You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 120.

Welcome to Drink Less Lifestyle, a podcast for successful women who want to change their relationship with alcohol. If you want to drink less, feel healthier and start loving life again you’re in the right place. Please remember that the information in this podcast does not constitute medical advice. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Sherry Price.

Well, hello my lovely ladies, and beautiful friends. I want to ask you, how many of you are doing a dry January? I am and if you want some encouragement and support come on over to my private Facebook group called Stop the Overdrinking Habit because we are talking about our journey on not drinking this January. So come be a part of the trend and hang out with us and get healthy this year, change your relationship with drinking for good.

And just as a note, I will be doing a masterclass at the end of the month talking about how to come off a dry January because I think that’s where a lot of people mess up. They do really good in January and then come February they’re like, “Oops, I’m back to my old habits.” So stay tuned for more information about that masterclass.

And then I have to ask, have you joined EpicYOU yet? If not, it’s not too late. In EpicYOU we focus on drinking and other parts of your life. It’s all focused on you. Now, while we are accomplishing the goal of drinking less and how to become a woman who can take it or leave it, we are focusing also on other aspects of your life of why you overdrink, those trigger areas. And all year long we are focused on getting our biggest goals.

So, yes, while you learn to take it or leave it with alcohol and drink less, it’s typically you have a goal on the other side of that. And so that’s the path to your goals. So maybe for some women in the program and maybe for some of you it’s to lose some weight. And so drinking less, and imbibing in less alcohol, less sugar, or less toxin is part of the process to losing weight. It’s just one part of that process.

And for some women it’s to really feel better and have more energy and more vitality. And they know that when they drink a lot they just feel worse about themselves, they don’t have the energy in the morning that they want. And then other things start to spiral out of control. So yes, they want to drink less because that is part of the journey to getting more energy and feeling more vibrant in life, and that’s part of that journey. And then they’re working on other things that bring them energy and vitality into their lives.

So I love listening to all the goals and helping the women get to achieve those. And it really comes down to defining what that looks like and choosing the right process along the way and the right path to get that. So come join us if you’re wanting more for your life in 2023. I also want to tell you that I’ve been bringing in some guest speakers to help us on our individual journeys.

So last month we had a grief expert come and talk to us about how to handle grief and many misconceptions that are held around grief, some of the outdated principles that we haven’t really cleaned up since the 1970s since they were discovered. But later research has shown that that’s not actually factual. And on this call some of the women were coached and it was very, very powerful. And I brought in this guest speaker because I knew some of the ladies were really having a hard time with managing their grief and their loss. And they just wanted to use alcohol to numb that pain.

So since that was the root cause of their drinking I wanted to bring in somebody who is an expert in this area to help them alleviate that and really integrate that grief into their life as this guest speaker had spoken about. Because when you’re able to integrate that into your life that’s when you can move forward and that’s the process of posttraumatic growth. So we really had a meaningful discussion around that which helped the ladies really move beyond some of the pain that they were feeling.

So for this month I have a guest speaker coming in who’s a female fitness expert and she’s going to join us and talk about what exercises are important for each decade as we age. So we’re going to talk about doing the right exercise for the right period of time that our body is in because a lot of us have been trained to think it’s cardio all the time and that’s not ideal for our aging bodies.

And so she’s going to be focusing on what moves we can do particularly around our posture because as many people look down on their phones or they’re hunched over working at their computers or they’re not doing these exercises. We can kind of look like a cane as we go throughout life. We start hunching, and hunching, and hunching and our pasture gets really affected which can throw our rest of our body out of alignment. So she’ll be joining us next week so I encourage you to come, take advantage of these trainings.

And if you even want to watch the grief call, that is in the replay section when you join EpicYOU, because ladies, I’m about improving all of your life. Yes, drinking is a huge part but we want to go beyond that. We deserve to have an incredible epic life and that’s what I am all about so that we keep elevating our life and we keep enjoying it to the best of our ability. And if you’re a member EpicYOU you know that I recently launched and added in an EpicYOU VIP component. The ladies are so excited about it. I’m so excited about it.

