99. Is Wine Your Coping Mechanism? It's Not About the Alcohol, with Colleen Freeland

The Wine Guilt Cycle

Cheryl Fischer 0:00

Okay, my friend. We have to talk about something that I believe plagues a lot of us. And it plagues me. I'll just tell you that right now. And that is really enjoying a glass of wine or a cocktail or a beer, whatever it is, and then feeling bad about it. And then feeling like maybe I shouldn't have it as often as I do. And then waking up the next day and thinking, well, I'm not going to do that again because I didn't sleep well. And we're not talking about heavy drinking. And we're not really talking about something that you would call an addiction. We're talking about that middle ground where we maybe don't feel great about it and yet we don't know what to do. And we stick in that cycle. So I have ideas for you today. Let's talk about it. Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind Your Midlife Podcast. Before

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Cheryl Fischer 1:33

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Midlife Sleep And The Tipping Point

Cheryl Fischer 2:07

Now back to the show. I'm not sure what age it was. I'm thinking it wasn't until my 50s, I'm in my mid-50s now, that this really started happening. But as soon as I see what I'm talking about, you're gonna be nodding. I know you are. Some of you will have had this hit you earlier, younger, but somewhere in my early 50s, I started finding that if I had two or three glasses of wine, I did not sleep well. And that never used to happen to me. Now, on a regular basis, I don't have three glasses of wine, but I might have one or two. And there was this, there was this like flipping, turning, what am I trying to say? There was this tipping point after about one and a half glasses, that if I kept going, I just I wouldn't sleep that well. And I would feel tired the next day. And I don't know if it was from the wine or from the not sleeping well, but it doesn't matter. The next day I would think, why did I do that? Why didn't I just have one glass, or why did I have any? But then I would decide that I wasn't going to have any, but I would want to go out for a happy hour with friends, or I would want to sit and read my book on the deck with a glass of wine, and I would want to just enjoy that. And so I would do it. It's such a tricky thing because if we're repeating an action over and over again and then making ourselves feel bad about it, what are we doing? What are we doing? I think the problem is we sometimes get stuck in that because we think that the solution to this is to not ever drink wine again. Or wine is what I like. That's I'm using that, but alcohol. We think we have to stop completely. Now that is a good solution, and maybe it was for you, or it is going to be for you. There's nothing wrong with that solution. However, for a lot of us, it's not really about the alcohol. We don't have an addiction to alcohol. We have a habitual behavior that is creating this shame, not feeling great spiral. And we just need a way out of that. It's

Meet Colleen And Emotional Sobriety

Cheryl Fischer 4:40

not about the alcohol at all. So I was fascinated to find Colleen Freeland. She is my guest today, and she is the founder of Emotional Sobriety Coaching, and she hosts a top-ranked podcast called It's Not About the Alcohol. You will definitely want to check that out. It'll the link will be in the show notes, of course. She has helped thousands of high-achieving professional women to transform into the version of themselves that can take it or leave it when it comes to drinking. So emotional sobriety is a skills-based approach she uses based on mindfulness, nervous system regulation, understanding neuroplasticity, meaning we can change our habits and the way we think, that helps her clients retrain their brains to work for them instead of against them. And that is fascinating. And you will hear her say she was a high-functioning, pretty heavy daily drinker for over 20 years. So she has a very significant story and had to figure out a way to move through that and to feel good about it. So I know this conversation is going to be intriguing. Welcome, Colleen. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me, Cheryl. I'm excited for this conversation. I really am too. This is gonna speak to a lot of people in a very intriguing way. I I almost wish this was a group discussion, but we will make do with the two of us. Okay. Your central message is that solving the problem I'm gonna call too much drinking that sometimes we deal with and we wanna fix, is not about totally stopping drinking. It doesn't have to be abstinence. It is about fixing the underlying problems. So let's start with who is this woman who has this too much drinking problem and what is what is she struggling with?

