Episode 273: Why midlife breakdown is inevitable and what comes next
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I spent years ignoring and running from my own emotions. I was so committed to keeping it moving and pretending everything was fine because I didn’t know how to be with myself, how to sit with myself. And now I honestly don’t remember why I thought honesty would kill me. What was I so afraid of? And I just wish another woman would have tapped me on the shoulder and told me the truth. Hey sister, it’s okay to be scared.
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But just so you know, the breakthrough that you’re looking for comes after the breakdown. And while I’m not a big fan of regret, I can only imagine where I’d be now if I had let myself break at 40 instead of 50. So this episode is me tapping you on the shoulder. So pay attention. I am sharing a powerful conversation from the Period Whisperer podcast with host Bria Gad.
00:57
We’re talking about the hidden link between hormones, stress, and drinking, and why so many high-achieving women end up using alcohol as a coping mechanism. You’re going to hear the truth about emotional sobriety, how the toxic cultural pressure to be productive leads to an inevitable breakdown in midlife, and why you don’t actually lose control of your drinking. You lose control of your thinking.
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So if you use alcohol to quiet your mind or reward yourself for another exhausting day, this episode will shift your diagnosis of the problem so you can start working towards a solution that doesn’t require you to stop drinking completely. My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%.
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Join me each week for evidence-based, holistic strategies to regulate your nervous system, balance your dopamine, and activate the growth mindset that makes you so powerful in other areas of your life so you can stop worrying about losing control and trust yourself again. Get happy, not sober. It’s not about the alcohol.
02:20
Hey there sisters, welcome back to this episode of the period whisper podcast. As you know, this is one of our expert guest interview days. And I have to tell you, I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation, this, and I’m about to introduce you and you heard the intro before, but I think that there is, we’re beyond time for a conversation like this one today. So welcome to the podcast, Colleen Freeland. We are talking about
02:46
being in like intuitive drinking specifically. So I’m very excited to have you here today. I’m excited to be here too. I love your stuff and we have so much in common. You’re the period whisperer. I’m a hangover whisperer. Like what is all this whispering going on? What is all this? I’m so glad you brought that up because I wanted to make sure everyone listening knew that Colleen, I love that you’re called the hangover whisperer. I’m going to want you to explain that, but I want to let everyone know listening to Colleen has an amazing
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podcast as well. It’s called It’s Not About the Alcohol podcast. ah We just recorded an episode for it. So make sure you go and listen. I know you’re going to want to after this episode anyway. But Colleen, tell us how you became the Hangover Whisperer. Well, I was a high functioning, busy mom coach. had four kids of my own, three step kids, and I was running through life at a
03:42
100 miles an hour doing all the things for all the people. I was very happy. I was extremely healthy. I was kind of psycho about how healthy I was. Only organic mascara for me and all of my food had to be sustainable and made from scratch. Everything, made everything from scratch for all the kids all the time. so I had really high levels of standards for anything that touched my body.
04:10
And yet I drank like a fish every single night because I used alcohol as a way to cope. Like I kind of thought of alcohol as my medicine. It was the only way I could shut down my brain. I have an ADHD brain, raging case, and I was, I now understand that a lot of that means for me that I was very comfortable with chaos. I didn’t know how to slow down. It was either a hundred miles an hour or bust.
04:39
I didn’t know how to relax. I didn’t know how to take care of myself. And so I was using alcohol and for years there was no quote problem unless you really zoom out and get honest about the fact that drinking a bottle of wine every single night, seven days a week for 15 years might not really be aligned with like all of my other healthcare mottos. I found myself really feeling like I wasn’t who I said I was.
05:09
I understand like that was alcohol use disorder. And what that means is that you’re drinking more than you think you should drink. And it’s very normal to get into the weeds with alcohol because alcohol is an addictive substance. But the problem in our society is that we are taught because of the AA model and what we know about alcoholics that there’s two different types of drinkers. There’s the alcoholic.
05:35
And then there’s everybody else. And if you’re a normal drinker, cheers, knock yourself out. And so I was a normal drinker for years. And then when I started to doubt or question my ability to take the night off, why does this feel so hard? And I would promise myself, all right, I’m gonna do a 10-day detox or I’m going to not drink on a Monday. I don’t know. um And then I wasn’t able to follow through.
