SUMMARY KEYWORDS

learning, know, like, trust factor, yourself, quitting, drinking, support women, alignment, authenticity, nourishment, movement, self care, inner alignment, inner voice, unconscious programming, outer, transformation, survivor, thriver, self critic, truth seeking, storyteller, inspirational, mind, body, soul, power, POWAR™, growth, mommy wine life, show up, thought process, blessed, realization, parent, journey, emotionally, physically, feel, shame, alcohol, wine, drinking, sober, important, core, ability, listen, inner compass, energies, guilt, servitude, inner child, full, loving, formative years comparison, judgment, insecurities, event, attachment, trauma, moments, detrimental, hurt, little adult, reactive, triggers, coping, healthy, functioning, victim, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, Coronavirus (COVID-19), self criticism, more ease, less stress, cope, aha moment, stopped drinking, seeking, comfort, self love, validations, snowball effect, constant companion, recovery, healing, passion, mission, becoming, empowered, realization, cold turkey, self esteem, broken, no judgment, worthy, experience, change, listening, mirror, cues, connected, meditation, educate, gratitude, practice, happy, visualization, our own biggest cheerleader, love yourself, growth, crying, blame, overwhelmed, emotions, soothe yourself, behaviors, fix, alcohol, tools, journaling, version of me, reality, detach, emotional cycle, move forward, quote, vision board, negative thought patters, limiting beliefs, outcome, mantra, create, show up, pause, bubble meditation, envision, peaceful, index cards, future, dreams, goals, grounded, you’re a badass, sober curiosity, foundation, continued, power within, riding the wave, natural, focus objectives, raise your vibe, extraordinary, celebrate

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Tanya Ouhrabka

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.

My guest today is Tanya Ouhrabka. She’s a Certified Life Coach and a friend, whose mission is to support women in regaining what she refers to as the know like, and trust factor. 

 

Tanya’s philosophy is based on the alignment of 4 pillars of authenticity, nourishment, movement, and self care. She knows the power to change our life lies within us, not externally. 

 

In this podcast, Tanya is going to show us ways to realize our inner world by clearing unconscious programming in order to create outer world transformations. She’s also a survivor and a thriver, a former self critic, and a truth seeking storyteller. In addition to Coaching, Tanya shares her inspirational story of transformation to groups of girls and women across the country. Additionally, she has found power, POWAR™, a community for women to authentically and transparently share and rise together. I know you’re gonna love this conversation. 

 

So Tanya, welcome. I am so excited to have you on.

 

2:43  

I’m so glad to be here, Casey. Thank you so much for having me.

 

2:48  

Yeah, absolutely. And I know every conversation we’ve had before this podcast has been so powerful and I’ve come away with so many questions and also new insights. So central to your work is helping women through the process of inner and outer growth and alignment so that we’re able to know, like, and trust ourselves. So tell me about what that means to you and the work you do.

 

3:16  

Okay, thank you. Um, so the know like and trust factor was paramount and foundational to a huge change in my life that occurred 10 years ago, in the spring. I had been struggling for years with drinking. And this was functional drinking. This was what we now refer to a lot as the mommy wine life. And it started… my drinking started as I had my third child, and it became more and more something that I read light on and that consumed a large part of my thought process in my day, so it wasn’t so much that I was drinking all day long I wasn’t, but it consumed so much of my day, which I didn’t recognize until I got to the next. The next part of my life, which would… didn’t involve alcohol anymore, I was able to look back and realize how much time I lost to thinking about my drink at the end of the day, whether I had the wine available, how I was going to make sure to have it that I was going to start cooking dinner earlier than I normally would because I wanted to have my wine you know that…that familiar?

 

4:46  

Yet I had around exactly like how it showed up for me and how I know it shows up for so many women. It’s just wine or alcohol in general just becomes more and more important to you. It just occupies a place of prominence in your life and in your thoughts every day and I completely get the thought process of, Do I have enough? And is it you know, is it scipy time yet or just structuring your social activities around occasions when you’re able to drink? And it’s so amazing that you realized that that was an issue 10 years ago, and we’re able to stop that. I know, I finally stopped when my daughter was 22 months old and my son was eight.

 

5:36  

Yeah, and that’s very, it’s, it’s, we’re blessed. We’re blessed that both of us were able to come to that realization and make the life change, to be able to parent our children through the time in their life, that is so so imperative for that, that you know, unconditional love that 100% availability as a parent emotionally and physically. What I say though to everyone is it’s never too late, ever, you know, the guilt and the shame the further along we get in our parenting journey. And the older our kids get, it almost makes it harder for so many because they feel. Women feel so much more judgmental about the fact that they’ve already ruined “so much” that the shame feeds their need for the alcohol even more. And it’s never too late. Um, my mother got sober when I was 10. And she’s my idol. You know, I got sober when my eldest child was 10 and my youngest was 2. So the know like and trust factor to me is so important because I realized after I stopped drinking, that I didn’t know myself. I didn’t like myself. And I certainly didn’t trust myself, because I had spent so much time chipping away at what I call this, this inner alignment, which is sort of the core of our ability to listen to our inner voice and our inner knowing, following our inner compass. And the foundations that you mentioned, the pillars of self care, the nourishment, the movement and the authenticity and they’re very intertwined. And what I find in my Coaching is, as I say, I’m an Inner Alignment Coach for women because at the end of the day, everything focuses on those four parts of us because if we’re not nourishing ourselves correctly, our physical, mental functionality is… is broken because we’re not nourished. 

