Nov 25, 2024
If you woke up again this morning feeling heavy in your head and heart because you drank far too much again last night, when you promised yourself you wouldn’t, when you have told yourself 1000’s of times you wouldn’t and then you did…..This is for you
In my 29 years of desperate drinking, I tried to stop many times. I wanted to be a better mother, a happier woman, someone who deserved self-respect and love, I wanted to feel healthier, slimmer, a version of me that coped with life, who loved life and wasn’t living in secret fear and guilt because of my drinking.
And I tried, I really did…..and each time, I ‘failed’.
Each time something tripped me, and I fell back into the bottle and the fear of failing grew stronger with every fall.
In my professional role as The Alcohol Coach, I have never had a truthful conversation with anyone who had tried and ‘failed’ before, and was frightened that their past ‘failure’ was their only future.
Is this your secret fear to? That you can’t do it, and you will never break free from your drinking habit?
Have you grown to believe this is just who you are. That your history—the times you’ve tried and “failed”—is proof you can’t change.
Well, listen to me because I am telling your absolute truth.
Your drinking history doesn’t dictate your happy, sober future.
The truth is, every choice you make today, even the smallest, has the power to rewrite your story, because;
💫 You’re not stuck.
💫 You are not weak.
💫 You’re not broken.
Instead, you simply didn’t know HOW to change.
And now? I am going to teach you, your exact ‘HOW’
Step One: Stop Believing the LIE
The voice in your head telling you, “You’ll never do it,” is lying.
It’s not your truth.
It’s fear, born out of past experiences, trying to protect you from disappointment. But that fear keeps you trapped in overthinking and self-doubt.
You’re not here to play small. You’re here to step into a life of peace, freedom, and happiness—a life free from the cycle of drinking and regret.
Step Two: Trust the Process
It’s easy to get caught up in your head, overthinking every little step, trying to “figure it out”, re-creating scenarios of failure based on past experiences and projecting them into your totally unknown future….
From TODAY, I want you to completely internalise this TRUTH
CHANGE doesn’t happen in your thoughts. It happens in your heart space – when you step out of your overthinking and into the safety and trust of YOU that is always present in your HEART.
Here’s HOW you stay in your safe, grounded heart space:
🌟 Breathe and Pause: When you feel the pull to pour a drink, take five, long, slow, deep breaths.
🌟 Slow, steady breathing shifts you out of panic and into calm.
🌟 Check In With Yourself: Ask, “What am I really feeling right now?” Most of the time, it’s not about the alcohol—it’s about needing comfort, connection, or calm. Identify the real need and give yourself what you’re truly craving.
Keep your focus only on TODAY. You don’t have to figure out forever, or even tomorrow, just focus on making an empowered choice TODAY.
Step Three: Rewrite Your Story
Your past isn’t a life sentence—it’s a lesson. Each time you’ve tried to change, you’ve learned something valuable about yourself, your needs and your boundaries. Now, you’re ready to use those lessons to create your NEW Story
Here’s HOW:
Instead of THINKING, “I always fail,” remind yourself, “Every choice I make today is shaping my future.”
When FEAR creeps in, say, “I don’t need to know everything right now. I just need to take the next step.”
When you feel DOUBT, tell yourself, “I deserve peace, and I’m capable of creating it.”
Step Four: Stay Connected to Your Loving Heart, Not Your Stressed Head
Your head will try to pull you back into the cycle of overthinking—“How will I cope? What if I fail again?”
But your heart knows better. It knows you are strong, capable, and ready.
The HOW to stay connected to your Heart Space:
🌟 Write It Out: Keep a journal where you can pour out your thoughts without judgment. This is your safe space to process and let go.
🌟 Visualize Your Future: Take a moment each day to picture yourself living in peace, freedom, and happiness. Let that vision guide your choices.
🌟 Celebrate Every Step: Whether it’s your first alcohol-free day or your tenth, acknowledge and celebrate your progress.
When you follow the above simple process, daily, you will be the woman you LOVE, the woman who rejects any false belief that your past experiences have any power over you. You will accept completely you are not your history, and you are completely in control of creating your future.