Colleen Freeland 6:52

Well, I

Too Much Drinking As Self Neglect

Colleen Freeland 6:53

s I work with a very specific type of drinker. I don't say that my approach works for everybody. I work with extremely high-functioning, professional, successful people who are high-functioning in all areas of their life. They are still running circles around everybody else, even if they're a little hungover. Like they don't stop. So I'm not talking about the people who are, you know, getting DUIs and not being able to hold jobs, their lives are imploding. My woman has the picture perfect life. She's worked very hard to get where she's at. And now that she is where she's supposed to feel like she has everything, has found like this low grade sense of emptiness. And the reality, when you ask, when you talk about the too much drinking, too much drinking is not self-indulgent, it's a symptom of self-neglect. So alcohol becomes a coping mechanism, which makes sense because you can get it without going to a doctor, it's socially acceptable and it works until it doesn't. And so it's a way to cope with the fact that you are running on a deficit. You're putting out more than you're taking in. And so now there's a gap, and alcohol helps fill that gap. And for a long time, it seems to work like that. But the bottom line for for my women is that they're the too much drinking is a sign that they feel like things, they're not enough. It's never enough. They're always late, they're behind, they're living in a chronic state of urgency. And that's an internal thing that they just don't understand. They just think if I get this one more thing done, if I finish this project as soon as I get through the season, then I'm gonna relax. Meanwhile, it's kind of like telling yourself you're gonna wait to pee till the end of the season. Like your body's like, your body says, I can't keep up with my brain. So at some point it hits the override, pour me a drink and give me some relief.

Cheryl Fischer 8:55

Yeah, you know, it's funny. Uh maybe a month or so ago, I emailed my newsletter list with a whole email about don't save it until the summer or until the end of the week or until next year. That's never gonna come. It's never gonna happen. You're never gonna have time. It's funny that you brought that up. I think it's such a slippery slope on how we define for ourselves whether we're drinking too much. And it definitely resonates with me what you're describing. And I think it can even just be, you know, you get used to having a drink each evening after work, and that's fine. And then maybe that turns into two, and then you realize at some point along the way, you get together with your friends. Maybe it's more than that. Like it's become a habit that you can't break. And then you feel bad, right? The next you don't sleep well, let's say, because that's a problem we have in midlife all the time. And you wake up and you say, I'm not doing that again. And then 5 30 comes around and you're like, Oh, but it just feels nice. So it's a it's a feelings thing in some cases.

Colleen Freeland 10:02

Yes, and something happens very specifically in the

Positive Vs Negative Reinforcement

Colleen Freeland 10:06

brain. There's a neurological shift. And I will tell you the day I started daily drinking, didn't plan it. I just didn't fall asleep sober again for 15 years. And I had been on vacation with my family, four little kids, youngest was two, magical, collecting shells on the beach at sunrise and grilling on the beach and playing with our friends. And then, of course, the 15-hour car ride home with four sunburnt little kids. And we slide into town, I get the kids to bed, school's the next morning, and I have a choice in that moment. And I'm like, I don't want to wake up to a mess. So I start unpacking the car. I'm gonna power through. And there was leftover of vodka and cranberry juice in the cooler. And I thought, I'll just pour myself a drink. I didn't over-drink that night. I didn't wake up hungover. In fact, I woke up morally superior because the crowd I was with, none of those ladies had their stuff all together. And I was teaching hot power aerobics, you know, at 9 a.m. the next morning, feeling very good about myself. But that night something switched in my brain. Instead of needing alcohol or wanting alcohol to enhance an already positive situation, vacation, date night, girls' weeks, holidays, it wasn't adding. That's called positive reinforcement, is when alcohol is adding to an already pleasurable event. Negative reinforcement is when it bridges the gap and makes a negative situation a little more tolerable. So my brain learned that night that alcohol isn't just for parties, it's also mommy's little helper. And so I had a shift subconsciously. I didn't think about that, right? But I had a shift. And then by the next day, when it was time to walk my boys to baseball, and I'm exhausted because I'd been up half the night, I thought, I think I'll just put a little more vodka in my yeti. And there it went. So then, you know, there were times I was drinking for positive reinforcement, but the habit develops when it becomes a coping mechanism. Again, to help you tolerate something that you really shouldn't be tolerating. I should have just gone to bed and put my own needs. But my brain said, I need this mess to be cleaned up. I need to wake up to a clean house. Go, go, and do not stop.

Cheryl Fischer 12:26

Wow. That just that simple way of thinking about it is gonna help me already tremendously. Is this adding to the experience I'm having right now, or is it compensating for something? Is it a negative thing? That's huge to think about it that way. Interesting.

