SUMMARY KEYWORDS

high-functioning, codependency, HFC, drinking, work, self-soothing, self-regulate, self-care, drinking, take a break from drinking, overly invested in the feeling states, the outcomes, the circumstances, the relationships, the finances, the careers, detriment of your own internal peace, 90 day, empaths, co-dependent, codependent, therapy, behavior, sober curious, modern women, high-achieving, stop drinking, boundary, boundaries, Boundary Boss Bill of Rights, Boundary Boss, Too Much, health, peace, people pleasers, auto advice giving, overly self-sacrificing, auto accommodating, recovery from alcohol, drinking alcohol, cravings, desire, sober, ask expansive questions, self-determination, respect, sovereign, high-achieving codependents, highly sensitive people, skills, think, feel, need, protecting, energy, sober coaching, non-alcoholic, self-relaxation, meditation, shadow addictions, self-numbing, self-sabotage, secondary gain questions, recovery, awareness, resentment, anticipatory planning, let them, resilient, sobriety

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Terri Cole

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.

[00:01:21]

Hi there. Today, We are talking about

High-functioning Codependency.

My guest is Terri Cole. She’s a licensed psychotherapist and a global relationship and empowerment expert.

[00:01:34]

For over two decades Terri has worked with a diverse group of clients that includes everyone from stay at home moms to celebrities and fortune 500 CEOs. She’s a gift for making complex psychological concepts accessible and actionable so that clients and students achieve sustainable change.

[00:01:54]

She inspires over 250, 000 people weekly through her blog, social media platforms, signature courses, and her popular podcast The Terri Cole show.

Terri has also been on the Hello Someday podcast before. If you’re looking for it, it’s episode 127. And we talked about why high achieving women struggle to set boundaries.

[00:02:17]

So Terri, welcome.

Why, thanks for having me back, Casey. I appreciate it.

Yeah, right before we jumped on, I told you that I had gone through your book and sort of underlined so many things on every page, and I posted them in my sobriety starter kit member group, and everybody was saying, Oh, my God, that’s me.

[00:02:37]

I resonate with this 100%. So, will you tell us a little bit about high functioning codependency and what it is?

Sure. Um, so High Functioning Codependency is when you are overly invested in the feeling states, the outcomes, the circumstances, the relationships, the finances, the careers of the people in your life to the detriment of your own internal peace.

[00:03:04]

So we make this distinction because we’re all empaths and highly sensitive people and lovers and mothers and daughters. And of course, you are invested in the people that you love being happy. So am I, but when you’re an HFC, as we call it, you’re taking it one step further. So, we go from being concerned about it to feeling responsible for it.

[00:03:27]

Which are totally different things and the reason I actually even came up with I created the moniker to begin with is because in my Therapy practice of the last 27 years. I had super capable women right you attract who you are.

So, just Masters of the universe doing their thing, building empires, and if they would describe, you know, they’d be talking about a relationship, but if I would say, oh, hey, what you’re describing, that’s a codependent pattern, they would immediately reject the notion of codependency.

[00:03:59]

They’re like dependent.

[00:04:00]

What? Everyone’s dependent on me. I’m making all the money. I’m making all the moves. I’m doing all the emotional labor. I’m definitely not co-dependent on anyone and I realized, oh, my clients don’t know what codependency is. So, it’s like they were being sort of unduly influenced by Melody Beatty’s codependent no more with the, you know, the, the idea that you have to be enabling an alcoholic to be a codependent, which that’s not even what Melody Beattie is saying anymore.

[00:04:31]

But, but this is the, this is one of the myths around codependency. So there, there seems to be a negative vibe attached to it. Like there’s a weakness or there’s something. And as soon as I changed the name and really started looking at the behaviors. And of course it was so familiar to me because it was my flavor of codependency for many years.

[00:04:54]

I realized that the codependency that I was seeing in my therapy practice and what I was writing about, that’s codependency for modern women, which is different. This is how we live now. This is what we’re doing now. All the things for all the people. And we’re freaking exhausted.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you talk about Codependent No More, I know a lot of people sort of reference that book and it’s absolutely fantastic, but you’re right.

[00:05:21]

Sort of the, the flavor that goes along with even the name of the book is the idea that you are somehow at service of everyone else and sort of a little bit of a victim y or, you know, um, a supportive role as opposed to what I learned about in your book.

High functioning codependency is where you are the one doing all the things and taking care of everyone else and sort of running their lives along with your own.

[00:05:48]

Correct. Yes, we and it’s not just, you know, we don’t see it that way, right? We see it as being loving. We see it as being wanting to be helpful. We want to be part of the solution, right? So, so maybe we could go over some of the traits or qualities of being HFC and see if you know anybody listening can identify because I feel like they’re going to. Yeah.

[00:06:15]

So what does it look like? Well, I mean one of the first things that you can identify with is feeling responsible for fixing other people’s problems. Just straight up. And what do we do because we feel that way is we are auto advice givers. Can’t stop. I have so many good ideas for you, Casey. I have so many good ideas for everyone.

[00:06:38]

And I’m a great problem solver, and I’m sure, so are you. So, really, you know, our heart, as HFCs, our hearts are in the right place. It just doesn’t mean that the behavior is optimal. Um, other qualities. Over giving, right? Giving until it hurts. Going above and beyond. Doing things a lot of times that people are not asking us to do.

[00:06:58]

Doing things that people can and should be doing for themselves. I’m always ready to jump into damage control mode like we are really good fixers. So, we’re always ready to help. Like, avert disaster if we can, um, sometimes you might get frustrated that people don’t take your advice that you have so generously given to them for free.

[00:07:23]

You might feel exhausted. You might feel resentful. You might feel a little bit bitter. That people don’t take your friggin advice after you went out of your way to talk to them for 2 hours about the same crap you probably talked to them 2 weeks ago about. So, we have auto advice giving, we have being overly self-sacrificing, we have auto accommodating, where we just see a need.

[00:07:44]

And we just jump right in. It could be someone on a plane. People want to sit together. We’re like, I’ll move. Um, I, I tell a story in the book about being at my hair salon on a really busy Saturday and I had a, like a mask in my hair, so I wasn’t doing anything, but I was lying in a sink with this mask for 20 minutes. And as I’m lying there, and I just had laid down, there starts to be like a backup at the sink.