 

If we’re not moving our body, our energies get stuck. And we’re not functioning properly, properly, our alignments off if we’re not self care if we’re not taking self care for ourselves, which that that’s a huge umbrella term, Casey because so much of what we need to be doing in our life falls under this so self care, there’s meditation, there’s our breath, our breath falls under self care, there’s journaling, gratitude, our servitude serve that being of service to others, which falls, falls away when we’re in shame and guilt mode. Again, when we’re out of alignment and we’re not feeling good about ourselves, the last thing we’re going to be doing is being in aligned servitude to other people. And then again, feeling worse about ourselves. And then authenticity is a lot of the work I do with the authenticity is our inner child. So I don’t know if you’ve had anyone come on yet and talk about inner child work.

 

9:23  

We’ve talked a little bit, but I’d love you to talk about it more in the work you do.

 

9:29  

Okay, great. So um, the inner child work is we… we grow up. Basically, we’re all born full, loving. humans, innately gifted as we’re supposed to be our authentic, true selves with no judgment of ourselves, no judgments of others. We’re full loving. We love others. We love ourselves. And I use this example of being in kindergarten and the teacher has us in a circle in our classroom and she says, raise your hand if you think you are smart. Every single child in that classroom is going to raise their hand with pride. They think they’re smart. I think I’m smart. Raise your hand if you think you’re beautiful. You raise your hand proudly, with no, no hesitation. Because you truly believe you are beautiful. You believe you’re smart, you are loving of yourself, you’re accepting of yourself. And as we grow into our formative years, you know, we’re in the ages of 7 and 9, between 7 and 9, we start really struggling with comparison and judgments and insecurities and it’s just a product of life. But what happens is, in those years, we start having little events happen where we start judging ourselves and we hold on to these stories really tight. And we make them mean things. So it’s not necessarily the event, but it’s the attachment. 

 

It’s the meaning we give that event whether it’s something a parent said to us, a teacher, a friend, someone in a store, you never know where it’s going to happen, but as children, these are traumatic moments, and the word trauma is very um, it’s very, it’s a confused term in our society right now because we, we, we tend to think of trauma as something really, really detrimental that happens in your life, like a rape or or you know, physical abuse, whatever it may be. Trauma can be anything. It can be you spilling your milk as a child and your grandmother gets mad at you. And what you make that moment mean, becomes a trauma in your life. Yeah. 

 

So the inner child becomes a hurt child. And whether it’s a very large event that happened or small one, we have these hurt moments. So the hurt child is in there. As we grow up and we move through other into our adulthood, we have what is called our little adult, and our little adult is the one who still reactive to these little triggers from these traumatic events that we have now, deep within our body. So if we do something wrong, for example, if it had been the spilled milk, if we do something by mistake in our adulthood, and someone is upset at us. We don’t react as a true adult, a coping healthy adult, we go back as that hurt adult, that hurt child. And it’s our little adult who’s doing the reacting, because we go back to that moment in time. 

 

So in my work with my clients, we do a lot of this authenticity piece. Because when we’re functioning as our hurt child, our little adult person, we are not authentically ourselves, because we’re still so stuck back in our time and coming from that injured victim place. So I feel like I’m all over but I’m gonna try to come in now.

 

13:50  

No, this is good. This is good. It’s a lot of thoughts in me as well.

 

13:56  

Okay, do you have any questions right off the bat at all?

 

13:59  

No. I mean, I have obviously. Maybe not obviously. I’ve been to therapy. And that’s some of the work we did. We did EMDR. And it was a lot going back to how you feel right now. And then when was the time you felt that before? And when was the time you felt that before and when was the time you felt that before and I am the kind of person who does not cry. It’s kind of weird. Like, I just don’t cry. 

 

And I was in this session. And tears were just flowing down my face. And it was from a smaller incident that happened when I was like, 6 years old and 10 years old, that I didn’t even realize was a thing. And yet it was showing up as a 40 year old woman based on something that happened in the workplace. So that was exactly when you were talking. What I was thinking about, when you think about the little traumas in my therapist, I was talking to her and said, Well, nothing really bad happened to me like I don’t have, I don’t understand why I’m so, too kept up on this, why can’t I just get over it? And she was like, you told me this and this and this, and that is trauma. And can you imagine that happening to your 3 year old daughter? And so it is what you’re talking about that resonates with me. And I’m sure it will resonate with a lot of the listeners who might be like, you know, there’s some people who talk about big T, little T. Trauma. They’re like, but I don’t have a big T. And yet, the reaction I’m having to this incident emotionally, is so far off the scale of what would be, “a normal reaction”. And it’s not about that in my talk. What about, what you prefer? 

 

Absolutely, absolutely. 100% it is. The little, little Tanya little Casey, we are you know, in fact, just to bring it to current day, that someday when your podcast is still being listened to in 20 years, someone’s going to listen and this has been recorded during a very tumultuous time in our in our history with Coronavirus, COVID, you know, the COVID-19 and our presidency and, you know, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, we are… we have a lot going on. 

