Episode 299: Why hasn’t my drinking changed?
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So today I’m gonna speak directly to a question that I get all the time from women in my program. They tell me, I’m showing up, I’m learning, I’m doing the work, I’m getting emotionally sober. So why hasn’t my drinking changed yet? So in this episode, I wanna walk you through a different way of understanding your progress. Not using the lens of good nights and bad nights, but looking through the lens of your capacity, your mindset, and the emotional conditions
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that make mindful drinking or staying sober actually possible. You have to understand that your drinking is an output of deeper patterns. You’re not trying to change one habit. You’re trying to change hundreds of habits. So I’m gonna give you the five coaching questions that can help you answer the question, why hasn’t my drinking changed yet? Because the solution to almost any problem is to simply ask better questions. These questions will help you get honest and clear
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and grounded so that you can move the needle in a way that keeps the needle moving, not by forcing yourself, but by understanding yourself.
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My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%. 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.
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In this episode, we’re going to talk about what it means when you’re not seeing changes in your drinking, despite being active in the program and feeling like you’re doing the work and maybe even feeling like you’re making progress with other stuff like emotional sobriety. But we’re going to talk about the very real reality of what’s going on when you feel like or can see that your drinking quote hasn’t changed. And then more importantly, what to do about it.
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I want to start by having you remember that this is a thinking problem, not a drinking problem. And while that may sound like bullshit and the solution is not to convince yourself that the way you drink is fine. And so I guess it just doesn’t need to change. You need to understand that the mindset that sees your drinking as a problem, the mindset that is telling you something is wrong or that you’re not doing it right.
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That mindset is the problem because it’s generating shame and fear and frustration. And those emotions are keeping you stuck in your amygdala. Your amygdala is your primitive brain that runs on habits. Your thoughts are habits too. And when you’re stuck in your amygdala, thinking with your emotions, all emotions by definition come from the past.
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You only know what you think and feel because it’s the same shit you’ve thought and felt before. And those emotions are preventing you from learning something new, learning what you need to move forward. And the path forward, my friend, is paved with progress, not failure, which is why I do so much teaching around how to focus on the wins. Stop throwing the baby out with the bathwater because you had a setback.
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When somebody comes to me and says, my drinking hasn’t changed, the first thing I do is have them zoom out, expand the timeline that you’re looking at yourself on. Because often, this my drinking hasn’t changed comes after a bad night or a bad weekend or even a few weeks, like over the holidays. And then you want to use that as evidence that negates all of your other progress. And that’s the perfectionism talking, saying that
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Yes, it was getting better for a while, but since I’m not predictably consistent yet, I need to start over. And the only way to get the results that you want is to stop starting over and to start learning from your mistakes. Setbacks are actually what set you up for future success. When you get a good streak of either sober days or ideal drinking, that just shows you what you’re already capable of.
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Evidence of growth and it’s a breath of fresh air that tells you yes, this is possible But getting it right doesn’t mean you’re done. That’s not enough There’s always more to learn you want to continue to expand your capacity, right? And your growth edge is outside of your comfort zone your growth edge is by definition uncomfortable So let’s talk about where you need to focus
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so that you can actually learn what you need to learn. You have to understand that your drinking is not the problem. It’s the output, not the input. You know that you can drink mindfully and in a controlled way when you feel mindful and in control. It’s when you’re not feeling that way, mindful and in control, that old habits slip back in. So you need to focus on expanding
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the conditions that make it easier or even completely natural to take the night off or to stop after one or two. And these conditions aren’t just external. They’re actually mostly internal conditions because controlling yourself isn’t actually complicated. You’ve done the work to build new habits before. It’s not rocket science. You want to work out more? Then you just got to make it easier for yourself.
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Join the gym or get the equipment. Put your clothes out the night before. Set reminders on your phone. Get an accountability buddy. Sign up for a race. It doesn’t really matter what strategy you pick. It’s just that you pick a strategy and start working that strategy and then learning from what goes well and what needs to improve and then just continuing to iterate the process. So it’s the conditions that make this feel complicated that are the real problem.
