Episode 242 Minisode: The Process And Payoff Of Emotional Sobriety
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Hello everyone. So I do a daily podcast called Coffee with Colleen inside my emotional sobriety coaching program. These are short, sweet mini-sodes that either give you an inside look at something I’m going through in my own life or a simple, easy strategy that you can implement or both. You may hear me reference other content that only my clients have access to. So if you’re interested in learning more about my program,
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get in the show notes and schedule a discovery call with me or my team. 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.
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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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tell you a story about a feeling that I had on last night’s group call, and just walk you through my own mental processes and show you both the process and the payoff of committing to being emotionally sober. So after we got through the hot seats, one gal asked if she could share a win, there was probably 10 minutes left in the call. And she had had a huge breakthrough. And the nuts and bolts if you haven’t listened to the replay are that
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she had taken massive action to get tested for a learning disability in her, she’s, think my age, like 50. She might be a few years older or younger, and if you’re listening, I’m so sorry. I think she’s around my age, so 50. She had taken massive action to get tested for a learning disability as part of the process of healing the trauma of being this beautiful, sweet, intelligent little sixth grade girl who had gotten held back.
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And yeah, she said she was born in the 70s. So this would have been early 80s and there wasn’t testing or support. Nobody explained it to her. She was just told at the end of her school year that she would not be progressing with her friends, that she had failed and would have to repeat the sixth grade. That created so much trauma for her. The shame of having to explain to her friends why she wasn’t in the same class anymore. The embarrassment.
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of feeling like something was wrong with her, the self-doubt of asking, why can’t I just be as smart as everybody else? I mean, I’m trying. I’m trying twice as hard as everybody else. Why can’t I just get it? What is wrong with me? And she’s carried this her whole life. And now, in her 50s, she is extremely successful as a financial advisor. I mean, despite whatever learning disability she has, she overcame it.
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and absolutely has crushed it in her career and in her life. But she’s in this program because her coping skills to become the successful professional that she is cost her. There’s been a lot of drinking, as everybody in the program has experienced, and other maladaptive, self-sabotaging behaviors that she’s here to heal. And so part of her healing was to get herself tested so that she would
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finally know once and for all if this is dyslexia or whatever it is, just to understand how her brain works and to quite honestly give herself credit for running a marathon with her hands tied behind her back and the wrong shoes on and still being able to overcome and achieve so many wonderful things in her life. She wanted to understand how her brain worked also so that moving forward, she can support herself.
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in whatever way she needs to keep her brain sharp and her mental acuity going. She needs to understand how her brain works. And so she gets in the hot seat and she shares this win. And the win was not only that she had taken the test and done the thing, but that her feelings during the test, had brought up so much. She said there were a few times during the test that she had wanted to cry, but she didn’t wanna make the lady giving her the test uncomfortable.
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But it had just taken her back in time to that trauma that was frozen in her body of taking a test and not really knowing the answers. And as she described some of the questions, I was like, yeah, whatever you have, might have that too. Like looking at shapes and then trying to transfer them three dimensionally and pick out the shape. Like I get it. I don’t think my brain works like that either. But I’ve known I’ve had ADHD, which that’s not her question. But everybody’s brain works different.
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And that was the one thing I wanted to remind her and neutralize as she started to share the wind is there’s nothing wrong with your brain. There’s just how your brain works. As I have learned how my brain works with ADHD, I love it. I feel like I’ve got myself a superpower. I’ve got to keep it in check, but so does everybody. mean, everybody’s got to know yourself because your greatest strength is also going to be probably your downfall. I mean, you’ve got to take both sides of the coin.
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and learn to operate from the big picture instead of just one side. So she shared that she had experienced triggered, activated emotional state during the test and had practiced amazing self care in response to that. Once she was done with the test, she went home, told her husband she was going to her bedroom to process her feelings and she processed. She gave herself the space.