 

And if you look at every single player in this politically, there’s a little person in there, there is a little person in that politician’s body. There is a hurt child in every single person you communicate with in your community that’s having a temper tantrum about politics, and there are old commands and old triggers and each of them that is showing up in this little, Little adult body, and we all need to be doing inner work. We all need to be doing inner work and we don’t have we don’t have time. We don’t have education to know the importance of our mindset in so much of what carries us through our journey every single day. So yes, what you’re talking about is 100% that we would all be my point is we would all be so much of a better place. If we in school had to have an entire year of inner child work.

 

17:45  

Well, you know, I I’m so jealous when I used to walk into my therapist, my absolutely adult door and I was finally doing EMDR work. By the way, I went to lots of therapists when I was drinking, and never worked. Go figure because I wasn’t talking about that, but I see teenagers in there. And I’m honestly jealous of them because I was like, Oh my God, if I had done this work at 16 or 17, how much you know, self criticism, how much shame, how much what’s wrong with me, you know, why can’t I cope with this? Would I have avoided and just moved through life with more ease and less stress? And I do know I tell my clients all the time, and I truly believe it that however someone is reacting to you, especially with a really big emotional response is only 10%. about whatever you did, and it is 90% about them and like you’re saying, their inner child, that hurt child, whatever that’s stemming from, but I have to remember that that’s true for me too. When I’m having a big emotional hurt reaction a lot of times it’s a reaction of hurt and feelings. misunderstood and, you know, goes from feeling powerless to feeling anger and indignant, you know what I mean as a method of self protection, different things triggering all of us.

 

19:13  

Absolutely. And you know, as you’re speaking a couple things I want to speak to is the word power is such an important part of my mission, in my work with women and girls is we have the power within us, all of the power we need to be everything we want, as as a person, in our achievements in our relationships, we have the power within us to do what we need to do by following our inner compass and turning inward for the answers that we’re seeking externally. 

We spend so much of our life this was really, my sort of, my aha moment for me – when I stopped drinking I realized I had been seeking comfort. I had been seeking self love. I had been seeking the love of others that I didn’t receive as a child. I had been seeking validations and just I could give you a you know, the list and you know, this is pretty common for a lot of people who drink. 

 

I had been seeking this in a bottle of wine. I had been seeking this externally my whole life and I couldn’t find those answers. I was looking for people to tell me I was okay. People told me I, my thoughts were valid, my feelings were valid. I wasn’t finding the answers outside of myself. And then I get into my, you know, 29 and a half. My first baby and then I’m in my early 30s. Now, I don’t know if I still need to find the answers about myself? Which I’m still like, I have my feelers out everywhere trying to get the answers to know that I’m okay. Now I have three children. And I need to now figure out how to make sure that they’re okay. And now on top of it trying to figure out how am I? Am I an okay mom? I don’t even know if I’m an okay person, let alone an okay mom. So it gets a snowball effect. So the next thing I know, I’m cooking with my glass of wine every single night. I never used to do that. But all of a sudden, wine is my staple next to me every single night while I’m cooking. So that’s where I did for about five years, Casey. 

 

It was all about wine, you know and that part of my life. It was like a blink. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know how it snowballed into, into, you know, more than one bottle of wine sometimes. And it just happened. And it took me a while to let go of that guilt. But now I have no guilt because I know I was just, I was doing my very best. And you know, they say when you know better do better. We’ve heard that a lot right now,

 

22:34  

I was about to say that as well. One question I had for you. The entire five years or in later years. When wine was your constant companion. You were drinking sometimes more than a bottle of wine at night. No judgement here. I did the same thing and I know a lot of women do that as well. Did you know it was a problem? Did you know it was problematic?

 

23:01  

I never tried to stop. I never have. I literally, the time I decided it was time to stop, I stopped. I never went through any other moments where I said, I think this is a problem. I’m going to try not to drink. I think I was holding so tightly to my best friend. Yeah. That there was an even distance to give myself that ability to see any other way. And I never challenged myself. 

 

Nobody else challenged me, which is another thing that is so important for for I feel like I want to do some coaching for spouses, because my husband, for example, has a friend who came to him and he said, You know, I know that your wife doesn’t drink anymore, and I just think that’s the coolest thing. Ever. My wife drinks every single night. It starts at dinner. And then I’ve lost her by the end of the night and I’m so lonely and I don’t know what to do. And he was telling me the story and I thought, Oh my gosh, this is a whole other population. Yes, spouses. They don’t know how to communicate. I wish my husband had said something to me, you know, but they don’t know how.