[00:08:07]

So, every person with their little robe who’s standing there waiting for a sink, I’m more and more anxious. It’s like, I don’t even need a sink. Like, I’m just sitting here not doing anything in this sink. I finally raise my hand, the assistant comes over, and I was like, you know, I could move. I could, I don’t have to take the sink.

[00:08:21]

And she’s like, Yeah, lady. We do this every Saturday, Tara. We got it. Don’t worry. But the point is that, I could have been doing a million better things than worrying about the sync flow at my hair salon. I could have been listening to a podcast or just resting my exhausted brain or talking to my mother.

[00:08:42]

But instead of any of that, I was worried about some shit that was not my side of the street at all. And this is a lot of what we do as HFCs. So, that auto accommodating is that we’re not just codependent in our close relationships, we’re codependent to our environment. Right. We are dialed into what is happening.

[00:09:04]

And we are experts at having our attention out. Right. Is everyone okay? I was laughing when I read that. Just because what came to my mind is I had been at the airport in the security line. And this woman, you know, came up. Behind me talking to one of the official guys with a toddler and she was like my flight leaves in 15 minutes This is my flight and he was like, sorry You have to wait with everyone else and there was that like fast pass TSA thing. And we were way at the back of the line and my like Anxiety just went into overdrive.

[00:09:39]

I was scanning the crowds. I wanted to talk to the guy again. I wanted to let the people in front of me know that she should go through the line first. And I didn’t do any of that, but I was like, why am I doing this? Like, I just wanted to fix it for her. I totally get it. This, we are, we. And we really don’t like there to be problems.

 

[00:10:00]

And we’re like, it’s not hard to fix that problem. Most people would have let her go through. Like I totally understand what you’re thinking is, you know? And you want her to advocate for herself. I’m like, you should, you know, do XYZ. But if you don’t, I can. So don’t worry. I got you. I got you, girl. You’re welcome.

[00:10:17]

Another one of the symptoms that you’ll see, or one of the behaviors is, anticipatory planning. So, you know, you’re going to be with difficult people or, you know, you were always planning like so that if anything happens, if this happens, I’ll do this, if that happens, I’ll do that. So, you have a difficult person coming to your house, I’ll make sure I have the booze that they drink.

[00:10:39]

I’ll make sure that I have the food that they like. I’ll make sure they don’t sit next to that person who I know they don’t like, like as HFCs, we have a stadium full of data. In our minds about all the people in our lives and really most of the time we really don’t expect that same consideration. That we give to others, you know, and then the last one I would say is, um, over functioning where there’s this tendency, if we over function, it can actually inspire under functioning in other people.

So, I used to laugh and say, you know, I could have a perfectly functional boyfriend in my twenties. I could turn him into an under function or in 2 weeks or less. How do you do that? I got it. Just always having it always being like, Oh, I got it.

[00:11:28]

It’s good. We’re good. I got it. Like it has to be me was always the feeling and being so highly capable. You know, the irony with high functioning codependency is the more capable you are, the less codependency looks like codependency, but it’s still codependency. So we’re still exhausted. We’re still burnt out.

[00:11:48]

You know, we’re still resentful because this is, this is where it leads to if we don’t get into recovery from it. And so, what do we get out of that? Because I know I do that like even around my house or with my husband. Like, I know what he’s not going to like, or, you know, we’re, we’re going out to dinner with the kids and I’m trying to pick the places that I know will be cool for my daughter in that a way that she doesn’t annoy my husband because he’s embarrassed that she’s on her iPad.

[00:12:21]

 

I mean, my mind is crazy.

Yep. No, it’s not your, that’s just anticipatory planning. Like I, I get exactly what you’re doing, but it’s exhausting. And what, why you do it is it gives you, um, the illusion of control, right? So part of it is we don’t like anything to be out of control. So what we want, we just want peace.

[00:12:45]

Like, we literally just want peace. We want everyone to be happy. We don’t want there to be any problems. We want everything to be running smoothly. This is what we would like. So, I understand exactly why you would do it and why I did everything that I did in my youth. It was all trying to avoid conflict, problems, anger, people being mad at each other.

[00:13:04]

We didn’t want any of that. We don’t like that. We don’t want that. So that’s part of it. Why? What happens though? The thing that really matters, you know, case is like, what is the cost to doing business this way in our lives? Because that’s, that’s why it matters. And the cost is having less than really deeply intimate relationships, right?

[00:13:27]

It negatively impacts our relationships because what we’re really doing is managing the shit out of the people in our lives. We are managing people and nobody likes to feel like a project, but they do. In our lives, because we always have ideas of what they could do better. Why they didn’t, whatever, whatever the thing is, um, the cost to us is bandwidth.

[00:13:49]

Is burnout, is exhaustion, is resentment, is not being known, right? Because we’re so busy managing out. We’re really not managing in. Like, we’re really not. And no one’s getting a chance to take care of us, right? Nah. We’re terrible acceptors of help. We’re the worst askers for help. We’re not asking for help.

[00:14:14]

We’re like, I got it. Like, what are the mantras of an HFC? I got it. And it has to be me. Cause I really don’t think that you’re either going to do it. You’re either going to do it wrong or you’re going to do it in, uh, not in a timely fashion. So, I just don’t even want to deal with that bullshit. I just do it myself because it’s easier.

[00:14:34]

But the thing is that can happen for a decade, maybe even 2. Can’t happen forever because you just run out of bandwidth. Like we literally have limited bandwidth. So another cost to us that I’ve seen, there’s two other really important things is that it creates a life experience. That’s what I call life light, L I T E where we’re really not Present.

[00:15:00]

Because we’re living in our heads so much. We’re anticipating, anticipating, planning, where there’s the hyper vigilance and the hyper independence that comes along with being an HFC. It’s lonely, first of all, but it’s exhausting, right? And we’re not experiencing life. It doesn’t hit the same. Life is like half as juicy.

[00:15:27]

Mm hmm. As it should be, because we’re only half present. And I’ve seen that this behavior creates a glass ceiling, like, of our own making when it comes to success and when it comes to quality of relationships. Because you can’t do all the things for all the people and invent the thing you’re supposed to invent.

[00:15:50]

Yeah. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, when you talk about hypervigilance, I mean, that’s how I used to function, right?

[00:16:00]

Hypervigilant about everything in my life at work, making sure that, you know, I was very competent and responsible and nothing would fall through the cracks. But this causing anxiety that went through me every day.

[00:16:11]

I mean it, it was not a very fun way to live. Mm-hmm . Not fun, not fun, but the thing is we get so habituated to the behavior. It’s funny. I would, I would say to my clients, I could see it in my therapy clients, this low grade annoyance. We’re just waiting for someone to cut us off in traffic so we can just explode.