Colleen Freeland 12:44

It's very helpful because it also kind of removes the guilt, feeling bad. It makes sense that I want it that I want to have a drink right now. I call them the alcohol commercials because with alcohol use disorder, it's a thinking problem. The problem for most of my clients is not actually how much they drink, it's how much they think about drinking. And what happens when your brain starts to associate alcohol with stress relief, then anytime you feel stress, it starts playing the alcohol commercials, like, oh, I can't wait to have a drink when I get home. Oh, you know, as soon as I get out of here, I'm gonna blow off some steam, take off the edge. And so your brain is always just trying to help you solve a problem. That's how the habit develops. But when you start using alcohol for stress relief, addiction, habit dependency, it's a spectrum. Don't be don't use scary words, but it develops five times faster because of the negative reinforcement. Like somebody who just drinks a lot because they're a simolier or they live on the beach and they're a restaurant owner, they might go 15 to 20 years without feeling like it's really a problem or that they're struggling to cut back. But somebody who's using alcohol to cope with their daily life, that dependency is gonna set in within a couple of years. So it's all about the why.

Cheryl Fischer 14:10

Goodness, isn't that always true? Isn't that always true? Okay, so let me ask you this.

Why Cold Turkey Can Backfire

Cheryl Fischer 14:17

I know that a lot of women, and in fact, some people that I know personally have decided the way I'm gonna combat this, because I do feel like maybe it's a crutch now and uh I don't sleep well, all that. The way I'm gonna combat this is I'm gonna stop. I'm getting it all out of my house. I don't need it, I'm just gonna stop. So, what happens when when we try to do that? Just cold turkey stop.

Colleen Freeland 14:44

Well, first of all, it's not if you can do that and that's the first step in the right direction, great. Like, I am not saying that you shouldn't just get it all out of your house. Good point. But what happens often it becomes the nothing in the all-or-nothing cycle. So you think about doing a dry January and you're kind of white knuckling and you actually feel really good, but that reward, like February's coming. February's coming. And and what's so dismaying, it's kind of like those Chinese finger cuffs, you know, it's like the harder you pull away from it, the tighter it gets. Because if you are white knuckling, meaning you're just using willpower to not drink and it feels hard, yeah, then you're not experiencing not drinking as positive. So your brain isn't learning, I want more of this. Now it's not all or nothing because you might be feeling really good. And you're like, oh, if I could just keep this up for the rest of my life, that's great. But if you don't solve the underlying pattern, which is I'm not enough, I need to do more, be more, get more, have more, then you're gonna end up just switching one coping mechanism for another. And so that might be, you know, scrolling on your phone, or I know when I quit drinking for a while, I gained like 10 pounds in three months because I didn't I didn't understand that this was an emotional issue because I didn't identify as an emotional drinker. I didn't get mad, I didn't get angry. Sometimes I got a little silly and a lot of times I just fell asleep, but I didn't understand the underlying emotions and that the emotions really weren't about the alcohol. I never thought I was addicted to alcohol. Right. I just needed something to help me take the edge off. And so that's why just giving it up can be a first step. But if you don't solve the pattern that's driving the drinking, then you either end up compensating or in a different way, or you train your brain that not drinking is hard. And then it's like trying to hold your breath forever, and you're finally just like, I guess I'm just gonna have a drink because I can't keep doing this. And then you end up back in the cycle.

Cheryl Fischer 17:01

And then added guilt and shame on top of it because you know you're not doing what you said you were gonna do. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And for myself, I have decided occasionally that, okay, on the weekdays, I'm not gonna have my glass of wine anymore. It's not healthy for me. I'll just have my glasses of wine on the weekend. But I really enjoy wine. So I'll see someone having a glass of wine on a show, or I'll read about it in a book, or my neighbor will be having a glass of wine, and I'm like, why can't I have a glass of wine? That's not fair. And so there's just all that, it's a it's a it's mindset and emotion, you're absolutely right. But there's all that kind of torn up and mixed up in there.

Colleen Freeland 17:45

Yes, and underneath it is negative thinking. And I don't mean negative like it's negative to want to drink less. But your brain can't imagine the absence of a behavior. Not drinking is not something you're gonna look forward to. And this is why there's so much rich tools that you can use. You