 

24:27  

Well I was gonna say even if they did, or I’m speaking for myself. I was so defensive. I was so in my head. You know, I knew, unlike you, I knew it was a problem. Certainly I stopped for four months, then I got pregnant. So overall, I stopped for a year and then I decided to go back to drinking. And they say that any recovery kind of ruins you for drinking, because you’re no longer oblivious, like I knew too much. So every time I couldn’t remember stuff that happened the night before, every time I would wake up in the morning just feeling like crap every time I was driving home and trying to figure out if I didn’t have time to go get a bottle of wine before I picked up my kid at daycare. I knew, right. I was like, yikes. So if my husband didn’t say you have to stop, and my husband didn’t say, you know, anything when he drove me home. But I remember distinctly, I was opening a second bottle of wine on a Tuesday night. And he was like, What are you doing, Casey? Like, what are you doing? And I was like, so defensive. I was like, What? I just want one more glass of wine, whatever. I work so hard. I do. You know,

 

25:43  

So I do think that’s a whole nother population that needs to be talked to, and needs to be supported. Yeah, I think it’s definitely tricky, right but, but a couple people called me out. Over the course of my drinking, including a friend, and I was super defensive, I kind of cut them a little bit out of my life. I feel terribly about it. But I gotta tell you, I remember that I remembered that 6 years later to this day, I remember it, it was like, so it is you dismiss it in time, but it is a catalyst for change. But I have a question because a lot of people listening are going to be like, dude, she had no idea she decided to quit. She quit because that is not my story. That is not. Yeah, a ton of work. So how and why is a low air wine it’s hard to give up?

 

26:40  

Yeah, yeah. And and as you were talking to me, I wanted to just say it’s not that I didn’t think I was, it’s not that I thought that I was fine, and everything was fine, and my drinking wasn’t a problem. There were so many times when I woke up and I couldn’t remember what I did the night before. But I think I, in this survival mode I was in, I justified it to all. All degrees went, I hadn’t eaten enough, or I was stressed of the wind on top of it. It was like, I just, and I hadn’t had anything happen. I hadn’t had a DUI. I hadn’t, you know, crashed my car. I hadn’t left my child somewhere. But I had so many things, but I justified them so well, I was, you know, it was like I was too smart for my own good coming up with all of my little lies and my stories that I created into my reality. 

 

And it wasn’t until I literally got off of this drinking conveyor belt after about five years, that I was able with that space and that time of looking Back in 2010, with the 2020 glasses on a hind sight rather, of seeing the night after night, and that was, that’s where I really really had to struggle with the shame and the guilt of not even noticing it in those moments and wishing for so long. I wish I could have just gone back so many times that I just cried and wished that I could go back and do those years over bed with my son reading him nighttime stories, rather than wishing he would just go to sleep. So I could run downstairs and finish having my wine. You know, those.. those really deep swords in our heart that we all have. So I did a lot of deep work on healing my shame and my guilt which is where my my real deep passion and my mission for becoming empowered by our inner compass and our inner knowing and our, our ability to know like and trust ourselves, enough to do what’s best for ourselves in this lifetime and in. And therefore, the byproduct of that is having to be doing the best for our children and our loved ones and our relationships in our jobs for others, but it all starts from within us.

 

29:41  

So how do you actually do that? Right? I know a big step is stopping seeking external validation and approval that can lead you down the wrong path, but I know you have sort of your 4 pillars of how to do it. So if a woman’s listening to this and it’s like yes, this is work I need to do. But where do I start? I can’t just be like, I’m going to validate myself. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s hard.

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.

 

30:09  

Yes. So let me start, I’ll just say so, my Sunday, May 1 2010, was a morning that I sat. And it just… it was my morning of realization. I had had a night where I slipped on a floor, and I was wearing all white, and I was covered in red wine. Now, I woke up the next morning, and my white clothes were covered in red wine and my husband had to tell me how that happened. Okay, for the millionth time, probably in my life of having him telling me what happened. I can remember listening to the birds in the yard and sitting at the table on the back, the back patio. By myself, and somehow the universe just, it was my day, it was my moment. Something changed within me. And I knew in that moment that I had a problem. And that’s where, where I discovered that I needed to, to make this change within myself so that I am not reliant on alcohol anymore. I decided in that moment, though, that I would not do it for a period of time. That was not going to be for me, for some people and I am absolutely 100% supportive of any form of alcohol relationship examination that anybody wants to do because nobody is the same. 

 

We are all going to look at our religions with alcohol differently, and in our journey of either abstaining completely, or having a period of time is going to be different for everyone. For me, I knew that I was going to go cold turkey, I was never going to have another sip of alcohol. And I could never ever, ever fall off the wagon because I have a brother who is still falling on and off the wagon. And I’ve watched him and I think that’s where that came from, for me, is every time he falls off the wagon, I think it’s just that much harder for him to have the self esteem that he can do it next time. And I so strongly wanted this to happen for me that I had just told myself, it’s all or nothing. 

 

Yeah, I got in the bath. And I can remember sitting in water. I wrote about this on my blog. If anybody wants to go read it. I talked about this moment in my life. And I was crying. It was like, partly like a wounded animal. And it was partly like a child in this body of Tanya, and I can remember being in this, this water in my bathtub, and not knowing myself, and just knowing there was this body. And I had just been walking through life for all of these years now. And all of a sudden, there was so much unhappiness just coming out of me. Yeah. It honestly was like an out of body experience where I realized that all of this that was coming out of me is where my power lies. 