[00:16:36]

We’re just, because the resentment that we feel and the way that we’ve set up our lives is cumulative. So it, right, it’s like a layer and then another layer and then another layer and That’s not how we want to live, right?

There’s so much more for us to live on the other side and I talk about high-functioning codependency about getting into recovery for it because there is no cure for it, right?

[00:17:07]

The same way that I’m in recovery from alcohol, drinking alcohol. Does that mean I don’t want to have a drink? No, it means I don’t drink. So, what I did is, I changed my behavior. And yes, the cravings get better and the desire to do it gets less. It’s been decades. I’ve been sober since the 80s, you know? So, but I liken it to that because I will still have the desire to auto advice give a stranger.

[00:17:37]

But I just don’t now. I just reserve my energy now. And it doesn’t mean that you’re never going to tell your friend what you think about what they should do. My point is that, instead of auto advice giving, which centers you in the person’s problem, we learn to ask expansive questions to start with. What do you, before I say anything, babe, what do you think you should do?

[00:18:06]

Hmm. Yeah. And then just don’t talk.

Yeah. Give people the floor because the truth is, you don’t know what they should do. You’re driven by your discomfort with their pain, right? I tell this deep story in the book about, you know, the pivotal life experience that I had with one of my older sisters. I’m the youngest of four sisters.

[00:18:34]

She had a history of like kind of crappy relationships and alcoholism and all this stuff. So she was actively alcoholic, living with a guy who was doing drugs, who was also abusive to her, in a shack in the woods without running water and no electricity in upstate New York, and it was winter. Just I just want to paint you the whole picture.

[00:18:53]

So, this is an HFC’s nightmare, right? Yeah, my life is exploding. I went from being a talent agent. I just became a psychotherapist. I just fell in love with my husband. We just got married. I became a bonus mom to three acting out teenage sons. I have I have so much going on. What I could focus on was my sister.

[00:19:13]

I was like, I have to get her out of this situation. So, I was crying to my therapist, Bev, and I was like, what am I going to do? I’ve done everything. I’ve done everything that I can do. What am I going to do? And she said, Terri, let me ask you something. What makes you think, you know, what your sister needs to learn and how she needs to learn it in this lifetime?

[00:19:36]

I was like, damn. And she said, I was first, offensive. Like, well, I think we could agree. She doesn’t need to learn it with this ass. I think everyone can see that what she’s doing isn’t good. So, any of my ideas are to prove it.

Exactly.

And she said, no, I can’t agree because I’m not God and neither are you, but do you know what’s happening for you?

[00:19:57]

And I was like, no, please clue me in what’s happening. And she said, Tara, you’ve worked so hard to have a harmonious life. Your sister’s dumpster fire is really messing with your peace. And you would really like your piece restored, so you want her to get it together, so that you can relax. And I was like, and enjoy your life.

[00:20:17]

And I was like, she is not wrong. That is accurate. So, there was a, it’s in a way, it’s a hard pill to swallow to really understand. We’re driven by more than one thing because as humans we’re complex. So, I was certainly driven by my desire to, for her to have a better life than that. And I wanted my piece restored.

[00:20:38]

So, I ended up setting, you know, I was like, well, I don’t know how to. Well, I didn’t even know whether it was an option. I thought as a sister, you just. Trying to get her out. So, you get her out. Right. Like, isn’t that what we’re going to give up? What am I going to stop? And my therapist said, you need boundaries.

[00:20:56]

She’s like, you don’t need to talk to her about this idiot guy every day or every other day or whatever. And you can’t do the work for her. It’s like, we can’t go to the gym for someone else to cure their diabetes.

Right. It’s like not possible. So, I talked to my sister, said, Hey, I’m, you know, I can’t talk to you about this guy, but if you ever want to get out, I’ll always be your person, will always be here.

[00:21:17]

And within 9 months, she called me and was like, are you still my person? I said, yeah, getting in my car. She got herself out. And then, I could appropriately, with my husband, help her, right? We could do things that were not taking over for her. And in the end, instead of her baby sister, being the hero of her story, right?

[00:21:38]

She was self-determined, and it stuck. She, she’s been sober for decades. She’s never been in another abusive relationship. Like, would it have stuck if I manhandled her or made her leave or whatever? No. Because it’s, that was her life lesson. That was her, she needed to get to whatever that bottom was.

[00:22:00]

As we all know, if you’re in the rooms, like, everyone has their, whatever their bottom is. So, the wakeup call, I thought I would be a bad sister. If I step back from that situation, and what I learned was that my sister had a right to be sovereign, even if what she was doing, I didn’t approve of or didn’t think was right for her.

[00:22:23]

Yeah, that’s hard for you to do right though, because when someone’s really in a, a bad situation, and they’re sort of acting or feeling like a victim, you feel like they aren’t going to be able to advocate for themselves. But there had to be, she had to get to that point. And listen, would it have been a different situation if my sister were shooting heroin?

[00:22:46]

Yes. Because she’d be like, I would have done an intervention, right? This, it was, that wasn’t the situation. So I’m not saying that what I did is what everyone should do. If you think the person’s in.

[00:23:00]

I think the overall point we can understand, which is that we have to figure out what is on our side of the street and what is on someone else’s side of the street and not as a favor to them.

[00:23:16]

We really need to have the deep understanding that we do not know what other people should be doing. And instead of auto advice giving, you ask these expansive questions that I walk you through in the book, even to kids.

A 17 year old, a 15 year old, a 6 year old. If you have a kid that comes home and is like, I had the worst day at school and I had a fight with Bobby.

 

[00:23:39]

Instead of being the parent that’s like, we don’t fight in this family or blah, blah, blah. You say, okay, tell me what happened. And then, they tell you and then you go, okay, now tell me what you think you should do. And this is for a 6 year old or a 60 year old. Because what they think they should do now with children, of course, it’s different.

[00:23:59]

We’re guiding them. And if the kid thinks he should go in tomorrow and punch Bobby in the nose, we’re probably not going to think that’s the best plan. But what happens when we start to ask expansive question and truly give people the gift of our attention, we learn about the people in our lives. We respect their right to be sovereign, to be self-determined.

[00:24:25]

Life is messy. And as HFCs, we do not like it. People have the right, right? They have a right to succeed and fail, to thrive and to flail, but we don’t like anybody flailing in our vicinity.