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And your thinking habits are a really big part of that. So let’s look at the thought, my drinking hasn’t changed. It feels true, which means it is true to some degree or from some perspective or angle, even if you account for all the wins. It’s perfectly normal and necessary for you to acknowledge that you’re not happy with your progress right now. And the reason you’re rightfully resistant
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to just cashing in on yesterday’s progress, going over all of your wins, is because you know that that will likely just end up in you justifying more drinking. Because at some point in the moment of decision, your brain will say, well, Colleen said my drinking is not the problem, and that step one is to just stop worrying about it. So fuck it. Cheers. I want you to dig deeper to the emotions that are driving that logic.
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version of you who thinks that way is not currently feeling confident or powerful or hopeful for the future. You’re feeling defeated, like, you know what they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. Pessimistic thoughts like that are symptoms that you have crossed the critical line of overwhelm. This is happening in your nervous system. There are three states.
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of your nervous system. The first one is the safe, calm, engaged state. The second state of your nervous system is the activated, triggered stress state. And the third state of your nervous system is the overwhelm, the shutdown, the trauma response. And before you confuse the trauma response with trauma like we think of it, like the bad shit that happens in your childhood,
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The trauma response is an actual state of your nervous system. It’s a feeling that’s happening in your body in the present moment that has a very significant impact on your thought processes, how you’re seeing and thinking about things. So let’s go over the three states of the nervous system. First of all, you’ve got your safe state and that’s your green light. You’re cruising with traffic. You’re traveling at a speed that feels sustainable. No need to speed up.
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No need to slow down. You’re comfortable. You’re hopeful. And you have every reason to believe that you’re getting where you’re going. Then you have the stress state. And that’s the yellow light. Caution. There’s a problem that you’re going to have to deal with. Stress pulls your focus and attention into a single point. Your heart rate increases. Your mind starts racing. You get a surge of adrenaline and cortisol in your body.
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which temporarily boosts your energy so that you can rise to whatever challenge you’re facing. This is happening in your body. This is your body supporting you. It’s a survival response. And so is the trauma response. But the trauma response comes after the stress response, when you’ve run out of gas. The trauma response is the red light that causes you to shut down.
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The trauma response happens the moment you realize, oh, fuck, I can’t do this. And it feels like a wall of resistance. It’s actually just the opposite of the stress state. You may feel heavy and sluggish and slow and lethargic. You may want to avoid or procrastinate or check out or numb yourself. You probably feel somewhat empty and lonely and stuck. And so.
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You have to learn how to view your thoughts as the window into your nervous system. Because you already know that your mind changes every time your mood changes. When you feel capable, you’re able to think in a way that allows you to solve problems. When you feel overwhelmed, your thoughts are just digging you deeper. This always happens. I never get it right. I’ve tried everything. It’s not.
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working. When you entertain those thoughts as real and true, you give them power. And this is how coaching teaches you how to use your brain to work for you instead of against you. When you feel overwhelmed, you are actually dealing with a fact. You know, we say that facts aren’t feelings. Actually, they are. They are states of your nervous system. So overwhelm is a fact.
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It is when the demands that you are dealing with have officially exceeded your capacity to deal with them. And your nervous system has put the brakes on your motivation. It’s conserving energy. It’s shutting you down. This is a survival strategy. It’s bigger than you, my friend. Just like you don’t consciously choose to pull your hand away from a hot stove, the trauma response happens.
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way below consciousness, which is why you can’t think your way out of it. Actually, you have to embrace it, allow it, you have to feel it. That’s why I say you have to move through this instead of around it. So if overwhelm occurs when the demands you’re dealing with exceed your capacity to deal with them, you have to understand that your capacity to deal with life is always changing.
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from day to day and moment by moment. Think of your capacity like a bank account. You make deposits and withdrawals. Deposits include quality sleep, good nutrition, sunlight, fresh air, movement, hydration, taking breaks throughout the day, connecting with your people, laughing, playing, joking around. And these are needs, and your needs are not negotiable. So not giving yourself what you need every day,
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and then expecting yourself to operate on too little for too long, allowing yourself to be consumed by the endless stream of distractions and frustrations and other people’s problems depletes your capacity account. And the lower your capacity account goes, the less capable you are of meeting the demands. The less resilience you have, the less it takes for your nervous system to move into overwhelm.
