Transcript:

Julie: So we have the coolest group of guests today. I’m really excited about this, I feel like it’s going to be an amazing conversation. I am going to have everybody go ahead and do introductions first. I’m going to start with Andrew. How are you today?

Andrew: I’m doing really good Julie. Thank you for having me on. First of all, I’ll give you a brief intro of who I am? I work for Palm Beach Recovery Centers. It’s a detox in South Florida. I’ve been sober for 2 years, a month and 5 days. I’m really proud of that fact, because I spent so much time going in and out, and my job is to be as helpful as possible. That’s how it look at it today.

Steve: Dang, 2 years, a month, 5 days, so you would’ve been… March 10 of 2021? I’m March 14 of 2021. I’m 4 days after you.

Andrew: I had to go to my app to see how long I’d been sober, I didn’t really expect to stay sober this long. (laughs)

Julie: That’s really cool. That’s a really cool story, and we’re so proud of you because it is really hard to get out of that cycle. So good job, and thank you so much for everything you do for the sober community. And next we’re going to go with Jean.

Jean: Hi! Hi, I’m Jean, I also have a March sober birthday, March 20. But for me it was 12 years in March. Feels like about 5 minutes sometimes. I feel like the first couple of weeks feel like an eternity, and since then it’s just flown by. It’s odd, almost, how fast time goes. I am recovering out loud, so I use my last name when I’m taking about recovery. So Jean McCarthy. If people have heard me before, it would probably be from the Bubble Hour podcast. I’ve also launched a podcast called Tiny Bubbles, which is a short, quick version of the Bubble Hour. Obviously it’s not an hour, it’s like the non-hour version of the Bubble Hour. And I also got sober by writing a blog and shed my anonymity over the years. I started blogging as Unpickled, and eventually shed anonymity and published a couple of books. So I write about it, I talk about it, and I like to jump in and help out where I can because I think podcasts really helped me in the early days. And I really appreciate anyone who is willing to put the voice out there because it helps so much when you’re looking for answers. Thanks for having me.

Julie: It really does. I’m gonna gush really quick. When I first got sober, the first sober literature that I ever read was your blog. I don’t know if a blog is actually literature…

Jean: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Julie: But I found Unpickled on my second or third day of sobriety, and there were days that I would just be laying there, almost in tears, not sure how I was going to get through the rest of the day. And I would just read your posts over and over. It was the first time that I didn’t feel alone. So it is an absolute honor to actually meet you, and I am so grateful that you shared everything that you did in your blog, because it had a huge affect on me and my recovery. So thank you for being here!

And last but not least, we have Steph.

Steph: Yeah, I’m Steph. Some of you may know me from my Instagram handle which is thisisstephsober and I am 11 days away from being 16 months sober. I did not get sober in March, so I’m not part of that (laughs) but I did get sober the day after Christmas, so that’s a big feat. Really hard time to get sober. But yeah, I host two sober podcasts now. I started my first one, This is Steph Sober back in August of last year as a way to give back to the sober community because also, I found sober podcasting this huge outlet for me and something that really just kept pounding that narrative in my head. I needed that in the beginning like you wouldn’t believe. I needed to know that alcohol was bad and that sobriety was good. So it was my way of giving back. And then I just recently teamed up with Kate, which you guys have had on your podcast. Her handle on Instagram, which is how a lot of people know her, is walkingthestraightline, and her and I just teamed up and now we do a podcast together called The Sober Effect. So we’re on episode 6 and it’s been going really well. And it’s been just another outlet, but now I feel like just so much sobriety stuff on my plate and I love it! It’s just so fun. I want to thank you guys for having me on, because I think because I host two podcasts, people just don’t ask me very often to come on, and I was thrilled when you guys reached out. I’m like, “Yes, I would love to!” So thank you.

Julie: So cool! Yeah, you know, podcasting is an amazing thing because it really helps hold us accountable and support our own recovery in addition to sharing with the rest of the community. So, two podcasts is a lot, I know how much one podcast is for us, so thank you for taking the time to be here and thank you for all that you do.