Instead, you will know that you are the woman who stands up, again and again, determined to create a better life for yourself.
Every empowered choice you make today is shaping the peaceful, joyful future you long for. And with each step forward, you’re proving to yourself that you can cope, can change, you can be happy and at peace regardless of life’s situations and storms, and you can live authentically and free.
So take a deep breath, remember who you truly are, let go of the fear, and decide to take the next step. Your future is waiting, and I promise you, taking back control of your drinking brings so much more joy than you can even imagine.
One last time, you are not your drinking history. YOU are rewriting your story—one powerful choice at a time and creating the future you deserve…..now go and make it extraordinary!
If you want learn the quickest, simplest path out of your alcohol pain and back into peace, I offer a FREE, 20 minute, Take Back Control of your Drinking Call, if you would like to secure one, click HERE to request.
Sonia Grimes
The Alcohol Control Coach
Mar 15, 2020
A gentle reminder, in the storm of this Pandemic, that YOU are AMAZING.
In these very anxious
times, with concerns for your health and the health of your loved ones, it is
easy to spiral into fear, panic and self-pity, and it would be understandable.
We don’t know what is going to happen in the next few weeks, months or even days.
But to be honest, we never know any of those – it’s called life.
We can plan, and then
our plans can change dramatically, and out of nowhere, because ultimately, we
are not in control of any external situations. The only place
we have any control over is our own inner world.
This week I took a much older friend shopping, he wanted to go with me as an outing after a coffee, but the sight of the grabbing crowds and empty shelves in the usually sedate supermarket frightened him.
He needed toilet paper and there was literally none. I told him I had plenty to share (which in this non state of toilet paper was not true, but knew I would deliver what he needed in a heartbeat), yet still he looked around bemused at the shift in his world view of the things he took for granted.
He went to put his
finger in his mouth in anxiety and then the miracles started to happen.
A young women with
two small children who probably would have passed him by, busy in her own
world, stopped his hand gently and said, “Oh don’t do that yet love, we’ve got
to look after you” and squeezed some of her hand sanitiser into his, before
rubbing them together for him.
Another woman, seeing
his confusion, at the people swirling around him, stopped her shopping and
started to chat to him, asking him questions, and making him laugh.
10 minutes later,
there was a tight group of us, all strangers, standing together, drawn like the
incredible magnets we women are to another human we sense in need, gossiping,
giggling, comforting and brightening all of our day’s.
As we slowly
dispersed, thanking each other profusely for the small time out we had taken to
support each other, my friend turned to me, relaxed, all anxiety gone, and
said, “That was lovely wasn’t it, I have had such a nice time”
These women are who
we ALL are, underneath the stresses and worries of life. An underneath that
comes rushing to the fore, for others when they need it most, yet the rest of
the time we don’t even notice the existence of that us.
Yet we always instinctively know
how to reach out, to care, to support, to encourage, to show love, compassion
and kindness, because it is our natural state of being.
When you are standing
in YOU, there is nothing you can’t do, achieve or be. Nothing.
When you are standing
in YOU, you are your true, brave, resilient self, with grace and ease.
That is who you
are, always.
Your instinctive
reactions are just that, led by your instinct, that superpower that
you have learnt not to trust as you have bought into a world of acquisition, of
having more and of doing more, at huge cost to your being.
Too often you
innocently buy into that world, and the way of living of that comes with it, that
leaves you depleted, overtired, under nourished, under comforted, under
supported and misunderstood, by YOU.
When you are living
in that way, you become disconnected with who you are, and in the disconnection
you drink.
You drink to find the
connection, the support, the comfort, the peace, the calm that is lacking.
And even when you do
come into the awareness of those inner neglects, and you desperately want to
drink differently, you don’t know how break your drinking cycle, and you become
more fearful, more stressed, less calm, less peaceful, without knowing why, and
so the cycle continues and grows.
Do you recognize you
here?
The reason you struggle to change your drinking is two-fold
1 Alcohol is your learnt method of comfort (in whatever way comfort is needed in the moment), so by trying not to drink, or not drink as much, you are saying to you, that you will deny yourself that comfort when you need it most.
2 You don’t know how change the way you drink. And in that not knowing, you believe you are weak, a failure, flawed, and so much more, that take you even further from who you are, leaving you even more in need of comfort!
It is that simple. That is your alcohol trap.
I DO know how to change the way you drink, effortlessly, and it is NOT hard – (watch my free Understand Your Alcohol Trap Masterclass, to help you understand, http://bit.ly/2w2gPUY and check out my Testimonials page to see how easy my clients have found changing (not stopping), the way they drink)
I was trapped for 28
years in my alcohol hell not because I was a weak failure, who was hopelessly
reliant on alcohol, but because I didn’t trust who I truly was.
Who I truly am, is
who you truly are too.
The women who stopped in the shop are all of us.
Good, kind, loving, compassionate, resilient, doing your best every day to be your best, instinctive women who are gentle warriors at heart, but who have lost a little bit of faith in you, because you have tried, but cannot change, the way you drink.
Make this your time to
Take responsibility for you to Let This Go NOW.
Stand up for YOU, no-one else can do it for you.
No-one else can invest in you and get the results you want and deserve.
No else can deliver your freedom, only you (with some inspired and unique coaching from me, another woman who has been where you are now and is effortlessly free).
Own YOU, invest in
YOU, and you are free.
Love & respect to
you
Sonia
—————–
I created the unique, 6 week, 1-2-1, Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method, for incredible women like you, who know that the life they deserve is not found in a wine bottle, and who are committed to taking the easy steps to becoming effortlessly free.
It is the solution I developed from the experiences of my drinking life, my sudden effortless freedom, the extensive research into the human design and the training’s I have invested, which I have bought together, and use to successfully coach 100’s of women to powerful freedom.
Some of my clients have been to rehab more than once, and then ‘failed’ when they stepped back into their lives, and yet all of them have found the peace around alcohol they deserve, through this process.
None of my clients
want to never drink again, all of them want to lose their ‘need’, which they
do, effortlessly.
At the end of the 6 week, Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method, you will be completely relaxed and comfortable around alcohol & alcohol situations, and still be able to enjoy the occasional, social drink.
The Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method isn’t for you, if
- You want to continue to rely on the energy exhausting methods of willpower, motivation and control.
- If you are not ready to step into YOU.
- If you are not looking to invest in being your best you, then it is not right for you.
- If you are looking for a magic wand – this is not a ‘learn a few new strategies and you are done’ process. It is a way of living that asks you to take loving ownership of you and, to work commit to being that you.
The Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method is for you if you are,
- Ready for your life of freedom from the stress, anxiety and pain of your drinking.
- Ready for lifelong change.
- Ready to invest in being your best you, one time and for life.
- Ready to own how amazing you truly are and to care for you in the way only you can.
If now is YOUR time to own your freedom from your alcohol pain and to regain your peace, let’s talk. Before we do, and in case you missed it earlier, take a look at my recent Testimonials, and decide if you are ready to make the best investment of your life, and step back into the strength, comfort, love and support of YOU.
If your decision is “Yes, this is my time, I am ready to be free!”, I offer a complimentary Exploratory Call, to see if the Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method is right for you. This call alone will give you comfort and support.
—————————-
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.
Feb 11, 2020
During my drinking years, my first waking thought was a dull, painful, despairing “What’s wrong with me?”, a thought that created the unexpressed sob of sadness, lodged, frozen in my chest, cooling the warmth of my loving heart , and all because I had drunk too much the night before, as I did every ‘night before’.
Each day , without fail, I would look in the mirror, into my frightened of life eyes, and promise myself that I would not drink tonight.
In all my promised ‘not tonight’s’ I would be the sober, engaged, emotionally stable mother, partner, friend I longed to be, but couldn’t quite find. And I would mean those promises from the bottom of my wounded heart.
Today would be the day that everything changed, that I changed.
Today would be the first day of my in control drinking life – I never promised myself a ‘never drinking again’ life – let’s not get carried away here, the thought of that was terrifying. No, I would settle for a safely ‘not every night drinking’ life. My decision was made (again).
And I would feel a little better about myself. Just enough for me to face my day and one-in-a-million son, with a crushing hug of love and a smile of hope, if not quite the happiness we both deserved.
