SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, drinking, work, alcohol, life, sober, Christy, feel, reached, Quit Lit, podcast, accountability, women, day, hangover, people, wake, big, stop, thought, sobriety, talked, coaching

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Christy

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. This is a bit of a different episode because it’s with one of my one on one private coaching clients. And if you’ve noticed, I’ve never done an interview with one of my clients before. And that’s because when I work with women, it is completely confidential. I do not share anything about you or our work together with anyone. Now you’re able to share the things we work on the fact you’re working with me how we work together or not with anyone you choose to. But on my side, it’s completely confidential. So I’ve never asked one of my clients to come on the podcast to talk about their story in their experience. But Christy, who you’re going to meet soon, actually approached me She said that she would love to share her story as she was finishing her 1^st year alcohol free. And there is so much about Christy story that I’m sure you’re going to relate to in terms of how she felt before when we first started working together. What she had tried before to stop drinking her emotions around her feelings about being a working mom and her partner and drinking, what she struggled with in early sobriety, the tool she used that worked for her. And what’s different now how she felt in the beginning in her first month, at four months at six months. And now it over a year alcohol free. So, this year is about your first-year alcohol free, how you might feel what you go through what works, what to expect. And just to give you a little bit of context because it’s going to come up in the interview. I’m going to tell you about how Christy and I work together and how I work with other clients 1-on-1.

 

Now, you might know I have the podcast I have a free guide that anyone can access, which is the sober girls guide to your first 30 days. I have a free masterclass available to anyone that’s five secrets to taking a break from drinking. I offer an online sober coaching course that’s on demand, which is the sobriety starter kit. And I work with women one on one like I did with Christy. Most of the women I work with are really successful, high achieving working moms who also struggle with alcohol, who drink more than they want to more often than they want to who’ve tried to moderate in the past and haven’t been successful. And they are tired of being in that really difficult painful place of questioning their drinking, of trying to stop of getting a few days or a few weeks of saying, screw it have started and again of beating themselves up and that’s where Christy was when we first talked. Now when I work with credit clients, I only take on four new clients a month, because it’s pretty intensive at first. And that’s because we work together really closely. We have a joint goal of getting you to 100 days alcohol free, which you’re going to hear when I talk to Christie. But obviously the goal is not to get to 100 days and then say screw it and drink again. The goal is to do all the math. Set work, all the boundary work, all the challenges of early sobriety in those first 100 days, the really predictable ups and downs, so that by the time you get to that point, you say, I feel so good, I like myself so much better, I like my life better. I want to see how good I can feel at 180 days at six months, and keep moving those goals, so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

 

So, we kick off with an hour and a half session that is all about you about your life and your kids, your partner, your triggers your schedule, what you drink, why you drink, what you want in your life that you’re not having right now, what’s been holding you back, and all the rest. And we come up with a really concrete practical blocking and tackling plan to get you through day three, and day five, and day 14. And then we have calls weekly, for about the first four or five months, I really want to get you through that first month, those first five weeks, because so much comes up for women not just about alcohol getting through the witching hour, but about relationships about things they’re noticing about their boss, and their office and their colleagues and their friends. And my job is to hold your hand through all of that the women I work with who get the most out of private coaching, we text or email or both. Every single day, I’m the person who when they wake up in the morning, they reach out to tell me how good they feel. And during the witching hour or after dinner, when they really want to have a glass or a bottle of wine, they reach out to me we text back and forth over dinner. If they go out to their first dinner party or a date night with their husbands. We plan ahead I hold their hand through that they check in with me sometimes from the restaurant sometimes after we talk on the weekend. So basically, I am your person to support you through this process. And then as we work together, we typically work together for about four or five months, sometimes six months, through the process of private coaching. Some women decide to check in with me monthly after that. Some women like Christy feel great, after we work together, they feel solid in not drinking, they’ve done a lot of work. They’ve dug into what was underneath and behind their drinking, and they’re ready to move on to other things to therapy to new initiatives.

 

And then when you get to 50 or 60 days, we do core energy coaching together, which is an online assessment that you answer about how you feel in different situations, what your typical thoughts and behaviors are. And we do an hour and a half session digging into that to see how you are responding to people and opportunities and, and situations both as you navigate life in general. And also in times of stress. And the reason we do that is if you’ve been drinking for a while, if you’ve been going to alcohol to celebrate, or for stress, or just because it’s a habit and you’re bored. Women typically have a lot of the same ingrained thought patterns and responses and fears.

 

And once you stopped drinking, you actually don’t need that anymore. It’s not necessary. And so at that point are sober coaching, transitions to life coaching, we transition to your goal being to not drink because it drags you down and keeps you stuck. And the main goal is to do all the things you want to do in your life that you haven’t done because you’ve been stuck in the drinking cycle.

