Wild Sobriety

Blindspot #1: Why Avoiding Alcohol Keeps You Stuck (5-Part Series)🌹

• Mary Wagstaff

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This is Part 1 of a 5 part series: The 5 Blindspots Secretly Sabotaging Your Sobriety.  I share  the three key reasons why distraction and replacement don’t lead to lasting change. Discover how to confront your beliefs, meet your real needs, and break free from the exhaustion of avoidance. Join me for a feminine-based approach to sustainable sobriety and start living your wildest, alcohol-free life!

• why avoidance keeps you attached to alcohol
• the belief ladder and confirmation bias
• planning mindset and body state for events
• case study of a date night that disproves a story
• the relaxation myth vs real nervous system shifts
• exhaustion from controlling environments
• replacing rumination with evaluation and skills
• focusing on thoughts, emotions, and actions you control

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DISCLAIMER: This podcast and its contents are not a substitute for rehabilitation, medical treatment or advice. It is for educational and inspirational purposes. I am not a therapist or doctor. The views here are expressed a personal opinion and based on first hand experience. Please consult a doctor if your mental or physical health is at risk.

SPEAKER_00:

Child sobriety is for the woman who has outgrown alcohol and was never meant to follow the script. I'm Mary Wagstaff, a holistic alcohol coach, and after 20 years of daily drinking, I finally made alcohol irrelevant in my life, and now I help women just like you do the same through my proven five chips process. Welcome to Wild Sobriety, Feminine Freedom Beyond Alcohol. In today's video, you are going to learn why avoiding alcohol is secretly sabotaging your sobriety. This is one out of five videos of the five blind spots that have been secretly sabotaging your sobriety, keeping you stuck on the merry-go-round of alcohol exhaustion, stopping and starting. And after you learn these five blind spots, your journey of sobriety is going to be so much more simple. Take notes and really watch out for these areas in your life. Avoiding alcohol really keeps you attached to alcohol. And there are three key points that I want to share with you. And there's so many other reasons why avoiding alcohol isn't the solution to sustainable sobriety or actually quitting alcohol. If you are new here as well as I am. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff, and I am a holistic alcohol coach and mentor for women. I've been doing this work for over five years and teaching, guiding women also through my podcast, Stop Drinking and Start Living. But now we are here on the channel of Wild Sobriety. And I couldn't be more thrilled to have you be here along for the journey. And I am here along with for your journey as well. Please subscribe to the show so that we can create a community here and we can share in the comments. There's going to be live streams, and I would just love to know what will serve you here. And this is the main reason I came over to YouTube. Not only so I could connect with you and you can put a face to the name, and I can share with you about my story and other things that I'm doing to throw a better party than alcohol and keep sobriety wild because truly it is the wildest expression of ourselves. And I'll talk more about that name later. But please let me know what it is that you're looking for, what you need support with as a woman. And this is a feminine-based approach to sobriety because we really want to honor the ever-changing needs of our evolution as women. And there are so many components and facets that go into being a woman and really honoring that deep experience of our own cyclical nature. Avoiding alcohol can come in many ways. It can come through distraction, replacement, and just simply not wanting to look at it and hoping that it can just go away. And this is extremely normal. We think, okay, if I just don't do something, then it can go away. But the reason that this never works is because the habit is still lurking in the background and you're never really getting to the root cause of why you are continuing to drink. Now, of course, alcohol is an addictive substance and it escalates all on its own. And if you have started drinking from a young age, most of the chances are that it was pretty unintentional. But as you grow older and as you age, you don't realize that alcohol is solving for problems that you didn't even know you had. And I know that was my perspective, or at least that was my experience. And that's been the experience of so many of my clients. The reason avoiding alcohol is keeping you attached is because when we don't look at the story and the beliefs underneath it, we simply continue to believe that they are true. Simple thoughts that you've had on repeat over and over and over again, as easy as simple as like, I can't celebrate without alcohol. I can't handle it. Things aren't fun. If you simply avoid all of the things that you are doing with alcohol and you distract yourself, you replace it. And none of these