One thing you wrote about that I thought was really interesting was that high functioning codependents are often also highly sensitive people or empaths.

[00:24:53]

Yes. Can you tell me more about that? Sure. This is, we, we are hyper vigilant.

[00:25:00]

We have antennas that go to Mars. We know the vibe in every room. We know the vibe on every face we know. And so, there’s many reasons why we develop these skills as highly sensitive really as empaths, right? It’s highly sensitive people. They’re slightly different right empaths is where you feel the feelings of other people.

 

[00:25:24]

It’s not being sympathetic towards them. It’s you can. it literally is in your body. You feel it a highly sensitive person really just describes the sensory experience of someone who is highly empathic.

 

So, for me, I don’t like, uh, I don’t like bright lights. I don’t like loud, loud places. I don’t like crowded places.

[00:25:47]

I don’t like anything scratchy on my skin. I’m very tactile. I’m very, I mean, that’s a highly sensitive person. I noticed, I could notice the slightest nuance of a change of your facial expression. I would register that in my mind. So, they’re the same and they’re different anyway, I just make the distinction because you can be an empath and not be an HSP highly sensitive person.

[00:26:11]

I identify with both. Yes. I mean, I can remember being a child. And like living in the dark and my mother being like, you’re going to go blind. I’m like, I can see fine. Like, I felt like I could see in the dark and everywhere I worked, I’d be like, we must kill that overhead. I cannot deal with these lights, like so stressful to the system because it’s such a sensitive system.

[00:26:35]

So, we have these skills that become, can become potentially our superpowers. Or they can become, or are, are Achilles heel. So, you have to know how you are, right? Becoming a therapist, part of why it took so long to become a therapist, is that I knew how highly sensitive I was, and I was afraid I was going to have people like sleeping on my couch.

[00:27:00]

Like, I was worried about my boundaries, and about how my empathic nature was going to come into play, me being a therapist.

So, I think that to be a, HFC, it makes sense that as high functioning codependents, we’re empaths because we’re really dialed into what other people want, what other people need, how other people feel.

[00:27:25]

And we don’t want you to feel bad and we don’t like you to feel upset. So, we’re always sort of working overtime.

But I walk you through these different things in the book that you can do.

When you’re an empath protecting your energy, doing energy work, and the biggest change really cases that we become aware of what is not our responsibilities when we interfere in the relationships of other people, because we’re always the go between.

 

[00:27:57]

Right. And then I was raised in a family system where none of us dealt with my father directly. There was four sisters and my mother, we were all terrified of my father. So this whole triangulation thing became just a way of life where I was always inserting myself in the middle of other. I always found myself in triangles and I’m like, Hmm, I wonder why, of course, obviously in therapy, I figured out why, but this is sort of the same thing where when you’re in HFC, we’re kind of the boundary tramplers in a way that is different.

[00:28:29]

When I wrote Boundary Boss, my first book, and it was sort of through the lens of how do we get other people to respect our boundaries? How does that happen? What, you know, how do I assert boundaries? What are they? And how do I get people to respect them?

In this book, I’m really coming at it from the point of view of as HFCs, we’re inadvertent boundary bullies, not on purpose, but when we are giving auto advice, when we give advice to someone who has not asked us for advice, we are overstepping a boundary.

 

[00:29:04]

Yeah.

One things that I thought was interesting was, the women who listen to this podcast, the women who are in my sober coaching programs, I sort of described them as the women who are doing all the things and then coming home and drinking to forget about all the things, even if it’s just for the night to shut down their brains.

[00:29:27]

And they’re very much over functioning, right? Like, high-achieving at work, taking care of the kids, running the household, doing all the things, getting together with their friends, remembering the birthdays. And then, they just want to shut it all off. They want to shut down their mind.

So, you talk a little bit about shadow addictions and somehow how it self-sabotages you.

 

[00:29:50]

Can you share more about that?

Sure. Um, it’s interesting. I used to say, before I stopped drinking that, you know, I, it was like an external way for me to exhale. Right? Like, I didn’t know how to do the work to calm myself down. I didn’t know how to do the work to shut it all out as you’re saying. And so for me, it was like this shortcut.

[00:30:17]

To a sense of relaxation, that I didn’t really know how to get. I mean, it took me years to learn how to meditate and do all the other self-soothing stuff that of course, I know how to do now that I’m 60. But when I was younger, I did not know. So, I saw this pattern in my therapy clients that there would be these self-numbing behaviors and I renamed them shadow addictions because a lot of most of the time they never reached like the full-blown of addictions were like your whole life and float, right?

 

[00:30:52]

It wasn’t that. Um, but it was a way of numbing. And it could be food, and it could be alcohol, and it could be smoking weed, and it could be gummies, and it could be, I mean, there’s so many, there’s a plethora of things that it could be. But there’s something, it’s really important to unpack if you’re someone who is feeling that way, that, you know, you kind of can’t wait to get to the end of the night so you can have your two big girl glasses of wine or whatever it is, that that’s not the same as self-soothing, right?

[00:31:25]

And I make the distinction in the book because they’re two different things. Self-numbing doesn’t. Your nervous system. It’s like a short term plan that has long term implications and problems. Real self-soothing, like taking a tub, or going for a walk, or whatever the things are that, you know, journaling, reading, being with friends, having sex, could be real self-soothing, right?

[00:31:52]

These are things that you don’t later feel bad about. And I feel like a lot of time, even with shadow addictions, I had one of my clients during um, the pandemic, a lot of people were drinking more and numbing more during the pandemic for sure. Even people who I knew for a long time and they had not had a history of real addiction, you know?

[00:32:11]

And so, she was really focused on, I’m going to stop drinking during the week. I feel like it’s just gotten out of control. I don’t want to. And she kept failing. She was like, I want you to hold me accountable. I was like, okay. She kept not making it. She’d be like, I made it to Tuesday. And then I drank and then I made it to one and then I realized and this is a tool that you guys can use as well.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  19:04

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.

[00:32:29]

We can put it in the show notes if you want. That I knew there was something else. I was like, , there’s something in this for her that she wants to focus on us controlling it, but there’s something else.

So, I said, okay, I want you to just spontaneously answer these questions. So, I asked her what I called, the secondary gain questions.

 

[00:32:50]

And I said, what do you get to not face, not feel, or not experience by continuing to drink during the week? And she literally just blurted out that my marriage is over. And I was like, Oh, maybe we should talk about your marriage instead of talking about your drinking. Right?