So yes, we are doing all new things in the new year because it’s fun, why not. So again come and join us inside EpicYOU and make 2023 the best year yet. So I encourage you to come on over, invest in yourself so you can have the life that you want. So if you listened to the episode last week you know that I talked about connection being an important part of overcoming addiction. So I talked about how connection is my word of the year for 2023.

And I also talked about the famous TED Talk that went viral, 20 million views from Johann Hari who talks about that the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. And then he goes on to say that the opposite of addiction is connection. So I want to take that concept deeper in this episode. So when we are connected with people, just being connected, what does that look like in your mind? It’s like you’re hanging out with people who get us. And we feel like we belong. We have our tribe.

And they, oftentimes the people we hang out with, not always, but a lot of times they may think like us or they may have similar views or a similar approach to living their life. Or we’re connected to them because we enjoy their company and we enjoy the conversation that ensues whenever we get together with them. And so people want to feel connected. That is a human need. It’s not only a human desire, it’s really a human need.

And if you think about it that’s a big part, a huge part of a 12 step recovery program. They often encourage you to keep coming to meetings daily, several times a day if you need because you want to be around others who have walked your journey, who understand how hard it is, how much this addiction has gripped your life. And you want to hang out with people who have gotten to the other side, that you could see hope, you have faith that you could be one of those, that you can overcome this addiction. And that’s what they want for their lives.

The addiction gets to a point where it causes so much pain that you’re just done with it. And I remember hearing from someone, pain is really a motivating factor for a lot of people. When the pain gets so great we’re willing to take the action to get change.

Now, it’s the same reason women hear this podcast or see my website and they want to work with me. They see that I have been once at their place in life where they are finding that cutting back is quite hard. They can’t do it on their own and they resonate with my story and then they want to work with me because they know I won’t judge them, I’ve been there. And they want to get to the place that I’m at now. So yes, connection is important and it’s vital because here’s the thing I want you to hear. We can’t always help ourselves, we can’t.

And I talk a lot about this because I don’t know if it really sinks in. We hear it, we know it. We’re like, “Yeah, I get that.” But does it really sink in for you, especially if you’re still on the throes of addiction or this problem of overdrinking? We see it in other facets of our life. We see a doctor when something goes wrong with our body or we have all these symptoms and we’re not feeling well, and we want to figure it out. So we go to somebody who’s trained to figure out these symptoms of the body. So we go to the doctor.

When we have problems with our teeth, when we have toothache, or decay, or pain, or one falls out, or a crown falls off. We can’t do and fix that. We have to go to somebody who has the expertise, somebody who has the knowledge, somebody who has the utensils, and devices, and the drills, and the glue, and all of that, to help put our teeth back together again.

I know I have a financial planner. I’m not so good with how to diversify my portfolio and my money to make it grow, to get a great return on investment. I just don’t have that knowledge and expertise, nor do I want to do that, so I’m glad to find somebody who that’s their level of expertise and who can help me.

And when I was selling my last company I wanted out, and I wanted to break it off. I did not know all the rules and the regulations so I got a lawyer to help me with that process. And thank goodness for lawyers who can understand the law and see how we could be both treated fairly. And we can end a partnership that’s no longer where I want to be. I didn’t want to be a part of that business any longer. Some people don’t want to be a part of their marriage any longer so they see a divorce lawyer.

So there are these people who have the expertise and the knowledge that can help us, skilled professionals when we need it. When our car is broken, thank God, there’s a mechanic that can fix my car because I don’t have that knowledge. Because as humans we can’t possibly know everything about everything. So we are meant to rely on others, do you see this? Clearly we are meant to rely on others. We are meant for connection. That’s part of connection, relying on others or turning to others to help us.

And I just want to tell you that humans really enjoy helping people. Do you enjoy helping people? I bet you do. I love helping people. I love helping my husband. I love helping my daughter. I love helping my clients. I love helping people. And actually it reminds me of a story, I always say to my family, I like to feel useful. And for me that’s helping somebody to feel useful, that I have skills and that I matter, and then I have a purpose here.

And I laugh because when I was reading Thomas the Train, my daughter was really into trains, really into those books. And I think we had every Thomas the Train character. She put together train sets and they would just go around the kitchen and she loved trains. And I remember reading those books to her at night and sometimes I would cry reading them. And she’d look at me, super confused and then she goes, “Mommy, it’s okay, they always have a happy ending and that you don’t really need to cry.”

