Episode 293 Minisode: What it means when you feel like you HAVE to do something
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I was recently watching a very stressful situation unfold between my daughter and her roommate, which is one of her lifelong friends. And it was perfectly aligned with one of the core teachings of emotional sobriety. And that is you can’t make a clear decision when your nervous system is in a state of stress. What started as a disagreement over an apartment issue turned into a very powerful example of how fast fear
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can hijack your perspective and how different the truth feels when you come back into your body and breathe. So if you’ve ever found yourself saying, I have to do something or I don’t have a choice, I want you to listen to this episode with curiosity instead of judgment so that you can remember that you always have a choice. This episode is a reminder that grounded choices feel like options.
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not obligations. And the clarity around those options comes from your heart, not your brain. You got to learn to solve your problems from the inside out.
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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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I’ve been dealing with a situation, well, it’s not my situation, I’ve been observing a situation. And it’s given me a lot of clarity as to how to know if a decision that you are making is actually coming from a place of free will because you’re exploring your options, or if it’s coming from a stress response and you’re actually stuck in fight, flight or freeze. We all like to think that we have a right to make whatever decision that we want to make.
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And we do, but if that decision doesn’t feel like a choice, if that decision feels like something you just have to do, then this story is gonna be really powerful. Because when you feel like you have to do something in order to be safe or to be okay, you’re not dealing with a choice, you’re dealing with a hostage negotiation in your nervous system. So here’s the story.
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I take my daughter back to college and she has been looking so forward to this year. Last year she decided to go to campus. She had been doing college at home and she decided to go to campus kind of last minute and got there and just kind of had to take any roommate situation she could find. And it worked out well. She had a good year, but she didn’t love the apartment that she was living in.
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and she had some problems with her roommate. One of them was seriously legit straight up crazy. Or at least she seemed like that for a while. They did end up having a friendship and developing a good way to communicate. But in the beginning, it was a lot for my daughter to negotiate. You know, she’s the baby and she’s used to having a lot of space and maybe a mommy that cleans up the kitchen when she leaves her shit in the sink.
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And she’s used to our style of communicating about our emotions. You can imagine living with me. It’s not about the dishes in the sink. It’s what you’re making the dishes in the sink mean. It’s the story I’m telling myself about the dishes or you’re telling yourself about the dishes. Any normal emotionally sober person knows the call is always coming from inside the house. You can just imagine our mother daughter skirmishes where my own daughter says, mom,
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you’re bothering yourself about the dishes in the sink. And I’m like, no bitch, I’m bothering you about the dishes in the sink. So anyway, she had a big learning year last year, how to communicate, how to respect other people’s perspectives, how to let go of a lot and not bother yourself about other people’s dishes in the sink, which I thought was cosmic justice, of course.
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So anyway, about halfway through the year last year, she and a friend that she was literally born with. I was really good friends with this other gal’s mom. We’re still good friends. We had our babies together. We’ve got pictures and years of Halloween costumes and trips and meals and playtime of all of our little girls. And it was so cool that those two found each other again and reconnected.
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and then decided to be roommates for this coming school year. It seemed like a perfect match. Both of them are the baby, both of them are easygoing, both of them are kind and compassionate, and they’re not like super tight best friends where they’re all up in each other’s drama. So it really sounded like a good fit. So we moved them in last weekend. Oh, and the apartment was just so cute. They got it all set up and decorated.
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It’s in a good location. There’s parking, which if you know anything about parking on college campuses, like I’ve spent the last two years Ubering from my car to the apartment or the apartment to the goddamn tow lot, because there actually is no place you can legally park when you’re a parent visiting the child at the apartment that you’re paying for. But anyway, I’m not bothering myself about that anymore because her new apartment complex has visitor parking and she gets to park right outside her front door.
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And so we are moving them in. And as we walk in, the other family is there. They had gotten there the day before and conveniently cleaned everything and gotten it all set up. It was awesome. I walked in with a bowl of strawberries and some sushi and felt like my work was done. But one of the things that was coming up was that right when you walked in the door, you could smell pot. And it wasn’t like overwhelming. It was noticeable.
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But it was just right when you walked in the door. Like the apartment doesn’t smell like pot. It’s clean and bright and sunny and they’ve got big windows and a door with an actual screen to their deck. The pot smell was noticeable, but it wasn’t intrusive and it was only right there when you first walked in the door. I don’t know where it was coming from, but I didn’t log that as a problem. Figured it would go away or.
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Yeah, I guess you just smell some pot right when you walk in the door. Like either take a big inhale or hold your breath. Like it’s not the big of a deal. Walk through it. So we get them all set up, take the pictures, everybody gets lots of hugs. And it appears that we are going to have an absolutely beautiful year. My daughter is going to love her new place. Their friendship will blossom and we’re going to make a great memory. So nobody was more shocked than me when two days later,
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The girls are talking about moving because of the pot smell. And I asked my daughter, I’m like, has it gotten worse? Is somebody actively smoking pot? Like, we kind of thought this was a stale leftover from a last tenant or something. And my daughter is like, not really. It’s just right there when you walk in the door. But you know, the manager of the apartment for once is actually being really nice and understanding and offering to show them other units. And I’m like,
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God, that’s a lot of work, right? Like we’re gonna pack all your shit and move you again. But like, okay, whatever, you guys do what you need to do. And then it became clear that there was no units in the place that they were in. So now they’re looking at other properties that my daughter was like, I don’t like this. Like it’s five floors up, like where she lives right now. It’s like this townhouse where she walks outside and her car’s right there. Oh, and yeah, there’s visitor parking also like.