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to acknowledge the feelings that had come up for her and to just not abandon herself. She said in the past, she would have come home and just started effing drinking. Like, oh my God, I had such a stressful day. That was so hard and now I deserve a drink. And she said it was so cool to have no desire to do that. She did end up going to a movie and I think she said she maybe had one glass of wine, but she wasn’t soothing her emotions or avoiding her emotions. She allowed them
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to exist and to breathe and she didn’t abandon herself. She gave herself space and time to process and get right with herself before she continued into the evening. And so that had been a huge win. There was a lot of wins in this story. But then I heard her say that now she’s just hoping, fingers crossed, that the results confirm what she’s known her whole life, that she has a learning disability and that she fears
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how she’ll feel if it doesn’t confirm. Like if the test comes back and says, nope, ain’t nothing different about your brain, would she then feel like, okay, maybe I am just stupid? And I picked up on that and went in like a dog looking for a bone. I did what I do. I reflected the fear. And I think I was very direct and said, are you aware that you’re giving away your power to this test? It seems like
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What you’re saying is that you need the results of this test to confirm a learning disability so that you can fully heal from the trauma. It confirms that you were right and some other people were wrong, which sounds like a really good plan. But what if the results are not what you expect? And I want to stop here and say that the mood, the energy of the conversation shifted.
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I felt like I had popped her balloon, like I had sucked the air out of the room. And she went with me and she answered the question. But I had a feeling in that moment I could see it in her face, I could feel it. And I knew that something had gone wrong. And I course corrected right there in the moment. know, feelings serve a purpose. They remind you of lessons of the past. And I’ve been
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very well trained as a coach. I’ve got thousands and thousands of hours of experience. And so my body alerted me, you know, I consciously wasn’t real clear what had happened there, but my body alerted me and I course corrected. And we ended that conversation very good. She didn’t get upset. I circled back to the winds. You know, the energy shift that I detected was just below the surface and my training kicked in. It was fine.
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And then I got off the call and I went about my evening. But throughout the evening, that was percolating in my subconscious. And my first thought, my first assumption, A-S-S, put the ass in assumption. My first assumption was that I just hit a nerve with her, which, if you’re listening carefully, would indicate that I wasn’t the problem. She was the problem. Her sensitivity was the problem. And there was no problem. I don’t want to frame it like that.
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But my first assessment of my own feeling was that I had picked up on her feelings. I was just being sensitive to her sensitivity. But then I remembered what I hammer into all of your heads. My feelings about her feelings are still my feelings. And before I reached out and made sure she was OK, because that was my intended course of action, I decided to stop and give this a deeper look.
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because I wanted to take 100 % responsibility and if there was something to learn, I wanted to learn it. So I stopped what I was doing and just got quiet with myself. I went inward. I checked in instead of checking out. And I went back to the feeling and to the message that I had that I had done something wrong. I did something wrong. That was the feeling in my body. was just this little blip of mild shame and guilt.
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It wasn’t a huge deal. It was like the bumpers that come up on the bowling alley that makes sure my ball stays in the lane. My body was doing its job. But when I looked at the message of the mild shame and guilt, instead of assuming that the message in my body was coming from her body and that I’d just been too right and made her feel bad with my stellar laser insight as a coach, I looked.
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at the message that I’d done something wrong with a little bit of curiosity. Like, take a breath, lady. Let’s just process this. And so I put my hand on my heart and said to myself, my body, it is safe for you to feel like you’ve done something wrong. Like, you can slow your roll. You don’t need to argue or justify or validate or create some story where you’re the awesome coach and she’s the lucky recipient of your brilliance.
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You don’t have to protect or defend yourself against this feeling. It is safe for you, Colleen, to feel like you did something wrong. And so I just sat with it for a minute. And then I asked myself, OK, what did I do wrong? And it took me less than one minute to figure out what I had done wrong. And it’s a coaching technique that I had blown through. I blew through a stop sign. I had failed to ask for consent.
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to give her coaching. When you get in the hot seat and you’re asking for coaching, consent is implied. But you may still notice that I frame the conversation. And I’m human. Sometimes I do better than others. That’s true. But as a coach, I am very well trained to create a container for the conversation that allows the client to feel 100 % safe and in control. They’re leading. I’m just following. I’m just reflecting.