And I said, “I know, I know honey, but it’s just so touching to me when I read these books.” And I remember those Dirty Diesels, they always were disgruntled. They always had these bad attitudes. They never wanted to help the Useful Engines. They just were the Dirty Diesels and they would always cause chaos in the books. But she was right, they always ended happily. But the reason I would cry reading those is because Thomas would want to feel like a useful engine.

And I used to cry because I remember relating to that so much. I just want to be useful. I want to feel like I matter. I want to feel purposeful in my life. And so I would tell her, “Mommy wants to feel like a useful engine too.” And I’ll tell you, when I don’t feel like a useful engine, it’s not a good feeling to me. I can clearly see one area of my life where I really don’t feel like a useful engine and it bothers me.

When we go camping and my form of camping is with an RV. So many people would call that glamping. I don’t know how to do the hook-ups. And I don’t know how to do all the things. And everything breaks down and stores nicely. And when I look at it I don’t understand how to make it pop up or make it useful. So I tell my friends when we go camping, I said, “I need to feel like a useful engine, please somebody give me something.” So I wind up blowing up inner tubes or something that makes me feel like a useful engine. Because I am completely out of my element when we go camping.

And so feeling like a useful engine to me is like feeling connected to the whole. How can I contribute to my group of friends? How can I feel connected to others? How can I make sure that I feel like I belong? And I think that’s what we want when we talk about connection. We want people to understand us. We want people to be interested in us. We want people who like to be around us and we feel supported. We feel that we bring value and our opinions matter. So I think that I like to feel like Thomas the Train.

And when I look at women who go through big transitions in life sometimes they pick up the drinking habit. Because when we go through a major transition we might see our usefulness go away temporarily. A big transition for women is when kids leave the house. And some women no longer feel needed by their adult children. And so this is a time where I see drinking kick up quite a bit for women. They go to the bedroom where the kids used to be and they’re no longer there and they feel this hole in their heart, and this missing.

And they go through this time period where, they used to need me is a lot of times what I’d hear. And now they don’t need me. It’s that useful engine, that usefulness, wanting to be a part of their lives or feeling useful in life. But that door is closed so then we go look for open doors, other doors where we can be needed, useful, connected.

Another big one and another big transition which a lot of people feel really bad about is actually retirement. Whether it’s early retirement or on time retirement, whenever they transition from job to home or even from one profession to maybe a different profession or career. That’s another hole for people because they know their talents and their skills of 10, 20, 30 years in this area had been so useful. They got accolades. They got praise.

And now if they walk away from that to not work or maybe do another form of work where maybe they don’t have the skillset yet, they haven’t learned the new roles. That’s another time people really can rely on drinking to numb out because they’re not feeling that usefulness. They’re not feeling like they’re contributing, which I think is a form of connection. And so you want to feel connected. And sometimes we have to create that connection. We have to look for those opportunities of how we can feel connected, how we can stay with people who understand us.

And so there are ways we can get in the way of that. And that’s what I want to dive into on today’s episode. This was an article that was posted by one of the members inside EpicYOU. And it really highlighted where in my past I’ve gone really wrong. And I got the recipe for success wrong. And so I wanted to share some of this with you because if you’re struggling because of these reasons, maybe it can highlight, where am I being this way and getting in the way of me actually changing and becoming more like the woman I want to be?

So it was a concept that I haven’t heard about before and maybe you have but it’s called toxic independence. Now, I’ve heard of toxic positivity where they just tell you to be positive all the time, and positive affirmations, and positive everything. Now, I’ve heard of when you do that too much that actually can have the countereffect. You can’t do it so then you think you’re a bad person. And so that could be toxic. Now, I’ve read a lot about that. But this concept of toxic independence was something I really wasn’t familiar with, but boy, when I read this article I was like, wow.

My past self, used to be a lot of these. And I’ve been doing the work over years to relinquish a lot of that and change and I’m so glad I have. But I could see how my past self, living up to all of these ways that are talked about in this article, really kept me trapped in the wine habit. It really kept me drinking. So I want to see if you are having any of these symptoms of toxic independence. And if so, could that be the reason that you’re not able to break this drinking habit? So I’m not going to read them in order of the article. And I’m not going to read all of them from the article.