But unbelievably, every day as the hours slipped by, my thinking would shift and the old thoughts of alcohol would, seemingly out of nowhere, sneak back in and, as they settled, they grew, literally multiplying in size and intensity, as I attempted to calm them, to control them, to plead with them, to find ways of working my way around them. It was both exhausting.
I would be pleading with myself, to protect me from me. To protect my health, my wellness, my mothering, and what almost felt like my sanity, from the harsh noise in my head.
I would be begging me to stop, and for reasons I never understood (but do completely now), I couldn’t/wouldn’t, and ultimately didn’t listen, and again, as with almost every night for 28 years, I seemingly ignored every instinct for my wellbeing and the wellbeing of my son, and drank, in tears after the first few sips (scratch that, gulps).
The constant cry from my heart, during those sad, isolating times, where I was so far from who I knew myself to be somewhere deep inside was, “What’s wrong with me?” and “Why can’t I change?”
And the answer, the simple compassionate answer, that I now know to be absolutely true of myself, and true of you too, is that nothing was wrong with me (or you).
I wasn’t broken, or flawed, I wasn’t weak or a failure, I just didn’t know how to stop, and nor do you. Because if you did, by God you would.
I hope that your drinking life isn’t the same chaos as mine. But the fact that you are taking the time to read this, means that you drink in a way that concerns you, and that concern ultimately is about your inability to stop – maybe not completely, but to choose when you drink, rather than feel compelled to, and to be able to let go of your energy sapping alcohol thinking, feeling storm that overwhelms you to the point where you have to drink to end it. You just have to.
I understand you completely and I know why you can’t (just for now) make the changes you deserve.
You drink in the way you don’t like for ONE reason and ONE reason only.
To make yourself feel better – whatever feeling better is to you in the moment.
And here is where the problem truly lies, you drink with the INTENTION of making yourself feel better, which of course is in direct conflict with what you KNOW on every intellectual level possible, that feeling better will not be the result.
In fact you are completely aware that you will feel worse, and that knowledge makes absolutely no difference, as your INTENTION, your perceived need for alcohol as your method of ‘comfort’ is always so much more powerful.
So, what is your intention behind your evening glass of wine?
Maybe it’s to find a little peace, a bit of calm, some you time, some confidence, to feel less lonely.
Or maybe your evening glass of wine is a marker at the end of your working day, before you start on your most demanding ‘evening’ job of being a mother. The job you love most in the world, and gives the most to you, yet takes the most from you too, both physically (cooking evening meals, homework supervision, dog walker, extra curricular activities driver – wow, that’s exhausted me just writing it), as well as emotionally (confidante, comforter, worry remover) whatever you are needed to be when you are at your most depleted.
When you are tired, probably hungry and needing some quite time and a bit of comfort yourself.
And in the absence of acknowledging your own basic, simple to deliver, with a little pre-planning, tweaking and communication requiring needs, you ignore you and push forward and use wine to deliver the ‘comfort’ you truly need.
You treat yourself as though you are a machine and wine is the fuel of your engine. Wine ‘get’s you through’, ‘helps you relax’ and of course it doesn’t do either, but you have learnt to believe it does, and then you beat yourself up for trying to comfort yourself!!
Do you recognise you here? I definitely
recognise me.
You go to bed, ‘wined up’, probably have a poorer nights sleep, feel low the next day and promise yourself, ‘not tonight’.
You are back on the hamster wheel of your drinking, and you will stay there in discomfort and unhappiness, until you start to shift your awareness of you back to you, and acknowledge and care for you.
Ultimately you cannot change because you have lost sight of who you are, what you need and your deservedness and self-loving responsibility for delivering those simple needs. And, in your innocent awareness of what is going on, you focus on the alcohol being the problem that needs to be addressed, when it is your lack of understanding of you, lack of connection of you to your needs and self-care of you that is the issue.
Then, (and here’s the A word again), in the absence of any awareness of what you are lacking, your ‘need’ for alcohol, or your fear of life without it, will never go. It can’t. For now you feel that alcohol brings you ‘comfort’ and you cannot live uncomforted.