So for our topic today – over the course of the past 35 episodes that we have recorded, we’ve heard so many people say they quit drinking and they realize they didn’t even know who they were. So I thought that would make a great topic for today. How did you start figuring out your identity once alcohol no longer played a central role in that? What was hard, and what have you learned? And if there’s anything you’re still struggling with, we’d love to hear about that too. Anybody is welcome to start…

Steph: I’ll go first! I feel like I just spoke, but I’ll go first. For me, I love this subject because it is actually something I’ve really been thinking about a lot lately. I thought about it a lot right away, obviously because you get sober, you learn very quickly how much you were depending on alcohol to… for me, it was like putting on a mask. I started drinking at 14. The reason I started drinking at 14 is because I wanted to fit in with the cool kids. For me it was a way – I’m very introverted – so it made me more extroverted, it made me feel cool, it made me be someone I really wasn’t. And it just morphed. As the years went on and I just continued to use that to essentially people please. To help other people feel comfortable. And as an adult, it became mommy wine culture. I wanted to drink to fit in with those groups of women. When I got sober I actually had a very profound moment, or realization, in the shower one day. I was about four months sober, where it just hit me that that person was gone. That version of me. I tried to hold onto her for a really long time, even when I first got sober I remember telling my drinking friends, “Oh it’s fine. I’m going to get sober but don’t feel like you can’t drink around me. It’ll be fine. I can not drink and you guys can drink and nothing’s going to change.” I finally got to a point where… because as you get sober you start really embracing who you are, and at least for me I started unraveling beliefs that alcohol fueled. Beliefs that really weren’t mine. Beliefs that society created. So I had this profound moment in the shower where I just realized I can’t keep holding on to her. I just realized, one foot was over here and one foot was over there and I was in full split and I had to let go. And I had to let go of her. And I cried and cried and sobbed and grieved her like a loss. But then I also had to thank her because she got me sober. She’s the one that had to wake up to the fact that she was fake, she wasn’t real, it wasn’t in alignment. It was a whole process but it was a beautiful process because part of my sobriety that I always talk about is feeling it all. I had a lot of anxiety and suffered for 17 years and found out when I got sober that it was just because I was such a heavy drinker. The anxiety went away when the alcohol did, so there was a lot of new coping skills that had to be developed because I never learned anything different starting at 14. That’s just what I did. So yeah, I think to answer the question of what is still hard? What’s still hard is that people pleasing, it’s still falling back into that pattern of doing things to keep other people comfortable. That was the whole point of my drinking. The minute I quit drinking it made those people very uncomfortable. They’d be like, wait you’re going to quit drinking You mean forever? That made me feel bad, because oh my gosh, I made them feel bad. So I still deal with that from time to time. If anyone resonates with that I don’t know but it is a big part of my sober journey, for sure.