I’m just going to point out a few, a few that I think will resonate with most people that will listen to this podcast.

So, number one, you’re an extreme perfectionist and extremely self-critical. Wow, that one right there I stopped and I was like, “Oomph, that is so me.” That used to be so much worse in my past self than I am today. I’ve learned to lessen up and tame that inner critic and less of a perfectionist. And I call myself a recovering perfectionist. But, man, back in the day, oh, yeah, perfection all the way, self-critical all the way. And I actually used to think that that was what was driving me to do better and it wasn’t.

It exhausted me, it caused more burnout, it actually created more problems than I gave it credit for. I didn’t see how extreme perfectionism, wanting the A plus, wanting to be the best, wanting to get external validation at all costs meaning I’ll work till midnight, I’ll put in overtime, I’ll stay up all night if I have to. I wanted to do superior work, not just high quality. High quality is good but superior in my mind, what did that look like? Go above and beyond people’s expectations all the time so I get validated. I get told that I’m a good person, I get told, “Wow, way to go.”

But my health would suffer, my sleep would suffer, my stress levels would increase. And of course I’d rely on substances outside of me to make me be able to handle that. So numerous amounts of caffeine to the point I’d get jittery, and to the point I’d bring out my receptors that I could drink a pot of coffee right before bed and my body wouldn’t even recognize it. It would still go to sleep because that’s how exhausted I was.

I remember doing this in my residences and wanting my preceptors to say, “Oh my gosh, you’re going to be a great pharmacist. This is great. Oh my gosh this is the best paper I’ve ever read, or that’s the best presentation you ever gave”, or whatever it was I was always looking to be super. And boy, if I got any negative comments, I didn’t even hear the good ones. They could have said 25 good comments but I only focused on that one negative one.

I remember being in academia when I was on faculty and I wanted to be the faculty member of the year. I wanted to be liked by all the students. And I would read all those evaluations, and yes, 98% of them would be good but man there was a comment or two. I couldn’t even look at all the other positive comments. I’d just look at these one or two where somebody just ripped me apart. And that wouldn’t just eat at me for a day. That would eat at me for weeks. I couldn’t handle it, it was crazy. It’s like I needed to be extremely perfect.

I needed for everybody to have a positive opinion of me. And we talk about this inside of EpicYOU, I use the quote that I learned from my coach, you could be the best peach but there are some people that just don’t like peaches. And I’m like, “Wow, yeah, I’m doing my best.” I’m trying my best and there are just sometimes the way I lecture, or my grading policy, or my syllabus, or something, it’s just not going to mesh with everybody who’s come through my course. And yet I still didn’t see it when I was in it.

It wasn’t until I learned these tools with life coaching that I can see where I’m holding myself back from being the best version of myself. Meaning that comment sure, I can learn from it but then learn to move on from it, learn to grow from it. Not learn to be a coward and be crushed by it, and have it follow you for weeks on end. And I didn’t have that skillset, nobody taught me how to do that. Nobody taught me how to manage my brain back in the day.

I just thought I needed to strive harder which we all know is exhausting and leads to burnout and really you don’t enjoy life. You stop enjoying things. You enjoy your profession less. And so not only needing caffeine, then you need alcohol to cause you to get sleepy, to go to bed because your brain is overactive and it keeps thinking about the presentation or how you’re going to measure up at work the next day, all the things. So then I needed alcohol to douse my brain to get it to sleep.

Alright, the next one, you take on too much responsibility. I see this a lot with moms. They take on the emotional responsibility of the household, the emotional responsibility of their kids, the academic responsibility of their kids. They start futurizing and saying how at nine or ten their kids aren’t going to make it at 18 like I used to do with my little one. So all of this responsibility, make sure everybody’s happy, you’re on the holidays. Make sure everything goes well for other people. So we start taking on so much responsibility that really isn’t ours.

And the things that we should be responsible for like our health, our sleep, our exercise, how much we drink or don’t drink, what we eat or don’t eat. We’re too exhausted because we’ve been managing other people’s responsibility. And we’re not focusing on, hey, what am I responsible for, for myself? And if we ran out of time or we have these limiting beliefs that we don’t have enough time, or we can’t do it all, and all of that is just showing that we are blaming.