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It’s as ideal of a location and setup as you can get in a college town. And so my daughter’s like, well, I don’t want to live on the fifth floor of this place. And then we have to pay more money for that rent. And I’d have to spend a bunch more money to get into this parking garage where I’m not even able to park right by my apartment. And she’s starting to put on the brakes. And I’m putting on the brakes. I’m like, can we talk about real things?
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Why is this a problem? Why are you making this a problem? And it’s a college town. Anywhere you go, you’re probably going to be exposed to the smell or whiffs of pot. I mean, that’s kind of how it is. And I realized that my daughter wasn’t driving the situation. She was kind of being dragged. And she was very happy with the apartment and didn’t want to move.
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But she felt like she had to because her friend wanted to move and she was trying to be supportive. So she, you know, went around and looked at these other apartments, but at the end of the day, she had to make a decision. And she calls me from her car, big, big eyes with big full of tears. And she wanted my advice. What should she do? And so I put on my coach hat and I said, well, what do you want to do? And she said, I don’t want to move. I don’t want to spend.
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more money, which of course I’d be the one spending that. She’s like, this other apartment is like double the cost. It’s farther away. It’s half the size and they don’t allow cats and both of them have cats. So I’m not sure how that was ever going to be an option anyway. I wouldn’t have signed off on that because trying to hide a cat or a dog I’ve known from personal experience in college apartments, they’re going to catch you and it’s going to be expensive. And if they don’t allow cats at all,
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you’re going have to get rid of the cat. And my daughter and her cat, that would be like taking away her whoopie when she was two. Not going to happen. And so I told her, here’s what you need to consider about the choice that you’re going to make. You could go along to get along. You could sacrifice what you want and what you need and what you have right now. You could sacrifice that for the sake of the friendship and make these concessions and add this. I said,
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But you’re going to resent her the whole year. Every time you walk up five flights of stairs and think about your old apartment, you’re going to be resentful because you’re not doing this because you want to. You’re doing this to make somebody else happy. And so if you’re worried about your relationship, that’s a sure way to tank your relationship is for you to not honor what it is that you want for the sake of her feelings.
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And then we talked about the fact that this response that her friend is having is about feelings, not facts. I suggested that this is something deeper, like her friend is having a stress response or a trauma response. She doesn’t feel safe for whatever reason. And that’s not about my daughter. That’s not about the apartment. That’s not about option A or option B. It’s not about
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the brief exposure to the scent of marijuana when you walk into the apartment that is brief, it lasts one second. If you even notice it by the fifth time I walked in, I was no longer even noticing it because my brain wasn’t registering it as a problem, something that needs to be escaped any more than the wallpaper that’s the border along the top of the ceiling in the living room is peeling. Like that’s also, you know, not great, but it’s not a problem.
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From my perspective on nervous system regulation, when you are in a state of anxiety or panic, you you’re having a stress response, your brain begins to scan for evidence that matches or justifies the way you’re feeling. Your brain is trying to make sense of the feeling. The call’s coming from inside the house though. But when you don’t understand how the nervous system works, you get caught up in the story.
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So our friend, my daughter’s roommate, got a story in her head that this pot is a problem. And then it wasn’t just the pot. I think they found like three ants over by underneath this kitchen sink. And I think the comment my daughter said that the girlfriend had made was, we’ve got to get the hell out of here. So she was in full flight or fight mode. And her brain was just looking for evidence to justify that feeling.
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and to take the action to get her body out of there. She didn’t feel safe for whatever reason. And so the reason I’m sharing this story is so that you can evaluate your own thought processes for themes of fight or flight or freeze, can’t do anything, I don’t know what to do, I’m immobilized, because you think how you feel. And so,
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noticing that you are not your thoughts, you are the observer of your thoughts, observing your own thoughts and asking yourself, what am I scanning for here? Your reticular activating system is the part of your brain that is filtering for incoming information. And there’s millions of bits of information coming in at any time. You’re only able to process consciously a small fractional amount of that data.
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So you have to notice what you’re noticing and then become aware of what it is that you’re actually looking for. The girlfriend, the roommate was looking for evidence more and more reasons to justify a flight response. And she was being hijacked by her nervous system. Her nervous system was kicking in a survival instinct, run bitch, run.
