The One You Feed - The Freedom of Sobriety with Veronica Valli

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Veronica Valli is a former psychotherapist who now works as a sobriety coach. With almost 20 years of experience, Veronica has helped thousands of people live happy, healthy lives and reach their full potential by being alcohol-free. She is the co-host of the popular Soberful podcast and has been the keynote speaker at annual conferences including Women for Sobriety and Soberistas.In this episode, Eric and Veronica discuss her book, Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alchohol.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Veronica Valli and I Discuss The Freedom of Sobriety and…Her book, Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of AlcoholThat alcoholism is just a symptom of a deeper malaiseHer history with drugs and alcohol and how she got soberThe experience she had with drug-induced psychosisBelieving she had a very rare problem when everyone else was fineHow and when she discovered that she wasn’t alone in how she feltEmotional unmanageability vs. emotional masteryThat behavior is the truest manifestation of how someone feels – we behave how we feelThe way our culture has normalized abnormal drinkingThe question, “would my life be better if I wasn’t drinking?”When you’re spending most of your time arguing with yourself about whether or not you have a problem with drinking, you’re missing out on the real and good stuff of life, including your own growth and discoveryToxic positivityFeeling comfortable in our own skin and having appropriate emotional responses to eventsEmotional sobrietyThe value of consistently having a framework in lifeWhat to do if sobriety meetings feel overwhelmingVeronica Valli Links:Veronica’s WebsiteFacebookWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Veronica Valli you might also enjoy these other episodes:The Magic of Being Sober with Laura McKowenThe Joy of Being Sober with Catherine GraySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Emotional unmanageability shows up years before the external unmanageability. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that

challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Veronica Valli, a former psychotherapist who now works as a sobriety coach. With almost 20 years of experience, Veronica has helped thousands of people live happy, healthy lives and reach their full potential by being alcohol-free.

She's been the keynote speaker at annual conferences, including Women for Sobriety and Soberistas. Veronica is also the co-host of the popular Soberful podcast and the author of the book her and Eric discuss here, Soberful, Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol. Hi, Veronica. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. It's great to be here. I am really happy to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, which is called Soberful, Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there is a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild, and they say, In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. There's a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And

there's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it and looks up at its grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd love to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, that parable is just, it's so interesting. So I was thinking about it. So thinking about, for example, resentments and fear and how there is a seduction to them. There's something seductive about blaming and it's not fair. And let me tell you what he did and how easily we can fall into that seduction and how I've needed tools to not fall into that

seduction of giving into the fear and telling myself a limiting story and a negative story. And I know when I felt seduced into that place, there's sort of something satisfying, but something very empty about it. It's like, you think it's going to fill you, but it doesn't fill you. And actually it's the other wolf that fills you, which is forgiveness and love and all that kind of stuff. And I want to say, I can't think my way into that. I can't think my way into being forgiving and loving. I wish I could, I wish I had that switch. I have to work my way into it. I have to use the various tools I have to restore my perception to how things really are and not the story I'm telling myself. Does that make sense?

Totally. Yeah, that's a great take on it. And I agree with you about the sometimes we can't think our way into something. I mean, there are cases where we can work with our cognitive perceptions of things and we can alter them. But yeah, there's also a place where we kind of have to, I like the way you said it, work our way into it. And your book is full of tools for doing that, particularly in the case of people who are trying to quit drinking. Although you make the point very clearly over and over again that alcohol is just a symptom of a deeper malaise. How would you describe that deeper malaise? You know, I really like the description that's in the big book of AA, where on page 52,

it's described as the bedevilments, or much more simply, in the doctor's opinion, it's described as the bedevilments or much more simply in the doctor's opinion, it's described as restless, irritable and discontent. And I was born discontent. Like I always thought the next thing would fix me and make me better. Like when I got that thing, whatever it was, that would be the solution. And I would often get it and it would fulfill me for about one and a half minutes. And then I would be discontent. It was like my default position. And really what that was, was I was very uncomfortable in my own skin. I was really uncomfortable being me. And in this world that we live in, alcohol is such an accessible and quick and easy anesthetic to the uncomfortableness of being me. And more than that, it's rewarded and encouraged

and, you know, celebrated. And it just numbed the edges of that discontentment. Yeah, I have always loved that line, restless, irritable and discontentment. Yeah, I have always loved that line, restless, irritable, and discontent. I was like, yep, that pretty much describes it. That describes my default state if I'm not either A, taking a substance or B, working fairly diligently to not be in that state. I'm not sure I love the way I said that, working really diligently. It makes it sound like life is a constant march, and that's not what I mean. But I do have a tendency to know that that is where I end up at if I just sort of let my brain do whatever it wants to do all the time. Yeah, it's like I'm a magnet without the grace of a spiritual experience, without the work that I do on myself.

And I say work, it's really the wrong word because it doesn't feel like work. But the effort I just put into personal development, let's say, you know, I can go to the other wolf, I can go to the joy and the security and the safety and the beautifulness and all that kind of stuff. But without that effort, I just seem to be like a magnet, I will drift towards that. It's really interesting. There's a whole discussion there about were we born that way? Were we made? But it's really my earliest memory.

