Navigating the Holidays: Maintaining Sobriety and Creating New Traditions

Episode 159: Navigating the Holidays: Maintaining Sobriety and Creating New Traditions

In episode 159 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen chats about navigating the holidays while maintaining sobriety and creating new traditions. 

Facing the holidays can be a daunting task while maintaining sobriety, but it's a journey I've walked before and I'm here to share my insights with you. This episode is all about overcoming those struggles, creating your own traditions, and setting boundaries that support your sober lifestyle. Trust me when I say, it's okay to reimagine the holiday season in a way that aligns with your journey towards sobriety. In this episode, we'll discuss how to stay sober during festive gatherings, from indulging in flavorful mocktails to setting time limitations, along with the importance of prioritizing your comfort and well-being. Plus, we'll explore how sobriety can help unearth and heal past traumas and emotions, especially during the holiday season.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Starting New Traditions 
• Healing through Holidays 
• Overcoming Holiday Struggles
• Doing You 

Thank you for listening, and we hope this episode helps.

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Transcript

Courtney Andersen: 0:01

这是开始. Hey, welcome to the Sober Vives podcast. I am your host and sober coach, courtney Anderson. You are listening to episode 159. So usually how we roll is, every third episode is me and my sissy, but I wanted to do a solo episode for you today. That way you have it for the month of December and this is really about the holidays, which I will get more into it. Okay, and episode 159.

Courtney Andersen: 0:57

But first just a quick announcement that I am giving sober vibes a little bit of a facelift and then the next couple of months, I am not taking one-on-one clients on. If you've already scheduled an appointment with me, that is no problem. But I am putting a lot of focus and time and energy into creating new stuff for you, but also to revamping my fixed community, which is now being called the sobriety circle, and this is more of a group coaching program with meetings and new support. I'm even adding in more meetings this month, so and I will have a lot of more workshops inside this group coaching program. So for the month of December, you can join the fix and this is good for anybody, for any female, from day zero up to two years and for the month of December I'm giving you $10 off with the code holiday. Plus to you, the sobriety circle members now get an exclusive course about how to have fun without alcohol, and that is free when you join and is yours forever. If I do any updates in it, it is yours. So the calendar is up for December. Come join if you are looking for sober support. This is game changing sober support and all what's included. The link is in the show notes below. Don't forget to use the code holiday at checkout. Okay, that is my announcement for today. And two, if you haven't grabbed my book yet, please do if you are in the first three months of your sobriety journey. It's called sober vibes, a guide to thriving in your first three months without alcohol. It's a banger, it is a banger.

Courtney Andersen: 2:45

So today's episode is about the holiday season, and this episode really came within the last week of having some conversations with some people and just really feeling it. The first couple holiday seasons are bizarro. Okay, the first one, especially to if you, if you, if you never liked the holiday season, it is weird. And or you did like the holiday season. Now you're like how am I going to do the holiday season without alcohol and eggnog and all the things right and it's very easy. You will do it.

Courtney Andersen: 3:26

But I have to say, for me, the first holiday season, the holidays were always triggering for me and it took a couple of years till they were not. So it's normal, you know, you get some people. It's just like it's just another day, and that is true and I have spoken upon it. But there is such a heavy association with alcohol and or trauma that goes back for a long time, right, like so, when I entered in the holiday season, sober, I really learned quickly because I was still doing same traditions that I was doing from my past drinking life, and it was in those first couple of years that I learned. I was like you know, I'm going to have to switch this up because doing this stuff no longer aligns and going to these things no longer feels good because I'm not in that same space. Right, and even just like recently talking to some girlfriends of what they were doing on Thanksgiving, and one girlfriend was like you don't have to keep doing that. You know, talking about switching up traditions, and it is very true If going over to your parents' house or your sibling's house or whatnot triggers you, you don't have to keep doing that and so when I got sober in those couple, in those couple of years because again, it's a healing process of what you're currently going through, whether you think you had a problem or not there's some healing that goes on and what you're living now is you're having an awakening of, and you're also too hypersensitive with, living a life without alcohol, because it is a huge life transformation. It is, it's a huge lifestyle change. I should say so If you were one who did not really like the holidays and I never really liked the holidays because I had when my parents got divorced when I was seven it was always okay, we do Christmas Eve, christmas morning at my mom's and then Christmas day over at my dad's.

Courtney Andersen: 5:30

I Was that was like that for a long time, but I always had guilt leaving my mother on Christmas Day Still, to this day, it's like you still feel a little bit of guilt, okay, but I mean, since I've had CJ, I've put on strong boundaries, so that's just me and Matt and him on Christmas morning. Because I need to make, I need to make those memories of just Us, right, so going into sobriety, it there was always still a guilt. Slash your mother's staying alone on Christmas Day, right, okay, just keep going with me. And and throughout the years there were always holidays ruined somehow because people got too drunk. There was one holiday that it was a complete disaster at my dad's house because we just got hammered and or expectations were not met. All of it. Okay.

Courtney Andersen: 6:32

So going into sober living and In the holidays I really had to. And it was dating Matt, where, because he enjoyed the holidays and when he kind of spun a new light for me, okay, and in that I noticed that I had to make my own traditions. I was a grown-ass woman and Still doing what I was doing didn't feel right anymore. Right Like it didn't feel. It didn't feel good being at being at my father's house where there was still heavily drinking involved on Christmas Day, and I'm sitting there being the only one and and Matt being the only one sober why everybody else is fucking crushing red wine and drinking scotch at the end of the night. That doesn't feel good and it doesn't. It doesn't make you feel good when you've been surrounded by that for a very long time.

Courtney Andersen: 7:27

Okay, so I started to make new traditions for myself. I started saying you know what? I'm not gonna go and do this on Christmas Day anymore. Right, like I started detaching myself from the guilt of my childhood of leaving my mother on Christmas and being like no, she has grown. I can see her another day within the Christmas experience of what is December or holidays, whatever it is. You know that you are tying this to whatever you do believe in or celebrate, so it's perfectly able to say you're perfectly able to be like. You know what. I'm gonna start my own traditions because I'm not gonna do this. People Please, in bullshit anymore and start enjoying this.

Courtney Andersen: 8:11

I just had a Meaning today in the sobriety circle and I was talking with the woman where she said I never you really used to Enjoy these holidays. And she's like but I think I'm gonna change it around now. And it was like absolutely, and you can do that. Just because you didn't enjoy something last year doesn't mean that now, because you are in a new state of mind, that you're gonna fully embrace it and fucking spread some Tencel all around your house and make it feel good to you. Okay, and Now, if you're on the flip side of that, where you're like I've always enjoyed the holidays, how am I gonna get through this without drinking?

Courtney Andersen: 8:51

And there's many different ways, you know again, put time limitations on stuff. If Mocktails help you Drink the mocktails, if just even having like a wine glass where you're just pouring sort of water, if that helps, you Do that. But I always say for anybody it's like you got to do what's good up until your comfort zone. And if you pass that threshold of your comfort zone and you start getting a little anxious and whatnot there's, it's okay to To peace out, it's okay to exit stage, it is okay to dip out early on this stuff. