{"id":5876,"date":"2025-12-09T11:40:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T19:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/?p=5876"},"modified":"2025-12-15T15:53:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T23:53:29","slug":"overcoming-betrayal-and-suicidal-depression-in-sobriety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/09\/overcoming-betrayal-and-suicidal-depression-in-sobriety\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcoming Betrayal And Suicidal Depression In Sobriety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\"><strong>In this episode, Sonia Kahlon from <em>Sisters in Sobriety<\/em> joins us for a deeply honest conversation about recovery, journaling, trauma, and rebuilding life after addiction.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>Sonia shares how her drinking escalated from teenage experimentation to daily wine-drinking as a high-functioning professional. While she never had the \u201ctraditional\u201d external bottom, she described being <\/strong><strong><em>emotionally bottomed out<\/em><\/strong><strong> \u2014 chronically ill, blacking out, and unable to imagine a future.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>What finally shifted? A moment of clarity at brunch, when she said \u201cno\u201d to a mimosa for the first time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>From there, she began exploring sobriety through AA literature, community support, and eventually the practice that changed everything: journaling.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Key topics we covered:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Moderation vs. abstinence: Some people can moderate; some can\u2019t. Addiction exists on a spectrum.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Trauma and dissociation: Many of us learned early to ignore our intuition and numb discomfort.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Healing through writing: Journaling processes emotions the same way talking to a friend does.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Different journaling styles:<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Morning pages (The Artist\u2019s Way)<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Gratitude lists<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Emotional processing<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Prompt-based journaling<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Somatic\/body-scan journaling<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Rebuilding after betrayal: Journaling helped Sonia reclaim her identity after divorce.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>The importance of community: A network of supportive women helped her through the darkest moments.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>ACTION ITEMS FOR LISTENERS<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>\u2714\ufe0f Try morning pages for 7 days \u2014 write 3 pages of unfiltered thoughts every morning.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><strong> \u2714\ufe0f Start a nightly gratitude list focusing on 3 things from that day.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><strong> \u2714\ufe0f Practice a weekly \u201cbody-scan journal session\u201d and write about physical sensations + emotions.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><strong> \u2714\ufe0f Identify 3 people you can call when you\u2019re struggling \u2014 and practice willingness calls.<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><strong> \u2714\ufe0f Reflect on the question: Can I moderate? \u2014 and be honest with your evidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>BOOKS MENTIONED<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4psZIBl\" title=\"\">Blackout \u2014 Sarah Hepola<\/a><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4pExKCw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Running with Scissors \u2014 Augusten Burroughs<\/a><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4oQjFkp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">The Artist\u2019s Way \u2014 Julia Cameron<\/a><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/44h6q4R\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">The Power of Two-Way Prayer \u2014 Father Bill W.<\/a><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4ptoSQ8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Radical Self-Acceptance \u2014 Tara Brach<\/a><br><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3MpPP8V\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">The Obstacle Is the Way \u2014 Ryan Holiday<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Link to Sisters In Sobriety : <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Instagram: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/sistersinsobrietypod\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/sistersinsobrietypod<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Podcast: https:\/\/sistersinsobriety.substack.com\/s\/pcast<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Embed Player\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/39346760\/height\/128\/theme\/modern\/size\/standard\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/87A93A\/time-start\/00:00:00\/playlist-height\/200\/direction\/backward\/download\/yes\/font-color\/FFFFFF\" height=\"128\" width=\"100%\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"\" webkitallowfullscreen=\"true\" mozallowfullscreen=\"true\" oallowfullscreen=\"true\" msallowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border: none;\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A8IwakwXnfs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>\ud83d\udc4a\ud83c\udffcNeed help applying this information to your own life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Here are 3 ways to get started:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>\ud83c\udf81Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days &#8211; With a printable PDF checklist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Grab your copy here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.soberlifeschool.com\">https:\/\/www.soberlifeschool.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>\u260e\ufe0fPrivate Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makesobrietystick.com\">https:\/\/www.makesobrietystick.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>Subscribe So You Don\u2019t Miss New Episodes!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong><em>Listen to the episode on<\/em><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast\/id1212504521\"><strong><em>Apple Podcasts<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong><em>, <\/em><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB\"><strong><em>Spotify<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong><em>, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website <\/em><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.odaatchat.com\"><strong><em>HERE<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong><em>.You can also watch the interview on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"295\" height=\"121\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-4.png?fit=295%2C121&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5877\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast\/id1212504521\"><strong><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"217\" height=\"76\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-5.png?fit=217%2C76&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5878\" style=\"width:288px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1374\" height=\"334\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?fit=640%2C156&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5880\" style=\"width:283px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?w=1374&amp;ssl=1 1374w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=300%2C73&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=1024%2C249&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?resize=768%2C187&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-7.png?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"179\" height=\"60\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-6.png?fit=179%2C60&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5879\" style=\"width:286px;height:auto\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@theonedayatatimepodcast\"><strong><\/strong><\/a><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><strong>Apple: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast\/id1212504521\"><strong>https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast\/id1212504521<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Spotify: <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB\">https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Amazon Music: <a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast\">https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff\/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Full Transcript:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Well, Sonia, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I&#8217;m<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so excited to be here. I am too. And it&#8217;s so funny. So I told you I was going<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to start with a little story, which is kind of like a little confession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Because you and I met through a friend where my friend Michelle, who&#8217;s been on the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">podcast a bunch of times. And I think it was her that did the email intro. Is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So I&#8217;m so embarrassed to admit this. So. um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and I was like, hey, let&#8217;s do your interview. So I sent you the link. So I was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">doing a little research and I was like, I searched your name and there was several<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">emails there. And I don&#8217;t know if you remember this, but in 2023, you pitched me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to be a guest. Yes, yes. That is so funny. And you just like never responded?