 

I needed to fix all of these broken pieces inside. And I think that’s where this all came from. Is recognizing that the broken parts of us are exactly that they’re just broken parts that need healing. And that is the human experience. Some people need less healing than others. Some people need more and there is no judgment. It doesn’t make anybody any more worthy of this life. It is just our journey. And like I said before, it’s never too late, you know?

 

34:37  

So, that was that day, where do we go from here as someone who..who wants to, to be empowered and make the change? We want to align, we want to have all parts of us be as healthy as they can be. And this is why I have come to focus on these 4 pillars. Which is nourishment because when we’re not nourishing ourselves, we’re likely not taking care of ourselves in other areas. When we’re not eating well, we’re likely putting ourselves last. We’re not listening to our body cues. So nourishment sounds simple. Yes, it’s the food we put in our body. But if we’re not choosing to feed ourselves, well, it’s, it’s another. So it’s almost like a mirror of how we are living our life. Because if we can’t give ourselves the self love that we need to be fueling our body, we’re probably not putting ourselves up high enough on the list. And we’re not valuing ourselves enough movement, if we’re not moving our bodies and taking care of our bodies, whether it’s stretching, getting out for a walk, going for a short run, doing an extra sighs class, you know, it can be little things, we’ve got to get our energies moving in our body because when our energy is stuck within us, it then bubbles out into other areas of our life. 

 

And I very much believe in the whole mind body connection which movement, nourishment, self care and our authenticity are all connected with this whole mind body piece of nourishment especially, there’s so much more research coming out now about the gut, and the mind connection. Self Care another pillar self care is a huge umbrella term for so much of the inner alignment. That will be the breath work that we should be doing. It is journaling. Meditation. Now meditation is very daunting for people. It’s taken me forever to even dabble in meditation. But guess what we can do as far as meditation. We can be meditating when we’re walking our dog. We can be meditating when we’re at a red light. We can be doing breath work when we’re at a red light. The more we educate ourselves about what self care means and how available it is to us, the easier it is for us to implement in our life. It’s not just bond bonds and bathtubs. Mm hmm.

 

37:29  

Right?

 

37:30  

Absolute gratitude. Gratitude is a wonderful way of self care because it gets us out of our minds about ourselves and into you know, that that external world that we are so, so lucky for so many things, even if things feel overwhelming, I feel like gratitude helps reprogram your brain to look for the positive I mean, you know, it’s It is true that whatever you focus on expands

 

38:01  

And it just is such a lovely practice and there are certainly some days that are extremely hard. I mean, you know, there are crappy days in sobriety, but there is always something good in it there is even if it’s just, you know, I love my…my little workout socks, they’re like, so comfortable and they’re the first you know, like whatever it is. I mean, I’m always grateful for coffee and you know, absolutely, yeah.

 

38:36  

Yeah, yeah, whatever it is, right. You maybe… maybe you love the nail polish color you have on that day you look at your fingernails, they make you happy, you feel grateful that you even have nail polish and it makes you happy. You know, it’s, it could be anything and, and so, visualization. 

 

There are so many, Casey so many self care parts, then the authenticity pillar is Like we talked about the inner child, authenticity is the, you know, this is the most important thing because we need to, we need to go back to that little girl that I talked about in the kindergarten who is wanting to raise her hand and say, I am smart, I am beautiful. I am worthy, basically, is what you’re saying. And, and I own it, and I love it, does it mean we’re going to go out on the street and raise our hand obviously not and say I am beautiful. But that’s our authentic, true self. Who needs to be a cheerleader? for ourselves? Nobody else is going to be our cheerleader. And when we’re living authentically true to ourselves, we’re being that for ourselves for our where, you know, what’s a good way to say this? You know? Yeah, no better way to say it, then just wait. We need to be our biggest, our own biggest cheerleaders in this life and as women that’s very hard.

 

40:05  

Yeah. I mean, I started after I quit drinking. God knows this didn’t happen before. But you know, my daughter was almost 2. And as she’s grown up, the funny thing is she’s like, Oh, you know, I taught her this, but I’m always like, you got to love yourself first before you can love anyone else. And so when she’s going through the people she loves, she’s like, Daddy, Mommy, Hank, and me because you got to love yourself first. And I’m like, Okay, hold on to that.

 

40:32  

Oh, I love it. It’s so true. It’s so true. And you know, and it’s a part of the journey. There’s times that we’re in… life is not linear, growth is not linear. There are going to be times I am not. I was on the couch crying the other day because the dog slammed his head into my cheekbone and it hurts so bad. And then I smashed my finger in something and the day had just been very open. whelming and I fell on the couch and cried and I and I, and I like you. I don’t cry a lot, but I was crying. And I lost it. But you know what? That’s okay. Yeah. And those are the moments where when we are aligned within ourselves and we’re taking care of ourselves, our nourishment and our movement in ourselves carry our authenticity. It’s okay when we cry, and we’re not making it mean anything other than we just need to get the tears out.

 

41:34  

Yeah. And when we’re drinking, we either blame ourselves for that. Or we say, I’m gonna have 3 glasses of wine and power through instead of realizing that you’re hurt and you’re overwhelmed. And you know, all those emotions. Well, what do you need to do to actually soothe yourself? When you’re hurt or overwhelmed, you need to curl up like a little girl and cry. That’s literally what you need. 