It's really my earliest sort of feeling of not feeling right. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't want to spend a lot of time here because I want to primarily focus on a lot of your work today. But I wonder if you could tell listeners briefly about your history with alcohol, your getting sober. Just paint the broad strokes of that for us. So I got sober relatively young. I was 27 and I'm British.

So when I was drinking, you could get into bars when you just had to look old enough. So I was drinking at 14 and 15 and it was a light bulb going on for me. It was the solution. It just made me feel exactly how I imagined everybody else felt. And it was brilliant. I loved it. And I remember this memory of being outside a bar in my hometown, actually where I am right now recording this. And I was 15 years old and I went into blackout and I woke up outside the bar, literally in the gutter, covered in my own vomit with the landlord throwing a bucket of water over me.

And I remember coming to thinking, this isn't right. There's something wrong with this. And then everyone around me told me that that was fun, that I was wild, that I was like a party girl, that I was so much fun. I ended up in the gutter. like a party girl, that I was so much fun, I ended up in the gutter. And my brain just kind of filed that away and went, okay, this is what makes you popular and fun. We'll just do this. And I had a great time till I was about 18, which is the legal drinking age in the UK. And then I hit a rock bottom through drug use. I went into drug induced psychosis with magic mushroom use, and I was suicidal. I had auditory hallucinations. And I couldn't tell anybody. I was literally going

mad on the inside. And I couldn't tell anybody. I didn't even know how to tell anybody. I had no words to say what was going on with me. That's when I started looking for help. And I went to the doctors and they just put me on prescription drugs, which started off a whole prescription drug problem. And I spent from 18 to 27. I knew something was wrong with me. And I just had to find the solution to what was wrong with me. And I thought it was a rare, absolutely rare, nobody else had a mental health problem. So I really did think everybody was fine. You all look fine to me. We're talking about restless. I moved continents seven times. I was

always looking for whatever the solution was and external fixes and, you know, vaguely suicidal young woman drinking, putting myself in very dangerous situations and I didn't use illegal drugs for a long time after that but then I started using towards the end of my drinking cocaine again which I'm actually quite grateful for because it brought me to my knees very quickly I mean very very quickly finished me off I think it really in all seriousness if I hadn't started using cocaine I'd have drunk for another 10 years. But it just absolutely finished me off. And I was desperate. And I, at the same time, this sounds very crazy,

because I had really bad panic attacks from my drug-injury psychosis, I couldn't be in groups. I found it very difficult to be in groups. I'd get panicky and anxious. So I thought I'd be a therapist. Anyway, I started doing some training and it was in addictions and I'm sitting there in the classroom going and then I don't even think I made a conscious decision to stop drinking it just sort of happened one day just thought I'm not going to

drink today and it turned into a week intention month and then I went to an AA meeting because I wanted to see what these poor people that I would be counselling were like. And I didn't identify or relate. And I don't know why I went back. And I thank God I did, because it was there that I heard someone talk about fear. And they spoke about fear in a way that I had never heard it described. And it was really, for me, that changed everything, because I truly believed up until that point, I was the only person who was frightened. I really thought everyone else was just getting on with life and they were okay. And I just sat there and thought, that's me. Because I wasn't relating to the stories, like I hadn't had a DUI or anything like that. So I wasn't relating to any of those drinking stories. But when someone described their

inner world to me, that was me. And that probably saved my life because then I just was like, what do I do? Sign me up. What do I do? Get a sponsor, do the steps, right, I'll do that. And I just threw myself into it because I was so desperate to not feel the way that I'd felt for so long. I mean, I was absolutely 100% convinced that I was never going to have fun again because alcohol is fun. I just wanted peace. I just wanted peace in my head. So it was much to my amazement after about a year, maybe I was just having experiences and beginning to have fun and go dancing. And I would say, you know, I've done everything sober. You know, I was going to nightclubs. I was going to concerts and festivals and traveling abroad and doing everything that, you know, someone my age would do. And I had way more fun sober. So I got sober, I continued my training as a therapist and here we are.

varying ways that people get to a point of sobriety. You describe stopping drinking almost without thinking about it. And then there are other people I know who getting stopped for two days is a torture. And neither of you is more, to use a term that's certainly out of favor these days, more alcoholic than the other. Those external circumstances are not really the issue. And I think we'll probably spend some time on a blog post you did in response to someone who strongly criticized AA. But the thing that you said in that blog post that I want to hit right now, we may go to it all in a moment, we may not. But you talked about in AA, the first step talks about admitting we're powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable. What I love that you said in that article was the unmanageability we're talking about is not the external life.