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">No, I didn&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Because I get a ton, I get a ton of pitches. I&#8217;m sure you guys, you too, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And we were new then, right? And so it makes sense that you would be like, right,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right? Like, because actually somebody said to me that, like, majority of sobriety<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">podcasts, like, don&#8217;t last a year. Like, it&#8217;s people who are really excited to be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">in sobriety. And they&#8217;re like, let&#8217;s go. And then they kind of are like, right,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right. Yeah, people, so I&#8217;ve been doing mine for nine and a half year. So I&#8217;ve<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">been kind of an OG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and I&#8217;ve changed my stance on some things. One being like I actually have clients<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">now who aren&#8217;t really interested in quitting initially. They are wanting to see if<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">they can practice moderation. And I think that that&#8217;s a really important question to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">answer is can I moderate, right? And so the thing is for years I&#8217;ve saying um the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">only thing that i know after 31 years of sobriety is i do not know what&#8217;s right<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">for anybody else yeah and if i really meant that then i should be open to working<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">with people who are still answering the question can i moderate and be open about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it like not have a preconceived idea that we&#8217;re going to eventually get to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">abstinence because that&#8217;s not how I feel. And I have clients who are high<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">functioning, really successful that are moderating successfully. And now we touched on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that a little bit when we were talking on my podcast too, because is that like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">antithetical to like A .A. Right. So like how do you square that with like A .A?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Right. Yeah. I just know that for me, it&#8217;s not an option. For me, it&#8217;s not either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m actually dating someone. I&#8217;m dating someone now who went to rehab, came out,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and has a beer once in a while. And I honestly, the first few weeks,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, I&#8217;ve never seen him drink, but the first few weeks you were dating, I was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, this just isn&#8217;t, it&#8217;s just not, it&#8217;s not possible. It&#8217;s not going to work,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right? You have answered that question. Yeah. Like you know to your bones, you&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">not going to moderate. I know it to my bones. And he said, I, he&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">know how to explain it to you. But alcohol is not a part of my life. If I go to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">a concert, a beer. I&#8217;m like, but I don&#8217;t get it. I&#8217;m the girl, me neither.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I know. I&#8217;m like, what about the pickle cucumber thing? Like, what about once you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">turn into a pickle, you can&#8217;t go back to being a cucumber. Yeah. And I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I bet part of me is a little bit jealous. Sure. Yeah. You can go to a concert<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and have a beer, you know. What&#8217;s funny is I used to, when I was doing tech<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">sales, I worked with a group of girls who, women, sorry, who had successfully<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">completed their, this program that allowed them to be an inside sales rep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And when I say completed the program, their program was in incarceration. They were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">incarcerated. And so the sort of go -between company trained these women that were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">incarcerated, this new sales skill, right? They were doing like sales development type<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">stuff. They were, you know, and then when they graduated, meaning were released, they<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">were eligible to become an inside sales rep. And so I was the only,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I knew the CEO. And when I moved to Idaho, they, when I moved to Idaho, they<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But we would do these sales conferences and they would drink. Most of them were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">there because of crimes related to drug addiction. I taught entrepreneurship in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">women&#8217;s prisons. And yeah, same thing. The reason they kind of had me going in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">there other than the fact that like I was an entrepreneur was but because I had<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">had addiction issues. And so. Yeah. No, like I think 80 % of people are in for a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">drug and alcohol -related offense. So you watched them moderate or you watch them<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">drink? I did. They drank. They moderated. They went to work. I mean, they were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">highly functional. So I was like, whatever. I think that was one of the experiences<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that led me to, I do not know what&#8217;s right for anyone else. And if you read the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">12 -step literature, they do talk about the quote -unquote real alcoholic. And those<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">are like really hardcore bottom out cases, which I felt like even though like I had<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">never been arrested. I didn&#8217;t get fired. Like the typical things that you would hear<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">of, I was so emotionally bottomed out that, you know,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">suicidal ideation was like flirting in my mind And things, it got dark for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So I considered myself a real alcoholic. That is the pickle for sure. And there&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">no coming back from that, I don&#8217;t think. But if we think of addiction as a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">spectrum, then maybe there are some people that are still on the cucumber side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t either. It&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s like just when you think you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Right. Someone proves you wrong. Yeah. Like you see 40 people try to moderate and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you kind of sit there waiting, right? And then and then none of them can. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">then, but then you see like people do it. And it&#8217;s like, I just don&#8217;t know. Like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I just don&#8217;t. I, yeah. And I agree. Maybe it is,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it&#8217;s more about your emotional relationship. I was so dependent on alcohol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I thought about it so much. Yeah. I still probably think about it like not as much<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">as the, I don&#8217;t know, maybe as much as the average person. Like if I&#8217;m out to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">dinner and I see somebody walk by with like a bottle of wine like a waitress or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">waiter, you know, I think about it. But I don&#8217;t know. I know. It&#8217;s really nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And then, yeah, I think we were talking about too about like cannabis, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Because I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t mess with anything. I don&#8217;t either. Yeah. Well, cannabis<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">was my get -down, like I was high 24 -7. Okay, so here&#8217;s another little thing that,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so this is the real part of the confession, is that I think, so I love 12 -step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I really do. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s perfect. I am very clear that there are lots of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">things that are actually very problematic about it, but I have found a way to get<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">around what I think of as obstacles, right? And the reason I&#8217;m so passionate about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it, I wrote a whole book about it for those that are watching this on YouTube,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">because I wanted to see if there was a way to help people gain access to the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">actual process of the 12 steps so that they could get, like, you know, cause and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">effect, right? The cause is you take certain actions and you get certain effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And I&#8217;m so obsessed with this process that the actual writing process of the 12<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">step,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">stuff like it&#8217;s old man stuff it&#8217;s people get triggered by the word alcoholic or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">powerless or um you know what i mean like god it&#8217;s like those that seem to be the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">big three triggers and then there&#8217;s the differentiation between meetings and the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">actual program those are two separate things and so i was like i wonder if i can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">try to just clarify these things in a non -defensive kind of a way um But because<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I feel, I get super triggered when I perceive somebody is saying, here&#8217;s another way<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">because 12 -step didn&#8217;t work. Yeah. You see where I&#8217;m going with those? Yeah, I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So I