Delay Don’t Deny And New Pleasures

Colleen Freeland 18:10

know, you're not saying no to alcohol, you're saying yes to yourself. I teach my clients how to set emotional goals. And really, if you are not in a dangerous predicament with alcohol where it's a threat to your health or your job or something like that, what you want to do is kind of like two ships passing in the night, where like when that when that scene comes on and the wine comes in, sometimes I get the same thing and like, ooh, that sounds good. And then I'm immediately like, you know what else sounds good? Uh, reading my book and going to bed, or making myself a cup of hot tea. You know, our there has to be something in it for our bodies. And so what I teach my clients to do is develop the neural pathways three, five, 10 minutes at a time. Say one of my strategies, delay, don't deny. So you come home from work and instead of pouring the glass of wine the second you walk in the door, find something for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes that you can do that that invites pleasure. It's not watching the clock and getting the trophy because you made it an hour. It's actually taking that time to put on some music or go lay down on your bed and do a five-minute reset or journal a little bit or walk the dog, remembering that you enjoy other things. Because what happens with any habit is there's a collapse of the neural pathway. What once was, I feel really stressed. I could go to the gym, I could have a drink, I could exercise, I think I'll have a drink, becomes I'll just have a drink. You got to push the drop-down menu and remember and retrain your body to experience other things as soothing and comforting. And that's how you build back the neural pathways. It's a physical experience, which is why you can't just decide, well, I'm just gonna have two drinks on the weekends and no drinks during the week. It's like, no, I'm going to learn how to enjoy on the weeknights. I'm gonna choose three other things I want to learn to enjoy. I'm gonna spend time cultivating and nurturing that. And then if I want to have a glass of wine, I can. It's like it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You're just building out the neural pathways so that you're feeling connected. Like when I think about, do I want a glass of wine? And then I think about my cozy lamp in my room and my sheets that smell so good and that book that I like. Uh, that's not even a fair fight. I'm going to bed. You know? But I but it there's a lot of work that needs to be done. You have to fantasize, imagine, mentally rehearse doing other things. And then slowly those pathways will come back online.

Cheryl Fischer 20:54

Really, really interesting. And I think maybe by accident, I've done this occasionally because I took up knitting about a year ago, and I have learned that I maybe could knit properly with one glass of wine. But uh beyond that, no. And I really shouldn't have any because I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes and I'm gonna get frustrated. And so I have been pretty successful at allowing myself to say, do I feel like knitting in my cozy chair and really making some progress on this thing I want? Or do I want to have a glass of wine and allowing myself to make that choice? And so I sort of accidentally fell into that, but it sounds like something that you would recommend. Like there's there's this other thing that's good.

Colleen Freeland 21:39

The reality is that all of my strategies are very commonsensical. It's just we don't think about it. You know, we have you the even the mental rehearsal, we mentally rehearse every speech we're gonna give or every podcast we're gonna be on. Like we're always thinking in a Imagining ourselves in situations, you know, there are studies that show that mentally rehearsing physical exercise, a bicep curl or a fist, uh, fist strengthener, that if you do that and just imagine you're doing it, your strength goes up by like 17%. The power of your mind is amazing.

Nervous System Tools Over Willpower

Colleen Freeland 22:21

But the problem is with alcohol use disorder, most of us start thinking it's gonna be so hard to not drink tonight. Oh, I said I'm not gonna drink this week and it's gonna be, everybody's gonna be drinking. It's not gonna be any, you are mentally rehearsing misery, is what you are doing. And so part of that is noticing the state of your nervous system, which is the foundation of everything I teach. Because if you're mentally rehearsing misery, the problem is not the scenes in your mind. The problem is the feeling of dread, frustration, anger, resentment in your body. So you have to learn how to regulate your nervous system. And then it's really easy to think the thoughts you want to think. But it's kind of like shifting the gear from positive or negative before you put your foot on the gas. Like you got to know, am I going forward? Or is this thought process sending me backwards? Get out of the thought process, somatic tools, sensation without explanation, just coming back into your body, moving through neutral, and then deciding what do I want to think about? How do I want to envision myself? What would I like more of? You know, so many of my clients, what would you be doing if you weren't drinking? They can't even answer the question. They're mental blind spots.

Cheryl Fischer 23:31

You know, I I think that is probably potentially an even bigger issue in this midlife phase that my audience is in and that I'm in, and that you're in. And it's it happens that there's so much change going on for us. There's so much pressure. There's a lot of people that we have to take care of. Our bodies are changing, and maybe our evenings feel different than they used to. We don't have to run the kids around to the stuff anymore, and we feel like I have nothing to do, and so this is what I'm gonna do. There's just all that stuff going on, too, that I could see would be a piece of this.