06:01
What that happens is it’s kind of like getting your shoelace wrapped around the bike pedal and you keep peddling and peddling. But in our culture, if you raise your hand and say, I feel like I’m drinking more than I should, there’s only one answer that we know of. And that is, then you get your butt to AA. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, get a sponsor, get the big book, and you’re never drinking again. And so what happens for women who are
06:27
really disciplined in all areas of their life except for one is A, we think we can fix it ourselves and sometimes you can. But for me, what happened was the longer it went, I was getting shame about it and I was embarrassed about it. And what happens when you’re pouring alcohol on shame is that every single time you try and fail to meet your own expectations or your goals or what you said you were gonna do.
06:55
your brain, there’s a part of the brain called the habinula that’s always tracking success and failure. And so I was building up quite a track record of failure, which was reinforcing the belief that I can’t control myself. I can’t cut back. Meanwhile, just like if you were drinking coffee every day and you stopped, there is a withdrawal. There is a physical dependency. You don’t have to call it an addiction, but I had high levels of dopamine or
07:24
at night from the alcohol, I wake up in a dopamine deficit. My cortisol levels are through the roof because alcohol is a depressant drug. And I was unaware that alcohol is a drug. I thought it was a food group, I guess. And so I didn’t understand that there were forces working against me that made it difficult. Meanwhile, I never slow the F down ever.
07:48
And so I just keep going and pushing and years go by, my drinking up ticks, because I developed a higher and higher tolerance, your brain learns to compensate. But what I now see is I just had a really high tolerance for ignoring myself and I got really disconnected. And so the more you are trying to pretend like you’re somebody you think you’re not, the more disconnected from yourself you get. I wasn’t feeling and processing my emotions. I was worried about how things looked. I was worried about checking all the boxes.
08:18
I was worried about what other people thought and I thought I was getting away with it, but I forgot I was a person and just shooting myself in the foot every day with the drinking. I love how candid you are about this. And I feel like I’m going to have to ask you 14 questions about this. I’m sorry, but can we circle back real quick to the ADHD part? Because I feel like we’re hearing more and more about this as well in certainly in midlife for women. Was this something you had all like, obviously maybe you’d always struggled with, but didn’t know?
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Or was this newer for you, this ADHD? You know you found something that actually works when you make your wife drink it every morning before she’s had her coffee. I’m talking about AG1, my morning greens, my secret no matter what for energy, digestion, hormone support, and just that feeling like myself again, secret tool that I cannot go anywhere without.
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Every morning, first thing before coffee, before chaos, I mix up my AG1, which is one scoop, water, a little bit of ice, because I like things cold, and sometimes a squeeze of lemon, and done. I shake it, I drink it. And let me tell you, the difference, it’s been unreal for me. My energy lasts all day, my digestion is smooth, my periods are regular, and those insane afternoon sugar cravings, totally gone for me.
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I used to wake up feeling sluggish and foggy and now, even if I’ve had a less than stellar night, I drink my greens, I head out on my walk and I feel clear and steady and just ready for my day. And here’s the funny part. I’ve totally turned into an AG1 evangelist. As I said, I make my wife drink it before coffee. It’s a non-negotiable. My friends, if you sleep over at my house, you’re getting greens in the morning. Visit me, drink greens.
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10:56
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 39 years old. And it was a diagnosis that came after probably 12 years of basically doing the rounds through all the psych drugs. know, from the time I set, four kids, the second child was born. And instead of my doctor telling me, oh, you need a nap, you need a babysitter to give you a little bit of a break. m
11:23
They just put you on, I think my first one was Paxil, welcome to the club. And then over the years, I just always thought something was wrong with me. I always thought trouble in my marriage, ah well, my ex-husband would be the first one to drive me to the doctor. It’s not your fault, it’s your brain chemistry. And basically, it’s like I have no boundaries, I have no space, I do not value my own needs. I was a stay-home mom for a long time. I wasn’t financially independent.
11:52
And so it just kind of messed with my mind and I believed that better living through chemistry. So I would take these antidepressant drugs and then might feel better for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and then you gotta up the dose, you gotta add another medication. So I kind of went through that whole thing. And of course I’m drinking the whole time. And so there might’ve been a couple of interventions with my family, cause I was slurring at the funeral or something.
12:21
Over time, I was trying to cope with what I now know is ADHD, but I also think it’s bigger than that. I think our culture, it is just normal that nobody can focus. I was trained as a female to make sure everybody’s okay around me. And God forbid, I take up space. God forbid, I ask for something. I need to always be giving more than I take. uh
12:47
And so it was a combination of my brain chemistry. It was a combination of my cultural conditioning. And so I got the diagnosis when finally a doctor went, I don’t, you know, this could be masking as ADHD. And I had a gal on my show who explained this for me because I would have never said I had ADHD. I was a teacher. ADHD is something that bad seventh grade boys have. women who can go through.