I mean, your external life may be unmanageable and alcohol may be causing it and making it worse. But you're describing it in terms of an internal unmanageability. Say more about that. Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting to me how I got sober as well. I was really half asleep. You know, I don't know why I kept going to AA meetings. I wasn't relating. And it was when someone described their emotional unmanageability. Like I didn't relate to any story, nothing. But when that was described, I was like, oh my God, that's me. And emotional unmanageability shows up years before the external unmanageability, the DUIs, the falling over,

the getting arrested, whatever it is. I mean, lying in the gutter at 15 covered in vomit, that's external unmanageability. But I also want to say when you're young, that behavior is extremely normalized. That is extremely normalized. That's right. That is just normalized. And it's not normal. And it's not okay to be a 15 year old child lying in the gutter, not knowing what you're doing. The internal unmanageability is when we don't have emotional mastery. I was like a little boat with no rudder on the ocean. And I was just thrown this way and the other. And I was full of fear. I was full of self-loathing. I was full of resentment, all of the bad wolf stuff. The only

way I could fix that was to numb the feelings with something external. The only way I could control it, make it go away, soothe it, calm it, was to do something external like drink, smoke a cigarette, flirt with a guy, binge on food, etc., etc. That was the only way I could make that internal storm livable with. So behavior is the truest manifestation of how we feel. If you look at someone's behavior, it will show you how someone feels. So that emotional unmanageability is when your emotions are ruling you and all you can do is just try and get them to a point that you can live with them by just numbing them. And that's what recovery is, the very reverse of that. It's about having emotional mastery. It's

about having appropriate emotional responses to events. It's not that I don't feel angry or frustrated or disappointed or whatever. I feel all of those things appropriately to whatever event is happening. If you crashed into my car, I'd be furious with you. That's an appropriate emotional response. But it's not appropriate for me to be still furious about that nine months later and telling that story over and over and over again. So yeah, it's the emotional unmanageability that I think people don't understand. They think that we've normalized abnormal drinking. That's the first thing. So as long as we've got a mortgage and a car and a job, we can't have a problem. And we think our drink problem is external things, but it's internal. And that's usually years, if not decades before

the other. There's so many things in what you just said there that I want to touch on, and I won't get to all of them. I want to hit that last point very quickly, which is that one of the things I've seen the recovery movement really do well in the recent years, and I think you've been part of this and you write about it very eloquently in your book, is we've moved away from this idea that like there is a bottom that has to be hit in order for sobriety to happen, and that you have to be, you know, an alcoholic, which is some definable thing. And it's a lot more about, you know, the very basic question of would my life be better if I wasn't drinking? And your book, I really love in a lot of places, you talk about

those sort of niggling thoughts that won't leave us alone that keep telling us there's something not right about my drinking or use. telling us there's something not right about my drinking or use. There's something that's not right about my drinking or use. And they just eat at us. They eat at us. And that is, you know, if you want to use the word consequence, right? That is a really big consequence. That is a big price to pay, which is to have most of your energy debating whether or not you have a problem with something. Yeah. And I describe that as bandwidth because to really, you know, frame this, it's like alcohol is just an inanimate object. That's all it is. It's not the main event,

but we make it the main event. None of us came here to flip and argue with ourselves about whether we're going to have a drink tonight or not when you kind of think about it like that like i'm spending precious bandwidth which is energy and thoughts in my head arguing with myself about whether i'm going to drink tonight or not or i shouldn't drink or do other people know i'm drinking or should have one it's like that's absurd but so many people do that and that's for me the first indication that there's a problem because people who don't have a problem with alcohol, they don't think about it. It just rents no space in their head. They have a drink of occasion in the appropriate setting or not, but they don't really think about

it. It's the waste of bandwidth. So we have finite amount of bandwidth. And that's, you know, energy and thoughts in our head. And can waste say 20 30 percent of bandwidth on alcohol and when we have a problem with alcohol we do four things we drink we think about drinking we think about not drinking which is the big one and we recover from drinking and that requires energy and bandwidth now you can do a lot with 70 80 percent bandwidth you can do a lot with 70, 80% bandwidth. You can have a career and buy a house and all those kind of things. But what you cannot do is emotionally grow and develop the way that you're capable of. And I want to say that is the juice of life. That growth is like, don't miss that. That's the main event, not this argument that you're having with yourself. Does that make sense? Totally, totally. And I love that breaking it into those four categories. You know, a lot of times when I'm talking with people about coaching, partway into the conversation, after we've been talking about a bunch of other goals and things they want, they'll start to talk a little bit

about, well, I might be doing a little bit of drinking, you know, and I always find it interesting because I immediately sort of hone in on that. Because very, very often, it's the drinking that's making all those other things really hard to do. The analogy I use, it's a little bit different than the one you use, is if you've got a problem with drinking, and again, we're defining that pretty broadly. But if you're spending a lot of time in your four categories, right, it's like carrying a backpack with 100 pounds of rocks around with you all the time. Everything is harder. You set that backpack down. And all of a sudden, you're like, well, I'll be damned. I actually do exercise pretty regularly. That's kind of amazing. And, oh, I'm a lot more patient with my kids. And I'm not saying that in early sobriety,

all those things happen right away. But in general, it gets to that point. I love that way of thinking about it with bandwidth. I want to circle back to two other things that you said there. One is you said, I may not have this exactly right, but that behavior is a very clear reflection of our emotions. Is that more or less what you said? We behave how we feel. We behave how we feel. Yeah. I've done so many of these conversations that it's hard for me to remember a lot of things. But one thing I do remember, it was a interview in the first hundred and the guy's name was David K. Reynolds. And he said, when you have control of your behavior, you become free to feel your feelings. And it blew my head off. I've been around these ideas a long time