 

You don’t need to tell yourself that you did it because you were drinking or you were fuzzy and this is crap or go drink to make those emotions just be so don’t that you don’t feel 100% Casey and this is it this is exactly what you were just saying is when when we’re out of alignment in our life, we try to put a bandaid on it with various behaviors. For some it’s gambling. With some it’s sex addiction with some it’s shopping. With some it’s social media addiction with some it’s substances like alcohol. Okay, so for you and I sitting here right now, it’s alcohol for our viewers, it’s probably alcohol. And along with it, often come some other band aids, but for this moment, we’ll just say alcohol is our band aid. 

 

So we have this band aid and we’re trying to fix this misalignment in our life. Because we’re not looking internally for the answers that we’re seeking and guess what happens then this so-called “Band Aid”? This alcohol, it is chipping away at these pillars and I think that you know, this is why these pillars are so important to me now. 

 

Gambling is different. Gambling doesn’t chip away so much in our movement, our nourishment, our self care and our authenticity, it probably does in its own way, but alcohol specifically, you know, and this opens up the whole can of worms of… Is alcohol really actually bad for you? But that’s a whole other podcast. Alcohol depletes and depletes our body of its minerals and our vitamins and, and the nutrients that it needs. Right. So it’s chipping away at our nourishment pillar.

 

Also, when we’re drinking alcohol, it’s chipping away at our movement pillar. We’re not doing the exercise, we’re not doing the movements we need to do. It’s chipping away at self care because we’re not doing self care. We’re not journaling, meditating, practicing our breathing techniques, practicing our visualizations. Because we’re focused on the drinking and the drinking is really holding us back. And when we’re drinking, we are completely not living the authenticity piece. Because we’re out of our lives, we’re out of connection with ourselves. We’re completely disconnected. So that’s where I feel like my whole sitting in that bathtub. All of my pillars had collapsed and I recognized that my whole world had crumbled. 

 

I hadn’t been eating well, I hadn’t been running anymore. I would have my bouts of running because I’m a runner. I would have my bouts of running but they’d be short lived because really the most important thing was drinking my wine.

 

44:58  

Right? Yeah.

 

45:02  

So, you know, where did where do we start? We start with some tools. And some tools for me were… I really love visualization and visualizing where we want to be tomorrow, where do we want to be in a few months? Where do we want to be in five years and in the moment, and this is so much easier said than done, but in the morning doing visualization, journaling about our future selves and getting as detailed as we want to be we can about who, who I am, who is Tanya, who do I want Tanya to be? What’s the version of me I want for tomorrow? Mm hmm. 

 

And the more we start telling ourselves this person, the more it becomes a reality when four o’clock rolls around, and we’re thinking, Okay, I really wish I had a glass of wine right now. visualizing the future self. Um, it sounds easier said than done. But if you can just get quiet, close your eyes and visualize who you want to be tomorrow. How do you want to feel when you wake up tomorrow morning? And you detach yourself from that moment because that moment when that feeling of alcohol comes in at four o’clock

 

46:44  

it’s almost like being hijacked.

 

46:47  

Right? Yeah. So you weren’t, we are not going to get out of that moment and that feeling by being who we are in this moment. We are going to get out of that. Feeling and that draw to the alcohol by thinking outside of this moment, thinking about who? Tanya, Casey, whoever the listener, who do you want to be when you open your eyes tomorrow morning on your pillow and you have the day ahead of you. What is it? What would you feel like if you drank right now? It’s like you have to detach from this emotional cyclone because it’s so strong.

 

47:31  

Well and I feel like you know there’s a difference and and I totally work with my coaching clients on this between I need to not drink because it’s painful to me which is true to what do you want in your life and what would that look like and getting excited about it? How good can you feel what can you accomplish if alcohol was not part of it, which is a very different way to move through life. And you know, a lot of people say if I just remember enough how bad I feel how much shame I feel, how awful it is, when I’m drinking, I will hate myself enough to stop. And I feel like you have to love yourself enough to move forward. 

 

And I’m a big quote girl like, my, anyone that comes to my house will say, I’ve got like vision boards everywhere. I’ve got a few offices, I’m push pins, I’ve got a bunch of my garage. But they helped me replace those negative thought patterns and limiting beliefs about outcome limiting beliefs about what my life could look like without it with things that let me put down those beliefs and things that let me move forward. And I just actually put up a new one because it spoke to me on my board and it says, “Every time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself, does this support the life I’m trying to create? If the answer is no, don’t do it”. 

 

But you have to visualize what is the life you’re trying to create. Because without that vision in front of you, where you’re going to see it, it’s so easy to get derailed by day to day stuff. If you don’t have that picture and whether it’s a house or a trip, or a mantra of how you want to feel inside, because it’s all related to how you want to feel.

 

49:30  

It absolutely is, Casey! And it’s so funny you say this because in regards to, you know, I talked about my brother, I always say he needs to love himself 1% more than he is hating himself right now. To tip the scale, to begin his journey to  not drink anymore, but you can’t until he loves himself. Just one percent more than he detests himself. 