Jean: Oh, I want to jump in because I’ve got the same but different thing going on. I have to say that alcohol wasn’t a part of my identity externally so much, I think I drank to cope with the weight of the disconnect between the me the I presented to the world as a woman in business – being really tough and assertive and that’s not actually me at all – but feeling like I had to be this way. And so I would come home and drink at night to cope with the discomfort of feeling like the real me was exhausted by trying to be this version of me that I put out. And it wasn’t that it was a fake version of me, it was kind of a heightened version of my skills and it was a lot to try to do that all the time. I started drinking primarily because when I went to bed at night I would lay there and think about all the things I did that day where I almost let it slip, where someone almost saw the real me or where I didn’t quite live up to the version of me that I wanted to be. I would just berate myself and I would dissect the day, or if that failed I would think back to things 5 years ago, 10 years ago! Oh like that time I spanked my toddler – he was a teenager by then – but I would just berate myself. I would lay awake for hours and just ruminate. And then cry, and then I’d get into worrying about the next day because, “Oh, God, I’m going to be tired tomorrow and I’m going to look awful.” So having a good snort of wine before bed helped me go to sleep before all that started. As I went into my 30’s and into my 40’s, I needed more and more and more for that to work and it started earlier and earlier in the day. And then I started pretending it was part of my identity, of being like a classy wine drinking lady because I actually needed it a lot. But I never wanted people to see me drunk because that didn’t fit with the original brand I was trying to project. So then I had to hide it. And then I had two problems – I was not this person I was pretending to be, and I was coping with the extra stress of trying to manage my drinking problem and trying to hide my drinking problem and hate myself for having a drinking a problem. It was so circular and exhausting and so much work. So when I did quit, it was hard in a way because I thought, how am I going to cope without alcohol? It never occurred to me to just be more authentic. That wasn’t an option. And it never occurred to think, “Who am I really, and what do I want to be like?” But at some point over the years I started absorbing the message to build a life that I didn’t need to numb from and realizing that that would come from being more authentic. So the firs thing I did was start calling anxiety anxiety. I used to always call it stress because I had this… I want to say belief but it was more like a bumper sticker. “Stress is for strong people and anxiety is for weak people. And I’m strong, so I have stress.” But I really realized that was just a smoke screen for myself so I started calling anxiety what it was. And then as years went on, I started working on what was behind the anxiety. So it’s almost like every few years, another layer peels off and I go a little bit deeper and I learn a little bit more about myself. And I was really afraid that the anxiety had some mysterious source in childhood trauma and I was going to need to go through all this Ayahuasca stuff to uncover trauma. (laughs) And you know what, it turned out it was none of that, it didn’t have to do with that at all really. It was more to do with shame, and what I’m realizing now is that I have some pretty mild forms of adhd that my kids have. I had so much shame about being forgetful or distracted. I was always so on myself to be on task, to be a good girl and be likable and people pleasing and all of that. I was just riding my own butt all the time. And to now finally be able to say, “Actually, this is just how my brain works.” If I have to go back downstairs six times for the same cup of coffee, or if I lose my i-phone five times a day, that’s not me being dumb. Just labels, right? I would have all these labels and I would talk to myself in the third person, like, “Oh Jean, ugh.” Now I’m at a point where I can so, “Oh, this is how this works for me.” Now I can get my steps in, walking around the house looking for al the things I forget. (laughs) Its a lot gentler, that’s for sure.

Julie: That’s really cool, the gentler. That is hard. I know like Steph was saying, you started starting drinking when you were 14. And I didn’t start drinking heavily until my 20’s, but I definitely was dabbling in alcohol and a little bit in drugs, and all I wanted was to fit in and belong somewhere. And we moved a lot during those really formative, 13, 14, 15 year old, that period where most kids, that’s really where you’re really supposed to start coming up with your own identity. You’re supposed to start gaining that sense of self and understanding your place in the world, and I just never did that. Between bouncing around between all these different friend groups and all these different schools and just desperately trying to be liked and to fit in and belong, I never had any idea who I was to begin with. So then, people talk about, “I want to quit drinking and go back to who I used to be,” I don’t even know who I used to be. It’s this giant empty void, all of these masks and pseudo versions of myself. So I feel like recovery for me has been this major discovery process, feeling my way through every experience and every feeling and everything that I’m faced with. And there’s this constant questions of, “What do I really believe here? What is really important to me here? What do I enjoy, what do I not enjoy? How do I actually feel?” And allowing that is terrifying. Like Jean, you were talking about the whole idea of authenticity. When I was really starting to struggle with myself, I started reading a lot of Brene Brown. We talk about her on almost every episode here, I’m sure everybody is probably familiar with her. And like you were saying Jean, the shame. I started recognizing all the shame that I was carrying and how that was affecting who I was and who I was trying to be. I remember her talking about dealing with your shame and starting to understand yourself, and then she’s talking about connection, and then she starts talking about vulnerability. And I was like, okay, I’m good with all of that, but that vulnerability thing, like that’s not gonna work for me. Thanks, no. I’ll work on authenticity, I’ll try to be myself, but vulnerability, that’s just gonna have to stay over there because I can’t do that.

Steve: And you can’t have one without the other.

Julie: And you can’t. I tried so hard for so long to figure out who I was, but it turns out you have to actually let people see the real you. And that was terrifying for me. That’s been the foundation of my recovery is just finding the courage to let myself be seen like I really am. Not like everybody wants me to be, or like I think they want me to be.

