May 29, 2020
Hello lovely, how are you?
How did you drink last night? And the night before?
When was the last time you felt hollowed out by your struggle not to drink?
When did you last give in, in frustration, fear and helplessness to a glass of wine, that became 2, and then the bottle?
And, how are you feeling in the deepest part of you? The part no-one else can see, but you.
Are you proud of you, of what you do, of who you are?
Or, as I was for so many long years, are you ashamed, feeling weak and helpless in your drinking…feeling lack of control, lack of peace, lack of physical and emotional wellness, feeling isolated and lost…..
You are meant to live connected and at peace with yourself, safe in your trust of you, quietly, deeply self-accepting, self-loving, self-comforting and so many other elements of self that gift you the peace and joy that makes life truly worth living, even in the harder, sadder times….and you those will always come and go.
You know that changing your drinking will change everything in your life….You have the evidence of it.
When you don’t drink, or drink much less, you feel more connected to who you truly are, physically and emotionally. You sleep better, your mood is more balanced, you laugh more, you hug more, you have more energy, you like yourself more and you know, you just know that you HAVE to make change your drinking, you just have to. Maybe not completely, just to cut down, to look, to feel and to act better.
And so you make the (daily) decision again……..You are NOT drinking tonight! And in that decision, you feel you feel just a little bit better, just a little bit more you, and you breathe again, because you know that today, ‘You Got This!’ It’s over, you’re back in control……
And your day wears on.
But as the hours slip by, a nagging feeling starts in the pit of our stomach…..somethings going down, somethings going wrong, an unwelcome visitor starts to tap at the door of your steadfast decision.
Who is it? What’s her name, and why won’t she just leave you alone?…….
Do you talk to your friends about this dreaded, destructive someone who comes zooming in on a broomstick enticing you back to the bottle?
Do they know her too, are they included in her daily visits?
Is this who you have labelled your WINE WITCH?
And what does your Wine Witch say to you? Maybe words of entrapment along the lines of;
- “Have just the one”
- “You deserve it”
- “You’ve had a long day, why not start tomorrow”
- “Don’t deprive yourself of something you love”
- “You’ll be ok this time, this time you can stop at one”
- “It’s not that bad”
And all the rest. Recognize her now?
And as she casts her alcohol spell, you give in. You drink, you feel rubbish, weak a failure, and blame your Wine Witch…..well you have to blame someone don’t you? I mean you don’t deliberately want to feel terrible, physically and emotionally, when you see the faces of shattered trust of your loved ones the next day.
And so you focus on getting rid of this mad, unkind, destructive demon who goads you into drinking, but here’s the truth.
Your Wine Witch is not your enemy, she is not outside you, she doesn’t come unbidden, out of nowhere or because of any clock time.
Instead, she comes when she is needed, when you are in need.
She comes to comfort you, to support you, to offer you the love and connection you are lacking in the moment, that you may have some sense that you are missing, but have lost the sight of how to deliver back what you need, and so you turn to alcohol. That is the truth.
You are not in ‘parts’, so there is no part of you that wants to hurt you.
There is confusion about how to offer and deliver you what you need, but no malignant part of you that wants you to fail, that wants to destroy your health, happiness, peace, calm or love of yourself or others.
I repeat again, because it is so important that you recognise this, you are designed to live in awareness and connectedness of who you are, what you need and how to deliver it. That is called your instinct.
However, life situations and learning’s from others, in this instance around alcohol, have taught you to believe, that alcohol is the problem.
That alcohol is a battle you can never win, that you have to abstain for ever. That changing the way you drink means giving up for life, that changing the way you drink will be hard and painful and worth it, but still a battle that will need constant supervision to stop you going back. And what you believe, you see, feel and you hear, all around you.
Here’s another truth. When you go into battle over alcohol, ‘To Drink, or Not To Drink’, you are going into conflict with yourself around your beliefs about alcohol, not with alcohol.
You are battling it out with your Conscious Mind, your learned ‘knowing’, pitted against your Unconscious Mind, you learned ‘feeling’.
Now you think your Conscious ‘knowing’ would win, but against your Unconscious ‘feeling’, (that has no language, just feels, so doesn’t even know what alcohol is), it never, ever stands a chance.
