SO, YOU HAD A SOBRIETY SLIP-UP?

If you’ve been trying to stay alcohol-free for a bit, and then you end up having a drink I want you to take a deep breath and read on. First of all, we don’t even call these instances a “slip-up” in my program.

Let me explain.

Along my own journey I have learned that no road to sobriety is linear. There is NOT one way. If you’re doing any sort of program that tells you that there is only one way to sobriety, I urge you to question that idea. There are some women, like myself, that simply had enough of feeling tired and hungover all the time. One morning I woke up and I said “No more!” but that doesn’t mean I didn’t put a ton of work into learning about why I was drinking and what alcohol was doing to me. I spent a lot of time doing various programs, reading everything about sobriety I could get my hands on, and eventually training to become a sobriety coach.

I never ever said “forever”. As humans, we can’t even understand what forever even really means, so why put a forever label on not drinking. Each day I just decided that for that one day, I wasn’t going to drink. Each day got better and better, and now I am to the point where I know what alcohol does to my brain and my body, for me I know it holds zero benefit, and thus, I don’t want to drink it.

Every one of us gets to this place differently. I had to have each experience in my life- every hangover, every embarrassing mistake I made while drinking, to get to the point where I felt like it was time to reevaluate my relationship with alcohol.

Remember, no journey is the same.

If you’ve been keeping alcohol-free for a while and then you have a drink, I want you to stop before you start going down the shame spiral of beating yourself up. In my coaching, and in the This Naked Mind methodology, we don’t call these instances “mistakes” we call them “data-points.”

We call them data-points because we use these instances, where you’ve had a drink after trying to quit, to discover DATA about why you went to the drink in the first place. During coaching, these data-points can be extremely valuable in the coach-coachee relationship because we get to figure out what you were feeling when you decided to have that glass of wine.

Were you exhausted? Angry? Sad? Were you hungry? What emotions led you to decide that wine was the answer to your feeling?

For example, if you were feeling stressed and decided that a glass of wine was the answer it gives us so much information and room for growth. It means we can figure out what made you stressed in the first place. Then, together we can learn tactics to put in place so that you make a better decision the next time around which actually helps you de-stress, and doesn’t add to your anxiety.

Here’s another example. If you’ve had a sober streak and you end up drinking at a party because of peer pressure from your girlfriends, don’t start cursing your own willpower. GET CURIOUS. Did you have a plan in place before going to the party. Did you bring your own non-alcoholic options? Did you rehearse what you were going to say when someone offered you a drink? Did you plan an exit strategy? These are the moments that we get to learn from so that you gain more strength and confidence to say “no thanks” the next time around.

If you’re trying to stay alcohol-free but keep having data-points, don’t worry. As I mentioned, this journey is not linear, it’s different for everyone. The key point is to give yourself tons of grace and compassion and try to learn from these instances.

With each and every data-point, you are one step closer to the total freedom of losing the desire to drink. If you need help getting there and would like a friend to help you along the way, why not book a free chat at this link and we can see if we are a good fit for coaching. I’d love to meet you, coach you through your data-points and show you how incredible and fulfilling life can be without alcohol.