 

Yeah, he is going to continue with the self destructive behavior. And that’s exactly what you know you were just saying and going, you know back to the day to day tools of this, the universe only hears, you know, for your listeners whether you believe in a higher power, you believe in God, you believe in universe, there is a power and it only can be directed by what you’re saying, you want and what you want to call in. It cannot get directed by what you don’t want. We can’t be focusing on I don’t want to mess up again. I don’t want to, you know, hurt anyone. 

 

Again, you can’t focus on what you need to focus on. I want to love everyone. I want to show up as the best mother I can. I want this, I want that. The universe understands that and the more detailed you are, the more apt you are to be able to call this in. That’s why I say we picture ourselves tomorrow. When we’re fighting the urge, for example to have the drink. We can’t be thinking about why we don’t want to wake up hungover. You’re what you want to picture how you do want to be tomorrow. The things you want to do, the clothes you want to put on for someone who battles with food addiction, you need to picture how you want to feel in a week. Do you want to feel healthy and strong? Do you want to feel like your clothes are fitting you well or do you know, and not feeling swollen? It’s all the same. Um, so visualization is a tool I call it sort of the visualization pause. You pause in that moment of that overwhelming you know, desire to have a drink and you try to visualize yourself for tomorrow or for next week, for example. 

 

52:10  

Another one is bubble meditation, which I really like because you can do it anywhere. Obviously not when you’re driving with your eyes closed, but you close your eyes and you envision yourself wherever is peaceful to you, whether it’s the beach or fields of flowers or you know, the canyon in the middle of the desert. You close your eyes and you breathe and you practice your breathing exercises and you picture little bubbles coming out from you. From your head and the little bubbles are just going to be carrying all of your negative thoughts out from the top of your head. You almost feel like you’re lifting and clearing all of this sort of frenetic negative noise, the negative thought patterns, you let your anxiety.. It is and your stresses and these horrible statements you keep telling yourself or whatever you’re, you’re, you know, beating yourself up about. Put them in these bubbles and let them float away and watch them go into the clouds. 

 

So that’s one that I really love is meditation. Um, and one other thing, just his index cards. So write down your goals of what you want for the best and, and greatest version of your life for you for your future, your dreams, your goals, you write them on index cards, you can have as many as you want, but I want you to go through these every night. 

 

This is what I have my clients do. This is what I do for myself. And these are your little golden cards. You look at these before you go to bed at night, and you read your goal and you shut your eyes and you picture that you’ve already reached this goal in as much detail as you can, you picture that you have already achieved this goal, and you picture yourself doing it and living it. You do this every single night and you can do it in the morning too. When you wake up in the morning, as you are, you are creating your reality. You are tricking practically your brain into thinking this has already happened. And what it does is, it actually changes the neuro chemistry that the neural connections in your brain trick the brain into thinking that it already happened. And it creates dopamine in your brain. It’s an amazing effect.

 

54:44  

I mean, I do that with my vision boards and like the thing they all mean something to me like when I read them. There is a goal in mind. I, in fact, I don’t remember if it’s Jensen, Sarah, I adore her. She writes you’re a badass but I have Have a quote on my, on my vanity and it says, decide what it is you want, make a fucking plan and work on it every single day. And that to me over the years has meant lots of different things. And yet, I know what the goal is. So when I read that, I’m like, I’m grounded again, in what I want to do.

 

55:21  

Yeah, that’s, that’s beautiful. I love that she’s amazing. But when we and then remember, though, it’s too when you get into bed at night, how many of us get into bed at night with the weight of the world on us already thinking about tomorrow? If we can just pause for a minute and look at those goals that likely we aren’t going to be remembering when we get and put our head on our pillow at night. We just have them right there and whether we’re so tired or not, we just go through them one time and go to sleep. You know, it’s just it’s little thing.

 

Yeah, really is the little things. And in this process of, of sober curiosity, for your listeners, for those who may be well into their journey of not drinking every day, it’s little, little things, little pieces that are going to create that stronger foundation for continued alignment in your life. The little changes that are going to start the foundation for the future alignment in your life. It’s little things and like I said it’s never too late. But also it’s never too early. I just wanted to speak to the little girls.

 

56:45  

Yeah.

 

56:47  

The little girls that may be Daughters of your listeners, the little girls that are going to grow up and someday listen to your podcast. I work with little girls who are also struggling and they struggle earlier and earlier now. And they, too, need to know that they have the power within them. If I had known that I had all the answers within me when I was nine years old, my life journey would have been very, very different. I wouldn’t have grown up feeling that I was unworthy and that I needed to be shameful for who I am and I wouldn’t have you know, I would have had the power to do a lot of things differently. 

 

And I believe that our girls have an opportunity to really live differently than we did because we are so much better educated as mothers and leaders, sisters, grandmothers, too, to hand that power to our girls and say that you can do this and you can do this now. You can start this journey of empowerment as a 10, 11, 12 year old. We don’t need to wait and see, are they going to turn out okay? Are they going to have issues? No, let’s just assume that they’re, they’re ready for empowerment at the age of 10. 