since early in recovery. But that idea hit me so strongly. I was like, yeah, if I'm not worried that being really angry, I'm going to do something terrible. If I know that I've got control of my behavior, it allows me to have that emotional bandwidth because I don't have to be afraid of it. Yeah, because the behavior and the feelings are linked. It goes backwards and forwards. That's right. Yeah. You know, as a therapist, it's all patterns. You know, I don't care what you say. You know, it's the pattern, the behavior pattern. So, you know, I'll get a client or friend who's got, I don't know, they're in a difficult relationship and perhaps the person is difficult or abusive or whatever. And they're promising to change. They mean it this time. They mean it. They're a hundred're promising to change they mean it this time they mean it they're a hundred percent and they do mean it a hundred percent when they say it it's like

when we promise to stop drinking but unless they have done some therapy or but you know done some different things that behavior will come back again because they haven't got to the root causes of how they feel which is what the behavior is a manifestation of it. You can tell, and we know, we all know this without even being a therapist. We can look at our friends and be like, are you all right? And if the person goes, yeah, I'm fine, but we know they're not all right. And it's not because anything they've said, it's because we're seeing how they behave. You know, that's what my job is, is to read behaviour. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

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Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column. Very few companies

who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I wonder if you could share a little bit more about what emotional mastery looks like, because emotional mastery often gets turned into never feeling bad. You know, I know I have emotional mastery if I never feel bad. And we're saying, oh, I drink because of how I feel, which then makes it think, well, in order for me to stay sober, I must feel good all the time. And I know that's not what you're

saying. So clarify what emotional mastery looks like or means to you. What you just described is toxic positivity. When we get sober, you hear people say, you know, you have to work on yourselves or you have to do a program or whatever. And for me, I was like, how long do I have to do this for? Like, when do I graduate? And I was told forever, it's a forever thing. And I was like, oh, crap. Like that was, and I understand it is the same as physical exercise. You know, I have to physically exercise. But I want to say there is a destination. And when we work a program, we do this personal development work.

The destination that we are looking for is to feel comfortable in our own skins and to have appropriate emotional responses to events. And that is when we have it. I call it emotional sobriety, but it's the same thing. Emotional sobriety, it's emotional mastery, is having appropriate emotional responses to events. So it's not that you crash into my car and I'm like, peace and love, Eric. You know, I'd be furious. I would probably shout at you because that's an appropriate emotional response to that kind of event. But the emotional mastery piece is that I want to move through the process. So after anger, I might go to sadness because that was my beloved car or whatever. And eventually,

I want to get to a place of acceptance with that. So it's about moving through the appropriate emotional process to whatever the event is. I'm a great believer in the tool of doing resentment work. And whenever I come across someone who says, I just don't have resentments, I'm like, yeah, right. You're just suppressing it. Because we all do. It's part of the human experience. Now I get far less than I did when I first got sober. But once in a while, I'll get a blinder. And I need to write that down and look at it and sometimes talk about it with someone so I can move through the process to be free of it and have an appropriate emotional response to it. Does that make sense? It does. It brings up the question, though, of what is appropriate and how do we know? It makes me think a little bit about people would be like, well, is that normal?

And I'm like, well, I'm not sure that word even has any meaning. But appropriate does. But how do we know what is appropriate for us? Because we're not all the same. Not all events are made the same. And there's a lot of different opinions on what an appropriate response would be. Yeah, and that's really interesting. And that's really important, because it is very, very personal. So just earlier, I was here with my mom, and she put the TV on and there was an

advert. And it was actually for a charity raising money for children in a very poor country. And it had some very distressing images of children suffering, which I found since I became a parent, I find that stuff very difficult. I cry immediately. Now, before I had kids, I would find that sad and I'd probably donate some money, but I wouldn't burst into tears. It's changed since I've become a parent. So appropriate emotional responses are subjective to where you are. So for instance, when I have a response that feels a little out of balance, or maybe it's an inappropriate response to an event, immediately, that's a red flag for me that something's going on with me. That really triggered me. You know,

normally, that wouldn't really bother me so much. But I've had a very big reaction to that what is going on with me so all of that is data it's information that I can look at that can help me grow and help me change and help me work on it so absolutely as we are growing our responses to things emotionally will begin to change because we will begin to understand them better. But I want to say a key part of having an appropriate emotional response is about having tools so we can get to a place where it feels more balanced and appropriate much faster. I want to talk about your article about AA. You know, there was a very specific article you were responding to, but that was among many, many criticisms of AA. They're pretty common ones at this point.

And before we go into that, I'd like to have you share a little bit about the importance in your mind of having a program of some sort. Yeah, for me, that's key. And, you know, I got sober in the 12 steps almost 22 years ago, because that's all there was. There wasn't anything else that was certainly free or affordable. There was no internet then. For me, having a program is key. We have lots of different programs that are much more visible now. I really like Women for Sobriety. I know that there's a couple of Buddhist programs. There's Smart Recovery,, et cetera. And I don't really think it matters, to be honest. The key component to having a program is consistency. And I hear this a lot. I see it a lot on Facebook. I've tried everything, tried everything. I've joined this, I've done that. And I'm going to say when I hear that, what generally they haven't tried is consistency, is they've done it intensely for a bit and then not done anything at all. It's the consistently having a framework. I don't know about you, but I felt like before I got sober, I always lived on quicksand. I never felt safe.