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I’m asking high level questions and guiding them into their own mind with intelligent thinking so that their own mindset isn’t just spinning them around in circles. But she didn’t ask me for any coaching. I had simply seen a vulnerability in her statement that she kind of fears getting the results and then tried to save her from her own future pain under the guise that I’m wearing some sort of superhero cape.
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and the belief that it’s my job to save her from herself. And I want to make the subtle distinction of what I’m saying here. It’s not my job to save her or anybody else. It’s my job to help her save herself. And in order for her to feel powerful and in control of her own rescue mission, I need her consent that we’re actually going on that rescue mission, that now is a good time.
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and that she actually wants to do this right now. Now, I’ll acknowledge that I’ve been working with her for 10 and a half months now, according to her. It’s been almost 10 and a half months. She has paid good money to be in this program and to have me as her coach. And we have walked through some serious shit to get her to where she’s at. So there is a relationship there that we’ve already established a lot of consent.
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And I know had I not taken the time to process this and reach out, we would still be fine. My purpose and the reason I’m recording this episode for you is to show you the power of taking a hundred percent responsibility for your own feelings. My feelings about her feelings were my invitation to explore my own assumptions and biases and beliefs. My feelings were my invitation to learn.
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because I love being a coach and I wouldn’t be nearly as good of a coach if I wasn’t willing to learn from my mistakes. And my body told me, you did something wrong there. And I’m so grateful that I took the time to look for it and then to be safe enough with myself, to be emotionally safe with Colleen, to allow for the fact that I can be a good coach and still make a mistake.
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Both things can be true. I can still be learning. I always want to be learning. And I know, because I did reach out to her, everything’s OK. But all I would have had to have done differently is ask her for her consent. This is a coaching technique. And the reason consent is so powerful, whether you’re a coach or not, if you want someone to listen to you, you have to ask if it is OK for you to share either your reflection or your
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piece of advice that you want to give them. If you don’t ask, humans are psychologically hardwired to resist what they are told. If I tell you what to do, you’re naturally going to feel some level of defense as to why that might not be a good idea. We all know this. Party term is reverse psychology. But if I don’t ask for consent, then she’s hardwired to examine my suggestions for flaws.
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And she didn’t. She actually quickly stepped over her own feelings because she comes into this space to learn. And I know that. So this was a safe client to make a mistake with. OK. But my technique, or lack thereof, required us both to spend some subconscious energy during that conversation managing our feelings. The beauty of asking for consent is that she probably would have given it to me. But she would have had the option not to.
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She could have said, you know what, I would like some coaching on that, but actually I’m just really enjoying this win tonight. And I hear what you’re saying. There’s some fear there, but let me circle back and get in a hot seat at another time because I’m really enjoying myself tonight. Or she could have allowed the question and then said, you know what? Yeah, I would like to get into it. Either way, she would have been in control. I took the control away from her. I put myself in control and I made a mistake.
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And I’m so grateful that I made that mistake with somebody that I was safe to make it with and that allowed me to follow up, make it right, and use it as a learning opportunity for myself. But this is the superpower of emotional sobriety. Your emotions are telling you what you think and giving you an opportunity to decide if you still want to think that. And if I had simply thought,
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well, she was sensitive and I’m being sensitive to her sensitivities, and then dismissed my emotions and patted myself on the back for just being a really good coach, I would have missed the opportunity to learn from that. So I encourage you today to notice whether in real time or in hindsight, when there was a subconscious feeling that you had to correct for, I want you to stop and process it and ask yourself the question,
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What is the message of this feeling? And is it safe for me to learn from this feeling? This whole emotional processing thing took me less than a minute to figure it out when I finally gave myself the time and the emotional safety space to apply a little bit of good old fashioned curiosity because the foundational truth is that my feelings about her feelings are still my feelings. My monkey, my circus, my side of the street.
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my lesson to learn. See what you can find today and don’t miss an opportunity to let yourself feel like you did something wrong and use your mental resources, your energy and your focus and your creative thinking to learn from that mistake instead of just internal dialogue that’s validating, justifying and arguing that you’re right. I mean, what if being wrong is the new right?
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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.