 

Yeah, they’re ready to hear us say, you know what, there are going to be hard journeys ahead of you. But guess what, you have the power within you and the hard journeys ahead of you are going to be interwoven in the wonderful ones. And you are a girl who is going to be empowered to know that you have all the answers within you. You don’t need to look externally for your validation and your worthiness. And they cannot hear this enough. And as mothers, if you mothers see their daughter struggling at all, the most important thing is to know that you don’t have to feel like you need to fix it for them because you can’t fix it for them. What you do is, you hand the power over to them and show them that you don’t need to fix it for them because they can do that themselves, listening to them. 

 

I call it riding the wave. Riding the wave for our girls is so invaluable for mothers, because as you know, it goes up and down and up and down. And the emotions are high and the emotions are low. And we don’t need to try and fix that because every time they feel us trying to fix things for them. They feel like we don’t think they can survive it themselves. Or they get nervous. You know what I mean? 

 

Yeah, is them nervous when you’re just riding with them and listening. It’s empowering to them because they realize that you… you completely trust that they’re gonna… they’re gonna be okay. You know you’re supporting them, but you’re not clearing the path in front of them. Yeah, letting them do the work.

 

1:00:09  

Like just to know someone has your back after you, like, is important, but that’s very different than listening to fix it for them, because they’re unable to do it themselves.

 

1:00:21  

And it’s hard. It’s hard. That’s one of the hardest things and I think too, you know, that’s why a lot of parents, a lot of women I work with struggle with their drinking because they are taking on all of their kids emotions. And.. and I do that now too, but I do it sober. And it’s, it is hard. It is. I have a 21 and an 18 year old and a 15 year old and I am taking on their emotions and their fears. But I don’t turn to alcohol to you know, to, to numb that out. I am right in it with them. And I had a point. I’m just forgetting what my point was. But anyway, um, so yeah, just being there with them and, and being strong and letting them know you’re there for them, but they don’t need you to do the work.

 

1:01:18  

Yeah. And I remember someone told this to me and it gets hard, right, because you have kids who are so attached to you. And then at some point, as they get older, they want to distance themselves from you. And I know it’s a natural process, but someone you know, as a mother, it hurts. And someone told me to picture it like you’re there in a pool, and you’re the side of the pool, you’re the wall, and they need to push off from you to do what they need to do, but they also know that you’re there if they need to swim back and that to me was a little bit easier to imagine what I’m just like they’re just pushing off from the wall of the pool and they will swim back.

 

1:02:00  

Yeah, maybe in a long time. I don’t know if I swam back to my mother for real until I had a kid and then had a baby. And then I was like, Oh my god, I was a terrible kid teenager, 20 year old and I didn’t know how much you did for me. I didn’t know how hard this was.

 

1:02:21  

I know. I know. Isn’t it amazing? Really? You just don’t know. And that’s the thing to remember. Right? When we feel unappreciated, and we were the same way that we were.

 

1:02:32  

they don’t understand. I know. And, but they love us. They love us and they’re just pushing off with the pool.

 

1:02:41  

And it’s natural. It is so funny. Casey, I went through that big time with my 21 year old when he was probably 16 because he’s the oldest and I can remember just that period of time, when he started finally distancing himself and it’s painful. It is. Yeah, but um, but he’s 21 now and he still needs his mommy. Yeah, boys love their mothers. They do.

 

1:03:05  

Well. So before we go, I wanted to talk about your free gift that you have The 7 Days to Y.E.S! And I’m going to link to it in the show notes. 

 

It’s your daily focus objectives and mantras to raise your vibes and get to a place of Yes. So can you tell us about it? I know they can sign up to get it on your website and get it sent to them.

 

1:03:30  

Sure, yeah. So the 7 Days to Yes!. So the Y.E.S! is an acronym for Your Extraordinary Self. And the yes is the seven days are. Some of them are ones that I touched on earlier, which is the gratitude, the servitude, and it’s basically on each day, I have something to focus on, which goes back to the peace of inner alignment. And as we’re turning inward for my answers and not externally, we are connecting to that authentic piece of ourselves our extraordinary selves because we are for each extraordinary. And we are each here, as we have gifts we have to share. And when we can be extraordinary and celebrate ourselves, we have those gifts that we’re able to give to others. 

 

1:04:25  

Awesome! Well, I cannot wait to get it myself and work through it because it sounds amazing. Thank you so much for being here. I know some of our listeners, or many of them are going to want to learn more about your work and get in touch with you. So what’s the best way to connect with you?

 

1:04:41  

So the best way.. so the way my website address is tanyaouhrabka.com.

I know you will link that so it’ll be that.

 

1:04:56  

Yes, I will. I will link it in the show notes, which will be easier.

 

1:05:01  

Yeah. And I’m on Instagram. I am on Instagram. @tanyaouhrabka. And those are pretty much my Facebook.

 

1:05:12  

Yeah, I’ll link to all of those so people can get in touch with you. So, go to my show notes. I’ll have the link to The 7 Days to Y.E.S! , the mantras to raise your vibes and get to the place of Yes. I’ll link to Tanya’s website, Instagram and Facebook so you’ll know where to get in touch with her.

 

1:05:31  

Great. Well, this was so lovely Casey. Thank you. 

 

1:05:35  

So thank you so much. I’m sure everyone who listens will get a lot from it. I know I did.

 

1:05:40  

Great. Thank you. Bye.