And the more you Conscious knowing berates you for drinking, the more your hurt Unconscious sends up alcohol as the method of comfort and support.
The worse you think, the worse you feel, the more you drink, to comfort yourself.
Your Conscious Mind is the voice that tells you “DON’T!”. “Don’t be so weak, what’s wrong with you, you’re useless, you know this will end badly” and that voice is stern, unkind, lecturing and makes you feel bad – and this is often referred to as the Angel…..strangely, as this Angel can be pretty dammed abusive.
And in response to the hurt your Conscious Mind inflicts on you, to comfort and support you, Unconscious Mind, your ‘Wine Witch’ kicks in.
Softer and kinder in tone, having no idea what alcohol is, or what it does to you, she is determined to hold you, to protect you. and in her lack of knowing what alcohol is and does to you, she feels you are trying to deny yourself comfort when you need it most.
Your Unconscious Mind is your super loving, super confused, super power, who will do anything and everything in her power to offer you love, and that is who your Wine Witch is.
Your Wine Witch is, (in intention), your deaf, mute, unknowing, only ‘feeling’, Guardian Angel, who exists only in response to your needing comfort from ‘bad’ feelings. But because the reality (so very different from her intention behind it), is that her method of comfort harms you more, you have grown to fear and hate her arrival.
Imagine now if instead of criticizing yourself when your alcohol thoughts drift in, you were to pause, take a couple of long, slow deep breathes, and to ask yourself with gentle love, “What am I looking for right now?” “What do I need to do for me?” and then waited and listened.
The true answer of what you are looking for, would appear from within you, your need for rest, comfort, communication, quiet, nourishment, physically, emotionally or both. Whatever it is you are lacking in that moment when your old alcohol thinking came up, which you then delivered.
What do you think would happen then? Well, you reconnect with YOU.
You re-connect with who you are and what you need, and in that place of self-awareness, self-compassion, self-care your step back in to self, yourself.
You step back into trust and communication with you, you start to feel the self-knowing, the self-acceptance that leads to your super power of self-love.
That is the ‘you’ that has no ‘need’, no cravings, no feelings of anxiety or deprivation around alcohol, because alcohol was never what you were looking for. You were looking for what you were lacking, and you were lacking the love and understanding of YOU.
When you have that re-connection, you have the peace, balance and harmony in life you were designed to live in, to be, and in that place, all your alcohol confusion and your loving Wine Witch simply drifts away, allowing your drinking to change naturally and effortlessly.
Be kind and gentle with yourself
Sonia
***********
Changing your drinking is not hard, and the life your drinking has given you is. And changing your drinking doesn’t have to mean ‘never again’, it simply has to be that are free to choose when you drink, not to feel you have no choice.
But you only stay stuck for as long as you choose to. You may have tried many times to stop and instead found yourself on the nightmare hamster wheel of your Stop/Start cycle instead, and that is because you have tried the same formula of not picking up the glass and hoping everything else will fall into place. Sadly, you know this doesn’t work, and knowing that, and knowing that you long to be free of your alcohol stress, anxiety and pain, you have to do something else.
I offer that something else. I created the unique 6 week, 1-2-1 RAPID ALCOHOL RECOVERY METHOD coaching process, based on my own sudden, effortless freedom from 28 years of out of control drinking.
It is not a freedom that comes with the caveats of control or relying on willpower, it is the freedom of choice and peace, and if you have understood this blog, if my thinking resonates with you, it the freedom that is on offer to you too.
***********
Finally, if you would like to understand more about my journey from 28 years of alcoholism, to peaceful freedom, take a look at my internationally acclaimed book,This Isn’t Me, described by Ranvir Singh, of Good Morning Britain as ‘Beautiful and devastating’ (click on the link HERE).I wrote it for my son, as an apology for his younger years, and as an attempt to explain the un-explainable.
May 10, 2020
How are you feeling today, after yesterday’s daily struggle with drinking?
Even if you don’t have a hangover, even if you managed to ‘control’ how much you drank, can you do it again tonight, tomorrow night, for a week, a month, and how much energy, exhausting mental and physical energy, will you have to put into it?
You know that the way you drink hurts you, on a level that is so deep, it feels as though it scars your soul.
You see children’s anxious, watchful eyes waiting to see how you will react over small incidents, or no incidents, just a little bit more noise or mess, cuts you in half.