Like, so any, if anyone, if you guys find yourself stuck anywhere or stuck in behaviors, like unwanted behavioral patterns or unwanted relationship patterns, you can always use that. The secondary gain questions, which is just,

what do I get to not face, not feel or not experience by staying stuck here?

 

[00:33:33]

Yeah. And it might really surprise. My client and I both were sort of like, Oh, okay. I guess that’s what we should be talking about. But it’s called, secondary gain because it’s not primary gain because it isn’t obvious like she really did want to stop drinking during the week. We needed to look at how was she, what was the hidden benefit to the drinking and she was getting to avoid the real state of her marriage and you can’t do that forever.

[00:34:03]

So obviously we talked about it and she eventually got a divorce. But anyway.

Yeah, no, that’s perfect. I always do think about that. Like, the underlying reason you drink. What do you not have to deal with when you’re drinking? What do you get to let go of?

That’s a great question.

Um, how do, a part of this is, we’ve been so conditioned as women, right, to be caregivers or problem solvers or nice or responsible or giving, whatever it is.

[00:34:36]

I would assume that when you stop doing some of these behaviors, one, the people you used to do it for, if they’re used to it, don’t really want you to stop. Whether it’s planning all the meals or the kid’s camp schedule or your boss really liking that you take over everything. Or you feel guilty for not doing it, that you’re slacking, you know, or you, you could do it.

[00:35:00]

How do you help people deal with that? Well, two separate things. So let’s talk about them separately.

One is, how do you deal with changing the dance in your relationships? Well, when you change your dance steps, you, people you dance with are going to notice. So, we’re going to start there, being like, you’re going to change and somebody’s going to notice.

[00:35:20]

And that’s okay. So, you can either have a conversation about it. If the person asks, but you don’t need to.

It’s funny, HFC is, we always want to like grab the, uh, bullhorn and be like, everything’s going to change people. And the big is, that’s not helpful. It just discharges or anxiety temporarily, but it really doesn’t help.

[00:35:43]

What helps is slowly, but surely changing the way that you relate to other people.

In the book, I share with you your HFC blueprint questions. It’s a pretty extensive and as this is your relational blueprint, how you learned to relate to other people and having a deeper understanding of why we are this way is helpful.

[00:36:09]

And also, we have to allow ourselves to disappoint other people. We just have to. We have to, you know, um. Um, what’s her name? Cheryl Richardson wrote a book called Let Me Disappoint You, and I feel like as HFCs, we don’t want to disappoint anybody, but the thing is, we really need to if we’re not going to endlessly self-abandon.

[00:36:36]

Yeah. You know, because those, those are the things that happen. If we never disappoint someone else, we’re always disappointing ourselves. I mean, that would be interesting. Every time you disappoint someone being like, this is good. This is a muscle I need to build.

This is growth. Correct. It is. And also allow yourself to feel uncomfortable.

[00:37:01]

Like, it’s not going to kill you. And to change, to transform, to grow, to get in recovery. We have to realize how resilient. We are. It’s okay to be uncomfortable. It’s okay for someone to be in a rough spot and for you to not offer advice, for you to say, let me know how I can best support you. For you to say, I don’t know what to say other than I’m here.

[00:37:32]

And I love you. Like, just let there be the pregnant pause. It’s okay. It’s pregnant with possibility, rather than pregnant with awkwardness, even if you feel awkward. Because when we stop taking up all the air, when we stop sort of talking because we’re uncomfortable, we learn things about the people in our lives.

[00:37:57]

Sometimes we can’t fix it today. And that just has to be okay. So, the first thing we were talking about is how do we make the changes within, especially established relationships is. Understand that someone’s going to have feelings about it. And you can, I walk you through different scripts in the book, and you can talk about it.

[00:38:18]

You’re right. You know what, babe? I actually, I was willing to do all of the holiday cooking for all of these years. And now, I don’t have the bandwidth, and I don’t actually want to do that. So, this year, we’re going to be doing a potluck. So, everyone’s going to bring something. And you can tell me what you’re going to make.

[00:38:34]

I would love it if you made a dessert. Like, yeah, we think we can’t make these changes. And yet we can, you know, one of my sisters is like the queen of Christmas and she’s got three kids and her kids are, you know, her youngest is 18. So, they’re pretty grown. And she would do these huge stockings with like all these expensive and incredibly thoughtful gifts in each one.

[00:38:57]

And it would take forever. And this year, about 2 months ago, I said, Oh, are we going to start the, you know, because I see her all the time. I was like, are we starting our, you know, stocking shopping? And she said, no, Tara, I’m not I’m not doing it this year. And I said, you’re not? And she said, no, and she stuck to it.

[00:39:12]

And she’s like, Tara, this was the best Christmas season I’ve ever had. And what is so interesting is that her oldest daughter bought everyone gifts, because nature abhors a vacuum. Mm hmm. Right?

That’s interesting. And she didn’t do it. The most thoughtful, beautiful gift that she, you know, my sister’s dog passed away this year and she, she gave her a necklace with the dog and you shine a light and you’ll see the dog, like, the sweetest thing.

[00:39:41]

And my sister is so thoughtful, but what that that’s a perfect example of for years, she was saying she wasn’t going to do it. And she finally followed through this year. And not only did the world not stop turning on its axis, she was pleasantly surprised that someone else was doing all of the thinking.

[00:40:02]

And it didn’t have to only be her and how loved she felt by the thoughtful gift that she got. And like, there has to be, you know, because of part of the, one of the things that we are as HFCs is hyper, um, independent. So, we’re really bad at asking for help. We’re really bad at allowing other people to do stuff.

[00:40:23]

We’re all like, I got it. I got it. I got it. So, this will be a shift for people and a shift in your relationship. And in the beginning, probably your partner is going to be like, what the hell is happening? What is going on? I don’t get it. And yet, let it be uncomfortable. And it’s okay. And it’s okay to say, babe, I’m changing and I still love you.

[00:40:46]

And this is just going to be a different incarnation of our relationship, like it’s, I’m not going anywhere. I’m just evolving a little bit and I have limited bandwidth and I want to spend it doing different things or whatever it is that you’re changing. But even just allowing your either having better boundaries with your, let’s just say you were talking about your husband and your daughter.