Colleen Freeland 24:12

Yeah, and we don't normalize in our culture, and you know, the coming of age story is usually the the 18-year-old young man, yeah, right. Yeah, and we have to constantly be coming of age. Like every life period is a transition. And most of us don't even think about it. I mean, it makes sense, right? I'm telling you, this is all common sense, but like take we don't ever slow down to check in with ourselves. You know, our needs, our wants are always changing. You know, what I wanted at 21 and at 31 and at 41 and at 51, it's always changing. And what happens is we get set in this pattern. This is what my life should look like. This is what success is. And these are my friends, and this is what I do and how I do it. And we get into the habits, which is normal. That's how our brain automates and makes us efficient. But then as those things kind of come to a natural end, our brains still run in the same program. And then we start feeling bad and unfulfilled. And really, it's just about checking in. You

Mindfulness And Reconnecting To Your Body

Colleen Freeland 25:21

know, the truth of the way I teach changing your drinking is you don't need willpower. You need mindfulness. Your body doesn't enjoy ever drinking a full bottle of wine, or even two or three glasses of wine. Like you're checked out. You know, I can remember one time drinking an entire bottle of wine before my husband got home, and I didn't want him to know it. I didn't mean to drink the whole bottle, but shit, I got to get rid of it and hide it. And I didn't feel even slightly buzzed to the point where I thought, somebody's watered that down, or I got a bad bash. Like, is that a thing? And I took the breathalyzer, because of course I carried a breathalyzer in my purse, like a normal person, and I was more than twice the legal limit. And I could not feel it. And it's not that I had a high tolerance for alcohol, I wasn't feeling anything. My brain was always three steps ahead of my body. Of course, I'm thinking about the third drink before I finish the first, because that's how my brain was working. And so plugging your brain back into your body, it doesn't take willpower to not hit yourself in the head with a hammer or a wine bottle. It just doesn't. It's not hard.

Cheryl Fischer 26:31

Wow. Interesting. And what I was thinking when you gave that example is oh, because you're drinking so often, your tolerance must be very high. But it's it's more than that, it's deeper than that.

Colleen Freeland 26:46

A true story, you can say you have a high tolerance for alcohol, but what you really have a high tolerance for is ignoring yourself. You can go four hours and not pee. You can forget to eat or keep eating and not stop eating. You're not feeling anything, you're not present for it. So a high tolerance for alcohol is just a high tolerance for a lot of bullshit.

Cheryl Fischer 27:07

Yeah. Wow, such an interesting perspective. It's that's gonna stick with me for sure. And I'm sure if you're listening, all of this is gonna stick with you also. And so, Colleen, let me ask you this. If if someone is listening and she's thinking, Oh, I kind of hear myself in some of these examples, uh, what should she do if she wants to kind of start changing this behavior?

Colleen Freeland 27:30

All right, put your hand on your heart. Nothing has gone wrong. This isn't a problem, it's an invitation. You know, if my drinking had been 25% less bad, I'd still be struggling. If my marriage had been 25% less awful, I'd still be married. The pain is what wakes you up. And so if it's niggling at you and it's it's like, first of all, there is a solution, and the solution is coming home to yourself. This is the best news ever. It doesn't require effort, it requires a completely different strategy of how you're running your life. Right now, you're letting your emotions control you. Nothing to do with alcohol. The urgency, the anxiety, the I'm never done, it's never enough, I have to worry about what everybody thinks. The strategies that got you here and built the life that looks so pretty on the outside and feels real empty on the inside, the strategies that got you here aren't going to take you to the next level. And it is possible to reconnect with yourself and embody the version of you that you want to be without making any external changes and still enjoying your wine. You just have to realize the journey is inside. It's not about efforting and trying harder and just getting your shit together and being more disciplined. It's actually learning how to relax in the middle of a stressful day, learning how to stay regulated. That is the skill that nobody ever taught little girls. We were taught to perform, nurture, be nice, take care of everybody else, put ourselves last, be as small as possible, and as nice as possible, and also pretty if you can be that too. Midlife, if you're drinking too much, hand to heart, nothing has gone wrong. This is my invitation to put myself first again, to say yes to myself, not no to alcohol.

Cheryl Fischer 29:30

That's powerful. It's powerful because the thing that gets me about talking about this topic is I don't personally think alcohol is bad. And I enjoy drinking wine, and I just don't want it to be this weird, bad, negative thing for me. And I know there's so many people in the same boat. I mean, it's all of everything we're talking about today. So I like this perspective very

Where To Find Colleen And The Quiz

Cheryl Fischer 29:55

much. If somebody is really thinking, I want to learn more about what Colleen actually is doing, where can they find you?

Colleen Freeland 30:03

Easy. My handles on social media. I am the hangover whisperer. My podcast is It's Not About the Alcohol. And my website is emotional sobrietycoaching.com. Perfect.

Cheryl Fischer 30:17

And I will make sure all of that is in the show notes. And you have a little quiz, I believe, that people can take to see kind of what type of drinker they are. Is that right?