Maybe your children are older, but their pain is still the same, worrying and fearful wanting to ring you, not wanting to hear your drunken voice. It’s all the same.
The shouty, snappy impatient you they see, is not who you are and is absolutely not a reflection of your love for them – that huge well of love that makes you want to scoop them up and hold them until your heart and theirs, feel as one.
But sadly, that is not who they see or how they believe you feel about them. You see the confusion and hurt and lack of safety in your love staring back at you, and you go into the bathroom and cry.
So feeling the way you do, what stops you making the commitment to letting go, for once and for all, of your drinking pain?
For most, it is the fear of failure – and yet you feel you are failing anyway.
Or the fear of how you will cope/be without alcohol – and yet you despair of your lack of coping, and who you are, with alcohol
Or the fear of trying again, and failing – because everything you have tried before has had the same approach and so the same results, just packaged differently.
Everything you fear about changing your drinking stems from 3 beliefs you currently hold
1 Your ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION‘ belief
2 Your ‘Changing the way you drink will be hard‘, belief
3 Your ‘You can never drink again’ belief
And how do you know you have these 3 belief’s? It’s easy.
- When you think about not having a drink at the end of a busy day, how do you feel? Contracted or Expanded
- When you think about trying to change your drinking, how do you feel? Contracted or Expanded
- When you think that changing your drinking means ‘never again’, how do you feel? Contracted or Expanded
When you feel Contracted you have the 3 beliefs. Contracted feelings are feelings of FEAR, and your fear always shows up first in your tummy. Think now about changing the way you drink and notice the feelings that arise – words you might also use to describe the feelings are deprivation, anxiety, loss, all of which are layers of fear. Do you recognise that?
When you feel Contracted, changing your drinking is fearful, stressful and very, very hard.
When you feel Contracted, you are thinking about stepping away from a habit that brings you something you need. And that need always comes under the umbrella of ‘comfort’ – this can mean rest, peace, coping, confidence, all things you don’t have, and need at different times.
However, when you feel Expanded, you are excited about change, the ‘challenge’, you look forward to it, expecting great results. Changing your drinking just means learning something new and you can’t wait to bring it on and enjoy the freedom.
In Expanded feelings there is no fear, and there are no 3 painful beliefs. Do you recognise this too, even if you can’t yet apply it to your drinking?
If you do, that’s fantastic as it means you already have a shift in awareness that can, when you know how to, propel you forward to changing your drinking, with ease, and it is the knowing and accepting of the above that makes all the difference.
I didn’t know, so couldn’t accept, or work with the awareness of the 3 beliefs I held around alcohol, and so I fought and failed for 28 painful years to change, in any way, how I drank.
I now know that those beliefs were 100% were the walls of my alcohol prison, not alcohol, and that they are yours too, and like mine, yours too can be easily disappear.
But your old beliefs cannot be smashed, or broken – your beliefs are who you are, even when they don’t serve you, and your beliefs are the creators of our reality, until you recognize them and know the process of letting them go.
It is easy to let go of your ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION‘ belief. Awareness of a new way of thinking, backed up consistently by easy self-loving actions, that cost you nothing and enhance every step of your empowering journey to peace and freedom around alcohol, is all that you need.
I have a simple formula for changing your ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION’ belief, and it is not hard, I promise you. It is literally down to a 4 step process of, AWARENESS +LIVING + FEELING = BELIEVING and once you no longer believe that alcohol is in any way your solution, the other 2 beliefs simply cease to exist. I promise you.
Awareness – learning how to recognise your limiting beliefs and releasing them, in the moment
Living – creating a way of living that has no focus on alcohol, is easy and re-builds your trust and love of you.
Feeling – the joy of consistently living your new life where alcohol, does not even feature as any sort of Solution. Where alcohol is just another beverage, an occasional treat, that you can take or leave, because your real, empowering solution is YOU!
Bring these 4 elements together and you easily release any beliefs around alcohol that leave you fearful, stressed and out of control around alcohol and alcohol situations. It is that simple.
Changing the way you drink is not hard you simply don’t know how too, and that is no longer a problem, because I do!
My empowering and unique 6 week Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method process gifts you the peaceful freedom from your exhausting, conflicting mind chatter.
