Hijacked by Alcohol

 Drinkers Guilt

First things first- I want to give a shoutout and say thank you for all the great reviews! You probably don’t think too much about reviews, but in podcast world they are super important and for me, personally, it’s so good to get feedback and it really keeps me going to hear from you so thank you for taking a few minutes to write something, I love that. And when you hear an episode you enjoy, make sure you share it with someone! That’s a huge part of the beauty of doing a podcast is it has the ability to reach and help so many people- and as people in recovery, we have to constantly be of service and share resources with one another to help us all get through this journey- so share this episode with a  few people you think would enjoy it, or pick out another favorite you listened to in the past and share it with some people- let’s spread the word and stay sober!

National Recovery Month

For those of you who don't know, September is National Recovery Month. So I decided to do a whole month of solo episodes, coaching you with different techniques and tips to stay sober, and to overcome some of the greatest struggles in sobriety. I've been seeing all over the place all of these things about sober September and I wish I would have gotten on that bandwagon a little earlier because we could have had some fun with that, but I was distracted and didn't get a plan in place to do something fun.

Today’s episode is going to be super helpful. We are going to talk more about some guilt and shame stuff and how to navigate that and lessen those feelings. At least, I’m going to share how it works for me and how I get through it.

Don't Poke the Bear

For those of you who listen to the podcast regularly, you have definitely heard me talk about the committee and poking the bear- and these are just my personal concepts of how I visualize my alcoholism. The bear doesn’t talk, because he’s a bear and doesn’t speak English, or any other language for that matter- and the committee is all the chatter in my head that represents the mood the bear is in. The bear is my alcoholism, and as long as I am healthy and sober, he is in deep hibernation. Totally asleep, not messing with me at all. And when he is in hibernation, the committee is pretty nice. It still has some devious and ornery behavior that I have to watch out for, but for the most part, if I am diligent in nurturing my recovery and my life, then I can keep the committee in check.

If I start doing things that aren’t good for me, things that make me feel bad about myself, laziness, procrastination, gossip, not caring for my recovery, being snippy or rude, any little tiny thing I am not super proud of that causes the tiniest ping of guilt or negative feelings about myself, is poking the bear. The more you poke the bear, the more he is going to wake up, and he is going to be irritated. And when he wakes up, he is going to immediately start throwing a temper tantrum screaming for a drink. Then the committee is going to start screaming at you for a drink because it’s the only way to make the bear shut up and go back to sleep. So our goal in life, is to NOT poke that damn bear!

Feed your recovery so that guy will sleep comfortably and stay that way. Make decisions, big ones and tiny ones, that you are proud of so the committee doesn’t have any ammunition to use against you. It loves to tell you are aren’t good enough, or you don’t deserve to be happy because of all the crappy things you’ve done, or you’ll never be able to stay sober, or you’ll never be happy, or you don’t have time to go to a meeting or connect with other people, or you should stay home and isolate, or you are too tired to do something fun… the committee is a little negative Nancy chatterbox that wants to make you feel crazy and weak and like a failure because that’s how it gets you to drink and that’s how it gets you to not make any big changes in your life.

The committee is extremely uncomfortable with change so it will always try to talk you out of it. It needs you to stay the same so you don’t rock the boat and make it have fear of the unknown.

Separate Drunk Self From Sober Self

In early sobriety, the committee is stuck. It is used to you being the person you were when you were drinking. Now, I don’t know about you, but I was not the best version of myself when I was drinking. But for the committee, that’s who I was for more than a decade so that’s who it knows me to be. So we get stuck in this thought process that that’s who we really are in our core- that person that lied and manipulated people, who was hiding things from the people you love, who was destructive and maybe a bit mean and damaged relationships because you just weren’t in your right mind.

And with all of those negative and hurtful behaviors, comes some guilt and shame for our actions. You feel embarrassed and want to hide, you have things that you never want anyone to find out because you don’t want them to know how “bad” you really are. You’re a liar and a cheater and a bad person. And that’s the information the committee has to work with.

And with all of that horrible information, and your guilt and shame, and trying to kill yourself slowly with alcohol, there is no way to have a healthy self-esteem or to feel good about yourself or to be confident or proud of yourself. And again, that’s the information the committee has to work with.