Andrew: If I knew that recovery was going to be a process of becoming the best version of myself, and finding out what stopped me from becoming the best version of myself, instead of this scary, “I’m never going to be able to drink or have fun again,” I think I would have done it a lot sooner. Everything that you guys are talking about, I’ve floated around like a leaf in the wind. This person that I thought I was supposed to be was based in conversations that I had at the dinner table with my parents. You have to become a doctor and you have to drive a BMW. Commercials on TV and different movies… you have to have the hottest girlfriend. And when you try to live up to those expectations and this false sense of self, just like what you guys were talking about. You have to put on these different masks and it goes against your conscience, and when you’re going against your conscience for a really long time you just can’t look at yourself in the mirror. I remember the multiple times, the multiple attempts that I got sober, I didn’t know that I was on a mission to become that best version of myself, I had no idea what I was doing. So I’d end up in these sober livings, and it was like, what are we going to do? Let’s go to the casino, let’s download Tinder, let’s download Bumble, right? And we’re literally just going down that same road and it just ends up me hating myself. This is what I’ve found recently – very recently – as far as what recovery and what AA and what God has taught me. I have a situational purpose. And in every situation that I am, it’s my responsibility to be the best version of myself. The more that I can do that, the more I can lay my head down on my pillow at night, and the more I can be okay with myself. And I love what you guys were saying, too. It’s just the same story in different words.

Steve: Yeah, I’m listening to all of you, but Steph when you were talking about what’s on the other side of that. I wrote about that. For me it was letting go of the rung where I knew what was going to happen and what I had control over and what I didn’t have control over and it was my shield. And as soon as I had to let go of that, I had to trust that there was another rung on the other side to grab. I feel you 100% because it was all tears. It was like, I’m going to start to trust this part because I can’t go back there. You’re talking about that and this is the image that’s in my head. It’s just, you’ve got to trust the rest of your life with this. And that’s what I’m going to believe. I have no idea what it is, I have no idea who I am really.

Steph: Yeah. My vision, do you want to hear what my vision was? My vision was, because mine was also fueled with anxiety too. Mine was, I’m jumping out of a burning airplane, hoping the parachute is going to open. That’s what it felt like for me. I knew I couldn’t stay on that no more, it was going to kill me. It was going to kill me. But I didn’t know what was going to happen when I jumped. I love yours, that’s how I think about things too. I’m very visual.

Steve: Yeah, it’s a picture that’s got so much emotion wrapped in it. I think once I let go, it became a whole bunch of trial and error. There was a whole bunch of, “I don’t know.” And I had to try to be self aware. I’ve never been self aware before. I don’t know what self reflection is. I don’t know what any of that is. I’m looking for the reflection outside of me to tell me I’m okay. And that would determine what I liked. I still needed that, I needed that when it was my decision. I still didn’t trust myself. But if I got to make the decision, and I got to say, “This is what I like,” and I got to feel that out. The trial and error, do I actually like this? One of the hardest questions for me is I can tell you right now a lot of the thigns that I don’t like. But the things that I do like? That list is still hard to find. It is still hard to find. I sat down in February with Julie, and we knitted. She taught me how to knit. Because a lot of these things are filled with my own bias and judgment. A guy doesn’t knit. What the heck am I doing even trying this? A bath – I love my baths. But a guy doesn’t knit, why am I even trying this? Just because it’s not a common thing? Take away all of my judgment and actually give it a try and see if I like it, just like anything else. And you know what? Outside of the frustration of the fact that I sucked and I was horrible at it, there was some sort of therapeutic nature to it. I’ve walked through Walmart, going grocery shopping, and I’ve seen yarn and I’ve seen the things and I’ve thought a couple of times, and I’ve thought, ya know what? I kind of want to buy that. And then I ignore that inner voice. That little inner voice says that every once in awhile, and that’s me telling myself I need to try that again because I actually enjoyed that. There is a part of that that I actually enjoyed. So I think inside of this discovery is a whole bunch of I’m going to suck at stuff. Because I’ve never tried anything for me. I’ve tried a lot of things for outside validation, but I’ve never tried anything for inside validation. Maybe that’s what I’m looking for. Maybe I need to go pick that yarn up and knit a sock or a hat, to validate whether I like that or not, because I still have an innate curiosity about it.