It allows for the gentle release of your ‘Alcohol is the Solution’ belief, and with that one gone, the other two beliefs just don’t exist! And you are gifted back the woman and mother you deserve to be, that you truly are, for you and your loves.
How utterly wonderful is that?
Don’t wait for a tomorrow that never comes, don’t try another, yet the same, quit drinking process, packaged with a different name, it won’t work. You know that, because by God have you tried!
NOW is the time to change your drinking and transform your life, so what’s stopping you? If you would like a confidential chat, contact me, you are trapped only as long as you allow yourself to be.
Be kind and gentle with yourself
Sonia x
PS. Here’s a recent client testimonial – I absolute respect all my clients desire for confidentiality, so I never use names.
“I ‘forgot’ to drink on Saturday! I forgot and I have never forgotten to drink in the last 15 years. I know we agreed on 2 nights a week, because I wanted that, but I find I only drink on one. I am euphoric at how easy this process is. Thank you, thank you, thank you”
**********
If you would like to join a supportive, loving community of amazing women who are on the same journey to letting go of thier ‘Alcohol is the Solution’ belief, why not join my private facebook group, The Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method, (click here to request joining https://bit.ly/2UpNdZU ). It’s a loving safe space where I share tips and training and you get the support and care of the rest of our lovely lot!
**********
If you would like to understand more about my journey from 28 years of alcoholism, to peaceful freedom, take a look at my internationally acclaimed book,This Isn’t Me (click on the link HERE).I wrote it for my son, as an apology for his younger years, and as an attempt to explain the un-explainable.
May 10, 2020
How many times have you woken up hungover, embarrassed, ashamed and said ‘Never again’ to the Demon Drink?
You have made the decision to stop, or to cut down, and you have done it! For a couple of days week, a month, maybe even longer………… and then gone back, maybe with the intention of ‘just the one’ and found yourself free falling in to your old ‘I can’t control it’ drinking habits, and feel you have ‘failed’ again.
Welcome to your Stop/Start drinking cycle, an inexplicable cycle that you just can’t explain.
However I can, and on a very basic level, here it is.
- You drink, you get drunk, you feel rubbish you STOP
- You don’t drink, you feel great, you feel energized, happier, more confident, more alive, and proud. Something shifts. You decide to ‘reward’ yourself, and you START. Again.
Now there can be many variations on why you STOP, there is only ONE reason why you START again.
For your STOP, maybe you frightened yourself by your drinking, maybe you upset someone very special, you know why you make the change.
And it seems to be the same with why you START again. Maybe someone upset you, you found yourself completely stressed, overwhelmed, unable to cope with a situation or just bored or lonelier.
However, there is only every one reason you START again, and that is to make yourself ‘feel better’. This is the absolute truth, even of the ‘reward’ reason.
You don’t reward yourself for feeling brilliant. You are not in ‘need’ of reward then, the brilliant feeling IS the reward.
Instead you reward yourself for your achievement, in your case of not drinking, of doing so well.
Yet the very need for ‘reward’ means that you are feel something slightly lower, maybe the voice chatter has come risen a few decibels and it has become harder to ignore it, or you are tireder, just a little, of having to try. Whatever it is (and the unable to cope situations are much easier to understand), something you unconsciously feel, is not quite as good, and you start to drink again.
And then, again, inexplicably you find yourself unable to stop. What on earth has happened to you?
It is actually very simple, – you drink to make yourself ‘feel better’, I think you know that, and whilst it is not the result, it is always the intention.
And behind that intention is your powerful, ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION’ belief, which is kept safe and protected in your Wonder Woman strength, super power of your Unconscious Mind.
And it doesn’t matter why this belief was created, it really is irrelevant, it is how you maintain and re-enforce that belief now that needs to be shifted.
Whilst you are in the STOP phase of your cycle, and you really are feeling better, even fabulous, and your ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION‘ belief is not needed, so it sits quietly enjoying your peace and wellbeing – the very things it wants to deliver to you.
But when you don’t feel so good – and that not feeling so good, can be as small as a bad nights sleep which leaves you feeling less able to cope, or an argument with a loved one, maybe an idiot on the road, or when you are in need of ‘reward’ – any time when you find yourself if need of comfort and/or support your ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION‘ belief lovingly rears its head, to offer you that comfort, and if you then try to deny it without offering an alternative to your need, your Alcohol is the SOLUTION‘ belief comes raging back, to offer you whatever it is that you are missing, and you drink. Again.