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get a college degree in three years and juggle 10 balls at once while bicycling and serving dinner for everybody. But she explained that one of the major things with ADHD is that addiction to chaos. I didn’t know how to slow down. uh I think in some ways having four kids was an ADHD coping mechanism. I looked at people with two kids and I’m like,
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I’d be bored. I gotta have four kids. I’ll watch your kids. I’m making dinner for everybody. I was just really intense. And yeah, that is an ADHD. I was kind of a dopamine junkie, and not knowing that I could control my brain, I just became kind of uh a ball in a pinball machine getting batted around. And at some point in midlife, you wake up and you just don’t have the energy to keep going with all that anymore.
14:08
Oh yeah, and I think that’s an interesting point I’d like to ask is, so you’re going through life and with sorry, with ADHD, I’ve heard it almost feels like there’s a hundred voices in your head at all times. So when we’re talking about maybe even alcohol being a part of the coping mechanism of like kind of quieting those voices finally, so that maybe you can sleep or maybe you can just exhale, know, that really starts to make sense. But so you’re going through life 15 years, you’ve got seven kids. I just have to reiterate this.
14:36
You’re not a very big human being for anyone who’s not watching this with us. You’re drinking a bottle of wine a night for this period. What was the turning point for you? what? old were you? I was 46 years old. I was 46 years old and COVID happens, right? And- straw that breaks the camel’s back. Well-
15:00
At first, it was like, do your part, stay home. Liquor stores were, they kept the liquor stores open. And so, by this time I had gone through a divorce, now I’ve got three extra kids, so I’ve got the seven kids. We go into COVID, I’m married to a neurosurgeon at the time who’s never home, and it’s my job to do all of the schoolwork. Plus, there was so much stress. And I was on,
15:28
Zoom with my friends, doing happy hours, doing my part. It’s okay to drink. And I just had gotten to the point with my own behavior that I kind of reached a tipping point where all the guardrails, all of the things that kept me in control were gone. I didn’t have to drive anymore. I didn’t have to teach hot power yoga at 7 a.m. All the reasons I had for not drinking went away.
15:57
And so I started drinking earlier and earlier. You know, and I wake up five, six weeks into COVID and I’m like, I can’t pretend that going to the liquor store and getting two mega handles of vodka by that time, and that I’m not the one drinking all of this. You know, it used to be that you could pretend you’re having a party and who drank all the vodka and the damn kids. No, no, no, it was just me. And I just woke up on a Tuesday and I was like, my hand went rogue and called the AA hotline.
16:26
and told on myself. I was like, I can’t do this anymore, I need help. And so that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. I just couldn’t keep going anymore. And I love that you said like midlife kind of gets to that point. I feel the same way. It’s almost like I think it’s our gift that irritates us and not like this added workload in the body where it’s like, no, no, no, we’re gonna shake you by the shoulders and it’s time to make something different. So I mean, that’s huge. then, you know, I think
16:53
I want to just tell your story here, because I find this is so for anyone listening. And I was saying to you before we recorded, uh obviously, there’s a lot of full, as you say, full AA, full sobriety coaches out there. You talk about intuitive drinking. What was that transition like for you? Recognizing that, as you said, a lot of women out there are either identifying as like, I don’t have a problem, but maybe I have some shame around this.
17:20
Where did you go from there? then, and yeah, and what do we do about it? Well, in my typical fashion, I go big. And so I get go to AA and I get sober. I got the t-shirt. I got the bumper sticker. Alcohol is poison. You know, I am all in. I’m going to be sober for the rest of my life. And I’m going to AA meetings and I’m realizing that they are teaching you how to re-language the story of your life.
17:49
to reframe who you are going all the way backwards. You stopped developing emotionally when you had your first drink, so you’re stunted. And it was just this really disempowering talk. Everybody’s talking about rock bottom and all of this trauma. And what I started to notice is, it’s kind of like a cult. And of all the cults in the world, I think if you’re going to join one, that would be a good one.
18:17
But basically everybody’s parroting the same thing. One drink is too many and a thousand is not enough and once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. And I just realized they’re training us to see ourselves this way. And they are doubling down on the fear and the identity that I can’t control myself. When in fact, I always could control myself.