Julie: I fully support that. I think you should go buy some yarn. Just for the record. (laughter)

Steve: It’s true though, we’ve sat down here before and I’m writing notes and this is the experience that came up for me. It is literally who am I? What do I like? I like hiking. I love hiking, I never got outside, it wasn’t something that I did. I knew I loved the outdoors but I didn’t know that when I walked through a set of pines that I would really enjoy that smell, that when I walked through the whole scenery changes, my jaw would drop. It would be something that I took in so much. Finding the joy in a lot of little things that I just couldn’t find before started with listening to myself, actually listening to that inner voice that said, You know what, that doesn’t feel right. Easter, it’s not a thing for me. And it’s always been a struggle because it’s always thing for everyone else. This year I was allowed to have Easter just not be a thing and it was wonderful, it was absolutely wonderful. My kids were with my ex wife and Easter is a thing for her. I was like, great, have the kids enjoy yourself, have Easter, have fun, it’s a thing for you, it’s not a thing for me, fantastic. It was my first Easter where I could go, cool, I don’t mind working.

Jean: I feel like what you’re describing is classic codependency. Where we define ourselves by how others see us. That was a really huge, explosive lesson for me in early recovery. I didn’t even know I was doing it, and I thought it was good because the world loves it when you shape shift, when you become what everyone else wants you to be, and you get awards and you get recognized and you get moved up the ladder and it gets really confusing because you think, “Oh, well, if I stop using that as a tool, my whole system of success is going to fall apart.”

Steve: It goes against your very nature, right? You’re just pushing against your own internal grain and it’s the rubber band that keeps on stretching.

Jean: And I think that in realizing that, I didn’t even know that about myself, I just didn’t even exist to myself. I realized there were a lot of things I had done in my life, that if nobody saw me do it, it didn’t happen. Eating behaviors, or just personal weird things we do, right? But I thought if nobody saw it, it didn’t exist. Because I was literally nobody. But I would have so much shame if a stranger, or probably even my dog had witnessed it because then it became real the moment someone else saw it. So a big part of recovery wasn’t just finding out who I am, it was actually learning to acknowledge that I exist and value my own opinion and my own awareness. Gosh, I feel sad in my body as I tell you that, that I went for so many years without existing to myself.

Steph: Yeah that really resonates with me too, even when you said earlier Jean about the layers. Here’s another visualization, but I remember at one point feeling like I was peeling back an onion because there was tears every time. Because as you peel open an onion, you just cry. Every time I discovered another part of me that I abandoned… I would literally meditate and go back to who I was at that time, whether I was a young girl or a teenager or whatever situation where I abandoned myself or did something that went against what I truly knew was no in alignment with me. I would go back to her and tell her what she needed to hear, tell her she’s safe, tell her she’s okay. It’s very deep work but it is so powerful. All I can say is the best way to figure out what you like and what you don’t like or what you may be interested in is to question everything. Question everything you do with a why. Why do I do this, why do I want to do this? If it has nothing to do with you and it has everything to do with the outside, there’s your answer. Because I realized really quickly that there were a lot of things that I did that made zero sense to me on why I did it. Zero sense! When I finally sat down and asked, “Why do you do that?” It had nothing to do with my beliefs, it was society’s, my parents, my husband, my dog, whatever. We just get wrapped up in people pleasing and keeping everyone, being who everyone needed you to be.

Julie: Yeah, that… I lived for everybody else’s expectations. My parents had expectations of me, my husband had expectations. Like you said, there were expectations coming at me from all directions. I mean, I remember when my kids were younger and I went to the grocery store and I homeschool them, and the lady at the cash register wanted to know why they weren’t in school and had expectations about like, she was asking my kids to answer math questions. Even she had expectations about me! And I lived my life to try to meet all of these expectations. I could feel them crushing me. It never ever occurred to me to ask myself what my own expectations are. And the minute I just stopped and I asked myself, what is my expectation of myself as a mom? What is my expectation of myself as a wife? What is my expectation of myself in this social situation? What do I actually expect myself to be? If nobody actually articulated their expectations to me, I would make them up. And they were so much higher and so much more impossible to ever meet. But if no one told me what was expected, then I would just guess. So I was never good enough. So once I finally asked myself what are my real expectations of myself, those were things that I could actually accomplish. Those were things that actually meant something to me. And it started letting me get a little bit more in touch with what I actually valued, which was just a completely foreign concept to me up until I stopped drinking. Like up until I was 39 years old, I lived for everybody else’s expectations, which is really sad.