But here’s the catch- you, and the committee, have totally forgotten you were a whole human being functioning in life long before you ever had a drink or used a drug. I didn’t start drinking really until I was about 20- 19 or 20. So I had 20 years of being a whole person before I was hijacked by alcohol.

You were hijacked. And so was the committee. I want you to remember the person you were before you ever had a drink- what was that person like? I was a super kind, funny, loving, nurturing person. I was honest and had a ton of integrity, I was a loyal friend and daughter and sister- I was a lot of great things! And so were you!

And here is the absolute truth- when I was drunk, I did not make good choices. I was broken. If I wasn’t broken, I wouldn’t have been drunk all the damn time! But I would NEVER make those choices in my right mind. NEVER. No matter how broken I was, I would have never lied the way I did, I would have never manipulated and used people the way I did, and I wouldn’t have hated myself the way I did if I wasn’t drunk. It’s alcohol that is all of those shitty things- not me.

When I got sober, I totally separated my sober self from my drunk self. Because they are two entirely different entities. All of my embarrassment and guilt and shame are the responsibility of my drunk self- not me, because that’s not who I am in my right mind. Those are not choices I would ever make in my right mind.  Remember who you are in your core, as a human being, is who you were before you were hijacked by alcohol. And alcohol does a lot of crappy things and makes terrible choices. And as long as I don’t drink it, I’m not that person. So I can separate them.

I’m not saying all of this to say we don’t have any responsibility in our choices- you know I am huge on taking personal responsibility for your life and your choices- and your responsibility here is to make whatever choices you have to make to keep yourself from drinking so you don’t have to be that person you are ashamed of.

Every tiny micro decision you make throughout your day plays a role in this- making the phone call you’ve been avoiding (that’s poking the bear), showing up late to work (totally poking the bear), hitting snooze on the alarm clock, being snippy with your partner or kids or co-workers, blaming things on other people, dodging an important conversation because it’s too uncomfortable- every one of these kind of decisions is making you feel bad about yourself, it makes you not trust yourself, it’s poking the bear, and it’s giving the committee all kinds of negative information so it can talk shit on you in your head all day long.

Wow, that’s exhausting.

I’m not proud of all the things I did as a drunk person. It makes me incredibly sad that I was that broken as a person and as a woman- I feel terrible for that part of me. But as long as I’m not drunk, I am not that person.

And this is one of the main reasons I do this work and I try so hard to be of service and provide so many tools and free resources and why I built myrecoverytoolbox.com, to figure this stuff out- because it’s confusing and hard and overwhelming. If you are shuffling to find a pen to write that down, or telling yourself to remember that for later.. it’s myrecoverytoolbox.com.

One of the things I recognized awhile into my sobriety was I had this strange sort of inner strength and confidence in myself. And I say it was strange because it was not present when I was a drunk. I was a shell of a human when I was drunk- I was scared of everything, I spent most of time hiding from life, not doing or accomplishing anything, I was kind of a waste of space.

But once I was sober, I started to see these qualities in myself that I had forgotten I had. And it makes me mad that alcohol erases that memory and hijacks my brain to believe I’m a big POS- POS is piece of shit for those of you who don’t know- sometimes I say I have these qualities that I never knew I had, but the truth is, I knew I had them, because it’s who I was before I started drinking.

I was super smart as a young person, always buried in books, fascinated by people and forever studying human behavior- I was a fantastic sister to my baby brothers who are much younger than me and I was an integral part of helping raise them and changing diapers and loving them, and I was really good at it.

I had healthy relationships and healthy boundaries because I was confident and well-adjusted.

And when I put down the booze, I started to see some of these great qualities in myself again. I started to see this inner strength to walk away from alcohol and not look back, I could see that deep down inside of me, I was confident I could successfully give up alcohol and I knew I had the ability to live happy. I did not doubt myself or doubt that I was capable.

Then, I went to AA meetings every single day of my life and that showed me I had the ability to be committed to something and dedicated to something- other than drinking because that was the only thing I had been truly committed to for many years. And in my drunk life, I never thought I was capable of committing to anything because all I ever did was talk a big game about all the things I wanted to do, but I had so much fear and overwhelm that I would never get off my buns and actually follow through with anything. And I mean anything- I didn’t follow through with anything that didn’t involve drinking.