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And the only thing she could see or hear or focus on was the reasons that justified the running. And I explained this to my daughter and I calmed her down to the point where I said, sweetie, you do have a choice. And I know right now it seems like you have to choose between your friendship and feeling comfortable where you live and going along with the plans that you made, but
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Let’s get you into a place of calm and safety so that you can evaluate your choices. You don’t have to do anything here. You don’t have to stay. You don’t have to go. You don’t have to go along with what she wants. You have an infinite number of options for how you want to respond. And she looked at me with her big, teary, big, beautiful eyes and said, Mom, I don’t want to go. I really.
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like this apartment, this feels good, this feels safe to me. This is where I want to be. I don’t want to undo everything we’ve just done and move again. And she goes, and then when we get there, she’s going to realize that everywhere smells like pot in this town, or there’s going to be some other problem that she can’t live with. And she’s like, I don’t want to do this. don’t want to worry that this is going to happen again. But I also don’t want to be insensitive. Like, I don’t want to abandon her. And I go, sweetie,
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You’re not abandoning her. She has a choice. She has a decision. And if she wants to move, she can. Technically, she’d be abandoning you, but we don’t have to look at it like that. Like, that’s not what’s happening. For whatever reason, this apartment, this situation isn’t working for her. And you can also just let her go with love. Feel your feelings. Feel the disappointment. Feel the fear of not knowing if...
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if or how you’re going to find another roommate, like all of this is scary. Like, can we just feel these feelings and allow them? And I used my coaching question, can you feel these feelings without letting them consume you? Where do you feel them in your body? And we went through the nervous system regulation, taking some deep breaths. And I said, the most important question is for you to look back on this situation and be proud of yourself for how you handled it. I said, so when you look back,
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on this, how do you want to see yourself? And she said, I want to see myself as strong that I set a boundary, I stood up for myself and I was supportive of my friend, but I didn’t force myself to do something I didn’t want to do to make someone else happy. And I said, okay, then that’s what you need to do. And now you have to have the big hard conversation and go in and let her know that you’re not going to be moving with her.
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and then allow that to play out and trust yourself and her that both of you have the ability to be okay. And of course, as a mom, I had to feel my own feelings of annoyance. But I also took the time to realize that, you know, from a calm and rational nervous system, from a place of safety and connection, that the litmus test for that
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is the ability to see someone else’s perspective. And the lack of ability to see someone else’s perspective is an indicator that you too are in a stress response. And I didn’t want to have a stress response. I wanted to get back to this place of neutrality and openness and acceptance. I didn’t want to harbor ill will or judgment for my daughter’s friend or my friend’s daughter because I’m still close with her mom.
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And so I tried to take on their point of view and understand that it is valid. My point of view, my daughter’s point of view is not more right. It’s just a different point of view. When you think of this, I want you to imagine that somebody has written a six on the sidewalk, like in sidewalk chalk, a big six. And one person is standing from one angle and saying, no, that’s a nine. And the other person’s being like, no, that’s a six.
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The truth is that it is a nine from one angle and it is a six from another angle. So this is an intolerable problem from one angle and from another angle, it’s not. But from a neutral perspective, you’re high above that and you just see, you know, uh a symbol written on the sidewalk and you see, yeah, you could look at that from a lot of different angles. But when your brain has been hijacked by your nervous system,
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you can’t see that there are other angles. And I would have said at one point that she’s just not willing to see that, you know, this is an outsized reaction. She’s overreacting, right? But the truth, I got a really sweet text from her and she was like, I’m sorry, this isn’t working out. And I respect Kate’s choice and decision to stay. And I’m doing what I need to do for my own wellbeing. And I now feel that that is true.
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And me and my daughter and hopefully her friend are all able to move into a place of curiosity. What comes next? How can this be a good thing? How can we frame this as a healthy decision for all involved and let go of the idea that something has gone wrong? The objective reality is that nothing has gone wrong. It is what it is. And everybody gets to move forward in a way that works for them and in a way that they can
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feel like they acted in integrity and with respect to other people. I’m sharing this story with you now, even though I’m neutral and ready to move on, because I think it’s really important to evaluate the quality of your decisions and notice when you are making a choice and when you feel like you have to do something because you don’t have any other choices.
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Taking the time to acknowledge that you could be looking at a six or a nine or a sideways squiggly is how you break cycles of reactivity and patterns of self-sabotage. When you feel an urgency to take quick, swift action, that is an invitation to pause and ask yourself, what are the themes? What am I scanning for?
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Am I looking for evidence that justifies my fight or flight or freeze? And can I sit with that discomfort long enough to understand this is energy in my body, this is happening inside of me, not out in the world? And can I shift my reticular activating to show me evidence of all of my options? And my daughter got to see that when her body was putting on the brakes, she took
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a moment to pause and get some coaching so that she could expand her perspective and realize she actually did have a choice and that her response that I have to go or else I’m never going to have any friends and I’m going to lose the only good friend that I have and so I have to go along to get along and see that actually there are other options and that most likely they will have a strong lifelong friendship because they both allowed
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Themself to make the decision that was right for them without forcing somebody else to go along with that decision as a test of loyalty real choices feel like options heart-opening ass moving forwarding options not Obligations when something feels like an obligation It’s actually an indication that you are not giving yourself a choice and when it feels like that
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you’re dealing with a stress response.
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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.