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So before you attempt to solve this problem, you have to attend to your physical needs. Are you tired? Do you need to eat? Do you need to drink some water, move around, or take a break? The more these small actions feel impossible or too small to even fucking matter because everything is too big and nothing is going to make a difference, the more you have to take this seriously. The number one obstacle.
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to living in a regulated nervous system is the idea that I don’t actually have time to stop and deal with this. I don’t have time to take care of my body. Bitch, you don’t have time to not take care of your body. The idea that you don’t have time is driven by the false assumption that you’re not gonna be able to feel better. The overwhelm isn’t going to go away until you fix or figure out whatever problem it is that you’re dealing with.
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but that’s backwards. You’re not going to fix or figure out the problem until you deal with the overwhelm. You have to feel better first so that you’ve got the energy and the bandwidth to think intelligently. So that being said, I’m going to give you five questions that help you think intelligently. And while you can write them down if you want, you should not attempt to process them until
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You feel hopeful and open and ready to learn whatever you need to learn. As long as you are feeling overwhelmed, like I can’t do this and nothing matters, then you need to pause and save the thought work for later. You can’t do mindset work when your nervous system is stuck in the trauma response. You have to restore your capacity. Let yourself be tired. Take a nap.
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put things away for the day, take a break, whatever it takes. You have to get back to a place where you feel like you’re ready and you have the capacity to process and move forward. So I’m gonna keep going, but until that moment comes, you need to give yourself full permission to pause because when you’re stuck in an overwhelmed state, all of the answers to the questions I’m about to ask,
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If you’re stuck in that overwhelmed state, your brain’s going to be generating bullshit overwhelming answers. Okay? So, so if you get into it, maybe you feel good now and then you get one, two, three questions into these five questions and your brain is generating pissy, pessimistic, bullshit answers, then you need to stop and restore your capacity. Put deposits into your account that renew and restore your optimism and hopefulness and your energy levels.
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before you continue because remember you think how you feel and if you don’t like how you feel you’re not going to like how you think. And another thing I want to say before we get started is that what I see from my perspective is when women come into the program and maybe they make some progress with their drinking maybe they’re really focused on the emotional stuff and just allowing their habits to be what they are whatever it is but at some point people get into the breakthrough session and
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They’re not frustrated yet, know, my drinking hasn’t changed, but they sincerely and genuinely want to know when will my drinking change? Like when, when’s that going to happen? And that reveals one of the things that need to be corrected, which is the misunderstanding that motivation just happens to you. The reality is that you are the source of your motivation. So waiting to take action or make a change or do the hard thing.
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until you feel like it is a really good way to not make much progress because you are reliant on the external world deciding if you’re in a good mood or not, if you’re going to actually move forward or not, and you’re a victim of a lack of motivation. You’re the source of your motivation. And so these five questions, hopefully, if you’re in the correct nervous system state, will trigger a little bit of dopamine, will trigger
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some aha moments as you work through and process these questions you should feel like you know a burst of something that’s going to move your ass forward a little bit. Okay so the first question I want you to consider is what do you think needs to happen or feel true before your drinking will change? Like if you you’re waiting for your drinking to just change naturally
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What do you think needs to happen or what needs to feel true before your drinking will change? This question allows you to explore the story you’re telling yourself as well as maybe some unrealistic expectations. You know, the idea that you’re going to go through a day and just forget to drink or that you’re going to be at a social event having so much fun and have one glass of wine and the thought will just pop into your head, hmm, I think I’m done.
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I don’t think I want anymore. And that you’ll have a feeling that matches that thought and it will be great. Like those things will happen, but they’re not going to happen until after you’ve practiced shifting your focus onto the positive emotional goals and built out new habits that feel awesome and relieve your stress and allow you to feel connected. Like you have to build those things.