Like I didn't have the rules to life almost. I felt like there was a lot of things I didn't know. I felt like I was always going to go under. And having a program gave me like a framework. It gave me something to hold onto. Even though the storm is raging outside of me and within me, I'm just going to do these things. And when I've discovered that by then doing these things, and for me, it would be the 12 steps, I can weather and get through whatever the storm is. And then that would happen again and again. And then that really solidified like this is what works when the storm rages internally or externally. This is what I held on to.

Whereas before I felt like the little boat, I felt like a big wave was going to come and I could really go under. And that was terrifying. I was really missing some key tools. could really go under. And that was terrifying. I was really missing some key tools. I just didn't have tools to navigate this world and people. I didn't have tools to navigate and deal with people. And what a program gives us is those missing tools that makes that navigation just so much more possible. Now, most of these things that we would think of as a program, AA or smart recovery or refuge recovery or any of these, there tends to be two components to them, or you might argue there's more than two, but there's two very obvious ones. And the two obvious ones are a series of things to do that are intended to change your inner state, the way you

relate to the world, your emotional response, your mental response. We could categorize that differently. So there's that actual sort of program like, you know, do this, do that, do that. And then there's also a fellowship. You know, there is a community of people that are getting together and talking about these things. How important do you think both of those are? Are they both critical? A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, it's the connection piece. There's nothing like being really seen, especially I think with an alcohol and drug problem. I think one of the defining characteristics is loneliness, is separation, is disconnection.

And I don't think there's anything more painful than that. I felt like that my whole life until I got sober. I felt like there was a glass screen and everyone was one side and I was the other. And I could see you and hear you and talk to you, but I couldn't connect with you. And I felt like that loneliness was killing me. I felt like I was dying on the inside. So what goes hand in hand with connection, we can't have meaningful connection unless we know how to be vulnerable. And that for me was terrifying. But there's no other pathway to meaningful connection. And by meaningful, we need people to really know us. And there's different levels of that. We need people who

know our souls, but that's not going to be like 20 people, that's going to be maybe one or two or three. But we all need friends, people around us who just get us. I think that's the magic of support groups is it just doesn't matter. Like if you walk into a meeting, I don't know you or your story, but I know your insights. Like I know how you feel. I know what you have been through. And there's something incredible, so powerful about that, that I think is even kind of hard to quantify. But having the framework of a program and the connection of people who get what you've gone through is absolutely essential.

You know, one thing that I hear from people a lot is that the fellowship aspect of it, they feel like it causes them more anxiety and pain than it does give them support. Going to a meeting makes them so anxious and they don't know what to say to anybody and they don't know how to say anything. And then afterwards they stand there and maybe nobody comes up to them. Or if somebody does, it's a stilted conversation, and all they want to do is run away. And, you know, how do you advise people work with that? Because I agree with you, I think that that community of having at least a few people who know you and connect you is critically important.

And that that really rings true, that fear that people have. Yeah, are we talking about AA in that respect? Well, we could be talking about AA, but we could just as easily be talking about refuge recovery or smart recovery. You know, any place where you're going to show up at a meeting of a bunch of people you don't know. And some of those people are already going to have an existing relationship with each other. Yeah. I think it's terrifying for most people. I know my first AA meeting, my ex-boyfriend came with me because I really didn't want to go on my own. And I sat at the back and ran out at the end. I actually think that that's why the internet has been so helpful. I think for a lot of people that the first connection they've had online feels safer. You don't have to have your camera on, you can make a name up, but you could be present and you can listen. And I know from the groups that I've been in that the genuine, like real genuine connections have happened and people have met up in real life.

So I actually encourage people if it feels overwhelming and terrifying, start with online groups because you're in your comfort zone. You can control so much. If you hate it, you can just turn it off and go, you know, in a way that you can't if you're in real life. And then if that feels good and comfortable, then maybe you can go into real life and it's a much more of a softer landing. So I think that we've done, you know, just with the AA,

I don't think AA was online before the pandemic, you know, and I know a lot of meetings are going to stay that way. I think, and there's been, there's so many others now. I think that that's been really helpful for people. positive. And I think that is one of them is that community is available to more people in more ways. Now, again, I believe a lot in face to face connection. And there's a lot of value in that. And at the same time, connections that happen, you know, mediated like yours and mine right now, those are very real connections, you know, just because there's a screen between us doesn't make it a not real connection. Yeah. And that's what's amazing to me is to see these online connections. I have several girlfriends. One I was just with over New Year's who I met online. I have several friends that I met online and we, you know, various groups.

And then we met in person and the connection and friendship was as genuine and deepened from meeting in person. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's talk a little bit about your book.