18:43
I would surrender control because I believed that alcohol, know, enough alcohol would help me, but I could control myself if I had to drive. I could control myself if my mother-in-law was around. This idea that we can’t control ourselves, loss of control is a myth. So I started, I was already a coach. So I had a master’s degree in coaching. And because I just really get into whatever I’m into, I went back and did an addiction and recovery certification. uh
19:12
Here’s the thing about AA, as helpful as it can be for a small portion of the population, the whole model was created before we even understood what neuroplasticity is and that the brain can and always is changing. So I start seeing research that shows, oh wait, six months after breaking a compulsive habit, your prefrontal cortex gray matter is denser, you are more capable.
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of self-control, not less. Like healing from a habit, fixing a habit is a learning process, just like the development of a habit is a learning process. So I just started to see all of the science plus the fact that 90 % of people who meet the clinical threshold for alcoholism, which for sure I did, reintroduce alcohol.
20:06
50 % of them never have another problem again. We are capable of self-correcting when we are not having fun. When we change because we believe we’d be happier to change, we’re able to do that. So the misinformation out there in terms of once you quit drinking, you have to stay sober forever is not true. Meanwhile, I am 18 months, two years into my sobriety journey.
20:35
I am more anxious and clinically meet the threshold for depression for the first time in my life. I was always just an anxious hot mess. Now I’m depressed and my doctor’s talking about putting me in the hospital. I was doing everything right and yet I had no energy, no motivation. And what I also learned from being a coach and learning is
20:58
It was my thinking that was the problem. It was my pursuit of perfectionism. It was my agreement to have no boundaries, to not take care of myself, to do everything right all the time. So I just began to see that the AA mindset is a story and it’s a story that can work for some people. But I was also by then coaching, I’d become a sober coach and a lot of my clients didn’t want to stay sober.
21:25
And being a coach, we are trained to hold space for the client’s agenda, not our agenda, which is the one thing that’s different. All the sober coaching out there, that’s the one thing. It’s like, well, you we’re going to coach you, but we’re going to backload it with the right answer. Well, I maintained an open mind and supported women through that journey without shaming them. And then realized, oh my God, they’re totally able to do this. You know, we just addressed the reasons they were drinking.
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that we address their beliefs about alcohol, that you get a little crazy about all that. And so I was seeing my clients doing it. And then I was like, well, I should probably make sure that’s okay. And when I reintroduced alcohol for professional purposes only, I do want to say that, I realized, oh my God, it all came back, all the crazy. I’d have one glass of wine and wake up.
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with anxiety and shame and self-doubt and fear the next morning. And so then I walked through all of that and then just using all the tools of neuroscience and somatic work, body-based processing of anxiety, I just built this program that helps women. If you’ve ever been a normal drinker, of course you can become a normal drinker again. You just need to stop, slow down.
22:45
and address the reasons why you’re over drinking in the first place. Yeah, yeah. And for you, and I think for a lot of women, I will agree, it is an avoidance of something, it has to be something in self, right? Either I’m not ready to handle what has to be handled, either I don’t know how to say no, so I’m doing all these things and I don’t know how to handle that. Like it’s typically, do you find it’s typically something that we’re trying to run away from a feeling inside of us?
23:13
Oh, 100%, it’s an emotional problem. And I know some people probably listening are like, well, that’s not me. And it’s like, okay, if somebody tells you you can’t have a drink, it would be easier to take a sucker away from a two-year-old. Yeah, it is emotional when you are finding it hard to say no, because it’s not actually hard to not drink, because you’re not even doing anything. So yes, it is an emotional problem. And it’s emotional.
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processing problem. You don’t ever lose control of your drinking. You lose control of your thinking because you don’t know how to process the shame. You don’t know how to process that. uh Any emotion that doesn’t fit with the version of who you’re supposed to be, women are taught. We control our behavior and we suppress and we push it down and we ignore and we avoid and we justify and we gaslight ourselves and all of the things. And that’s why we feel like we’re living in a pressure cooker.
24:10
by the time we get to midlife. If you’re not drinking, then you’re eating your face off or you’re doing something to cope with these unprocessed emotions. Alcohol just happened to be my drug of choice. Yeah. First of all, I have to say that again. You don’t lose control of your drinking. You lose control of your thinking. think that is- damn mind is out of control. Yeah. I want to drink. I don’t want to drink. Like that right there is the core of the conflicting beliefs and people don’t know how to-
24:38
That’s why your mind changes every time your mood changes. Like that’s the symptom. If you’re constantly going back and forth and feeling stuck because you can’t make up your mind A or B, that’s an emotional problem. You don’t know how to hold two opposing thoughts in your head at once. You believe everything you think and you don’t notice that everything you think changes every five minutes.