We’re blaming time, we’re blaming other people, we’re blaming needy family members and it’s really not. It’s us taking on too much responsibility. And when we take on too much responsibility, oh my gosh, the weight of the world can feel like it’s on your shoulders and so how do you relieve that weight of the world? You drink, you eat sugar, you hit the pantry, you hit the ice cream. And so I wasn’t seeing where I was taking on so much responsibility that really wasn’t nine, which leads into the next one.

Delegating tasks isn’t your thing, you’re just like, “No, I can do that and I want to do that. You know why I want to do that? Because if I give it to somebody else they won’t do it right.” I see this a lot in relationships. If I give that activity or that responsibility to my son, or my daughter, or my spouse, they’re not going to do it to my standards. Then it’s like, okay, if they don’t do it your standards maybe it takes practice for them to be able to do it a couple of times and then eventually they might reach your standard.

But they’ll never reach it if you never delegate it. And then you’re left taking on more and more responsibility than what you really need to do. When my 12 year old cleans up the kitchen and she does dishes, because I have to teach her to be responsible as an adult when she leaves the house, so she has these chores to do. Yes, there are going to be a few dishes that I’m going to uncover and be like, “There’s a spot. There’s still some gravy stuck to that dish.” And instead of getting mad about it, I’ll just do the dishes. Now I’m doing 5% of the dishes instead of 100%.

But if you’re an extreme perfectionist you’d be calling them down, “Look at this spot, you need to clean it.” Yeah, I might point it out to her but it’s not devastating, it’s not life threatening. There is no reason to criticize somebody. It’s just to say, “Hey, there’s a spot on the dish.” And maybe you don’t even need to say it because when I’m there putting them away right there when she’s cleaning them she’ll see if I put it right back in the sink. She’d be like, “Why are you putting that back in the sink? I cleaned it.” And I said, “Well, there’s a spot right there.”

I’m not criticizing her, just pointing out that there’s a certain standard for clean dishes in the house. And that one didn’t meet the standard. We’re just going to try again. There’s nothing wrong with trying again. So notice if you’re a person who doesn’t delegate tasks because you need it done to a certain level of perfectionism. And you’re not willing to train other people around you to get to your standard. I’m not saying get to perfectionism but get to your standard. If it’s a reasonable standard, reasonable people will be like, “Yeah, I get that.” Which brings us to the next one.

If you prefer to do everything yourself you do struggle with toxic independence. Yeah, you want to do it all. And this could come down to a trust issue. Maybe somebody wasn’t there for you in your younger years. Maybe you have trauma of adults walking out or something and now you just don’t trust people so you have to do it all.

For some reason that brings you a level of comfort or safety because back in the day that’s how your brain interpreted it as, as your younger self. But I’ll tell you, that can be very much holding you back, very much holding you back from a life where you get some relaxation and you get pleasure because you don’t have to do every single thing yourself.

I was working with a client and I remember she said, “I have to book everything, everything when it comes to travel because my husband will inevitably mess something up. He won’t get the right date for the car rental or won’t get the right date for the flight”, or blah, blah, blah. And I said, “Well, if you keep on taking on all of this responsibility and you can’t delegate, and you prefer to do everything yourself, you’re exhausting yourself.” And she goes, “I am, I see that. And I don’t want to do that, please help me out.”

So we came up with a strategy where he can win and she can win. And you didn’t have to wait till you showed up at the car rental to say, “Is it the right day?” There are things you can do to start delegating so you don’t feel so bitter and exhausted for having to take on all the responsibility. And of course when you do that you amp yourself up, you’re amping up your cortisol. You feel like your blood pressure is rising, you’re boiling sometimes with anger. And what do some people do with that? They drink.

So let’s go to the next one because this kind of ties in as well. You proudly proclaim to be a workaholic. Oh my gosh, ladies, that was such a badge of honor for me, working day and night. I did it for most of my pharmacy career. There was one point in time I had three jobs and I would tell people, “I have three jobs.” You know why? Because workaholism is a measure of worth for some people. And it was part of my self-worth. The harder I work the more I thought better of myself, the more worth I gave myself mentally. Look at me, look at how hard I work.