In your book, the heart of it is what you've described as five pillars for sustainable sobriety. And so I don't know that we'll get through all five of them, but I'll let you choose which one we start with. You know, do you have one that just feels more like you feel like talking about right this moment? Because I know if I ask you which is more important, you're going to be like, they're all five important. So I'm not going to ask you to pick the most important or your favorite, just the one that right now comes to mind that you most feel like talking about. Well, let me just kind of frame this that I would see people really struggling in sobriety, kind of stopping drinking and doing stuff, but really not understanding why they didn't feel comfortable in their own skins,

why they were still dissatisfied and all that kind of stuff. And for me, it was the therapeutic work. And I wanted to put the therapeutic work that we have to do in a framework that was very easy for people to digest and understand. And really, it's just personal development. And many people have read the book and said, like, this is for everybody. This isn't just for people. And it's true. It's just the work of being human. That's all it is. So I conceptualized it into the five pillars as a way to just kind of understand that and see that as something that was just more digestible. So they all work together. And it's movement, connection, balance, process, and growth. And, you know, movement is really just about exercise and being conscious of the direction you want your life to go in. What are you moving towards and what are you moving away from? That's about waking up. And it's also, you know, the research is overwhelming about how effective exercise is to manage our mental and emotional health. I feel for people who are just getting started, it's like, can you walk for 15 minutes today? That's an achievable goal. You'll get some serotonin, but you also, that whole action is, I am worth making 15 minutes to just go and walk outside as something that's good for my mind and body. It's a statement, all of that kind of stuff.

And then connection is about we have to be vulnerable and we have to connect with people. And there's lots of different ways that we can do at that. And it's life sustaining. Balance is that we all have needs and those needs change with our circumstances. So we need sleep and we need the right food and we need exercise and we need time with our friends and time with our family and we need meaningful work and all of these different things that make us human. And fulfilling those needs, it just changes. Balancing, you know, how I get those needs met before I had kids and then when I had very small babies, I still had the needs to exercise and see my friends. But when I had two young children, I had to meet those needs in different ways. When we are out of balance, we will feel uncomfortable in our own skins. We will begin

to feel restless and irritable when we're out of balance, when we're not getting what it is we need. So it's learning that tool of listening to our bodies, listening to the signals, listening to the I'm not okay. So I need to do X, Y, and Z. You know, that happened to me when I hit burnout years ago. It was like, ah, I'm not okay. I'm out of balance here. I need to do this very quickly. And then the last two pillars are process and growth. And that may be process is the one that I want to talk about. Process is about understanding. It's hard for me to just talk about one and not mention the others. Process is about understanding how our past shows up in our present. And it's hard for me to just talk about one and not mention the others process is about understanding how our past shows up in our present and it's understanding why we are the way we are and you know i have had clients when i was a psychotherapist so i don't want to make up

the past and it's like we're not it shows up every day anyway we don't have to break it up it's obvious in your behavior that you don't trust or you were hurt or whatever. So it's really processing and understanding and getting free of the stuff that is the hundred pound weight that we're carrying. The first thing is like, I like that analogy that you used. It's like, I didn't even know I was carrying a weight. I had no idea I was carrying it. And I had no idea I didn't have to.

And that's the first part of the process. And then it's like, well, what is all this stuff I'm carrying? Why? Why am I carrying this? And so process leads to growth, which is the job of being human. And that's unavoidable. That's a universal law of life. If you look around, you will see it to be true. We are either growing or we are dying. You can see that in businesses, in communities, in people, like I was dying on the inside. So those two are linked. And I want to say those are the rewards. That's where the richness is. That's where the juice of life is. Is it easy? No, it's not always easy. But I also want to say, having an alcohol problem is hard. That's hard. That's hard work. Getting sober and doing this work, it's not hard. It requires effort. It does require effort. But it's far, far easier than the life that we have been living.

So that's kind of the five pillars in a nutshell. And then in the book, I go deeper. For instance, you know, part of process and growth work is understanding our limiting beliefs, the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Dealing with resentments is part of process work. So we can process through our emotions to be in a different place. Understanding our attachment patterns, that's a really important part of process work. That was key for me. I had such a train wreck relationship history. Like just understanding about attachment and understanding that how I felt was actually not really anything to do with this guy in front of me and everything

to do with my feelings towards my father when I was a child and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what sets us free. One of the things that I see in people often, and I'm curious your thoughts on this, when we go back and we explore the past and we understand why we are perhaps the way we are. So we might say, okay, well, Eric could look back at his life and go, okay, well, he had a very angry father. And so if there's a male around him who starts to get even just the slightest bit testy, he gets afraid. Okay, that's not a made up. That's real. People like that sounded very specific. So knowing that is one thing. And there is some value in that. But I hear people say to me a lot, I've done all that therapy where I know why it is, and nothing seems to be changing, though.

So what's the step to connect? Okay, now I know why. I know what happened to me. I know that I was harmed in that way. I sort of have that, but it's not changing my behavior or how I feel in those moments. What's missing there to sort of tie all that together in your mind? That may be too vague, but if you can work with that. No, I relate to that very much, actually, because I was doing all of my training as a psychotherapist and learning about attachment, all that kind of stuff.

