programs. Some of them I adjusted just based off personal experience, but in general you can Google Wheel of Life and check out any exercise where you can kind of do this reflection activity right. So I want you to ask yourself how you’re feeling in these areas and first, if there’s any area where you feel good, let’s celebrate that right. Like if you literally need to go and pause this recording right now so that you can jot down what is going well, what is it that you’re doing that is going well in this area, so that you can keep that energy going right. It’s super important for us to pause and recognize what’s going well so that we can keep at it. That’s always so, so, so important.

13:35
So if it’s your sobriety and you have been consistently engaging in a sobriety support community, you go to meetings. You have found either a sober mentor, a coach, you have a therapist whatever it is that’s helping you to stay away from your substance of choice, right Then, like, keep doing that, for example. But now let’s switch gears a little bit and let’s look at the areas that maybe you don’t feel so great about right. Now I’m going to be fair. It is totally possible because you are a human being and we, as human beings, love to be tough on ourselves that you might be thinking well, I feel bad about all these different areas that you listed, jess, and that’s fair and that’s fine. What we’re not about to do is try to flip the script on every single area that you might be feeling uncomfortable in. That, right, like, I understand that maybe you aren’t happy with you where you are in terms of the spaces that you’re occupying, depending on where you’re at, that’s okay. What I want us to focus on is the fact that change big changes don’t happen from a big, grandiose action. They actually happen from being really consistent with small actions, right? So pick one of the areas that you’re not feeling satisfied with, and maybe it is your relationship with alcohol, right, like, maybe you’ve been in and out in terms of, like, recovery, and now you’re realizing what with the new year might be a nice opportunity to really like be consistent. So pick that right.

15:06
What is one small action that you can consistently take to help you move the needle just a little bit from where you are at? And here’s the thing whatever you are choosing, it absolutely has to be something that you will actually do, right, Because it’s so important for you, a to build confidence in yourself and, b to also trust yourself, right? And the best way to build that confidence and self-trust is to complete things that are going to actually happen, or aim to do things that you’re actually going to complete. So think of a small action item that you can take. So again, I’m just using the alcohol example, but you can use this for anything in your personal life too, right? So let’s say it’s with alcohol and your goal is to not drink alcohol.

15:56
What is one thing that you can consistently do on a daily basis? That is a small action item. The small action item might be getting into a community space and showing up on a meeting right, that is a perfect example. You can do that every single day, pretty much no matter what, because, if it’s not, say, like the two communities that I’ve been involved in the Reframe app and the Luckiest Club they both have meetings seven days a week. But let’s say, you go beyond that if you are interested in 12-step programs, aa has literally meetings going on 24 hours a day. Right, so you can have anywhere that you can go and literally get on a meeting. Whether or not you drink or not, that doesn’t matter. The point is that you can build your confidence and your trust in yourself by showing up every single day to a meeting, no matter what. That’s an example.

16:47
Another example might be, let’s say, if movement is something that you’re wanting to do in the new year and doing it more consistently, I’m not saying, go to the gym, pay thousands of dollars for a trainer and then sign up for, like, the biggest training package when you’ve barely moved. If you’ve just been like a couch potato which, being couch potato, can be nice, right, but it might be okay every day, no matter what, there’s five to 10 minutes of movement that I’m going to commit to, no matter what, so that you can build that trust with yourself that, once you’ve hit that first level of completion successfully, you can add on to that right, and add on to that with confidence, adding on to that something that you know that you will then be able to complete, moving forward. And the point is that you keep adding to where you’re starting at, so that by the time we’re sitting here in a year you should have moved significantly from where you are today. As you’re listening to this episode, notice again, I’m not saying for you to change all of the things. It is very difficult to do multiple things and spread yourself in and do multiple things. Well, right, just find that one small thing that you can do for yourself to build that confidence and that trust, and then you move on.

18:06
Because, again, like I said, where your life looks like a year from today is going to depend on your consistency in taking the small actions. And here’s the thing with regard to the actions If there’s one day that you break from the consistency, does that mean that you throw everything out the window? No, what is going to be really important for you to recognize is that consistency means that some days you’re going to feel like you’re doing, like taking three steps forward and you might stumble backward, but then you get back up and you keep going right. Because the point is that if you, the person who literally, let’s talk about walking, if a person takes three steps forward, falls back, gets up and then continues in their forward movement, are they making progress? Absolutely, they literally are moving forward. So, likewise, whatever it is that your journey is, think about it with regards to walking a path, some days you’re going to move quickly, some days you’re going to move slowly, some days you might have a setback, but the point is that you get back up and you continue moving. The only way that you are going to fail at whatever it is that you want to accomplish is when you stop trying. But as long as you don’t stop trying, you are on the path to get to wherever you’re trying to go, and that’s so, so, so important to remember.

19:26
The other last point I’m going to make, and then I’ll stop for today, is whatever it is that your goal is, please don’t attach your worth to that goal. That’s in the future. Please go look in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re worthy now, or play me saying you are worthy now if you are not comfortable enough with telling yourself such words, because here is the thing For so many of us, myself included, we are socialized to think that life will be better when we accomplish this. When I hit six months of sobriety, my life will be better. When I hit one year of sobriety, when I lose these 10 pounds, these 15 pounds right, when we hit all of these markers, then we will be worthy, then we’ll be happy. But let me tell you what happens when we hit those markers we’re not happy, we’re not worthy because of those markers, because our worth and our joy is an inside job.

20:28
It’s not determined by the things that we do on the outside. It absolutely isn’t. There are things that we can do that can help us build confidence and feel better about ourselves. Of course I’m not saying that. But at the end of the day, you can acquire all the things. You can acquire recognitions and awards, and you can acquire everything and still, in the end, have nothing. And so please recognize that your dignity, your humanity, your worth is not determined by outside things. It is not determined by attaining things. It is determined by you simply existing in your flesh as you are.

21:13
So, in closing, just remember, if you’re going to feel guilt when you do the right thing. Just like Dr Pooja Lakshman said, treat that like a check engine line and ignore it and you keep driving and again, pick one small thing that you know you can do to build trust with yourself. Moving forward and regardless of where you are on any journey that you may be embarking on for the next year, remember the most important thing is that you’ve always been worthy. You have always been worthy. So with that, I hope to see you again in my upcoming book study for the Body Keeps the Score.

21:53
Check that out on my site, bottomlesstosober.com. Or I hope to see you in my Writing for Healing program same website, bottomlesstosober.com to sign up. Hope to hear from you. Have a lovely new year and I will see you in 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, bottomlessesaubercom, 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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