25:01
That’s interesting. Do you think productivity is also a drug that we use as women where it’s like we’re just addicted? It’s like you can’t say no. So I’m like, I’m just going to say yes, because it brings on that self-worth. Well, and that’s something I talk to a lot of women. You why do you think you want to reduce your drinking or why do you think you want to quit? And you know what they say? It’s because I want to be more productive.
25:21
Oh, okay. Well, that’s not going to be a good idea. The reason you’re drinking is because you’re addicted to productivity and you’re just mad that Saturdays aren’t as productive as they could be because of Friday nights, you know, giving yourself the break you finally deserve. And that’s the other thing where I don’t teach my clients to quit drinking because when you are addicted to productivity, that’s the real problem. Okay. And if you take away the one thing that allows you to calm down, look what happened to me.
25:51
I just went into super drive, super productivity and woke up even more exhausted and confused, you know, two years later because I was so perfect. And yet that wasn’t aligning with how I felt. wasn’t dealing with a lot of things because I was trying to work my way, earn my approval, validate, just earn, prove, do all the things. Yeah. weren’t listening to the need of your body, which was to slow down. You had just found.
26:19
Alcohol was a coping mechanism. So then when you removed that productivity became the coping mechanism to avoid that message from inside of you. Yeah. was how I coped with productivity before. And then I removed that alcohol and I didn’t have the skills and my mind was just, I was still out of control. I didn’t understand how to manage my mind.
26:44
or manage my emotions. As women, we are taught to smile. Like the woman who can put up with the most shit and still smile, look hot and bring a meal for everybody else wins. What do you win? A raging case of dysfunction in some way. You win really crappy hormones and peri-menopause. I will tell you that from my own experience and like all the women that I also work with. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the root cause.
27:11
So I mean, I work with probably women in the same age box and they’re coming to me because their body is falling apart and we’re all thinking, oh, it’s perimenopause and that’s playing a role, but it’s, it’s always comes down to like your relationship with self always like, what have you done for this body of yours? Have you worked with her? Have you worked against her? And usually it’s like what you were saying. We’ve just kind of shrunk ourselves to fit this validation mold, I guess of, what other
27:41
People are telling us it’s good to help us feel better, but it never makes us feel better. And this is the rebellion of midlife, I think. It is. And I want to go back to what do you win? You win a breakdown and the breakthrough comes after the breakdown. Like run right into it. Just let the shit fall apart because you can’t fix it if you don’t admit that it’s broken. And, you know, I work with
28:06
women all the time, it’s actually wonderful to have that breakdown to just, I don’t even know what the rules are. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know how to take care of myself. Like cry sister and take, take some space for yourself and work on internal that relationship with self. You know, I always thought that taking care of myself meant my highlights were fresh. My makeup was done. My ass was in a size two.
28:33
And the truth is that I now understand self-care is kind of like babysitting a two-year-old who has a driver’s license and a pension for vodka. Like you have to take care of your body and it’s not complicated. Your body doesn’t speak English. It speaks energy. She lives in the present moment. She needs more or less food, more or less sunlight, more or less sleep, more or less movement. This isn’t complicated. But we’ve learned to, it’s like for me, alcohol was my consolation prize.
29:03
If I could keep going all night long and all day long and the next day and all, because now I’m running on guilt too, right? And I just kept going and alcohol was my consolation prize for not taking care of myself. I now understand self-care is not as fun as the brochures. It’s not all Prosecco and pedicures. It is putting yourself to bed. It is turning off your phone. It is saying no in order to say yes to yourself.
29:32
We almost, outrun, we try to outrun that guilt. think that’s what I was hearing you say. It’s like, we really try to outrun it. And then it’s like, when we’ve gotten enough of the lead, that’s when I think we go back to those old habits. It’s like, oh, the guilt, I can’t see the guilt in my rear view mirror anymore. Now I’m going to have a drink again. You know? Right. Yeah. And then here it catches up in that moment. Here’s your shame spiral. Well, and I want to circle back to why I call myself the hangover whisperer, because the work you need to do is zero percent.