Effortless change starts with the intentional awareness of what you are looking for, in intention, when you pick up the glass for your first drink.
From that intentional awareness, you can start to gently question yourself and listen to your answers.
Take the few seconds that is all you need to ask yourself “What do you need from me right now darling?” then pause, breathe deeply and allow your answers to bubble up from your heart, from your soul. They always come when you allow them too, when you ask yourself with kindness and love. One thing I can absolutely promise you is that alcohol will not be one of them!
Allow yourself to receive your gratefully acknowledged, heartfelt answers of “I need some rest/quiet time, a hug, some fresh air, a kind word, nourishment” and you will notice with relief that you can deliver all of them to you. Even the hug and the kind word.
Everything starts with with how you are towards you.
In that simple asking of me, what I needed from me, and trusting myself to consistently easily deliver, my ‘need’ for the non-comforts, of alcohol no longer existed. It really was as simple and self-loving as that.
There is no effort to changing the way you drink, there is never any effort in loving yourself. You have simply forgotten how to.
Yes, it is very helpful and supportive to have some simple strategies to keep you safe as you re-connect with you, but they are part of who you are, nothing new to learn, just to re-connect with.
Change seems hard to you because you are putting all your energy on trying to PUSH open your door to peaceful freedom, when all it needs is a gentle PUSH, you just can’t see the sign.
If you are ready to re-connect with who you are, on the most joyful journey back to peace and freedom, let’s talk. I offer a COMPLIMENTARY 20 Minute Recovery Coaching Call, and that alone will offer you the start of the awareness you need to be peacefully free.
If you are ready to be peacefully free, with ease and confidence, contact me here.
The life you and your loves deserve it waiting for you it and it always will be, it is who you are and how you are designed to live.
Love & respect
Sonia
If you would like to know more about how my unique Recovery Coaching works, take a look at my How I Work For You page.
And, finally, I promise, if you would like to know more about my journey into and safely out of addiction, here’s the link to my Internationally Acclaimed book, This Isn’t Me. x
Dec 28, 2019
You are heartsick of the way you drink. Of feeling out of control before you pick up the first glass, almost tearful from the exhausting inner struggle of “I want/I don’t want, please stop me” around alcohol.
A struggle that has built over your day to the point where you feel almost battered into submission, and defeat (and drinking) is inevitable. Again………
Every day you make the decision that THIS. IS. IT!
You are going to do it, you are going to change the way you drink (not stop for ever, you want to be able to raise a glass of something chilled at a celebration. You want to enjoy a social night out, and why should’t you?)
And you are going to stick with it, for your family, for your health, your relationships, your work – you know your reasons.
And how do you always feel having made the decision of ‘ENOUGH’?
Do you feel empowered and excited at the thought, or does your ‘stopping’ fill you with fear and dread?
And if it does fill you with fear or dread, why does it, when you know, on every intellectual level that these changes are potentially the most necessary of your life?
There can be many reasons why stopping/cutting down/cutting out your poison cause you distress, and when that distress is present, it makes your journey feel even harder. It is even harder, and here are the two, completely intertwined, reasons why.
First, Starting with the stopping is always the hardest way.
It is not the result, but it is always the intention.
And behind that intention, there is a process you go through every single time you return to you poison.
It is never, ever, any other way around.
Whilst you act on your feelings, your ‘cravings’, they are the second step of the process, the first one always being your thinking, which creates your feelings, which lead you to re-act.
Picking up the wine glass the slab of cake is only ever the end result of the thinking, feeling process, and it is your attempt to comfort that thinking, feeling storm.
This is an absolute truth.
Can you see now why starting with the stopping is so hard – is actually almost guaranteed to let you down, when you start with trying to stop at the end result of the process?
‘Stopping’ means you are left with your unhappier thinking, which creates the feelings, which you have to comfort. You just have to. Again, do you recognize yourself here?
Now all of the above, is actually absolutely fantastic news, as one of the only things you have any control over is your thinking – the first step of the process.
Release your thinking, and there are no feelings, no cravings, there is no need to re-act. No need for comfort. It is as Halle-flippin’-lujah, simple as that!