[00:41:10]

Letting them hash it out. Does he think she shouldn’t have her iPad at dinner? Then maybe she shouldn’t and let those two duke it out, where you go talk to your father about it. And I understand that sounds easy and it’s not if you haven’t been because I’ve been the queen of Being in the middle of all the things to be like, well, this is what we’ll do instead and this is how we’re going to do it. It’s how everybody’s going to be happy. Yes, but we’re robbing people the skills that they need. We’re robbing them of having the relationship that they could and should have with each other without us in the middle.

[00:41:48]

And listen, I say us, even though I’m in recovery, but dude, this is like a forever thing. The same way that my alcohol addiction recovery is a forever thing.

Being in recovery from being a high functioning codependent is also a forever thing, but you can do it. Right. And, and that’s the important thing is that you can do it.

[00:42:09]

You might, the second part of the question that you asked was more about.

So, what if your boss loves it that you take over everything and whatever you have to start looking at and we do a lot of inventories in the book itself. It’s a book, but, but it really has workbook aspects to it. Yeah, I love it.

[00:42:28]

Right. So helpful. It’s fantastic.

Anyone listening? I seriously think every woman I know needs this book. A hundred percent. Uh, great. I’m not kidding. I cannot tell you that what the feedback coming back is exactly what you were saying, Casey.

Yeah. People are like, Oh my God, this is me. And there’s something that I can do because that is really part of the, that what we really want is like, okay, well we identify with all these things.

[00:42:56]

We get it. What can I do? So, awareness is your, this is the first step to changing. It’s raising your awareness, read the book and find yourself in this book. And I know that you will.

Yeah. Then realize it’s one baby step at a time. We don’t need a bullhorn and we don’t need to warn anybody. We can literally just make the next right action and then the next right action, which might be letting your husband and your daughter go out to dinner without you, like maybe, or, and figuring, figuring out what would a different construction look like, how would it be if I just let it go?

[00:43:32]

So, so some of the things that you guys, if you’re listening and you’re like, oh my God, this is me.

So, let’s just talk about, you want to look at your boundaries. Where are you overstepping boundaries? Where are people overstepping your boundaries.

 

[00:43:49]

We can tell this by taking a resentment inventory. That’s really helpful. It’s not hard to do. We, every single person listening or watching this right now knows exactly who they feel resentment towards. Now we want to write down why and what is my 50%. Right. Is this a conversation I’ve been avoiding having with this person?

 

[00:44:09]

Do I need to set a limit on what I’m willing to do? Someone just wrote to me on Instagram, Can you please give me a script to talk to my teenage son and to tell him that I’m, he’s asking for more money than I’m willing to give him? And I’m like, sure. So, like Setting limits, right? Those are boundaries that we need.

[00:44:28]

Um, we also want to understand that we have to disappoint other people, right, as we were just saying. We also want to bring in the Mel Robbins, let them. Mm, yeah. Everybody’s talking about that right now. But it’s so funny. I wrote this book how long ago? I didn’t even know Mel was writing a whole book on it.

[00:44:46]

She, it was a concept I heard her talk about. I give her credit in the book, obviously, for it. But then my book came out and then her book and I was like, Oh my God, she wrote a whole book on that. Amazing. So people don’t know what that is. Will you share it?

Sure. Sure. So the, the, this concept of just letting people, I mean, it’s funny because it’s an illusion, right?

[00:45:07]

Because we’re not really letting or not letting, but. Yeah. There’s does something to your nervous system when you’re thinking about micromanaging or controlling or giving someone advice they haven’t asked for because, you now feel panicked that they’re going to make the wrong decision, whether it’s your kid picking the wrong major in school or whatever in your mind, you just have to say, let them.

[00:45:33]

Let them live. Let them decide. Let them, let them figure it out.

 

But something happens physically when what we’re really doing is like putting down this over sense of responsibility, especially when it is not. Your side of the street and you’ve really have to figure out when it is your side of the street, right?

[00:45:56]

Because it’s really about you Right, like how you feel about it, but it’s okay. We just need to let them do whatever it is they’re going to be doing and this requires us to surrender to what is right. I couldn’t. I was not surrendered in the situation with my sister. I was not surrendered to the fact that she would make a move when she was ready to and most likely not before and that that was her, right?

[00:46:26]

I didn’t know that I could be surrendered to that truth and that it was my job to be supportive when she asked for support, which I was, and that felt so much better than the shame that goes along with trying to save someone, meaning their shame, right? Because that’s how she felt. So, surrendering to what is, and allowing, allowing people to help you, asking for help when you need it, allowing shit to play out.

[00:46:57]

Right. We’re so hell bent with our anticipatory planning that we’re not going to let anything play out. Let it play out. It’s okay. People are way more resilient than you think. You are way more resilient and everyone is on their own path.

 

As my Bev, my therapist said, what makes you think you know what lessons everyone needs to learn in this lifetime and how, and the thing is, we don’t know.

[00:47:26]

We literally don’t we just think we do I feel like I’m just when I interviewed you for boundary boss I’m having this memory that I was talking Cause I always get free therapy and I guess, but I was talking about my, my husband and he wasn’t happy with his work. And by the way, this has been figured out.

[00:47:46]

It’s like amazing. You go a year, year and a half in advance and I’m like, Oh, that letting things play out. But I was like doing everything I could like, you should talk to this person. You should do this. You should go from being the head of the middle school back to a teacher. And you said to me on the interview, why do you think, you know, what’s best for him?

[00:48:06]

And what he needs to do in his career. And I was like, oh, shit, but that’s exactly what you’re talking about. And you know what? I didn’t know. Right. But it’s because we’re scared and it’s because we love and it’s because we don’t want them in pain or to be humiliated or to feel bad. Like I, you know, I understand and everybody listening to this.

[00:48:30]

I see you. I got you. I can M you, right? But there is a better way and on the other side of this recovery is so much expansion. It’s deeper intimacy. It’s so much peace. And that’s the thing that’s so funny all of my over functioning for all the years and all of my overdoing and whatever, all of my HFC ness.

[00:48:57]

Yeah. I was striving for peace. That never came. And it was only in getting into recovery and allowing people to be who they were and accepting my husband for his amazing qualities and his shortcomings and accepting that he is not me. He doesn’t see the world through these rose colored glasses that I wear most of the time.

[00:49:21]

He’s different. He’s Eastern European. His parents were in like war camps. Like we can’t, I can’t expect him to be the same. And I wouldn’t have been attracted to him if he was the same. So, when years ago, when I was able to be like, how about embrace who he is? Really? He’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met still 27 years later like how about stop trying to change him?