 

And for every woman, that life coaching portion looks very different. And that’s the part of working with women one on one that excites me the most that I love because for most women, if you’re high achieving, if you’re navigating life, keeping most of the balls in the air, and yet you’re drinking a lot and worried about it and waking up hungover. You get rid of that ball and chain that’s been around your ankle, you let go of all that physical load and emotional load and mental load of drinking and not drinking and you can achieve anything.

 

So jump into this conversation with Christy. I am so excited that she reached out to me that she said I would love to share my story. And I hope you enjoy it. get something out of its things you can apply now and take away some inspiration that you can do. There’s two, and that life is better on the other side.

 

Well, hey, Christy, welcome to the podcast.

 

10:08

Hi, Casey, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here and talk with you live.

 

10:13

I know, I know. We’re just saying that we’ve actually we talked so much we emailed so much we texted, and we actually had never done a zoom call where we see each other’s face, which is kind of crazy.

 

10:29

It is crazy, like you were the voice on the other end of the phone. But you know, what you look and, and your gestures are exactly what I pictured in my head. Like it’s the exact same thing. So, and since we’ve worked together, I actually do video calls with some of my clients, like, I don’t know why we didn’t think of it or do it before. But then some of my clients, they take calls when they’re going for a walk or in their car, or somewhere private away from the computer. So it’s kind of works both ways.

 

10:58

Yeah, I think in the beginning, it would be like quiet and a secret of place where you felt like you could be really honest. And then probably towards the end of the 100 days, when we were really digging in deep. It probably would have been better to like to see your face when I’m throwing things on you and seeing what your reaction is. Yeah, I’ve been really helpful.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  11:18

Well, so I gave a quick intro about you and how we work together just for context. But why don’t you introduce yourself and kind of say where you are now?

 

11:28

Yeah. So I’m Christy. I live in the Midwest. I’m an HR professional. I’ve been doing it for a number of years. I’m a mom. I’ve got three kids, three teenage kids, and I’m divorced. So I’m a single mom, which I wasn’t when you and I first started talking. So we’ll probably dig into that. I’m sober. I have been sober for 13 months. And you know, my life is big. I do a lot of things. I started a new job recently. And so I’ve been really growing my career and focusing on that and really getting out and enjoying the last five years I have with kids in the house, which is crazy. That’ll be an empty nester, but you know, trying to make the most and be as present as I can for those last few years. You know, this is my son’s last summer my senior sons. So I want you to go out have adventures, make memories, do all of those things. So it’s a lot of camping and hiking and snowshoeing and enjoying the Midwest and the fall and things like that. Even with all the craziness that is happening, and things being shut down, we still find things to do.

 

Well, I remember that like you are a big hiker, an outdoor person. So like in the very beginning, you’re like anchor activities and sober treats. Were all around, getting out of the house getting away from like the alcohol that used to drink after dinner, whatever. And getting out in nature. And that was awesome. And I think a god, I can’t imagine having my oldest go off to college soon. I think I’d be so sad. Because he’s 13. So when you said you have like five years left with him, I’m like, are with I know when you think about it that way. It’s terrifying. But what’s so great is like your oldest, as they get ready to exit the house. Like he’s got so much confidence and who they’re going to be in the world. So it’s beautiful to see that.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  13:24

I know, I know when you’re supposed to do right raise them to be independent adults. Yeah, I know. I know. So I was looking back through my notes, I know you were as well. And first I want to say thank you for contacting me and actually suggesting this I mentioned in the intro that I have never asked any of my clients to come on the podcast. And that’s because when we work together, it’s totally confidential. I wouldn’t want to put any of that pressure on you or have that be like an expectation that you would ever share your story publicly, you reached out to me and said as something that you’d like to do.

 

14:04

That’s right, I’m sharing my story have been a big part of my journey because I learned so much in the last year and one of the largest barriers to me stopping drinking was that I didn’t know another sober person. There wasn’t someone in in my orbit that also didn’t drink and so there was no one to model how that life could look for me or what I could do to get there. So now you know doing a podcast. You know I put a social post out on Facebook when I made one year to let people know like you can live a sober life you can do this and it’s beautiful. And the reason behind that is now every single one of those people that I’m connected with socially, they know one sober person me and if that’s what gets them from, you know, hey, I think I want to reevaluate my relationship with alcohol. Maybe I have a drinking problem, or maybe I just want to quit drinking and see what it feels like. There’s someone else in the world that they know that did it. And it turned out okay. And so that was kind of the, the reasoning behind reaching out to you and being really social about my sobriety.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:19