think when you initially pitched me, I just did a quick scan and I was like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that doesn&#8217;t fit for me. So I just didn&#8217;t respond. And what was so interesting<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">about how we met was that I was introduced through a friend. And I didn&#8217;t see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">here is an area where I&#8217;m not open -minded. Here I am. I&#8217;m asking other people to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">be open -minded and my book was closed. In a sense, too,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like I would say maybe when we pitched you, maybe I was more closed off even to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">AA. My brother had like recently relapsed after having been an AA for 10 years. So<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I was little, you know, and I remember reaching out to his AA friends and like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">they were not particularly helpful. And actually, they were right. They ended up<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">being right that they could not fix him, right? Like they, I think I expected. You<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">were asked, you were looking to them for help, though. Yeah, but I wanted them to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">kind of go in like the cavalry and like fix him. Yeah. And I didn&#8217;t, you know,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">but, but yeah, I think that it&#8217;s really interesting the prejudices we have about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like just even certain like words right but also we got a comment we got like a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">scathing review on the podcast the other day i really liked it someone got triggered<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah and it was kind of like like who are these like unrelatable ladies and and it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">was basically like that we had never hit rock bottom that because i was a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">functioning alcoholic with like a career and like i had a dental practice and i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">sold and she actually wrote she&#8217;s like these these ladies are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">love that gets bashed all the time like we frequently there&#8217;s this ideology of not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">bashing somebody else&#8217;s program except a a like that seems to be that seems to be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">okay and i just get super triggered and i&#8217;m like what is the treasure under this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you know do i need more compassion where am i close -minded and so i&#8217;ve really been<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">digging and it was just sort of a um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">spokespeople of A .A. And it makes me really sad when that happens. But that is not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">for me to, you know, I try to clarify where I can, but I&#8217;m not into,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m not interested in fighting with anybody. I&#8217;m really not. Like, I&#8217;m not here to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">try to convince anyone. I thought I was for a minute there. And that&#8217;s just, I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">don&#8217;t want to argue with anybody. If like, you don&#8217;t want to do it. That&#8217;s cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">You go to. I think it matters where, like, I think what area of the country are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">into or like what meeting you go to. Like, I&#8217;ve been, like, because I still will<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">drop in on meetings and like there&#8217;s meetings where you drop in. And it&#8217;s like, you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">know, four guys from like old guys from a motorcycle, like gang with their hardly<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">smoking cigarettes outside and drinking coffee. And like maybe to me that&#8217;s a bit of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">a like, I&#8217;m intimidated a little bit by that to like walk into that meeting and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">then yeah no in and when i&#8217;m in toronto you know you go to a meeting like three<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">blocks away and everyone&#8217;s like my age and like dressed like me and like so and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah i hate to say it like i hate it i mean i&#8217;ve been to meetings like everywhere<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right like in new york city and like there&#8217;s just sometimes you walk in and like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the vibe is just i don&#8217;t know and maybe it&#8217;s my judgment too it&#8217;s like oh i don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">think these are my people yeah i i got to tell you i&#8217;ll tell you this one quick<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">story there was a meeting um there is a recovery center where i&#8217;m from and it uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">i walked into this meeting and mind you i was in high tech sales i was wearing a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">very nice tailor dress i was in heels i had my louis baton bag um my tiffany<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">bracelet my you know what i mean i was walking in and these women are my age but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">they&#8217;re missing teeth they have neck tattoos they have three different color hair um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">they they&#8217;re looking rough right and i walk in i go these women are not going to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">relate to me at all right and i start talking and pretty soon when we talk about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the feelings all the other stuff kind of melts away I know what it&#8217;s like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">You know what I mean? Like, I get it. I get it. Right. And when, and when you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">speak from the heart, like, that is the language that crosses all boundaries kind of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">a thing. And suddenly we&#8217;re all the same. And, and I remember walking out of that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">meeting going, there you go again. You thought you were different. And we are all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the same. No, that&#8217;s true too, right? I think what it is, like, yeah, it&#8217;s those<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">perceptions. But I think, too, my, my brother sort of showed me that because he he<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">was a low bottom drunk. And so. But he was sober for 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. So it&#8217;s so funny when someone realized, was, were they a 10 year success<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">story? Or is that a story of, you know what I mean? I think that there were a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">number of years where he was a dry drunk. Oh, sure, for sure. Yeah. And so yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But I think so I remember I was married at the time and like thinking about going<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to AA and telling my husband at the time like, you know, I think I have a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">problem. And he&#8217;s like not like you&#8217;re your brother. You&#8217;re not as bad as your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">brother was. Oh, that&#8217;s you&#8217;re not as badass. Yeah. And it&#8217;s like no, we&#8217;re all the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">same. And especially when you look at a sibling, you&#8217;re like he came from the same<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">place. Like he&#8217;s his trauma is very similar. And so we&#8217;re just a different bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">throw that out there because I, you know, want to be somebody who is open -minded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And when I was feeling triggered, the treasure for me was to recognize an area<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">where I was holding judgment and being close -minded. And I was like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">wow, I&#8217;ve missed out on knowing you three years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But here we are, and we&#8217;re going to, yeah, everything happens as it should. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">listen, that wasn&#8217;t the whole topic of this conversation. What we&#8217;re running for like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that point. I&#8217;m glad you&#8217;re not in a hurry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">We are going to talk about your story and some of the tools that you have used to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">heal, recover, relearn, whatever. We&#8217;re going to be talking about journaling,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">how we can use journaling. And I think we&#8217;ve come up with maybe five different<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">methods of journaling that we can talk about. But before we jump into that, I like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to play pulling out my lightning round of paper. Dun, done, done. Ready for this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. There&#8217;s used a long pauses, but go ahead. I know. This is fine. When you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">first got sober, were there any books that were really helpful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Oh, this is Sarah Heppola, Blackout?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Burroughs running with scissors. Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think I&#8217;ve heard of that one too, running with scissors. That&#8217;s a recovery book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It is about his recovery. It&#8217;s about his&#8230; It&#8217;s like a memoir. Yeah, it&#8217;s a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">memoir. Yeah. There&#8217;s something about hearing other people&#8217;s stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Like, that&#8217;s the acronym for hope, hearing other people&#8217;s experiences. I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. That&#8217;s a good one. If you look back, gosh, you&#8217;ve been sober eight years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It&#8217;s a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Is there a theme to your sobriety? Is there a mantra that you&#8217;ve hung on to it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And I&#8217;ll buy you a little time by sharing, you know, mine&#8217;s obviously like one day<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">at a time. Like that has really helped me. It&#8217;s like a little mind hack. Like I&#8217;m<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">not worried about next year or whatever. Is there something like that that has<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">really helped you through your sobriety? Yeah. Yeah, I play the tape forward all the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">time. Like so anytime I&#8217;m at like a cocktail party or I&#8217;m out with friends that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that are having drinks, like I play the tape forward. Like when I feel like I&#8217;m<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">not fitting in like this sucks, like I start to get kind of like agitated, I play<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the tape forward to like the next morning and I&#8217;m like, oh my I get to wake up<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">in my like comfy bed, not hungover. And like Even that evening,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;ll be like, I get to go home and like watch Gray&#8217;s Anatomy and pop popcorn. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so these things still feel so like novel to me. But I play the tape forward like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">anytime I have a craving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah, anytime, anytime I have a craving. That&#8217;s so interesting that you play a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">forward and you think of the positives. Like my mind immediately went to, I&#8217;m not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">going to risk driving drunk. I&#8217;m not going to be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I would say, like, when I was going through my divorce, like, I would be like, I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">really want to drink, like, a bottle of wine. And, like, I think that I, I played<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the tape forward. And I was, like, sending angry messages in my mind to, like, the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">mistress and to my husband and, like, and, like, everybody I knew and like, whar,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and like, and so that, when I played, I was like, I don&#8217;t want to be that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. I do a little bit. Like, you know, that petty part. But, like, I don&#8217;t want<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to be that whole that person. Yeah, I don&#8217;t want to be that person. Yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that&#8217;s a good one. That is a powerful motivator. Do you have a regular self -care<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">practice, like a morning routine, or do you think of like a set of meetings that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you go to weekly, anything like that? I&#8217;m a big journaler. I think that that&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">something it&#8217;s so consistent. Also, like, I travel like a little bit. And so it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">something you can take with you, which I love. I don&#8217;t like working out, but I do<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it. Same. Yeah, I hate it, but I do it. I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think like my evening, my evening routine is really calming. And so it&#8217;s, I kind<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">of need to be like in my bedroom sort of like near or on my bed for a couple of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">hours, like before I go to bed. And whether it&#8217;s like journaling or or like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and reading is something I couldn&#8217;t do at night when I was drinking. Yeah. And so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it&#8217;s something like anything like that is still really special to me, like things<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that I just, because I was like an everyday drinker, like every day for at least a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">decade. And so every day I couldn&#8217;t get in bed and read. Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. Every day I didn&#8217;t take my makeup off for 10 years, you know? And like, so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think it&#8217;s those things that were impossible before that feel the most, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">sacred. That&#8217;s so interesting. I&#8217;m pretty obsessed with, like, my morning routine, but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I didn&#8217;t even think about my morning routine. I have, like, this routine of, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">taking a bath and washing off my face, and I have, like, this whole skin care. I&#8217;m<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">obsessed with, like, all this skincare stuff. It&#8217;s super fun for me. It smells good<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">a little bit. And then my husband and I typically watch TV before we go to bed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and that that is sort of my wind down process. So, yeah, it&#8217;s kind of nice to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">have something at both ends to kind of calm down. Yeah, I would like to, you know,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I had a dog up until like six weeks ago. Oh, no, I&#8217;m so sorry. What happened? Oh,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">she was 16 and a half. So we had a good run. But so my morning routine was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">always taking her out the first thing, like when I open my eyes, I would take her<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">out. And so it may be time for me to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">about yourself, about sobriety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Something I didn&#8217;t realize was that not drinking was just the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. And so I still had like, I don&#8217;t want to say like it&#8217;s not an uphill<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">battle, but there was still a lot of stuff to like uncover and dig through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And I don&#8217;t know if it would have helped to know like, okay, let&#8217;s just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that to stay sober I would have to like mine like the depths of my trauma I know<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">isn&#8217;t that crazy like we don&#8217;t realize that they&#8217;re like we have trauma when you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">were young and then we dissociate like we just literally like bury it somewhere and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">we become unconscious of it but that is the very thing that compels the addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And we&#8217;re like, why am I like this? I don&#8217;t even know. Well, of course you don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">You&#8217;re dissociated. Yeah. And it&#8217;s like, I know it sounds like it&#8217;s just like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">oh, like I don&#8217;t want to figure that stuff out. But it&#8217;s like I, I like, I feel<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">bad for people who don&#8217;t get to figure that out. I know. Like my ex, I don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">think we&#8217;ll ever like figure it out, you know. And I think like that&#8217;s what it is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">when you&#8217;re numbing and running and you just, I don&#8217;t know. I think it&#8217;s a gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It is. I always think that I always say that alcoholism is like the best, worst<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">thing that ever happened to me. Ryan Holiday wrote this book called The Obstacle is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the Way. Yeah. Yeah. Alcoholism was definitely my obstacle. It became like a whole<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">way of life for me. Yeah. Yeah. It&#8217;s pretty cool. It sort of, I mean, I wouldn&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">say it defines me but it&#8217;s a big part of my identity right like yeah i think it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">one of those things that really determined my value system yeah i had to get very<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">clear on what it was that i value like what kind of attributes did i want to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">embody what was really you know the what were the principles like the intervals that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">they call them the principles you know honesty integrity service like spirituality<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like those are the those were the things that i wanted to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So we have that in California. My mom was from Mexico City. That is from Kentucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So hence the fairness. But you,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you know, and some of the things that I read about you was this idea that there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">was such high expectations of you growing up. What was that like for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I mean, I think I just, I think sometimes you were born a certain way. and I&#8217;m<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">one of those people that I&#8217;m, if you tell me, like, I suck and I can&#8217;t do it,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;ll agree with you. I&#8217;m not going to be like, I can do it. And I don&#8217;t respond<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to that type of encouragement, if