Because in our society that is a measure of success and I bought into that concept wholeheartedly. And if that’s a badge of honor for you and then you go to retire, and so if work is your measure of self-worth and you go to retire, that could be a time that drinking really picks up. Because then you’re like, “Well, what is my self-worth now? I’m not working.” And you have plenty of self-worth, plenty outside of your job. But a lot of women can’t see that, especially if they have defined themselves by their job for decades.

And so I help them through that process. I have been there. I know exactly what it was like to give up my pharmacy career. There were days it was incredibly painful, days where I just wanted to hit the vodka bottle because wine just wouldn’t get me there quick enough because I was like, “Who am I? What do I do next? What’s going on? Why do I feel this way? I shouldn’t be feeling this way.” My mind was all over the place and I entered a mild depression over it.

I’ve seen this recently happen with my husband and I worked with him through it because mentally if you’re not right, nothing else seems to be right, your emotions aren’t right. You don’t work out, you don’t care about things, you just mope and sulk. And you isolate because you’re like, “I don’t know who can help me. I feel so alone. I don’t want to be here but I don’t know the way out.” And then you don’t want to talk about it with anybody because if you’re like me, you don’t want to burden anybody with your problems.

You look at your life and you’re like, “Why do I feel like I have problems, my life is so good?” But if you’re wrapped up as a workaholic and that’s your whole self-identity like it was for me, walking away from work or that kind of work where you felt so knowledgeable in that area and that you could be ‘a useful engine’. I knew so much about pharmacy, so much about drugs. I could help anybody. People used to ask me questions sitting on an airplane and I’d be like, “Well, here’s what that side effect is [inaudible], that side-effect.” And so you should talk to your doctor about this, and this, and this.”

I used to love it, still do but then who was I if I wasn’t a pharmacist? Who was I now that I didn’t have that identity? And so for me, shifting my identity was really where I learned that work and what I taught inside of EpicYOU. And that’s why I developed that whole course inside of EpicYOU for others who are like, “This season of my life is ending and I need to shift my identity, can you help me with that, Sherry?” So I put a whole curriculum together that people can follow. It’s the same thing that I did for myself and it really helped me through the process.

Alright, next one. This was me too. You’re an intensely private person. You don’t like people knowing about you. I mean even starting this podcast was like I have to talk about myself. I always cringe when people are like, “Yeah, just ask people, they love to talk about themselves.” I’m not one of those people, ladies. I will gladly hang out and hear all about you. Talking about myself was something that I had to learn to do so people would get to know me because I think deep down I’m afraid of rejection. I’m afraid of people thinking I’m a weirdo.

I don’t feel like the bell shaped curve. I don’t feel like the normal people out there. I feel that my views are different. I feel that I think differently. I feel that I feel differently. And for some reason opening up that part of me feels scary, feels unsafe, feels very vulnerable. And so I’ve been posting a bit more on social media about my personal life because I’m like, well, I like simple things.” I like to be with my family. I like to be goofy sometimes. I like to be serious other times. But somehow sharing that with others feels very scary.

So I’m learning to be a less intensely private person, and that may surprise some of you, I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t. But doing a podcast every week really is still something that I’m surprised I do really. I can’t say it’s out of my comfort zone but I can’t say it’s in my comfort zone. I don’t know, I guess I just do it, but sharing things in my life has not been something I’ve been wanting to do, unless I can see that it helps somebody.

And knowing and hearing from some of you who DM me or reach out to me on email, or who I get the opportunity to work with you personally have said, “Your story has really helped me.” That’s what keeps me going.

And then last one I want to share from this article, and if you join EpicYOU you will see the article posted and all the ladies commenting because it really hit home for some of us. Is that you have great difficulty asking for help. And I know we will ask for help for our children. We will ask for help when it’s for other people but really do you ask for help when you need it, you need it? And this is where I feel it comes back full circle. Having that connection, we are made as humans to need each other, not just want each other, to need each other.

Just think of our process of evolution of tribes, of conquering the land, exploring. Nobody does that on their own. They have people with them on boats. Somebody’s fishing, somebody’s doing whatever is in the engine room, or the steam room, or whatever it was. But we conquer land together as a team. We raise kids together as a team. There’s various teachers in our lives. There’s various people in our lives because we are meant for connection.