And I was like, oh, my God. Yes. Oh, wow. That's me. Yes. That's what happened. My daddy abandoned me. It's abandonment.

I keep recreating abandonment. Oh, my God. I was I was like I get it but then I had a relationship and the same pattern happened and I didn't understand like now I knew this why was this still happening and I can tell you for me what began to change that was regular self-reflection through personal inventory. So I regularly write down my resentments, my fears, and my limiting beliefs. And I use a very specific process to begin to see them differently. And it was that that specifically changed it. What happened was by being very specific in writing this stuff down in a certain way, you know, I'd ask myself, I had certain questions, that kind of thing.

What the result was, and it was a slow kind of dawning, I began to see how other people behaved, that it wasn't personal. And I also want to say a big part of that was the amends process, writing out resentments and then having to make direct amends. That process, I began to see that when you did what you did, it wasn't anything to do with me. So when I set up the pattern of abandonment, and this is kind of brings everything together we've been talking about.

So I did this work and then I had a relationship and I did, I had my pattern. I was anxiously attached and I would attract and avoidance. So I would have this intense relationship with a guy and then he would begin to back away. And the last time this happened, this happened in a relationship before I met my husband. For the first time, I saw that he was really frightened, that it really frightened him and he had to leave. Whereas previously, that behavior would happen. And I would immediately think it's because I'm not thin enough. It's because I'm not pretty enough. It's because I'm not good enough. That's why he's behaving. So my perception completely changed. Now talking about having appropriate

emotional responses to events. Before when that happened, and I believed it was because I wasn't good enough, I would go into a black hole of suicidal despair. That's an inappropriate response to a relationship that was six weeks. I can see you relate. The last time it happened, I felt sad and upset. And that's an appropriate emotional response to that. I wasn't just like, oh, I was sad and I was upset. And I moved through that. And I saw that he had a lot of stuff that he hadn't resolved. And it was very frightening to him.

Intimacy was very frightening. So he had to back away. And I stopped making the interpretation that another person's behavior was personal. And I want to say that is the greatest freedom you will ever know. This is a lesson from the Spiritual Habits Program that I created, and I borrowed it from the Buddhist teacher Ruth King, who borrowed it from the three Buddhist marks of existence. But what she basically said is nothing is permanent, personal, or perfect. And, you know, like you, I find that A, realizing things aren't personal is an incredibly huge freedom. I find remembering that things aren't permanent is another incredibly huge

freedom. And then also recognizing like things don't have to be perfect is another one of those. Let's circle back to your dealing with, I think you said fears, resentments, and limiting beliefs. Can you share a little bit more about what that process looks like that you go through? So to deal with resentments, I do two methods. I do the method specifically that's laid out in the big book, and I do six columns. I'm resentful at cause, it out in the big book and I do six columns. I'm resentful at cause affects my, I have harmed how in order to get to the sixth column, which is to reveal my character defects, which are, there's only four selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, or afraid. Self-seeking is just manipulation because the only thing I have power over in this life is me.

I don't have any power over what you're going to do. And if I'm waiting around for you to say sorry or do it differently or whatever, I'll wait forever. But once it's revealed to me that it's my fear or I'm trying to manipulate this or I haven't been honest or whatever it is, I can change that. I can change that bit. The other method that I use is based on REBT, which is. I can change that. I can change that bit. The other method that I use is based on REBT, which is rational emotive behavioral therapy. And it's a different method,

but it ends up in the same place. And it's looking at our resentment and then identifying the irrational belief we have about that. So it's like, this man shouted at me. What's the story you're telling yourself about that? Oh, he doesn't like me. He's going to get me fired. Like they all think I'm an idiot, whatever. And then it's challenged. Like, well, is that true? Like when you believe that about yourself, what are the consequences?

Is that true? And changing it into a more effective way of thinking is that actually this is a person who is always angry. We know that fear is under anger. He must be really frightened. This isn't personal, but I am going to have boundaries because it's not appropriate that you're going to talk to me like that in my place of work. So I'm going to just very calmly and clearly say,

I'll speak to you when you're calmer or whatever. I can't think my way through that. I can't do it in my head. There's something cognitive about writing it down. And I have resistance. This is about the wolf you feed. Like, there is something about self-righteous anger about what you did to me. And let me tell you, let me, I want to tell people, let me tell you what Eric said. Like, can you believe what Eric said? And getting people to go, oh God, can you believe that? No. Like there's a, that's the seduction of that wolf.

And nearly always I will have a resistance to doing this because I know when I start it, it will shift for me. And I can no longer tell myself that story and I'll be in a different place. And even though I want to be in that place and it's a better place and it's a liberating place and it's a wonderful place, I still have resistance. It's very, very interesting. But I've had so much experience of knowing that this works. And I want to get to the place of freedom that I

do it. Do you think that some people are more resentment focused and other people are more fear focused? Do you see any of that? I saw that in myself early on in recovery. I was like, you know, yeah, I did have resentments. But in comparison to fear, my resentments, you know, were like a 10th of my inventory, and my fear was like 90% of it. And I know other people who are almost exactly the opposite. They are just perpetually, you know, pissed at the world. Do you see that breakdown? Or is that just a pattern I'm making that's not really there? For me, it felt the same way. It felt 10% resentment, 90% fear felt like fear ruled my

life. But however, through processing through my resentments, I saw that fear was at the bottom of everything. Yeah, yeah. So the reason I told myself the story about whatever it is you did, was because I was frightened, or the reason I tried myself the story about whatever it is you did was because I was frightened. Or the reason I tried to manipulate that situation that then backfired on me that made me resentful was because I was frightened. It's two fears. I'm frightened that I'm not going to get what I want or I'm going to lose what I have. When I make a decision or act from a place of fear, it's always wrong. So what's your method for working with limiting beliefs?