Andrew: I like what you said about the expectations that I have for myself Julie. As we were talking about anxiety before, a lot of times when I start defining the expecations that I have for myself and I know that they’re there and I don’t do them, I start feeling that feeling in my stomach that just rattles around that’s like, “Hey, you need to be doing this.” And Steve, when you were talking about the yarn, this is a crazy place for my head to go, but you’re talking about how you want to do this, but you don’t want to do it, and I’m like, I don’t know why I thought about this but I was thinking about when I don’t want to go see my parents, but when I go see my parents I’m going to feel a lot better. I know that if I just think about it about what can I bring to them, since they’ve done so much for me, that anxiety will go away. A lot of times the expectations I have on myself and the way that I want to be defined, the ideal that I want to live up to, is doing things that I don’t want to do. And I feel it in my gut, just like you were talking about, Julie. These expectations of who I want to be. I don’t know why my mind went there when you were talking about yarn, I also thought about my grandma, too. Like I wish I could go hiking with my grandma. I don’t know, everything just came out. (laughs)

Steve: It’s funny what comes up. And those things that come up when other people talk, they’re important to you. So you’re going to have to revisit that, because anything that crops up, even when it’s… any time I’m talking to anyone, I have those times when my own little story pops up inside someone else’s story. That’s something worst investigating. There’s something authentic in that. Anytime anything pops up like that, there’s a piece of me that comes up there that I get to examine and rediscover. It’s like doing laundry. I’ve got all of this dirty laundry, it’s all clothes that I like. I need to clean them, I need to look at them, and I need to decide if they still fit. If that’s something that I want. I have literally done that with my clothes. Outside of what was authentic to actually me, I need to be authentic to my own clothing. I got rid of a whole bunch of stuff that I wore that I didn’t really like. It came right down to the nitty gritty. My t-shirts, my sweaters, my socks. All of that stuff, it turned into… a lot of that, even that small stuff, was a reminder of who I was. It’s not like I was getting rid of it because I didnt’ see it, I think that didn’t serve my anymore. I think that was the purpose that is kind of like what Steph was saying. Does this serve me? If this doesn’t bring me joy, what is the point of having it? It doesn’t serve any purpose other than to make my life messier.

Andrew: And I think discerning if it serves you in a way of validation versus serves you in your purpose. That’s the trick. The alcoholism trick.

Steve: It’s the trial and error, and it’s the trick for codependency, and it’s the trick for all of that stuff. Inside of that is a whole bunch of… I’m going to make mistakes. There is no perfection in this game at all, in this business. None of it. Throw that right out the door. Life is going to get messy. I’m going to make a lot of wrong decisions about myself, and when I make those wrong decisions, that’s where the magic happens. That’s when I figure out what I actually like and what I don’t.

Julie: That admitting those mistakes, what you say, admitting those flaws. That was my struggle with authenticity and vulnerability. Like I’ll show you everything perfect about me, you should look at my Facebook from when I was still drinking! My life was amazing. But God forbid anybody see my mistakes or my flaws, anything I didn’t like about myself. Just learning how to face those and accept those and own my mistakes and admit my character flaws. That’s a huge part of learning our identity and accepting our identity. Accepting ourselves as we are. There was so much self loathing in there if anybody found out about those little things that I didn’t like about myself, then I would just hate on myself. It was so awful and so ugly and that internal dialogue about, “You’re so stupid.” It was awful, it was terrible. And just to be able to admit your mistakes and your flaws, say I’m still okay. This is an opportunity to grow, but this is who I am right now. There is a real beauty and strength in that part of finding our identity.

Jean: I think I had a double standard, because I could talk a really good game for everyone else. I would tell my kids, it’s fine to be imperfect. Or a friend would come and talk about her struggles and I could be so accepting and kind and loving and really mean it for other people. But when it came to me? No way man. That did not apply. I felt like I had to overcompensate because other people were allowed to be imperfect because they were somehow of more value. I was thinking this morning about – I remember being young, 7, 8 years old, and teachers and friends saying, “You’re so hard on yourself. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Which is a weird thing to say to a little kid. I must have earned it because it was something I heard a lot. But I also remember thinking how can I not be? I need to be hard on myself. If I’m not hard on myself I’m going to make mistakes. Instead of internalizing that as, “oh, thanks for the tip, I’ll stop being hard on myself,” I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to be less obvious about how hard I am on myself so people don’t notice, so think my performance level is just my normal.” I felt like everyone else had more value so they were allowed to be imperfect, but I was not. That’s still… that goes back a long ways I think, and it takes a long time to undo that kind of core belief about ourselves and it’s not easy. I think if I’m not careful I backslide a lot in that thinking.