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You can’t just wait for the absence of what you don’t want. You have to build what you do want. Then as you build the thinking habits and the physical habits and the emotional connection that you have with yourself, as you build those, then you’ll be in those mindsets. And one day you’ll wake up and realize, shit, it’s Thursday and I haven’t even thought about pouring any wine at all this week. But that’s not what happens first.
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That happens after you’ve been doing the work. So pull into consciousness whatever you’ve been thinking that you’re waiting for to happen or for something to change or to feel true that will just cause your drinking to change. Remember, you’re the source of your own motivation. And so the second question is, what are you doing to change your drinking? And I love this question.
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Because I’m responding to a question with a question. Your question of why hasn’t my drinking changed is I’m responding to that with, well, what are you doing to change your drinking? Let’s talk about why your drinking hasn’t changed. What are you doing to change that? And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with you just allowing your drinking habits to be what they are,
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and doing the deeper work into the actual emotional sobriety and consuming content and getting coaching and participating in community events. Like all of that is fine. But if that’s not having a quick enough impact on your drinking, then you have to own that what you want might require a little more effort or a little bit more of a direct strategy. And again, it’s fine if you don’t want a direct strategy.
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But it’s kind of like watching an ice cube melt on the counter. That will definitely take longer. And there is a push and pull to this. Pushing with your own willpower, designing strategies and your environment and thinking about all of it. And then allowing your motivation to naturally increase with wanting to feel something different. Not wanting to feel numb and dumb, but wanting to feel
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more grounded and connected and cozy in the evenings, that motivation will pull you forward. But there’s definitely a push and pull. At some point, you might actually have to tell yourself no and deal with the feelings that come up around that. OK, so that’s the second question. What are you doing to change your drinking? The third question is, what feels difficult about whatever it is that you’re doing or not doing?
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What is this bringing up for you? So what feels difficult? The fourth question is, if you felt really good about your drinking, how would it be different than it is now? What would it look like? How would you have to be drinking in order for you to feel good about it? So you have to get a crystal clear character in a scene, screenplay, direct the actor. What’s the actor doing?
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What does it look like? You have to get a clear vision for exactly how you want it to be different. And then once you have a more clear vision, then the fifth question is, what would it look like to move the needle by 10 % in that direction this week? So if your ideal drinking, you clearly define that. For me, it’s, I don’t want to drink during the week.
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unless there’s a social event and then I will or and I like to limit to two drinks on the know Friday and Saturday night unless it’s Christmas and my parents and we’re having wine with lunch like whatever but for me my ideal drinking looks like pretty sober during the week and about two glasses on Friday and Saturday night so if that’s your ideal then what would it take to move the needle by 10 % in that direction this week
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So if I was starting back where I used to be, where I’m doing a bottle of wine every night as a warm up lap and then continuing to go, then moving the needle 10 % might be not drinking anything more than a bottle of wine. A little closer up the spectrum might be, I’m going to take one night off. Or I’m going to have one night where I’m just having one glass and then I’m going to seat belt myself to my bed.
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or whatever, like there’s so many different things that you can do and there’s no right way to do it. But question four is you have to understand what it looks like and the behaviors. And then question five, you have to decide where’s the low hanging fruit? How do you move the needle by 10 %? So just to reiterate those five questions again, number one, what do you think needs to happen or feel true before
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your drinking will change. Number two, instead of asking, why hasn’t my drinking changed? Ask, what am I doing to change my drinking? Question number three, what feels difficult and what is that bringing up for you? Question number four, if you felt really good about your drinking, how would it be different than it is now? So clearly define what that looks like. And question number five,
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What would it take to move the needle by 10 % in that direction this week? It’s so important to take the time to give yourself credit, even if it’s just because you listened to this and some new awarenesses or insights popped into your head. It’s so important to process out loud or through your fingers by sharing in your community with other women who get it and allowing yourself to be seen. It’s so important to share and be open.
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about this and this community is a safe place for you to do that.
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All right, thanks for listening. And if you’re a high achieving, coachable woman who is ready to commit to manifesting your best life, and you’re going to need to reduce your alcohol consumption by about 80%, so that alcohol goes back to being a pleasure instead of a soul sucking problem, get in the show notes and click the link and schedule a discovery call with me or my team.