[00:49:48]

How about stop trying to control him and I have so much from that point forward. There was so much less resentment That I had because I realized Let, let him, let him live his life. Let me live my life. And just allowing that creates a much richer, instead of feeling responsible, learn something. How was that for you?

[00:50:14]

Tell me more about that. And then what happened? And that’s so different. Having those types of expansive and deep conversations is so different than sort of compulsively fixing. Whoever it is that you’re talking to, this empathic listening, instead of that auto advice and auto problem solving. If that’s the only thing you changed in your life from listening to this interview, I promise you it will change your life.

[00:50:47]

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. Can I ask you one question that I see in my group all the time? And it’s about the idea of auto accommodating. So, I see this all the time where someone’s in. Early sobriety or, you know, maybe a little bit further on and they’re like, hey, my friends who like to drink are coming to stay with me for one night, you know, um, and so we’re all like, don’t have any alcohol in your house, tell them you’re not drinking, don’t serve alcohol, don’t do whatever and, and the argument is Well, I don’t want to be rude.

 

[00:51:23]

I don’t want them to not be able to drink if they’re here. I don’t, I still want to be fun and half the time they break down and end up drinking with them, right? Or, you know, hold on for an hour or two or whatever it is. But the idea that, you Oh, auto accommodating. I don’t want to ask my partner to not have alcohol in the house, or I don’t want to not go to the brewery because that’s our usual date night, whatever it is. What, any advice or direction for people?

[00:51:52]

Yeah. Uh, think about it this way.

How you feel, what you want and what you think matters and it needs to matter to you more than what anyone else. Wants, thinks, or feels.

 

You’ll be shocked at how quickly you can normalize. Not drinking. You can say to people, Hey, I’m on the wagon, so it’s going to be a tea night for us.

[00:52:21]

You could be funny. Use humor. Yeah.

Right? But I’d appreciate it if you don’t drink. Give them a heads up. If they don’t want to come to your house because they can’t drink, they’ve got a bigger problem than you do. Like, and the thing is, you have to stand for your sobriety and for some, it’s funny, some people live, they can live one evening, not drink, it will not kill them.

[00:52:46]

Yeah, and you’re worth the consideration. You and your sobriety are worth the consideration. And people take you seriously if you take yourself seriously. So it’s not a big deal.

 

[00:53:00]

You’re just like, Hey, we’re going to be teetotalers tonight. Isn’t that what that means? Where you don’t drink?

Yeah, totally. Or like, Hey, I’m not drinking, so I don’t have any wine in the house, but I’ve got this awesome non-alcoholic beer or whatever it is, or non-alcoholic Prosecco, whatever it is.

[00:53:17]

Yep, or I’m making mocktails. It’s going to be super fun.

Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes you have to be more straightforward, too. If you really don’t want to, if you don’t want them bringing booze, because a lot of times people will bring their own booze, especially real drinkers. They never leave it up to chance.

[00:53:36]

They’re like, I always brought my own. I would bring two bottles of wine just to be super generous (a.k.a. I was very afraid there would not be enough there). I needed like a full bottle of myself.

Yes, fact. You’re like, just in case there’s not enough. That’s really what that’s all about. I think that part of it is you just have to give yourself permission to matter and to realize that if they’re really your friends.

[00:54:01]

They won’t care and if it really bothers them, they won’t stay and if they’re upset, you can let them be upset, right?

Yes, one night. Correct.

Yeah, let them and prioritize you because that’s really part of what it’s about. Getting into recovery is, instead of because there’s so much other codependent that we’re really need to prioritize ourselves and it’s not selfish.

 

[00:54:32]

It’s just self-knowledge. It’s self-intimacy. It’s knowing who you are. It’s developing who you are. Right? We don’t just come out of the womb. You know, when people are like talking about authentic self, I’m all like, what do you think people are like onions? Like you just peel away and it’s, it’s going to be a fully developed, authentic self in there.

[00:54:49]

No, that requires us to decide. Who will I be? Who do I want to, how do I want to interact in my relationships? How am I standing? What am I standing for in my life? So I feel like it takes time for us to build our authentic selves. Like I feel like we have our core self, but you know what I mean? Where I don’t feel like it’s just like some magical thing where you can just tap into your authentic self.

[00:55:14]

I feel like we need to know who we are. And most of us have been people, master people pleasers for so long that it’s hard. To really know it’s going to take time, but you definitely deserve the consideration that you endlessly give others.

 

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And, and I think it’s really interesting when you said that people, you know, exhibit these behaviors, like if you’re highly capable, do everything for everyone else to try to achieve peace and that you didn’t find peace until you let go of a lot of that, you know, highly capable codependency.

[00:55:57]

Because you can’t, the real thing is, it’s this losing proposition, like my therapist actually said to me about my sister, she said, I’m not saying you shouldn’t. Save your sister. I’m saying you can’t that it’s an impossibility. And I was like, Oh my God. So, I’m like smashing my head against a brick wall.

[00:56:18]

That’s not even possible to do. And I feel like that’s something that we really have to, to think about. Right. That. What we can control is what we think and what we do and that’s pretty much it.

Yeah, I see this all the time with women You know, worried about like their kids picking the right college. How to get their kids a job. How to get all these very, you know, their spouse doing XYZ like trying to solve everyone else’s problems. And you’re right, you’re just doing it for them, and they’re probably not going to be thrilled with the results anyway, because you don’t know.

[00:56:57]

And you can talk about it. Rather than that, have the expansive conversations.

Yeah. Like, why are you not taking care of your health? How can I support you in doing that? It’s having agreements in your relationships. It’s being clear about the expectation. Especially when it comes to, you know, as we’re aging, it’s like, health is the thing.

[00:57:16]

Oh, with parents. Yeah. That’s another one. Health is a thing. Yeah. But, but with your partner too, it’s like, I remember when Vic and I, I mean, we’ve been together almost 30 years, but I remember one of the non-negotiables, I was like, you have to take care of your own health. You have to stay in shape. You’re already 10 years older than me.

[00:57:35]

That’s on you. And that you, you know, and he has, and he still does, but it’s something where some people are like, well, you’re, that’s too controlling. I broke up with a boyfriend who I loved very much because he was a couch potato. And I was like, I don’t want this for the rest of my life. I want to be fit and healthy forever.

[00:57:53]

And this guy’s never going to be. And I wanted to do it together, which I do with my husband. So I feel like there’s things that we were allowed to have feelings about the stuff that impacts us too. You know what I mean? And that’s not the same as being like, I need to fix you because I think you should be doing something different.