Steve: It takes a long time to learn how to say no. You hear that every once in awhile or see it on social media – no is a complete sentence. That is you standing up for yourself and saying I’m worth it, that’s what that says. In any aspect, as long as that’s true to yourself, as long as you’re saying no for that reason, it’s pretty powerful.

Julie: It’s so easy to slide back into all of that though, like you were saying Jean. I have worked really hard to develop a sense of self worth that comes from inside instead of always coming from outside. But it does not take a lot for me to fall back into all of that negative thinking. And then I have to dig myself right back out of it. And I recognize it now, which at least I recognize it. I see that it needs to be done. But it’s a constant process. That is one of our core values or core beliefs about ourselves that we develop really young. I remember – I was literally a performer – I was a dancer, I was on stage when I was like 6 years old. That’s where I got all of my worth. I don’t know if that every completely gets undone, or that we just make ourselves aware of it so that we can constantly refute it. I don’t know what that looks like. I have a lot of years ahead of me in this game, but it’s definitely not just a one and done for me.

Andrew: A lot of times when I’m overcompensating or pride and ego come out, I really want to accomplish something or I’m scared… maybe somebody’s triggered me in some type of way or maybe I’m feeling shameful, or I’m going off of my old constitution again. And I feel like I overcompensate when that pride and when that ego comes out, I’m drawing off this false sense of power. And the paradox that it is, the most powerful version of myself is my authentic self. It takes time to trust that. It takes a long time to trust that. Like I said before, I’m two years sober, and I’m still learning to trust that. I’m always constantly growing and falling back into my old ways. It’s very easy for my subconscious, without me even knowing it, to become an egotistical asshole that knows everything. It’s that awareness that, hey, you’ve learned this. If you just bring out through trust, that loving self, that authentic self, that the paradox draws into play.

Jean: Authentic self doesn’t necessarily mean perfection, right? Our authentic self still has room to grow and capacity to grow and I think that was where I had to really cut myself some slack in terms of realizing, “Oh, my authentic self is kind of a jerk sometimes.” And I authentically need to improve that, but I really kind of thought it was another kind of false self, like an idea that I held up for myself. So even just getting really grounded on what that authentic self is, is good. It’s so helpful. And you’re right, it is our best version of ourselves at that moment, but it can also become a better version of ourself as spend more time as we become integrated. I don’t know if you guys have ever talked much about the parts of self, but the idea that we have different masks for different needs. So when we’re with our family we might be one way, when we are with our kids or other family members we might a little bit more care giving. So we kind of pull up aspects of ourselves and I think sometimes we get stuck in the wrong one. I was stuck in my ‘doer’ self, my manager self. And Steph, you were stuck in your fun self. It’s not that it’s entirely fake, but it’s an aspect of your personality that, when we’re in our authentic self, we’re the manager that’s choosing what part of our self to use in that moment, which one to consult. And we get stronger and stronger in doing that, more intentional in how we act. I guess it’s scary in a way too though, because then that’s the vulnerability. It’s like, what if people don’t like my authentic self? (laughs)

Julie: It’s terrifying!

Steve: It is terrifying! I was wired that way for a really long time. I had a moment where I broke down and cried not too long ago because of a couple of experiences at work that just… it just brought me right back to memories of when I first started abandoning to myself, when I first started lying to friends to just try to be liked and fit in. That memory came back. And I was like, “Wow, I have been doing this for a really god damn long time.” And so to try and unwire that, to try to… how many plugs, how many extension cords do I have that tell me this is the right way to do it? It’s like, okay I’ve got to unplug this one, it doesn’t need power anymore, but I’ve got to figure out what to plug it into. And I’ve got to find a different light bulb, but at least I unplugged… I don’t need that one to work. That is a lesson and I’m good with that lesson. I’m glad I cried about it, I’m glad I figured it out. There’s that piece now, I plugged it into the new spot. I’m winning, that’s the progress.