you want to call it, that type of,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, tough love. And so I think for me, it just created this, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it didn&#8217;t create, like, motivation and inspiration. I just created this, like, bundle<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">of anxiety. anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Some people are like, I can do it. And some people are like, oh, my God,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m so scared. And I was one of the, yeah, so scared to fail, so scared to, yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">not meet the expectations. Yeah, that&#8217;s really tough to deal with on a daily basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Would you consider that a form of trauma growing up with these unreasonable<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">expectations or not good enough or? I think a lot of immigrant kids grow up with<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">those expectations. I think the trauma comes in the way that they were expressed to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">me. Do you have an example? Yeah. I mean, my, my dad was a like harsh,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">harsh kind of abusive guy. And so if you,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you know, didn&#8217;t do well on a test or something, there were repercussions. And so I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">think that it was more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">express expectations and disappointment without doing that. I&#8217;m still learning, right,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">how to do it in a healthy way. But that, yeah, I think that essentially,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, I shut down. Like, you know, when people raise their voices, I shut down. So,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah. Yeah, yeah, the phrase response. That&#8217;s really hard. So you started drinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I read somewhere that you started, you can&#8217;t read it, believe you read it on the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">internet so it sounded like you started smoking first and then drinking is that true<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah i started smoking probably around 13 and then drinking around 15 like those<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">just kind of awkward years everybody does yeah it seems like that&#8217;s when it starts<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah yeah and um when did you recognize that it was becoming problematic like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">because i know you didn&#8217;t drink till you stopped till later when did it become<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">problematic for you? I would say when you look, I&#8217;m sure you feel this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Like when I look back, like it was always problematic. Like I was never a normal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">drinker. Like I was always binge drinking. I was like always getting sick. Like and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so. Blacking out. Yeah. Blacking out seemed normal in college. You could get away<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">with it. And then I would say probably,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and so I just binged, right, until I wasn&#8217;t in school. And then when I started<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">working full time and I had like a little bit of money and could like pick up a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">bottle of wine on the way home and it was like very sophisticated, right? Like I&#8217;m<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">going to open a bottle of wine and I&#8217;m going to. So boogey. Yeah. And so probably,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">probably a couple of years before I quit. Like when I was trying like 35, 36, I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">was like I started trying to go a day without drinking. And I never did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Wow. There was years, years where I would try, I would like wake up on a Monday<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and be like, I&#8217;m not going to drink today. And by Monday night, I&#8217;d be drinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. What did that do to your self -esteem or your self -image? I mean, I think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that I was in such like denial that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I was very much like, well, I worked really hard today. Yeah. It deserved. Yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it was a really tough day and I&#8217;ll do it tomorrow. So I didn&#8217;t think like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">oh, I&#8217;m constantly failing at this because I wasn&#8217;t taking it seriously enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah, because you weren&#8217;t as bad as your brother, quote, quote. And it&#8217;s easy to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">dismiss it. Yeah. What was it that made you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah, I was really lucky with that, too, because I, for some reason, I also knew<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">if I got a DUI, I would lose my dental license. Oh, yeah. And you work so hard<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">for that. Yeah. And so I was very careful about it. And so, yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think there was a series of really bad nights. And also I started to feel like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">chronically ill. Like I only felt better,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right? The only part of the day I felt good was after like my first drink, like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">in the evening. So I was sick essentially all day. The first couple of drinks felt<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">good. Then I would start to black out and then I would be hung over in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">morning. And so I think that cycle just started to wear on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And I think I started to see, like, I couldn&#8217;t see my future. I couldn&#8217;t see what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">does this look like when I&#8217;m 60, 70, 80. Like, what is this? How do you even get<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to that age doing this? Like, I, yeah, I started to not be able to visualize,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, a future. Yeah, that&#8217;d be scary. It&#8217;d be hard to be just, like, chronically<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">ill all the time. You&#8217;re just, like, chronically hung over. Hungover? Chronically hung<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">over. How much were you drinking? I mean, really, like, probably by the end, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">a little over a bottle of wine a night. So, like, four or five glasses a night?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. Sometimes, like, a bottle and a half. If I went over that, then I was, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">sick, sick. Yeah. Did your husband ever express concern about your drinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">No. Which makes him a bit of an asshole now that I&#8217;m like that. Dick. I&#8217;m just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">kidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Do you want me to him? Because I will. No, I don&#8217;t blame him at all for anything,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">really. He was smoking weed, and I think that sometimes when you have your own<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">issue, you&#8217;re not going to start pointing out somebody else&#8217;s because then I think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it would have been like, well, you&#8217;re smoking weed. And so he never, I mean, the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">minute I would pour a glass glass of wine, he would light up a bowl. And so it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">wasn&#8217;t, um, they were different. And for some reason, I don&#8217;t know if he had me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">convinced or I was convinced, convinced that weed was like, not addictive and a lot<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">better. And so I wasn&#8217;t that I wasn&#8217;t super concerned about his habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">He didn&#8217;t seem super concerned about mine. Yeah, I smoked non -addictive marijuana<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">every day for like 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah you was smoking every day yeah yeah that&#8217;s a yeah if you&#8217;re doing something<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">every day it&#8217;s like people who are like oh if i could smoke if i could do heroin<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like a normal person i would do it every day yeah yeah wait a minute um yeah okay<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so you decide was there just like was there like a dark moment that you&#8217;re just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like this has to stop yeah i Yeah, I think there were a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think I was blacking out the majority of the nights, the months before I quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And we went out one night with another couple, which is, this is very funny. But<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">my ex -husband ended up cheating on me with her, the couple that we were out with,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the night. Hilarious. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And She was pregnant and drinking, I remember, and we were at a B .YO,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and so there were just like an enormous number of bottles of wine. And so I wasn&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">tracking at all, like how much I was drinking. I showed up drunk. I think I went<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">home and drank more. And I had brunch for the girlfriend of mine the next day. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I was like seeing like splotches of black. Like I was like, I could barely,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, stand up straight. And I just remember, and Sundays were, like, a great day<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">for me to, you know, have memosas and start drinking early. And the waiter came by<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and was like, do you want a mimosa? And I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d ever said no to, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">a drink. And I said, I just remember this, like, moment. And I thought, no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">No. I mean, I&#8217;m not going to drink today because I am so sick right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">stayed sober again Monday. And then probably after a week or two,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I called my brother. And I said, I think, I think I might need to go to AA. This<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">is like a lot harder than I thought. And he had no idea. Yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">because you were so high functioning. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you never know what&#8217;s going<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">on behind closed doors. That&#8217;s a brave admission, especially to somebody who&#8217;s in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">program, because then you got to back it up with some action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that a fair statement? Yeah, I explored it a little. Yeah, I explored it a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Had my brother who was in the program. Right. Right. And it was super helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But I, when I discussed it with my husband at the time, he was like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you can&#8217;t go to a meeting around where we live. It&#8217;ll jeopardize your career. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">What if people see you? What if people see you? And he wasn&#8217;t wrong. I don&#8217;t blame<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">him for saying that. And so I really thought, okay, I&#8217;m just going to like listen<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But it really helps to hear other people&#8217;s stories, even if there&#8217;s like a little<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like piece that resonates. Yeah. It&#8217;s like, oh, they get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I love that. Yeah. That&#8217;s amazing. And it just, so you are an example of there are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">many paths, right? And every path is valid is really how I truly feel about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Every path to sobriety is valid. And I feel like there are so many options and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">solutions that there&#8217;s no reason not to find one, find a path,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right? First, you have to answer the question, can I moderate or not? And I think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that&#8217;s really an important question to answer. But once you feel like you have<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">enough evidence that no, I cannot, then there&#8217;s lots of ways. And I want to talk<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">about some of the ways, like one of the tools of sobriety is journaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And you and I identified a few different ways. I have some books in front of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So for those listening on the podcast, I&#8217;m holding up the power of two -way prayer<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and the artist way. Did you know, I don&#8217;t know if you knew this, but Julia Cameron<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">is also sober. No. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">just a little shout out to Julia Cameron for being sober. That&#8217;s in my Kindle right<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">now. Oh, my God. I love this book. Yeah. If you, if you all have<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">pages. Yeah. And what I find it&#8217;s it&#8217;s really challenging to do that,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">but people that can submit to that process, it&#8217;s like you&#8217;re just getting at like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">all the chatter that&#8217;s in your brain. You&#8217;re just getting it all out on paper and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">your mind is more peaceful because of that. What other forms of what forms of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">journaling have you tried? Yeah. So I look at the morning pages like as equivalent<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to just like like a mind dump, right? Yeah. Like just you take whatever is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">nothing to, you know, I, you were five years sober at this point. I was five years<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">sober and I was having a hard time staying sober. I did stay sober, but it was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">really helpful to gratitude journal. And so pick three things that you&#8217;re thankful<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">for. And it really, I think it shifts your nervous system,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">right? I think it shifts it from this yeah fight or flight almost yeah and you&#8217;ve<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">had been in in a relationship for 18 years yeah yeah and you&#8217;re blindsided by this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">blindsided and so it was so it&#8217;s still surreal like but it was so shocking that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and also you know just like on practical note like We were living between New York<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and like rural Pennsylvania. And New York just didn&#8217;t feel like home. So I came<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">back to rural Pennsylvania and I was pretty isolated physically. And so it was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">really hard to picture what my life was going to look like. And so actually be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">listing what I was grateful for was really the building blocks of like creating a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">new life. It&#8217;s so interesting because I also use something called the five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And then it&#8217;s three things you&#8217;re grateful for, three things that would make the day<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">great, an affirmation. And then there&#8217;s an evening phase where you write down three<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">good things that happen and something that you learned. And so I tend to do mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I write the evening portion in the morning for the day before because I only do it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">once a day. So I do the evening part from the day before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">looking for those throughout the day and your brain starts to orient towards positive<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">things whereas, you know, we actually are fighting against negativity bias. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Right. Our brains are naturally wired for survival. So we&#8217;re always looking for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">threats. Yeah. Right. And there&#8217;s a lot of threats out there these days, real or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">imagined. So it does sort of reorient your, I would call this your locus of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">control. So like an internal locus of control is I&#8217;m intentional about how I spend<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">my time, the thoughts that I think, the actions that I take were as opposed to an<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">external locus of control as I&#8217;m reacting to external stimulus, like reacting instead<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">of responding. So it&#8217;s a really interesting way to sort of like rewire your brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">That&#8217;s really interesting. I think that&#8217;s super helpful. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I, so when I coach clients, I often ask them to get it. And then we trade lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Like, they&#8217;ll fill it out and take a picture of it and text it to me. Oh. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;ll do that for them too sometimes, depending on who it is. But it&#8217;s really, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">as a coach, it&#8217;s good for me to sort of be able to keep track of what&#8217;s going on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">in their their life between sessions. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So that that&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">been really good. What other types of journaling have you tried? I was doing a lot<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">of emotional processing. For your divorce. Yeah. And it was just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think too. Like I think sobriety brings up just like a bunch of stuff you&#8217;ve<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">been like pushing down or not wanting to deal with. And so, and you&#8217;ve been<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">numbing, right? Distracting, numbing, yeah. Yeah. And so I think the emotional<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">processing is like, you know, admitting things like, I&#8217;m angry, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And why am I angry? Because I&#8217;m scared about what my life is going to look like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">or, you know, I&#8217;m angry. It took me a while to even say, I&#8217;m angry that my ex<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">cheated on me. Oh, that betrayal is so brutal. Yeah, but honestly, for the first,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">if I trace back my journal entries from the first six months, like it was more<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, what did I do wrong? Oh, like you were blaming yourself? Yeah. What did I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">do? What could I have done differently? What mistakes did I make? And so when,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and that&#8217;s kind of the beautiful thing about journaling is that you can look back<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and see. And so just when I&#8217;ll have days where I&#8217;m like, I thought I would be so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">much better by now. I&#8217;ll look back and I am so much better. Oh, yeah. You&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">comparing yourself to yourself. Yeah. Like this is like way more healed than I was,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you know, a year ago type of thing. And so yeah. Yeah. I really think like naming<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">your emotions is and something really hard, I think for people that are newly sober.