So limiting beliefs, it's similar. It's kind of zoning in on the, what is the story I'm telling myself about this? And I think you can boil most limiting beliefs down to one or two things, which is I'm not good enough. And if I'm not good enough, I'm not going to be loved. You know, there's all sorts of variations from that. So what I do is then I've asked myself, I do this with clients. You know, somebody might say, well, I, you know, there's all sorts of variations from that. So what I do is then I've asked myself, I do this with clients.

You know, somebody might say, well, I, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm like, prove that to me. Do you have some evidence? Can you prove that to be true? Well, yeah, this guy dumped me and I didn't get the promotion. And I'm like, those are events that happened, but we can't prove it to ourselves. And we'll filter out all of the stuff that disproves it. So then what we do is change it to an empowering belief, which is it's important that it's not Pollyanna.

Like I'm the best person in the whole world because our ego voice will go, yeah, right. We change it to I am learning that I'm good enough. I'm learning that I'm good enough in my role at work, for example. And then, and this is the crucial bit, is look for evidence to support that. So, for example, I'll get, you know, people like, I'm not worthy of being loved. So we change it to, I'm learning to love myself, or I'm learning I'm worthy to be loved. And we look for evidence. And I'm like, don't look for Prince Charming coming down the street. Notice when the guy in Starbucks just uses your name

and says, hi, fine to go. Decaf latte, here you go. We're just going to look for little, tiny pieces of evidence that, you know, your neighbor said, ohcaf latte, here you go. We're just going to look for little tiny pieces of evidence that, you know, your neighbor said, oh, you know, your hair looks nice today, whatever. We're going to just begin to consciously change this filter system that we have, that just filters out anything that contravenes these negative stories we have. And we're going to change it so it supports the more positive story. Awesome. You write each year, I guess, I didn't go back a whole bunch of years, but I see the last couple of years, you wrote 20 lessons for 20 years in sobriety, you had 19 years of 19.

No, the same lessons, I just add one for each year. You just add one. It's very smart. You get a whole new post each time. It's brilliant. That said, I wanted to hit a couple of these. And I guess we already hit the two I really wanted to hit, which was it was never about you. Say a little bit more about that, though, and maybe where that particular line comes from. It was never about you. I feel like there's a poem that that comes from. I think there was a Mother Teresa line, right? Yeah, that one. Yeah, that is the ultimate freedom. It talks about this in the big book,

which I think has some incredible wisdom, spiritual wisdom in it. And it talks about the self-obsession. And that really defined me, the obsession of self. Everything was about me. Everything you did was about me. Everything was just about me. And it's exhausting and horrible. And getting to a

place where you realize that nothing's personal, that you're free of the good opinion of other people, and that it's just not about me. It just isn't. That's the ultimate freedom. I think that Mother Teresa line was something like, it's between you and God. It was never about them. So the other one that we could hit on, we certainly covered personal, but what will matter more in 10 years? Say a little bit about that. I found that really useful for getting out of when I go down a rabbit hole, you know, of like, oh, my God, this thing has to work out. This is really important. This has to get done now. When I get in the woods, and I can't really see and it just feels like it's

really, really important, that question really frees me. Like what will matter more in 10 years? And immediately it's like, you know what? That's irrelevant. What am I obsessing over that? That won't matter in 10 years. It just kind of puts everything in perspective for me. And these are the tools I'm talking about. It's like we go down rabbit holes and get obsessive about something and we need a tool to pull us out. And that one pulls me out of there and just helps me shift my perception so I can really see what's going on. Yeah, I have a version of that. I don't think I came up with it. You know, it's will this matter in five hours, five days, five weeks, you know, and you find the vast majority of things won't matter in five hours. And very few will matter in five weeks, some will, you know, and then you're

like, Okay, well, this is an appropriate use of my energy and my time. But me being upset that I'm on hold for an extra five minutes, I will have forgotten about this by 5pm today, unless I choose to allow myself to get into such a lather about it that I'm still mad four hours later. Yeah. But like you, I need that tool. I need that reminder. I need that context. Yeah, it's the framework. It's something to hold on to. It's like when I can operate within this framework work, I just have these tools to just stop me going to these places that are unhelpful. Yep. Well, Veronica, thank you so much for coming on. Your book is called Soberful, Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol.

We'll have links in the show notes to where you can get the book. We'll have links to Veronica's website and everything she has to offer there. So thank you so much, Veronica. It was a real pleasure to talk with you. Thank you, Eric. It was wonderful to be here. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.

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