Yeah, I love that. And when you said that I was nodding my head, because that was the exact same thing for me. Like, I literally didn’t know another person who drank like I did was like me had stopped and said it was better, and they were happier. And I was so secretive about my internal worries about alcohol, like I didn’t want anyone to know, because I desperately didn’t want to stop that. I did the same thing once I got to a certain point. And I don’t think it was actually at a year everyone in my life, knew I had quit drinking, like everybody knew, like, Oh, yeah, I used to drink a lot. And I stopped. But social media, right, all my ex bosses are on there, and my ex colleagues and like, my friends from high school, and college, and whatever. But one of the reasons I actually put it out there is because I used to drink with tons of people like I was in a big drinking crowd, at work and in college. And I was like, actually kind of curious if anyone else had quit to that I knew. And so that was cool. And I did have people reach out to me to be like, Hey, I’m also stopping, or I’m working on it, or I quit a year ago. And that was really cool to get people from different parts of your life kind of be like me, too.

 

16:41

Absolutely. The people that reached out, I would have never guessed that they were struggling, that they were thinking about quitting drinking. And some of them were, like old ex bosses that were pretty established and careers. And I was like, wow, that that person reached out. But that’s the that’s the beautiful thing about sobriety is that there’s this whole underground network of people that thinks the way that you do that maybe have eliminated alcohol from their life or thinking about it. And even with my silver sisters group that I have, which we can talk about a little bit later, but all of these beautiful women that were in my community that I didn’t know existed that didn’t drink that, if I met them at a football game, I would never think oh, that’s a silver person. They’re fun. They’re funny, they’re outgoing, they, they’re just regular women like me who have jobs and kids. And, you know, they’re not like the trope of under a bridge with a, you know, paper bag with alcohol, they, they’re just regular women that have made a decision to make their lives better, to improve their health and be present. And how they’re my friends, you know, we’re very similar goals.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  18:01

Yeah. And I was curious, I wanted to ask you, when you said, I never would have suspected these people. Tell me why. Like, why you because everybody’s like, I just want to drink, quote, unquote, like a normal person, like, how come? Other people can take it or leave it or have two classes? And I’m always like, dude, you don’t know, like, you know, they may just have two glasses out with you and drink before a drink after or, like, there are so many smart, loving, high achieving women who you would never suspect are waking up at 3:00 am and having the same crap thoughts that you are. So, you said, I never would have suspected? And was that kind of why they looked like they had it all together? Or another reason? Yeah, absolutely.

 

18:51

They had it all together, I’d been out with them in social settings. I’ve seen their posts on social media, which of course is always the best part of your life, and not really the honest part of your life. But I would have never thought and drinking with them or you know, working with them every day that internally they were struggling with something. It’s just so insidious that and you get really good at hiding it. I mean, I was really good at hiding it. I was great at putting out into the world, that everything was okay with me. And I knew I knew that there was an issue and I knew that I wasn’t meeting my full potential and, and that something needed to change. And so I feel like that’s probably what’s going on with those people too, is that they’re having those internal struggles and they’re starting to identify and put those pieces together. of, Oh, am I drinking too much, or some of the things that are going on with me because I’m drinking too much is it because I got blackout drunk on Saturday. You know, like you kind of start and that’s such a great area you know, when I look back at when my drinking became problematic and when I became aware that there might be an issue you know, it’s such a gray area of When was I drinking normally and when was it not impacting my life and then when did it really start to take a turn and I was one of those drinkers that drink very, very normally for a long, long time. And then about four years ago, something just switched, and I started using alcohol as a coping tool to deal with the stress of a growing career of a failing marriage of raising three children. It just started to work, and it became problematic, so you know, some people have drunk forever, and they drink a lot and they never have a problem but for me, it just got it just got out of hand.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  20:58

Yeah, I think that’s so common for so many women. I mean, I was always a big drinker that was you know, that was just sort of my jam since college and obviously it like escalated over the years but I think I was always sort of a 365 nights a year kind of girl but I talked to so many women where they you know, previous in their life it was just fun and casual and not like this big looming thing that takes up so much of their thoughts and sometimes that can hold them back from stopping because they were like well it used to be really good any you I used to be able to take it or leave it and I just want to go back to that place. But you said so for about three years before you ended up stopping a year ago. It took sort of a darker turn and what did that look like? Because it’s a little bit different for everybody.