30:01
about how much you’re planning to drink on Friday night. Like I teach that the work you need to do is being not abandoning yourself when you make a mistake. Setbacks can propel you forward if you’re capable of learning. But with alcohol use disorder or anything else where you’re dealing with a lot of shame, when you’re in shame, there’s a stress response going on in your body. You’re in your amygdala. You can’t learn
30:30
anything in a state of shame. So when you keep repeating the same mistake over and over, the one takeaway is you’re not learning from that. You’re not learning what you should be learning from that. And so I work with shame. That’s why we don’t quit drinking, because using good behavior to avoid the shame just prolongs the learning process. So pour yourself a drink and enjoy your Friday night.
30:55
And then what will happen is as you stop abandoning yourself, as you start unpacking the shame, and then like I give very specific tools of like how to look back over the night, where did you blow through the stop sign? Where did you have the urge to do something different? What was the autoresponder that happened in your brain of, it’s Friday night and I deserve this, or, oh, that’s not enough wine to save, I’ll finish the bottle. Those are your autoresponders. So I teach women to learn about their drinking in hindsight.
31:24
from a non-judgmental, compassionate place, and then work on strategies using an iterative mindset to how to set yourself up for success so you can do better next time. And most people, anybody with a drinking, well, we’re all trained to change our behavior. I’ll feel better when I only drink two drinks at the party. No, like you’re just avoiding it. So what I do is you learn how to be your best friend, own best friend.
31:53
in and process that shame. And then when you feel good about yourself and set yourself like you’re not attached to the results, you’re just attached to seeing what works and what doesn’t, then your behavior changes naturally. Like drinking 80 % less is a side effect of plugging your brain into your body and being your own best friend. Yeah, I love that. I love your philosophy on all of this, Colleen. It’s really, you know, I see why you’re successful, why you make such a difference.
32:22
I’d love to kind of get into some initial steps, but I want to circle back to this run right into the breakdown. think like, what do I want to say about this here? I agree with you. I think that breakdown is so important to get to the breakthrough. Do you feel like as women, we’ve gotten really good at almost like getting close and then backing up. It’s like, we almost protect ourselves from that breakdown,
32:49
that’s the damn breakdown that we need to get to the breakthrough. Like, you, do you see? Well, and that’s the purpose of self-sabotage. You know, it’s like, I am so grateful of what happened with me and alcohol because it finally, the pain got my attention. Something was bad enough that it got my attention. And I can look back and say, well, had I, you know, not been in so much pain, I wouldn’t
33:15
have gotten to learn and to change my relationship with myself, I would still be living my old life as kind of a shell of myself, not connected, living the life I thought I was supposed to be living. And so there’s nothing to be afraid of. Pain is your body’s way of getting your attention. And usually emotional pain, it’s because we’ve got conflicting beliefs about who we think we are and what we think we want. And the truth is nothing
33:44
thing that you believe is actually true, you get to choose. It’s the beliefs that you’re afraid of looking at. You’re afraid of your own damn feelings. Like if you could realize you’re not afraid of losing your job, you’re afraid of how you’ll feel if you lose your job. You know you’ll update your resume, you’ll do the things, you’ll change your spending habits. Like we have no choice but to put up with whatever life hands us. What we are truly afraid of is our own feelings.
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And it’s learning how to manage that so that you’re no longer afraid of your feelings. Well, this didn’t go well. I guess I’ll try better or different next time. But the breakdown is when you stop running and meet yourself where you’re at and learn how to clean house in your subconscious, learn how to...
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Soothe yourself, learn how to ask better questions, decide what you really want. And there’s nothing better than a good breakdown. I highly recommend them. I agree. And I think we’ve become so skilled at the numbing so that we don’t get so uncomfortable, right? It’s like, know, when we, productivity is probably the female’s number one drug and then either drinking, shopping, eating might fall into number two, depending on who’s listening right now, you know,
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I mean, that covers like 24 hours where we are just numbing out this emotion as opposed to going right facing it. And you’re right. That’s the damn scary part. Yeah, it is. But everything you want is on the other side of fear. Five years ago, I was drinking half a fifth of vodka every night. I was married to somebody that it was not a good fit. I had no way to support myself. I, you know, I
35:36
I didn’t have good friendships. I just kind of went along to get along, drinking at the country club, whatever. And now five years later, I have a six or seven figure business. I employ a team. I support myself. I do whatever the hell I want. I released my former husband and he is now one of my favorite ex-husbands. It’s like, I am so happy.