[00:58:12]

Yeah, that is a very different shift in terms of what you’re asking. I also love that you included I mean, I love Boundary Boss too, but I saw on I think it’s page 111. You included the Boundary Boss Book of Rights. Can you tell me why you included that or what’s important as women are reading this book to make sure they they pause there?

[00:58:34]

Because two things the Boundary Boss Bill of Rights. I wrote because nobody knows what their rights are.

Yeah, right Um, having the right to say, cause I didn’t. So it’s, it’s not like, gee, I wonder why they don’t know. Nobody tells us. And so, there’s 10 of them, the Boundary Boss Bill of Rights, um, and it’s like a baseline.

[00:58:57]

And then, I also flipped it around for this book. So, it’s not just, so like, let’s say the third one in Boundary Boss Bill of Rights is, um, you have the right to make mistakes, to course correct, to change your mind. I flipped it around as well, because for HFCs, we need to respect other people’s right. Other people have the right to make mistakes, to course correct, to change their mind.

[00:59:23]

And it hits different when we’re sort of applying those Bill of Rights to other people. Because it was easy to apply it to myself, but then when I was really looking at other people, I’m like, Oh wow, I should step back, because that person does have a right to do those things. So I feel like it’s very helpful.

[00:59:40]

I have so many people who’ve like, I printed it out, I’ve got it on my refrigerator. Do you feel like this book is a companion book to the Boundary Boss book or a phase two or what, or do they go separately?

I mean, they’re, they’re separate because I didn’t want people to have them both.

[01:00:00]

And I include a lot of, one whole chapter here is about boundaries in Too Much, in the new book.

[01:00:06]

Um, but here’s the thing, if you, if you’re an HFC, you also have problems with boundaries. So my feeling is it’s, it’s both of these books, including the Boundary Boss Workbook would all be really great if you struggle with what we’ve been talking about on this podcast today. Yeah. So, is there anything you want to leave with someone listening to this?

[01:00:29]

Maybe someone who wants to stop drinking, but is very high achieving and, you know, sort of fits the, um, high-functioning codependency model. I think you need to really look at the, like all addicts, whether it’s a high, whether you’re high-functioning, I was always like a very high-functioning drinker myself.

[01:00:50]

So, my bottom was not like other people’s, you know what I mean? Um, or whether it’s more of a shadow addiction, you really, you know, the truth about what has control over you or what you have control over, you know, the truth. Like ,when it’s just you and you know it. So, if there’s a part of you that feels like, listen, you’re listening to this podcast for a reason, because you are probably sober curious, if you’re still drinking.

[01:01:18]

So give yourself permission to do 90 days, right? And if you want to go back, you can see how you feel if you really stop. And I will, what I give you in the book is a whole entire chapter on healthy self-soothing. How do we emotionally self-regulate without numbing? Without these shadow addictions without straight up addictions, because if you’re a high functioning person in the way that I was, I mean, I was definitely an alcoholic, but I could drink people under the bar and then get up and do a presentation at 8:00am.

[01:01:59]

Like, I had so much discipline. I would go to the gym at 6:30 every morning, no matter what time I went to bed or what I had done the night before. So, I think that it’s more insidious to identify when you are highly capable, which is why I even came up with the shadow addiction thing, because you may not be getting a DUI.

[01:02:23]

That doesn’t mean that your numbing behaviors isn’t negatively impacting the quality of your life. But here’s the thing is for anybody listening, you have to want to change, right? Sometimes people will say in reference to the high-function codependency. Well, I mean, I’m a helper and I love helping people and I like what I’m doing.

[01:02:47]

And I’m like, Hey man, don’t, who’s telling me to change anything? Don’t, if you like what you’re doing and your relationships are amazing.

Yeah. Go you.

This book is for people who are tired. This book is for people who feel like there’s probably a better way to do what I’m doing. There’s probably a more effective way to get my needs met because when you’re an active high-functioning codependent, you’re really not.

[01:03:13]

Getting your needs met your need to truly be seen your need to be intimately known because we’re too busy moving the chess pieces of our life around the chessboard and that’s people that we’re managing.

So, my feeling is that if you’re looking for a sign that maybe something can change let this podcast, in this interview, in this conversation, be that sign.

[01:03:35]

And I invite you, I encourage you commit to 90 days with no alcohol.

Yeah. See how you feel. If you don’t like it, if you don’t feel any better, if nothing changes. Go back. You can always go back, but it’s really getting a break.

And I say 90 because I feel like that’s a really nice, you know, we always talk about doing 90 meetings in 90 days, but three months.

[01:04:03]

It’s like the first quarter of the year. Give yourself that gift and see how you feel. Someone, um, actually Charlene Johnson. Or Shailene, I think is her name, Johnson. She’s on Instagram. She’s like a physical fitness person, whatever. She’s like in her late fifties or mid-fifties. And she was just sharing her story about how she stopped. She was just going to do like a 2 week thing.

[01:04:25]

And that was 7 months ago. And then, she started doing all of this research about how alcohol is just so bad. For aging, how it, it accelerates the aging process, how bad, it’s shrinking our brains is all of these things. And Dr. Daniel Amen, a friend of mine, talks about this at nauseam, how bad drinking is for our brains.

[01:04:46]

I follow him on Instagram and love him. I mean, I’m obsessed. He’s the cutest. I went on his show. I did the scan your brain thing on his Instagram show. And he literally said, Yours is the busiest brain scan I’ve ever seen in 40 years. I was like, wow, that’s pretty sad. How do I make it be less busy?

But anyway, that’s what I, and I also have a gift Casey for your audience, because I know we talked about a lot of things and I know this can feel overwhelming, so I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed.

[01:05:17]

If you identify with this, just know there is hope if I can get into recovery. You can get into recovery.

You can go get the book, HFC book, there’s all kinds of bonuses, but I also have a free gift for you guys that will, like, sort of bring it down to what you can focus on. Just go to terricole.com/hfc for your, stands for high function and codependent, and you’ll get, there’s a simplify and do less, there’s a pdf, there’s a video, there’s a self-love meditation, there’s a bunch of things in there just to get you started.

[01:05:52]

Oh, that is awesome. I am going to post that link in my group as soon as we get off the call because I know it’s going to help so many people.

Thank you for taking the time to come on. I can’t tell you how helpful this was.

Yay. Thanks for having me. I love it.