 

21:59

Yeah, so I think when it when it started to get to be a problem I wasn’t having as much fun when I was drinking so like I wasn’t getting like fun drunk I it took a lot more alcohol for me to feel you know the numbing effects of not caring about the world and not caring about all my problems and just the hangovers were so intense you know moral hangovers you know the next day stupid’s? I couldn’t think clearly you know sometimes I couldn’t remember my password to get into my computer for work which you type in 1000 times a day my decision making my memory I was anxious I was uncomfortable and I you know, it was really just every day that I would wake up with a hangover I just wasn’t functioning and I also was starting to not starting to like I’d always been a binge drinker so I wasn’t an everyday drinker. But like, on the weekends, I would drink a lot like with my husband and my neighbors and we’d all have a fire in the driveway and just annihilated and I was blacking out a lot and not able to piece things together the next day and so I you know, I’d wake up and how much did I drink? What time did I go to bed? What? You know what? How late was I up it and what did I do? And I would find like text messages on my phone that I had sent in a blackout? I text message my pastor one time. No, what did you say? I just I don’t know. I asked him about like something in the Bible. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t even know. But I mean, it wasn’t bad. But it was like, I don’t remember doing that. You know, and I would I gosh, this is a good one. I subscribe to Playboy magazine. Why? Why would I do that? Like I don’t know what led me to come up with air Jay showed up, put me name on it. And I was like, why did why did this come to me and I share it. Sure enough, looked back in my phone history and my browsing history. And I did a it was like 2:00 am and I subscribed.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  24:17

Sure there was some reason that you’re like, this is gonna fix things like whatever. Yeah, I don’t know. And it was things like that happening where I was really truly in blackouts. And you know, sometimes it was funny, but sometimes it wasn’t funny. Like, one night. In a blackout. I helped my son rearrange his fish tank. He’d been asking me to do it forever. And then the next morning I went in to wake him up and I was like, oh look, you rearranged your fish tank like good job. And he was like you did that mom. And he looked at me like I was crazy. I had no memory of it. And I felt horrible. And I just pretended like I remembered I was like oh, I was just messing with you, but I really didn’t remember doing it.

 

Yeah, and So just not being present and losing that control while I was drinking was starting to really get scary. And then I started to have health consequences. So I developed like gastritis. So my really bad stomach problems and I was on medication for that I developed an author, I had to have my gallbladder taken out. So I kept having all these like stomach and digestive issues, I put on a lot of extra weight, without my highest weight, even counting pregnancies that I had ever been at, because I was consuming so many calories and alcohol, but also like all the junk you eat when you’re drinking, you know, you just eat all the things. And I was starting to like I was falling. So I fell a couple times and hit my head bruised my leg, you know, is hurting myself and then waking up like what happened? How did I hurt myself and my husband at the time would say, Yeah, you feel last night you fell off the chair and you hit your head. And I was just not okay with that. You know, it was I was hurting myself, I was destroying myself. And I had never thought that like I would be there that I would be the kind of person that was doing those things. And I knew it wasn’t aligning with who I knew I was and what I wanted to be. And I knew it was alcohol. Like I was getting drunk and doing those things. That’s what was happening. So that’s when I started going down the road of Do you know googling? Do I have a drinking problem? Yeah, what maybe I’ll try moderating, maybe I’ll try. Let’s list the 1000 things that we tried to do before we actually decided that the only thing to do is quit drinking. Right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  26:42

Well, so you also said that nobody kind of knew or that you were really good at hiding it. Like, is that true? Even with all of those things going on.

 

26:53

Yeah, because I was able to play it off, I was able to piece things together. It was a lot of work. But I was able to piece things together so that people didn’t really know that I was blackout. I was able to drink so much that I really didn’t come across as drunk when I was as drunk as I was. And I hung out with people that drink too. So most people that were with me when I was drinking, were also drunk, you know, so they, you know, we would talk about the next day and everything was great. And then I was hustling to be a great mom and be a great employee and be a great wife and have a clean house and do it with a hangover and it was costing.

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:36

It’s so exhausting. Keep that up. Yeah, don’t even realize how hard you’re like I’m drinking because my life is so hard. My work is hard. My bosses stressful. I don’t have any time for myself, my kids like all this stuff and you don’t realize till you stop drinking and get away from it. You’re like, holy shit, it’s actually not as hard or stressful or difficult. I mean life happens life is hard, but the degree to which drinking makes it harder is almost unimaginable while you’re drinking.

28:15

That’s right, and just the dishonesty that comes with drinking you know that’s hard to swallow too. So while I’m running around and making excuses and pretending like I remembered what happened that weekend, and pretending that I’m fine that I’m healthy that I have everything together it’s just the dishonesty just weighs with you because you know you’re hung over you know you don’t feel good you know that you probably let your kids down the night before said something stupid to your husband or to a friend or offended someone and you’re always playing catch up there and it weighs on you just not only physically feeling hung over like that, but just emotionally it was heavy to carry.

Casey McGuire Davidson  29:01

If you’re listening to this episode and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit. The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study, sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step-by-step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one-on-one coaching. And The Sobriety Starter Kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it, when it fits into your schedule.  You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time. This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step-by-step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life. You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better, you’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course.