36:02
to be in control and power of my life, no longer held back by I’m afraid to feel the truth. And I’m not saying you should leave your husband, but it’s like, actually I spent four years not leaving my husband, getting happy with myself in the marriage. And then I didn’t actually leave him. He moved and I decided I wasn’t going. I wasn’t leaving my four kids when he left. It’s like, nope, see ya, I’ll send you off. But there is nothing better. uh
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than aligning your body. That’s what unlocks your energy. I can’t believe I have so much energy now. And it’s because I’m no longer spending so much energy trying to keep a beach ball below the water and pretend like I don’t have a beach ball below the water. Like, no, I’m fine. Are you fine? Can I help you hold your beach ball? And it’s like, oh, you unleash your energy when you learn how to manage your mind and...
36:58
and heal your emotional wounds. Yeah, that’s a beautiful way of explaining it. The amount of energy you get just by existing as who you are meant to be is, think, something so many women are missing right now. Like when you just get to be living in integrity with yourself, like life gets a lot easier. It’s so much easier. Yeah.
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Your i love your passion it really is just so it’s so energizing in its own way calling so okay so for the women listening i think we know i definitely think they get the picture and they’re picking up what you’re putting down here. What now what if they’re they’re nodding away they’re hearing what you’re saying like what would be some initial steps they could take maybe even before they reach out to you to start getting real with their emotions or start recognizing there something underneath the hood.
37:53
Well, I think they’re doing it right now listening to your podcast. I think my podcast also would be an excellent place to start because specifically with the habit of alcohol, I teach in context. know, it’s not all just nervous system regulation. There are very specific strategies and techniques like how to respond to your next hangover, like make yourself, I have an episode on how to make a hangover kit.
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so that you are ready to greet yourself on that morning and prepare yourself. So I think just being willing to start looking for help and be careful where you ask for help because every single other sobriety program out there, and I’m on cleanup from a lot of those programs because women go, they feel amazing. They do the eight weeks, the 12 weeks of sobriety. Great.
38:47
But if you’re not planning to stay sober forever, you do not have the skills. Like I said, when you reintroduce alcohol, those old thought processes come back and you have to train in context with alcohol. So I definitely would say, you know, reading books, listening to podcasts, doing the work on yourself. And then if you’re struggling with the specific habit of alcohol, understand there is help out there. And my podcast is an excellent place to start.
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And then, you know, if you find that you’re too busy being productive and you don’t want to do it all on your own, well, you know, then I have a coaching program for that, but not everybody needs or wants that. You sometimes when you know better, you do better. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it’s just about getting in the space and the energy of these podcasts, the information that they’re there, you know, even following on social. Are you right? Like those can be really simple ways to start that journey. And when you feel like you
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want more, go for more. Like you just, it’s available to you. have to, can you give us a little spoiler alert? Is this hangover kit, is it emotional? Like obviously is it, it help you? Oh, Oh, it’s, it’s both. Like I set you up, you know, playlist, movie list, books, favorite podcast episodes. You write yourself a love letter to be opened in the event that you do it again. And then
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You do that from a place of love and like you’re helping somebody and you write it out. So then you open that and you read that love and unconditional acceptance and support and guidance for what the day needs to be and just reminding you that how proud I am that you’re even trying. And here’s these resources. I do also have in the hangover kit, like there’s a three step process.
40:37
where again, you look to see, map the path of the storm. Where did you blow through the stop signs? Where did you say no to yourself enough time? You can’t expect more from yourself until you’re giving more to yourself. You cannot run on a deficit and then say, oh, I’m just gonna change all my habits now too. Like, no, no, no, this is a give and take and you’re already running on a deficit if you have a self-sabotaging habit. So uh just teaching you how to do that.
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and how to plan ahead, how to think differently, how to ask better questions so that you can break out of that shameful of what’s wrong with me, why can’t I do this? um You’ve got to think different thoughts. So the Hangover Kit is everything from aromatherapy to playlists to specific instructions, all of that. What role do you think, because in my experience, when it comes to changing habits,
41:34
It’s really an energy. like, do I have enough? And like our energy runs out in the day. So it becomes harder to change that habit later in the day. Like for you and your experience, what role do things like having a good night of sleep, eating good quality food, getting out like some of these, these real self care, less sexy, but real self care habits. How much of a role do they play in our success in being able to get under the hood, change these emotions, like look at them and make the difference. A hundred percent.