And when you’re struggling with something and it really bothers you, really look at it and say, “Is there a way I could connect with somebody to help me through this process?” Whatever it is you’re dealing with, is there somebody who I can connect with who’s been there, who’s an expert, who I trust so I could stop living with this pain, so I can stop living this way, so I can improve my life?

And I believe that’s what Johann Hari mentions and means when he says, “The opposite of addiction is connection.” Is getting connected to those people who can help you, getting connected to those people who will hold you accountable because they want what you want, a different life for you, a different way to experience this life. It doesn’t have to be filled of turmoil, and pain, and hurt. And yes, some of that will come but how can you move through it to move beyond it? And how could you stop identifying with it? A lot of us don’t know who we are if we give up drinking.

It’s like, what do we do in the evenings? What do we do when we go out to a restaurant or hang out with friends? How do I manage that? Who am I? And I’ve seen so much, working with women. It’s like, I show up to my favorite bar and the bartender knows me. And he’s like, “Hey.” And he just automatically pours my favorite drink. What’s the conversation I need to have? What do I need to do? How do I show up differently? How do I shift into this new identity?

And ladies, I can help you manage all of that. I had to learn it myself. And then I’ve learned from working with more of you on how to help you specifically in the way you show up and how you want to show up, and what words feel right to you and which ones don’t? The thing about moving on from a bad habit or an addiction is all about being a different version of you. And that’s individualized. That will be unique. Maybe some of the things I say on this podcast you’re like, “Yeah, that will work for me.”

And then some of the things I say on the podcast you’re like, “Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.” And that’s all good. It’s all great that you know that upfront. So let’s prune away what’s not going to work and let’s double down on what’s going to work. I mean I think about my life and all my identities. And I didn’t get to become a pharmacist all by myself. I had to learn from other pharmacists. I went to pharmacy school. I went and did pharmacy residences.

I wanted to be a critical care pharmacist, so then I did a critical care pharmacy residency because I learned how to manage a code, what does a pharmacist do on a code. How to draw up drugs, how to get the code cart, how to be a member of the team, how to help my nursing colleagues, how to help my physician colleagues. That just wasn’t built into me. I had to learn that. And thankfully I had such great mentors who taught me how to remain calm when a life is on the line.

And then when I started my own company I had to get help on wait, how do I manage payroll? How do I manage human resources? I now have employees. I didn’t learn that on my own. I had to reach out to a payroll company to help me, to teach me, to educate me so I can now shift my identity to now a business owner. So whatever job you do in life you’re learning it along the way. And if you’re a mother you know this very well. Your kid comes into this world and you’re like, “I don’t know how to do this one.”

So it’s just we’re given these opportunities to learn and to grow. And sometimes it comes with asking for help. So, ladies, if you want to get connected, you want to feel heard, understood, you want to know that somebody’s been through your journey and you want to drink less?” Come on, join us inside of EpicYOU. We all know inside of the program how lonely it can feel, how isolating it can feel and how defeating if can feel when you keep doing something over and over again that you really don’t want to be doing.

And I know it can be difficult to ask for help and I know it could be a little scary, but when you see others go through the same process as you, your fear starts to drip away. And you become more confident because you’re more connected. And you see how things can be different. And so if you’re wanting them to be different for you in 2023, come join us. And hey, if it’s not our group, find a group, find a way to get connected, find a way to learn how to get over this once and for all because I fully believe it doesn’t have to define you.

It doesn’t have to be your identity. It could be something you identified with for a while and then you left it because it no longer worked for your life. And you’re on to bigger and better things in your life. Cheers to that my friends. Alright, loved seeing you are here. Thank you for joining and thank you for tuning in to this podcast episode. If you love this podcast, please rate and review it, I would greatly appreciate it and I will see you next week.

If you want to change your relationship with alcohol and with yourself, then come check out EpicYOU, it’s where you get individualized help mastering the tools so you can become a woman who can take it or leave it and be in control around alcohol in any situation. EpicYOU is the place for women who want to be healthy, confident and empowered to accomplish their goals and live their best life. Come join us over at epicyou.com/epicyou. That’s epicyou.com/epicyou. I can’t wait to see you there.