That is all that happens. Do you recognize you here?
Letting go of your ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION’ belief is the ONLY way to find peaceful freedom and to change your drinking effortlessly. But you cannot break, bully or control any belief that has an intention of wanting to comfort you. Your beliefs create our reality, and you cannot smash your reality, because ultimately you are trying to smash you, which makes your need for comfort (alcohol) even stronger!
Instead, you need to let go of the belief that alcohol is any comfort, to release the emotional attachment you have to it, but that cannot be done with talking, reasoning or any form of intellect.
Releasing my Alcohol is the SOLUTION belief, is how I became peacefully sober after 28 years when I had given up all hope of trying to change with any other method, and guiding you to it is now my area of absolute passion and expertise.
I created the unique 6 week Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method process, which allows you to find your peace and freedom around alcohol effortlessly, by dealing with your drinking ‘problem’ at its cause, your innocently learned, there to comfort you, Alcohol is the SOLUTION‘ belief.
Once that is done, you have no cravings, or need for willpower, alcohol is no longer good or bad, it is a drink, you can take or leave, and so there is nothing to fight over.
The process starts with a loving deep dive into how your Unconscious Mind has learnt to believe alcohol is the solution – not ‘why’, but ‘how’ – it represents alcohol, & what your Unconscious Mind feels it brings to you. This is a huge part of why my work is so unique and life changing.
That is followed by you understanding the exact 3 step process you go through every single time you pick up your first glass, and the picking up is the last part. I work from the other way around, letting go of the first step, leaves no other steps to follow.
Freedom from the way you drink, (a freedom that is about changing the way you drink, not stopping for ever) comes from removing the emotional charge, (the feeling) of the ‘Alcohol is the SOLUTION’ belief, behind your drinking.
However, my work not only offer you freedom from your hangover, it is also freedom from despair, unhappiness, disappointment, shame, fear of failing, fear of not being the mother, partner you long to be, freedom from a life that is stress, anxiety and struggle, all of which is created by the time and energy you spend on your STOP/START cycle.
There has never been a time where your emotional and physical wellbeing is more imperative for you and for you loves, so there has never been a time where you need to end your STOP/START cycle more, and to step back into the woman you were born to be.
The price of anything is the amount of LIFE you exchange for it. How much, and for how long you paid, in LIFE the emotional, physical, spiritual and financial costs of your drinking, and how much longer are you prepared to pay those heavy prices?
The hardest part of changing your drinking is reaching out, from there, I take you on a journey of relief, release and joy, so if you would like a confidential chat, to see how I can best support you, message me and I will do the rest. The life you deserve is waiting for, are you ready for it?
Be kind and gentle with yourself.
Sonia
PS. Here’s a recent client TESTIMONIAL. This amazing women is now 6 months free and sent me this, plus a follow up testimonial last week, to remind me how she was just 3 weeks into the process. She didn’t want to a ‘never again’ solution, she just wanted to freedom from your daily alcohol ‘need’, her endless mind chatter and exhausting struggle, and she has them all, effortlessly.
“From 2 bottles a night, from hiding and lying to my family, I haven’t drunk EASILY in 3 weeks and the difference is everything to me. My children come to me for a cuddle and I don’t shrug them off anymore. I only did that because I didn’t want them to smell the alcohol, but as you said, they didn’t know that was the reason. I feel joy, real joy now when we sit and watch the tv together, not thinking about wine. In fact I can’t even imagine what I was thinking before. Thanks Sonia”
—————————–
Would you like to be where this amazing client is? Here’s the Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method link again in case you missed it earlier.
If you would like to join a supportive, loving community of amazing women who are on the same journey to letting go of their ‘Alcohol is the Solution’ belief, why not join my private Facebook group, From Alcohol Pain to Peace. It’s a loving safe space where I share tips and training and you get the support and care of the rest of our lovely lot!
If you would like to understand more about my journey from 28 years of alcoholism, to peaceful freedom, take a look at my internationally acclaimed book,This Isn’t Me (click on the link HERE).I wrote it for my son, as an apology for his younger years, and as an attempt to explain the un-explainable.