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You asked about feeling and you have to learn, like I teach something called a litmus test. You have to learn when your body is in a stress response, which for many of us, for me for years, I was in a chronic state of stress response. I didn’t know what it felt like to not have a bunch of tension and tightness in my shoulders. So if you start to uh focus
42:34
on that, stimulating the parent’s sympathetic nervous response, learning how to calm yourself, just going to the bathroom for a couple minutes every day without your phone and feeling, it feels good to potty and nobody’s talking to me right now. The more you put those moments of what I call touching base in through your day, then if you move through your day regulated, you will move into your evening regulated.
43:03
The reason you’re drinking too much is because you’re doing, you wake up, the feet hit the ground, your eyes open and it’s go time. Well, you pour alcohol on that mindset, you’re gonna get more of the same. And so I don’t have people look directly at their drinking until they’re ready. But to your point, if they just optimized for their sleep, which of course you’d have to correct for alcohol. So sometimes that’s harder. you’re like for me, I drank before I went to sleep every night.
43:33
But if you just increased how much time you were in bed and you put 60 second breaks throughout your day where you stop and put your hand on your heart and be like, are you okay, babe? Do you need anything? Can I get you anything? And then you optimized, you know, eating better. Like here’s the good news. It’s actually addictive to feel uh good also. So if you just start making little changes and then here’s the mental thing.
44:01
You have to notice what feels good. you have, that’s a positive mindset. You have to notice what you’re doing right. You have to notice because uh the motivation to do more is fueled by evidence of progress. So you have to feed your brain evidence that you are making progress, that things are getting better, that you are watching it happen. With our perfectionistic mindset, we tend to think we either get 10 points or we get no points.
44:31
And hangover whisperer 101 know if you can give yourself one point the next morning You’ve made an improvement and you have to feel appreciative for that improvement Then you have to go for the two and the three, know You’re not going for the Olympics and the gold medal You’re going for incremental progress and the more you focus your attention on the progress the more you’re going to get that’s how it works I love that. I think that’s it. You know, I think
44:59
I hope everyone listening really took that in, like just looking for those small but very real wins, but we got to pay attention to get there. Yeah. Okay, Colleen, I am going to wrap us up with this new question that I am starting to ask all my experts because I am working on being more bold. And so if, if you had one piece of advice without the teaspoon of sugar, I want like raw, like doesn’t have to be nice at all to the women listening, but like,
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the get up and go advice, what would it be for them today? You’re your own biggest problem. And you’re the solution to that problem. You’re stepping on your own air hose.
45:42
The only person holding you back is you. It’s not your husband. It’s not your kids. It’s not your boss. The only person holding you back is you. And that is liberating. Yeah. Yeah. Let that be liberating. Don’t let that crush you. No, no. Because you’ve been doing the best. here’s the sugar you didn’t ask for, but it’s got to be there. You’ve been doing the best you could with the tools that you had. And you should be so proud of how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve accomplished.
46:12
But the strategies that got you here are not gonna get you there. So be so proud and then get yourself some new strategies. Yeah. Because yeah, the strategies that got you here got you here and you don’t want to be here. Yeah. Colleen, thank you. This has been so energizing, so informative. And yeah, I know the women listening I think are gonna be fired up after listening to this. So thank you very much for being here today. You’re welcome. Thanks, Brea.
46:41
All right, that’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And if this conversation woke something up inside you, an awareness and a desire and a motivation to see what else is possible, what could change if you started doing the work, then let’s keep it going. I work with high achieving professional women who want to reduce their alcohol consumption by 80 % without shame or strict rules.
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or feeling like you can’t have a drink when you want one. In my year-long emotional sobriety coaching program, we’re getting happy, not sober. You don’t need willpower to drink less, any more than you need willpower to not hit yourself in the head with a hammer. You need to learn how to regulate your nervous system, manage your mind, and change your relationship with stress so that drinking feels like a choice, not a coping mechanism. The beauty of our approach
47:37
is that even though change doesn’t happen overnight, rewiring your neural pathways takes about a year for most of our clients, but the results are permanent. When you join the next chapter, you get access to live daily calls, over 1,500 hours of content, unlimited one-on-one support, and a community of like-minded women. But we take things one step at a time. You don’t need to decide right now if you want to join my program.
48:06
You just have to talk to somebody. The Discovery Call is a free coaching session designed to help you get clarity around where you’re at, where you want to be, and what you need to do to make that happen. So even if you’re curious, don’t overthink it. Take action right now before you can change your mind. Click the link in the show notes and book your free Discovery Call. And that’s all I got for today. So thank you so much for listening and being a part of this community.
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I love you, truly, and I appreciate you. Have a kick-ass week, and I’ll see you on the next episode.