Colleen Freeland 30:27

Yeah, because you can't break the pattern if you until you see the pattern. And I've worked with thousands of women, and these patterns that I've already been alluding to, the not enough, the urgency, there's some women are really sensitive, some women are really anxious, some women are stress drinkers, some women are habit drinkers. And so when you take the quiz, it just kind of shows you your patterns and shows you where you need to put the work in. Uh because it's not about the alcohol. That's the name of my podcast. It's not about the alcohol, it's the patterns that are driving the drinking. You know, you don't. I had a gal the other day who was like, Yeah, when I drink, I get out of flow. And I'm like, no, when you get out of flow, you drink because you've run yourself into the ground, you are out of gas, and you don't have the capacity to stay in flow. It's like it, the cause and effect is very upside down. We think the drinking is the problem, but it's really the output, not the input. It's the effect, not the cause. The cause are these patterns that we've been brainwashed, programmed, trained to run so that we perform and produce and ignore ourselves. Those are the that's where the work has to be done.

Cheryl Fischer 31:40

Yeah, because if we're running, and I I coach people on this aspect of it all the time, but if we're running nonstop, always, with our nervous system riled up, not paying attention to what we want or what we need, not only are we not making good decisions or having good ideas, our bodies are going to be all messed up because we're not digesting properly. There's all kinds of things going on in there. So this is also a piece of that. Yeah.

Colleen Freeland 32:05

It's a very holistic approach. Alcohol's the symptom. You know, it's the sign I put on my door. Do you drink too much? You can bring your drink. Come with me. But it's really a bait and switch because it's not about the alcohol. It's about reconnecting with your body, with your desires, with your values. It's it's such gentle, deep, wonderful work. It's not just behavior change. I mean, of course, we do that because yeah, you got to put a little effort in with the habit change. But for the most part, it's becoming the version of you who doesn't need or want to use alcohol to dampen down what needs her attention.

Cheryl Fischer 32:45

Yes, I think that's gonna resonate. So here's what I always think uh as we do these podcast episodes. I think people are listening while they're doing the laundry or driving or doing the dishes, and they're they're not gonna remember everything. So, what is the one thing that you really want someone who's listening right now to remember and take away from this?

Colleen Freeland 33:09

That it's completely normal for high-achieving performance-driven women to need a coping mechanism. There is nothing wrong with you. And maybe your friends are different, maybe they're using different coping mechanisms, but you are not broken, you are not weak, you do not lack discipline, you lack connection and mindfulness. Here's your invitation. Like your pain is your portal.

Cheryl Fischer 33:38

And such a good point because we've been talking about alcohol, but there's a million different things we could be using as a coping mechanism. It could be food, it could be all kinds of things that are so simple and we might not even realize. So that's a very good point.

Colleen Freeland 33:52

Yeah, and and it's not just the things we're doing to cope with the stress, it's the things that are causing the stress, the people pleasing, bending over backwards for everybody because we think that's what we're supposed to do. That's what we're really coping with, is the fact that nobody ever told us that our needs are not actually negotiable.

Cheryl Fischer 34:12

Yeah, so true. So true. All right. Well, you've given me a lot to think about in my own personal story as well. So thank you so much for joining me, Colleen.

Colleen Freeland 34:24

Thank you, Cheryl. It was good to be here.

Cheryl Fischer 34:26

Oh

Key Takeaways And Closing Reflection

Cheryl Fischer 34:27

my goodness. There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with me. Needing a coping mechanism in a tricky, confusing, changing, difficult part of life is normal. And I'll tell you what, when Colleen had me put my hand on my heart a few minutes ago, maybe you did it as well. That was powerful. So much of what we talk about on mind your midlife is about being kind to ourselves and taking just a little bit, just a little bit, better care of ourselves. And figuring out what's underneath a habit is really powerful because, like we were just saying, it doesn't have to be about alcohol. I'm gonna put in the show notes the link to an episode I recently did with Tricia Nelson about emotional eating. It could be about food, it could be about many things. When there's a habit that creates shame and guilt for us, it's a coping mechanism. And if we can find out what's underneath, we can really solve it. So I hope that's empowering for you. I know, I know I'm gonna be holding on to this idea of when I have a drink, is it a positive adding to my experience, or is it a negative covering and coping? Really good question to be asking ourselves. And so keep remembering, midlife is your time to take just a little bit better care of yourself. On the outside, your body, your actions, your people, and on the inside, and that's all about mindset. Just a little bit more care makes a huge difference.