Reclaiming Autonomy Through Sobriety

Challenge the notion that rebellion and self-governance are tied to alcohol consumption. As women navigating motherhood, care taking and challenging ourselves in new ways. Explore strategies for reclaiming personal power, including setting boundaries and embracing solitude. Learn about self-soothing techniques and letting go of limiting beliefs. 

This time of year can be full of joy, but it can also come with extra stress and temptations around alcohol. So, I thought, why not offer something to help bring in a bit more ease and peace?
I'd love to spend this time together with you. I miss you! 
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Chapters

• 1:12 Exploring Autonomy and Self-Governance
• 11:38 Creating Autonomy for Sobriety

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:12

Do you ever feel like you're out growing alcohol, that you are longing for a deeper connection to life? If alcohol is keeping you playing small and feels like the one area you just can't figure out, you are in the right place. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff. I'm a holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20-year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help powerful women just like you eliminate their desire to drink on their own terms. In this podcast, we will explore the revolutionary approach of my proven five-shifts process that gets alcohol out of your way by breaking all of the rules, and the profound experience that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, what is up? Thank you for being here for another year. Are you in the podcast group yet? Come over there. We need all of you and we want to have a conversation. It will be so fun to connect. So the link is in the show notes in Facebook. I'm over there, I'm hanging out and answering, asking questions and just ready to engage with you. It's a really, actually a really amazing opportunity to get questions answered, to get feedback from other people who have been through the process. I have a lot of clients in there, so come on over. Yes, so today we are talking about autonomy. What exactly is autonomy? We're going to look it up. It is the right or condition of self-government, this idea of really having self-agency government, government where you are making your own rules, you're living by your own standards, you're living your own life. Most people aren't doing this. We are doing it unconsciously. I've talked about this a lot on the show but I can't emphasize it enough. Autonomy is the number one reason that people continue to drink. The women I know continue to drink, especially at a later stage in your life, like motherhood era. Not to say that you need to be a mom, but motherhood era is autonomy is finding some sense of self while they're holding all of these labels. We have all of these stories about these rules that have been created. It's like this is my soapbox always the external rules of society and the things that we think are required. But you can unsubscribe. All you got to do is unsubscribe and just look the other way. I mean seriously. I know there are exceptions to this. I know that things need to be changed on a big level. What I'm telling you is the impact that you get to have and I've seen it with my clients and I've done it myself. The impact that you get to have on the world through simply raising your children or engaging with other people and being an example of what's possible is going to awaken other people, is going to create change. It has a ripple effect. You get to unsubscribe to the quote, unquote external governance of your life. Now we know there's certain things that we have to do, but again, it is all still a choice. If you don't pay your taxes, you're probably going to get audited at some point Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. There are consequences of that, but you still have a choice whether or not to send that in. That is a choice. This is what is so important is to remind yourself of where you have choice and to really be honest with yourself about the consequences, because we continue to run a narrative, too, of the past, where it's like, just because something happened in the past or to someone else is the way that it's going to be. That's why I can't do X, y and Z. The reason autonomy is so important when it comes to alcohol is because you use alcohol to try to find some sense of self-governance. I've talked about this as the wild woman, or that idea of rebelling or being quote unquote bad. You don't need that to give you permission to be bad. Take your clothes off and run across the road, I don't care. Do seriously. This is a level of maturity and just acknowledgement and making a decision. You get to make a decision today, no more. No one else is going to do it for me. So what you need to do if you have the thought my time is not my own, a you need to do an assessment and you need to talk about how that's not true and how, even if I've got to work to get money, to get food, well, you got to feed yourself somehow. Is it a privilege that you actually have a job? Probably Right, so own it right. I hear you know it's like we have so many opportunities to create New experiences for us that we can always find something wrong with it. Look at where you're focusing your mind. What is the narrative you're telling yourself? This is going to put you in the power position of creating agency and autonomy. You also get to create new opportunities for you to explore and have new experiences. So if the only way that you've created a sense of self, of autonomy, of this self-governance, is through the lens of alcohol, even when other people aren't around, right, like I know a lot for moms that are raising especially young children, it's like, oh my gosh, like this is my only time alone while the kids are around. It goes fast, right, it goes really fast. Is that the experience that you want to have, not from a place of shame or judgment, but from a place of curiosity? But also the curiosity in this arena is going to be your best friend. So, say, you do go out by yourself. You like to go have lunch or take yourself shopping, or to the movies, or to a Concert or to an art show, whatever it is. What is that experience like when you don't have a buffer, right, and how else can you create autonomy? I always like to think of stepping into a role, right? So if I want to go out by myself for an evening as my own autonomous person, I'm gonna think about what I'm wearing. I'm gonna. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna pre-game, right, I'm gonna turn on the music, I'm gonna get dialed up. Maybe I'm gonna wear a pair of boots that I don't normally wear. I'm gonna turn on some music in the car. I might even have an energy drink. Girl. Now, I know that is an external alteration, but if I'm gonna go out dancing until like one or two in the morning, I might need an energy drink. I'm just saying not always, but it's, it's happened. So you know like what, what does that look like for you? Maybe you get a pedicure, create opportunities to explore and have new experiences. Look on meetupcom, go to a networking group, do so or do something different that's outside of the lens of anything you've ever associated with alcohol, to get comfortable doing that. And then you get to Reexamine are these things that I've done with alcohol on my own? Do I enjoy them right? Like, maybe, going out with some friends that you don't see often and normally you drink and gossip together. What I want to go out with those people when I'm not drinking? Chances are maybe not right. Do I actually even like you know, like the movies, right you know? Maybe I don't know? Right, what, what is it? Go, have that experience from curiosity. Maybe you get to enjoy it even more. Maybe you're even more aware and give yourself time to transition. This is so important. Alcohol is the buffer of transition. We aren't robots, so we can't just like it's not a microsecond that we are like, okay, I'm in a new environment. It doesn't matter what you're transitioning into. It doesn't matter if you went from you know, like Going to a PTA meeting to like going to work out. There is a transitional time where you're like entering in a new mode and this gives you the opportunity of Exploring mindfulness, being present with my senses, some a practice, and I'll just give you I Last week I gave you the, the intention of the mantra soften something. If you bring your hand onto your chest not like necessarily onto the center of your chest where your heart is, but just below your collar bones and your palm flat right, you might even even feel your collar bone Just a little bit, with, like your thumb and your first finger Taking a deep breath here I am, here I am, and saying it out loud. Or, if you're feeling anxious, you might reach for the part of you that you've kind of lost and say, there, you are, there, you are, there, you are. So you want to examine your thinking and notice where you're placing your attention and come back. Another really, really powerful practice is to ground yourself. You have to come in the present moment to ground yourself. So this means anchoring a grounding cord from the base of your spine. If you're familiar with the chakra systems, you can think of a ruby red ball at the base of your spine, at your tailbone, and dropping an anchoring cord into connecting with the center of the earth. I like to call it the womb heart of Gaia, the center of the core of the earth. This could look like roots, a waterfall, a golden rod, a tree trunk, and it pulls all of your attention to the centerline of your body. Take seconds, seconds. Here I am. When you walk into that space from a grounded confident, you reach your chest, into your hand and you can always just rub your hand over your heart and then you give yourself a minimum or a boundary. If I don't feel good, I can go home. If it doesn't feel right, I'm going to give myself permission or I'm going to stay for at least 30 minutes. So what does that look like for you? And create the opportunity this week, on purpose, intentionally, to put yourself in a new environment and to create an opportunity for autonomy. Maybe, that is, you don't have dinner with your family and you tell your significant other if this is available to you I'm not having dinner tonight and you make yourself some popcorn and you go hang out in your bedroom and you journal, or maybe you like go shopping online I don't know, right, like, sometimes there's things that we don't take the time to do. You make some appointments for yourself. How can you create an intentional opportunity for autonomy and the result of this is no longer needing to hide out in your head, right, so that you're not, and so you're not people pleasing, given the rules that you've given yourself. Examine the beliefs that you've bought into and just say for, just for today, I'm going to unsubscribe and see what happens. Let me know how it goes. Come on over to our stop drinking, start living discussion group and let me know what happened. Get some ideas and let's share your takeaways, because, I guarantee it, you will not die, I promise you. The worst thing that's going to happen is you have to feel a sensation in your body. The best thing that's going to happen is you're going to have a blast and love yourself even more for it. Have an amazing week. The bridge between where you are and where you want to go with alcohol is spiritual alignment. That is what makes my private coaching program so unique and effective. It meets the needs of all parts of you through a feminine lens, so that sobriety can become a sustainable part of your life, while alcohol becomes unimportant. Take your commitment to self to the next level by scheduling a private discovery call with me. Follow the link in the show notes to pick the best time that works for you and I will take care of the rest. I can't wait to connect with you in real life.