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">for me. So do you think that anxiety, so journaling really helps your anxiety?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah, I think, I think it does like a lot. They say they. We had somebody on the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">guest, a therapist that said they&#8217;ve done studies where it has the same effect as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">talking to a friend. Oh, processing. Yeah, processing some,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you know, a situation with a friend, the same effect that you get from journaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And I was like, that is something, right? What a great tool. There are so many<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">people who want to get sober, like, quote unquote, on their own, right? And I feel<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like these are people that are hyper responsible, people who have trust issues, like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">they couldn&#8217;t rely on the people they grew up, like their family to be safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And so what a great tool for people who sort of fall into that category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yeah. Yeah. I think I really love that. And then I thought about it after. And I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">thought, yeah, it is like that. And even more so in the sense that there are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">things I can&#8217;t say to some of my friends. Right. Some things you shouldn&#8217;t say to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">your friends. I have like, I really, I do have the greatest friends in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But I hit a friend. I don&#8217;t think she&#8217;s going to listen to those. She said to me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">she&#8217;s hooking up with a married guy and she said, why can&#8217;t he leave his wife like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Jeremy left you for his mistress? She said that to her face. But she herself&#8217;s in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so much pain over this relationship. She&#8217;s still wrapped up in it. Yeah. I promise<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;ve known her<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">27, 20, almost 30 years. I know she didn&#8217;t mean it. And honestly, I laughed when<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">she said. She forgot who she was talking to. I laughed when she said it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I said, I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t know. Okay. I just want to offer a little, like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">apparently this is my day of confession. But when I was drinking, I often dated<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">married men. And I didn&#8217;t know that I dated married men because they were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">emotionally unavailable because I thought so little of myself that I could I couldn&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like real intimacy is somebody who&#8217;s willing to stand in front of you and look at<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you all of you good and bad and accept all of who you are like that to me is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">real intimacy and yeah by choosing people that were unavailable there was never any<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">threat of any real intimacy and that was all low self -esteem stuff. You know,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I think that is what&#8217;s going on with her. Maybe I should suggest that as a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">possible explanation. Girl sent her my way. I&#8217;ll talk to her. No, I mean,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">there is something about that, right? Yeah. It comes from not good enough,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">low self -esteem. Yeah. And I felt it. When she said that to me too, I felt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Like, I was like, it made me so sad for her. Yeah. It made me so sad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">She&#8217;s saying, why am I not good enough? Yeah. Oh, that&#8217;s so sad. I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I feel for her. Yeah, I hope she can get out of that. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">You said real empathetic. Oh,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah. Ho for show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Okay, listen, talk about when you said that journaling is like writing to a good<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">friend, that made me think of the power of two -way prayer. And that is sort of a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">really old Oxford group, like A was founded off of the Oxford group,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and they were like pretty strict, pretty religious. And of course, so the guy that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">wrote the book, The Power of Two -Way Prayer, was Father Bill. He&#8217;s a religious guy,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">so he&#8217;s kind of bringing it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And that&#8217;s just like talking to a friend, somebody who loves you. And I feel like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the great thing about it is you can define it anyway. You can define the other<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">side of the two any way you want. So you can call it your tuition, intuition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">You can call it your guides. You can call it a spiritual. You can call it whatever<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you want. It doesn&#8217;t have to fit anything specific. I actually we&#8217;ll ask questions<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">to my intuition to your intuition do you have this are you are you um spiritual do<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you believe in a god or a higher power or anything yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">spiritual no specific denomination but for sure i believe in yeah i believe in yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">i believe there&#8217;s a reason for everything um and so the intuition this is really<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">interesting is that my therapist said to me um you&#8217;ve spent your life learning to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">ignore your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that learning is really like healing is unlearning it&#8217;s like unlearning the the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">impulse to dissociate or push it down it&#8217;s like and it&#8217;s you know self avoidance<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">there&#8217;s this book by terra bra called radical self -acceptance yeah i think that&#8217;s i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">love this book like i know some people are like put off by the title but i that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">is the book I return to probably more than any other except for like the 12th step<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">literature because she talks in such a compassion it&#8217;s like a series of lecture have<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you have you heard it or read it yeah yeah yeah oh okay yeah so yeah she talks a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">lot about the self avoidance and the self avoidance is all about I have pain I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">don&#8217;t know how to resolve right and these journaling practices are a way to process<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">pain to resolution. Yeah. And I think it&#8217;s like, I think she talks,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I don&#8217;t know if she talks about in that book, but like that journaling is not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">always comfortable. No, no. Feelings are not. Like there are days where the last<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">thing I want to do is journal. Like if I&#8217;m really actively upset,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">it is really uncomfortable to journal. And sometimes I will skip it. I try not to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">when I&#8217;m really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah like giving yeah i resting is a thing like that is um that is resting is a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">tool for and it&#8217;s so funny because those of us who sort of identify with like the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">overachiever never good enough more doing more doing the doing the exact opposite<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">which is letting your nervous system calm down take take your anxiety offline for a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">minute like that&#8217;s you know people sort of use this idea of oh go go touch grass<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like in a sort of mean mean way but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">safety so scant isn&#8217;t that interesting so all these little tricks that we have i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">typically when i get really angry i need to talk to somebody i do that too yeah i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">need someone to talk me off the ledge so but when i&#8217;m really triggered i forget<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">who my friends are so i literally