Steph: Yeah, what Julie was saying, because I related to it and it kind of leads up to what I am going to say. I was a dancer too, growing up. And there’s… I did competitive dance, I’m guessing, did you do competitions and stuff too when you were younger?

Julie: Not until high school.

Steph: Okay, so there was a lot of perfection that came with that, right? You had to be on. I remember practices where if we couldn’t do the routine completely perfect, it was like a punishment right? Nope, we’re starting over, we’re going to be here until we do it perfect. And at a young age, when that’s ingrained in you, it just seeps into every area of your life. So perfectionism is another thing that I struggle with. And what I’ve had to learn to do is to redefine success and to redefine failure. For me, failure meant we quit and we don’t try again. Failure always meant we’re done. No matter what, we were done. And I, through my adult life, have tried so many different careers and things and just because I’d have one little slip up, I would just quit. Nope, I can’t do it, I’m done. And success too, is just looking at what does success mean to you? Who cares what your co-worker things is success? Who cares if they they think they need to hit a bonus or make this amount? Is that really what makes you happy, is that really what fills your soul? What is success to you? And I think success is a really tricky one in society. It seeps into everything as well. It seeps into social media, because you can start getting hung up in the follows and likes and comments and all of that. It’s everywhere. There’s measurements everywhere. And you’ve got to start… that’s just, when you’re someone who is in sobriety, you sometimes kind of just morph into something else to validate you or to make you feel good, to fill that, to give you that dopamine. So it’s messy. It can get really messy.

Andrew: A close friend of mine… you and me Steph, we’re right around the same sobriety time, same with Steve. And a friend of mine just relapsed between 2 and 3 years. I was sharing at a meeting last night and I was saying, I could see how you can get complacent between 2 and 3 years of sobriety because of those measurements. You’re doing good for a good amount of time. Or just me personally, right? I’m doing a lot of service work, for lack of better words I rest on my laurels and then it becomes how much money can I make? How well can I do at my job? What are these things I’m going to buy? And that constitution that I changed to a spiritual constitution is now switched back to the conversation I had with my parents. And I can see how this happens in between 2-3 years. But just so you guys know I’ve been to 3 meetings in a row.

Steve: The really cool thing, and I’ve had this experience now a few times in the last couple of days. I’ve seen, and I’ve got to talk to, and now Jean with 12 years, and you see that it’s still a journey and that it’s not a destination. This is what keeps getting reinforced with me. Jean, that’s what you’re doing for me today. It’s really awesome, I love that. I tell myself that all the time. It is a journey. There is no destination here. And Jean’s talking like, “I’m still struggling with this, and I still have this,” and I’m going to just keep trying to figure myself out. I’m also going to evolve. The things that I like today I might not like in three years. And that’s okay. If I decide that I don’t like knitting anymore, or whatever that may be, it’s okay. I don’t have to hold onto it like it is a piece of me that I need to show around anymore. It’s a piece of me that doesn’t do me any good anymore. I can put it away, it doesn’t have to.

I’m going to wrap this up guys. You guys were fantastic, you guys were all really great. I really like Andrew, you said recovery is becoming the best version of our selves. I think when we quit, we give ourselves that best opportunity and that best version of ourselves changes throughout the process of our sobriety. I am not who I was six months ago, and that’s okay. I don’t have to hold onto that. We hid behind a lot of masks. We talked about the people pleasing and the shame, and all of that is just different forms of self abandon. One of the things I thought of was, how often do you trust your heart now? I think we’ve learned through this experience that trusting our gut is a good thing. Asking yourself the question, what are my expectations for myself? They can be realistic, and we have the self awareness now to try and make those realistic expectations and not crazy ones like they were before. Jean, you mentioned parts of self. I thought that was really cool when you mentioned that. I thought about those exaggerated parts of self where now you get to make that decision where, I don’t need to be this version here anymore. And answer your whys. What are those? Andrew, thank you, Jean, thank you, Stephanie thank you for making the time today to share your thoughts and experiences with us, really appreciate it.