When I suddenly shifted from mad drunk/binge eater, it happened in a ‘thinking’ instant. I didn’t know the what or the why and I didn’t care, it was more than enough to be free. Easily. I mean WTF!
I know now, understand and have the language and simple strategies to deliver that WTF moment to you, through the unique Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method.
Some of my clients have been to rehab more than once.
However, all who accept the above as being the truth of what the hell is going on in their inner world, have peaceful release – not control, control takes an energy you don’t always have, and most even drink / enjoy sweet treats occasionally without going back into freefall.
If 2020 is your year. If it is your time to step and make the commitment to you that will change your life, contact me today.
Nothing will change whilst you continue attempting to ‘start with the stopping’. It is just too damn hard.
My Recovery Coaching comes from a place of complete understanding of your struggle, as well as the compassion and skills I have gained on my own journey, and I now offer the joyful awareness and strategies that take you to release and back to the peace and balance you and your loves deserve in just 6 weeks.
After your first session you will have the relief of understanding of your pain, plus two simple, within you all the time strategies, to show you that everything I write is the reality of where you are now and why you are stuck – how empowering is that?
I deserved the gift of peaceful freedom. You do too.
Contact me here and we can arrange a complimentary, no obligation, chat to see the best way to peaceful release for you.
Love & respect
Sonia x
Dec 20, 2018
2019 will be my 5th suddenly sober year! And I mean ‘suddenly sober’.
If anyone had told me, even 5 minutes before I stopped drinking that my 28 year booze battle would be peacefully over, I would have felt suicidal at sheer size of the task ahead, as well as the impossibility of success. Didn’t they know me?
And yet, I, Just. Stopped. Drinking. And I remain in a peace and ease around alcohol I didn’t even know existed.
Now to, 2018. It has been a strange, sad, wonderful, thankful year for me, of much loss and even greater love. To a large extent, the view of my world has been smashed into tiny pieces which are currently, and haphazardly, airborne.
I don’t know yet how the pieces will land, or what the new shape of my life will be, but I do know that because I am sober, it will be a beautiful new shape from which I will grow in understanding, joy, gratitude, compassion and thankfulness. Aren’t they wonderful, empowering words to apply to yourself?
Four years ago those words would have been a painful reminder of all that I was not. I was a drunk, for a very long time, and I didn’t know why. I was desperate to be where I am now, but knew, I just knew, that I didn’t have the energy or strength, to even face the battle, let alone win it. And then I didn’t need strength, and I understood why.
I drank out of confusion and fear. Fear of stopping, fear of being, and there is nothing to fear.
We all fear the dark and unknown. But I know now that even the darkest days have beauty and learnings in them. That there are always small chinks of light that I could never see before, a kind word, a smile, a new understanding. I hold those tight when I see them and those are what I naturally gravitate towards, never the wine bottle.
My life isn’t perfect. It couldn’t be and I wouldn’t want it to be.
But now, without the chaos and pain that layering alcohol into my life bought, and with my sobriety safely in place, I navigate the (much less savage) storms and bask in the (much longer) peace. This is what being sober has gifted me.
I want to offer the same gift to you. I have started a closed Facebook group, (click on the link to request admission), Dry January & Beyond! . Its sole purpose is to offer support, comfort, encouragement, love and a safe place to any who would like to start your own sober journey.
My aim is to create a community of women who would like to understand or change their relationship with alcohol. It doesn’t matter where you are now, it is just a snapshot of time, and all the power you need for a different way of living is within you. You have just lost sight of that.
I am The Recovery Coach, a Master Coach, Master Practitioner of NLP, author of This Isn’t Me, my journey into and out of 28 years of alcoholism (and with a hugely destructive relationship with food). I have been there, done that and manufactured the tee-shirt so there is absolutely nothing you can express, that I either haven’t done, seen or heard.
I will be giving regular live coaching sessions, as well as be available to answer any questions you might have. And ultimately, I want you to support each other on your journey. Listen, learn and support one another. Never be critical, or judgmental. We only every walk in our own shoes.
Join now and let’s get this started. Introduce yourselves and my first live will be on 1 January 2019. Together, we got this!
Love & respect
Sonia Grimes xx