have a post -it note under my desk of so we um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">i interviewed shannon watts from mom to mom&#8217;s demand action She started after Sandy<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Hook for gun violence. And she was reading something or listening to a podcast that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">said, you should be able to count like five people you can call in the middle of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the night. And it can&#8217;t be your family. Yeah. And she realized she didn&#8217;t have five<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">people. And she really set out intentionally to create a community of women she<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">could rely on. And I think that&#8217;s really important in sobriety. I think that is,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I don&#8217;t know what I would have done during my divorce if I didn&#8217;t have the five<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">women. Yeah, for sure. When I sponsor women, I ask them to do what I call<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">willingness calls. And that is you make, you know, at least one phone call every<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">day to several different people. And the idea is that you&#8217;re willing to sort of go<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">outside your comfort zone and you connect. And you know, in our community,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">everybody&#8217;s like, Arlena&#8217;s making me do this thing. They&#8217;re like, yeah, we know. It&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">fine. It&#8217;s just got, but you get, you get five people that you call. And the point<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">is, it&#8217;s easier to call when you feel good. It&#8217;s very difficult to call when you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">feel bad. So we don&#8217;t rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">of our training. So if you put in the reps of making these phone calls when you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">feel good, you are way more likely to make the phone call when you feel bad. Yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you&#8217;re totally right. Yeah, it&#8217;s been a really good practice for me. And the thing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">is, is if you&#8217;re current with like even three people, you know, when the shit hits<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the fan and you call the first person and that&#8217;s out there, you get the second<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">person on the phone, you&#8217;re like, can I just, you know, talk to you for a few<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">minutes? you don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">five is good right but i think if you have a spouse and you have kids like you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">know especially like when you have older kids that you can like talk to i think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">probably where it&#8217;s that you know it&#8217;s so funny so my husband&#8217;s sober too we&#8217;ve<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">been together since i got i was like five months sober when we started dating but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">uh i started doing this thing with him and i need to vent i&#8217;ll be like he grew<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">up with women so he learned not to offer a solution. He learned to listen. But,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah, but the downside of that is sometimes I felt like I was talking to a plant<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">because he wouldn&#8217;t respond. So I&#8217;d be like, okay, I need to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m just going to vent. And at the end, I need a poor baby and a hug. And he&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, he&#8217;d be like, okay, go. So I&#8217;d be like, and pause. And I look at it and I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">go, poor baby. And he goes, oh, poor baby. Give me a hug. I can see how you&#8217;d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">feel that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does this funny thing where he&#8217;d be like, do<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you want me to hate them? Yes. Yes. I love that. Yeah,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">just always on my side, which is so funny. It makes me laugh because of course<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">not. I said that to my boyfriend the other day. Like I was like, you know, we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">don&#8217;t have to be compatible about like everything and like on every, you know, we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">have to be aligned on everything. But if I hate someone, you hate them. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">but they don&#8217;t fix, but they don&#8217;t know what to do instead. So we need to get<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">better at telling people what it is that we need from them. Love that. Yeah. More<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">baby to hug. Was there any other kind of journaling we should talk about or do you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">feel like that was good? I think there&#8217;s always like prompt based is always fun and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">good. I think it like gets you out of your head a bit and into like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">oh, wait, I hadn&#8217;t thought about that, right? If you really prompt from like, we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">have them on our substack. I think you have prompts, right, too, that you can,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like, give people, like, journal prompts. And so that&#8217;s really good. Yeah. And then<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the one that I just started using, but like a little bit briefly, I&#8217;ll do it while<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m doing like emotional journaling is like the somatic, which is like the body<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">scan. And so. And you&#8217;re writing out your body scam. So you&#8217;re kind of like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">like you kind of go for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I have anxiety or and something like that right like it&#8217;s just yeah so I like that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">or you&#8217;ll notice I&#8217;ll be like oh you know what my knee kind of hurts I&#8217;m going to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">take a Tylenol like or whatever it is but I think sometimes your body gives you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">clues that something else is going on and you don&#8217;t realize it yeah for sure I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">love that I had not heard of the body scan connected to journaling. That is,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">that&#8217;s genius. That&#8217;s really good. Yeah, our bodies have a lot of wisdom. And if<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you&#8217;ve experienced trauma when you&#8217;re young, we learn to dissociate from our body. So<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">this is a great way to sort of unlearn some of them. That is what it is. I have<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">learned to dissociate, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think I have a very, like, high<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">threshold for physical pain, too. So you don&#8217;t Sometimes it&#8217;s like, I need to stop<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and scan. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I love that. Well, listen, I kept you way longer than I had intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m glad you didn&#8217;t have a hard stuff because I feel like we covered a lot of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">ground, lots of different forms of journaling. But thank you so much for sharing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">your story and all the tools that have helped you. And I really appreciate the work<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">you&#8217;re doing. If people are interested in getting a hold of you, where can they<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">find you? Oh, you can head over to our substack at substack .sac .com. And so all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">our information is there or check out our podcast, Sisters and sobriety. Yeah, but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">thanks for having me, Arlena. Yeah, I had so much fun being a guest on your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">podcast. Is it out? It hasn&#8217;t come out yet. No, it hasn&#8217;t come out yet. Okay,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">yeah. I can&#8217;t wait to hear it because I had so much fun. I have no idea what I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">said. But I&#8217;m going to leave those that are listening i&#8217;m going to leave links in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">the show notes so if you&#8217;re driving you don&#8217;t have to try to remember all that but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">son it was such a pleasure to hang out with you again i thank you so much for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">everything that you shared today thank you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode, Sonia Kahlon from Sisters in Sobriety joins us for a deeply honest conversation about recovery, journaling, trauma, and rebuilding life after<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[91,84,44,43,23,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-12-step","category-addiction","category-alcoholism","category-betrayal","category-depression","category-divorce"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/odaatchat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Sonia-1-e1765318719874.png?fit=1080%2C796&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9npAr-1wM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5876"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5901,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions\/5901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odaatchat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}