things are inherently bad. And if they support you, go for it. But at the same time, we don't want to just start a new habit that is seemingly positive to replace a habit that we haven't actually unlearned. Because unlearning something that's as profound as alcohol is going to take more effort than learning a new habit. And so when you start a new habit, like an exercise routine, or I'm going to go on a diet, now you have two things that you're going to struggle with and that you're going to fail with. And then you're going to say, screw it, because you only have so much bandwidth to change one thing at a time. And that's what I really suggest at the beginning is don't substitute alcohol for something else. Now, naturally, you're going to have time and you're going to want to do new things. And I used to go for walks at that kind of witching hour in the evening and listen to podcasts and really honor myself. I would go to listen to podcasts, things that were inspiring to me. But at the same time, I wasn't avoiding alcohol. I was actually moving towards it, really trying to understand and unpack all of the stories that I had had that eventually turned into my five shifts process. When you keep those beliefs alive, you never get to disprove them. I look at the relationship that we have with alcohol as a ladder. And there's all these rungs on the ladder that create our whole belief system about that thing. And this is what confirmation bias is. You go out into the world and you're like, see, see, see, I it's true, it's true, it's true. And you just keep climbing that ladder and you're looking, your view is from that ladder. Our job to create sustainable sobriety on purpose with intention that's going to really enhance our life in every area of our life is to start to disprove and take down the rungs of that ladder. And as we're doing that simultaneously, we start to prove to ourselves and build a new belief ladder for our sustainable sobriety, for our wild sobriety. And it doesn't even have to be through the lens of sobriety, just for our life beyond alcohol. As you're dismantling this, you're growing this. And if you avoid alcohol, you will never get to disprove your beliefs. If you're avoiding alcohol, you will never get to disprove your beliefs. For example, I had a client that recently went out on a date night with her husband. And it was, it's been pretty early in her sober journey. Now, most of us have tried to quit every single week, sometimes every single day. And that's something that we'll get into later. How the statistics out there just aren't actually true to what real women, real everyday women are going through in their lives. We use the five shifts process. We use some other tools that I have in my tool bag that I teach my clients. And we planned not just what is she gonna drink, we planned her mindset. We got into her body, we did embodiment work. We planned, she implemented and executed, and then we evaluated. And from that experience, what she told me was that one experience that taught her and disproved the belief that she couldn't celebrate without alcohol, she realized she could celebrate without alcohol because she had that experience was more beneficial than a hundred days of not drinking, especially through the lens. Now, had she not gone out on that date with her husband, or had she gone out on that date and when she was just focused on having mocktails and what she was gonna be drinking and nervous and just focused on alcohol the whole time, it wouldn't have had the impact that it had. The second reason that avoiding alcohol is secretly sabotaging your sobriety is because you never get a chance to really understand and meet your own needs. You don't bring awareness to what it is that alcohol is doing for you that you think you can't do on your own. And if it's actually true that it's really doing that. And here's another example. I was talking to a client who, and I she had the same kind of witching hour, five o'clock, unintentionally pouring a drink at five o'clock, thinking that it was her time to relax. But every time she would actually sit down with that drink, she couldn't sit still. It made her antsy. So inevitably she was up. And I always call this the party of one, where we're kind of like relaxed in our body, we're feeling loose, no one really knows how we feel inside, but we're still able to do all the things cook the dinner, tidy up the house, put the kids to bed, all of those things. All the meanwhile, we haven't actually relaxed. There's no actual relaxing. And what this person had observed was mind blown by the fact that she could sit down with just a glass of water and have water with her feet up, not feeling antsy, actually enjoying it. And all she ever needed to do was give herself permission to do the thing and to have that transitional period in between work and home time where there was an opportunity to actually soften her nervous system, not just keep up with the energy of the day, but balance the energy of the evening by getting herself prepared, giving herself permission to celebrate and, you know, find that moment of catharsis after a long