I even thought I was a pretty good dog mom, and I was okay. I was committed to my dogs and I loved them dearly- but now, as a totally sober person and being a dog mom to Henry, it’s a whole different ball game. My dogs before we well cared for, but I also did that half-assed because I was too consumed with being drunk or hungover to take really good care of them.

But in my recovery, I started to notice these deep-seated core values that alcohol had stolen from me. And what I realized was, those were all the core values my mom raised me to have. Just like her. Honesty, integrity, an incredible work ethic, respect and kindness, generosity, and an inner strength that is second to none. And that’s who I really am as a human being.

Find Your SELF

The drunk version of me is some weird twisted Halloween costume of a human. All those crappy choices and laziness and burying my head in the sand, lying, having no ambition or path, living afraid of life- doing all of that for so many years continually broke me down and diminished my self-esteem. You get to have self-esteem when you believe in yourself and you trust yourself to get you through hard times, you trust yourself to make good decisions even when it’s hard, you trust yourself to take care of your SELF.

Getting sober is like this exercise in reconnecting with your true self, who you are in your core, before alcohol hijacked you and your life- it’s rebuilding a relationship with yourself after you’ve broken your own trust. This process is about you getting back to who you are, doing things you love, and loving your self on a daily basis.

So when I think about all the things I am not super proud of, how I hurt people, including myself, my put all of that responsibility on my drunk person. Because that’s not ME! It’s the drunk version that is extra crappy and will lie and manipulate to get what she wants. In my right mind, I wouldn’t do those things.

I want you to spend some time today thinking about the person you were before you were hijacked by booze. And some of us were a little broken and struggling with self-esteem issues or depression because of life situations and that’s what led us to drink to start with. If that was your situation, then I want you to think back even further, to who you were as your happiest self, as a young person.

Sometimes I go all the way back to 8! Man, 8 was a good year! We lived in a beautiful neighborhood for the first time ever, we could walk around and play outside, my mom entered a contest and won me a bicycle so I had this freedom to go wherever I wanted, the pool was right up the street from our house- it was good.

If you have to go all the way back to kid years, do it! Because I want you to start to uncover who you really are in your core. Think of those qualities and how you can start getting back to being more of that person. We have a tendency to shy away from friendships and connecting with people because we have this underlying fear that they will find out who we really are- the drunk version- but let’s spend some time focusing on showing people who we REALLY are, in our core, all of those great qualities that we possess before we were hijacked by alcoholism.

Let your guilt and embarrassment and shame live with the drunk version of you and don’t carry all of that weight as your sober self. And I don’t just mean sober, like you aren’t drinking- I mean sober, like recovering. Recovering from all the bad habits you practiced as a drunk, recovering from falling prey to life and it’s challenges and for being verbally abused by the committee and seduced by the lies alcohol promises you.

Recovery is working to heal yourself and to get back to that person that lives below the drunken drama. It’s breaking those bad habits and adopting new healthier ones, it’s repairing your self-esteem and rebuilding your trust in yourself and your belief in your abilities.

You have to shed that skin of the drunk you, like taking off a costume,  and let the real you come out again.

I love this visualization and makes so much sense to me. I can’t confuse those two entities because they are not one and the same. And as long as I don’t drink, I can leave that other half behind and focus on showing the world the REAL me. And that’s what I want you to do.

I hope this makes sense and helps you get through today a little easier. Don’t forget to check out all the free resources available at myrecoverytoolbox.com. I know you guys are loving the sober sleep relaxation recording- I’m getting incredible feedback from that and I’m so glad you are loving it!

As usual I will put links to the Recovery Toolbox in the show notes, as well as a link for those of you who would like to do a private coaching session with me- there is a ton of value with a coaching session so don’t look at the cost and freak out- you aren’t paying that for one hour. This is a full week of support and guidance with me personally. So I will put those links in the show notes.. myrecoverytoolbox.com!

You have a great day, you know how to find me if you need anything, and I will see you next week!

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