The Therapy Edit - On one tweak to find more calm and patience

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

In today's solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna shares with listeners her recent journey to cut right back on alcohol and the surprising effect it's had on her sense of calm and her nervous system.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, Psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi, lovely parent walking along or driving along or having a bath or whatever you're doing. I am so grateful that you tuned in. I love doing these podcasts. I absolutely love them. I think it's one of my favorite things when I sit down and I write up some notes and I sit at my microphone. And today, I haven't actually got any notes at all. These ones make me feel a bit nervous, but more like I don't want to just go blah, blah, blah. And I always want it to feel clear and make sense, which feels so much easier when I have

notes in front of me. So I have no notes for this one because I started right. writing notes and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to tell you my story. So this is on one little change. That actually is it a little change? I don't know. I'll let you decide that. Depends who you are and where you're at on this journey. That has made me a calmer parent. And I am so, so grateful for this. It's definitely been a few years in the making. But let me tell you a little story. So I am someone who always loved at the end of the day having a G&T. It wasn't a small one. Let's put it that way. But that would be my treat at the end of the day. It was something that I lent towards. If things were stressful, I would just so look forward. I would lean towards

that moment where I could pour my gin and tonic and it felt like it was my exhale. It felt like it was my present, like I deserved it and I needed it. And I didn't see any issue with that at all. I'm not alone in doing that. I see that on social media. I see that in my friendships. I am not alone in leaning towards that at the end of the day. Anyway, I went to Jixil Puzzle Club. Now, it's not like book club. It's not a regular thing that we do. I think we just do it a few times a year with my neighbours. and there were Gs and tea, Gs and T's, G and T's being poured, Praseco being poured, wine being poured, and really that's, you know, we get together and we chat and do a jix, so we wouldn't always finish it. And my friend had bought some alcohol-free gin, and I was like, so entreat,

especially as she was the last person that I would imagine would be making any kind of swap to alcohol-free gin. Anyway, she said to me that she was doing this new thing. It was more around health for her and fitness and just drinking once a week. And it really challenged me. I could not get this out of my head. A, I was like, why would you do that? B, I was like, I'm not sure I could do that. And when I feel challenged in something like that, it sticks with me. And I think it's almost, it's almost a challenge of, Anna, the fact that you think you couldn't do that, maybe you should try and do that. So what I did, I started off. Now, this is a couple of years ago, it's when we could start doing these things after the pandemic. I started thinking, right,

I'm going to have one alcohol free day a week. That was hard. It felt hard to me. I felt like I was really missing something. I felt like I was lacking something in my evening. It was a very conscious missing. Then I started thinking, well, maybe I'm going to do two nights, then three nights, then four nights. And it was almost as if the nights I didn't drink were a thing to get me to the nights that I could have my G&T or my glass of wine. I started reading some books and following some people and I read William Porter's Alcohol Explained. And I started learning about alcohol. I started learning about the effect it has on our nervous system, the effect it has on our brains, the effect it has on lots of different aspects of who we are.

also started, I listened to a podcast called the Holberman, Hulberman Lab. Now, it's very neuroscience base, which thrills me greatly. But he's an American neuroscientist, I believe, and he did this one episode and it was called kind of how alcohol, it was all around how alcohol affects your nervous system. Now, I am big on the nervous system. I notice how my nervous system, you know, it's that, it's your nervous system, basically. basically helps all of the different aspects of you as a biological organism and a mental and emotional organism work together. So we know when our nervous system's heightened, we feel kind of hyper-alert, hypersensitive, irritable, just like we cannot relax. And everything, all the

different sensory input, it can feel, we can feel quite sensitive to it. So for me, that feels like noise sensitivity. It feels like just being stressed quite quickly, finding finding things challenging and stressful because we're already in a state of stress. So that's when your nervous system is kind of in that flight or fight stress state. And then when it's in that good kind of rest and digest state, you know, it's easy to chill. You're just feeling, you're feeling calm. Nothing feels wildly stressful. Your stress response is there if you need it.

So I started learning about the effect of alcohol on the nervous system. And I thought, goodness me, this is incredible. I am here trying to get all the tools so that I can parent in a way that I'm proud of to get all the tools to help calm my body, to help me stop being so reactive and I'm doing all of these things. And I feel like I am doing the best I can. But at the same time, I am drinking something that is putting me in that stress state. It's putting me in that stress response. It kind of feels like it helps. When you drink, it's a nervous system depressant. So what it does is imagine. you've got a spring, it pushes it down. So it's depressing that spring. That spring that helps you respond to the world around you. Helps. You know what a safe helps you react. It's pushing it down. So we feel good. We feel calm. But actually what our body is needing to do is make our nervous system even more sensitive because it's like switching an alarm off. If you're switching an alarm off, you're very aware that you're you're threatening.

the safety of whatever is alarmed. You know, if you're turning off your house alarm, you know that in, and say you've gone on holiday and you have a house alarm, you know that you've actually made yourself more vulnerable in switching off that state. So what happens is that our nervous system responds by saying, whoa, the alarm system has been calmed, turned down, switched off. We need to make it more sensitive. So when we wake up the next day and I really relate my sleep, I always thought I just

woke up in the night. My sleep, we can't sleep quite as well. Our sleep's really disrupted. And we wake up and we feel more sensitive to the world. I feel more irritable. Don't feel as calm. I feel more reactive. And I just honestly thought that's who I was until I did dry January. So I'd gotten to a point where I was maybe drinking twice a week, three times a week. And I did dry January and I felt like a different person. I felt less reactive. I felt calmer. My nervous system just wasn't as hypersensitive. So no wonder I felt tired even when I'd slept. So it's been a real journey for me. My current thing at the moment is that I don't drink more than once a week. Anyway, I had a drink last night. I feel really heightened today. Every time I do have my one day a week,

I wonder why the heck I bothered, because now I'm just irritable, I'm reactive, and I slept fine, but at the same time, I clearly didn't. Anyway, I know that this is a massive topic, right? And it's been a real journey for me of actually learning and understanding what alcohol does to my nervous system. But through doing this, I really do recommend exploring it. If you find it hard to be calm, if you are getting all the. the tools and you're doing this, you're trying so hard and you're doing lots of reading and you're doing all of those things that we do to equip ourselves as parents, but you're still drinking alcohol regularly. I just think it's one of those things that I never realized was

working against everything that I was working to do. Now, I don't know what I'm going to do with that one day a week. I'm beginning to feel increasingly asking myself whether it's worth it. And maybe I'll cut that out as well and just have it as an optional thing. But the thing is I think I feel so much more informed now and I don't feel like I was informed before. So this is just a little story, a little tale of mine, a little big thing that has actually really, really impacted my parenting and my sleep. So cutting out alcohol, really massively vastly reducing, I'm not tired when I'm not drinking, I actually recognise that I'm not feeling tired. I'm just calmer. And I really, really value that. I feel like calm and patience is one of the most important

parenting commodities, as is sleep. So there we go. There's my little tail. And maybe it'll prompt some thought. Thank you so much for listening. Please do take a moment to subscribe, rate and reviewers, it really helps get these words out to benefit more juggling parents like us. And head to anamatha.com to find my resources on everything from health anxiety to people pleasing, starting at only £20. And finally, don't forget to pre-order my new book, Raising a Happier Mother, How to Find Balance, Feel Good and See Your Children Flourish as a result. I can't wait for you to have that. Take care and we'll chat soon. Thank you.