day, and then get up and be present with her family. Really look at her intentions that she had for the evening. Wow. So the idea that alcohol actually is relaxing me, and that's the need that you have turns out that's not actually true at all. That they're that you're never even sitting down with the alcohol. It is what it's actually doing, is it's softening the thoughts that are inhibiting your ability to relax. Any thought that you have that's creating nervousness, that's creating discomfort, it is inhibiting those thoughts, but it's not actually doing the thing. What's actually doing the thing is when you sit down with permission and take a deep breath. The third reason that avoiding alcohol is secretly sabotaging your sobriety is because it is creating way more exhaustion than you realize. Avoiding alcohol takes so much more effort than actually confronting the story, generating more awareness of what's underneath the habit than you even realize. And that is why you are exhausted, because so many of that, so much of that back and forth and the questioning that's happening anyway in the background, even while you're avoiding it, could completely be put to rest through the process of the five shifts of what I teach through my sustainable sobriety kit and through one-on-one coaching. We actually answer the questions that have only just been, you've only just been ruminating on. You have to answer the questions, and that's where you gain control. As you're avoiding alcohol and you're controlling your environment, you're controlling the places you go, you're controlling the people that you see, you're controlling the action, everything around you, and you know, the making sure that you have a mock tail, making excuses, you know, binging on Netflix, whatever it is. And again, none of these things are inherently bad. But what I want, my invitation to you is to expedite your results, to go further quicker by actually confronting the story and generate, and we do that by generating awareness. What's the truth about what your brain has been telling you? Because your thoughts, by the way, just to let you in on a tip, your thoughts are not facts. Your thoughts are subjective interpretations, most of them hypothetical, most of them that haven't even happened, not just yours, mine too. This is how we think. We don't think in facts. Oh, the sky is blue, the barn is red. We don't think in facts. We think in subjective interpretations based on our life's experience. It's your opportunity to go deeper, to have maybe a good laugh at yourself, even though this is a serious matter, and think, oh my gosh, none of this is even true. And once you start to unpack that and see it, and you look alcohol and all of your beliefs and all of your thoughts in the face, you realize, I can actually let this go because everything I've been telling myself simply isn't true. And there's parts of it that you want to be true, but then what we do is we work towards building that skill set because the things that you think alcohol is needing for you, you actually get to meet on your own. And instead of controlling the world around you, you get to control your thoughts, be the watcher of your mind, your emotions, your behavior. And this is what actually creates the ultimate freedom. We work to disprove the story, meet your own needs better than alcohol ever could, and learn to identify what's actually in your control and what's not, so that you can relieve some of that alcohol exhaustion. When you try to control the world and alcohol, it is exhausting. Alcohol's not going anywhere. But when you look to change your mind, you will expedite your results in ways that you never knew how. And while you're working on this, you are keep your nervous system, you're stay relaxed, you'll stay curious and compassionate. And the best way I know how to do that is through my free guide. It's called 60 Seconds to Calm. And it is going to help you find relief quicker than it takes to pour a drink. Seriously. And these are not mantras, these are not positive affirmations, these are actual words that when you say them, our words are spells. They actually help you find relief. Because the thoughts that you think are generating your emotions. And if you go even deeper, I would love to invite you to come and schedule a strategy session with me where we can talk about exactly where you're at and the exact thoughts that you have, and to help you work towards disproving them so that you can start to find relief even through your journey. Because taking your last sip is not the first step, generating new awarenesses. Make sure you subscribe to the channel, like, follow, and I will see you in the next one. Thank you, my beautiful wild women, for being here. If you are loving the show, I want to invite you to come on over to my YouTube channel, MaryWagstaff Holistic Wellness. And don't forget to download the free guide, 60 Seconds to Calm. This is going to help you find a relief from any emotion and less time than it takes to pour a drink. Have a beautiful day, and thank you so much for being part of this community. It wouldn't be the same without you.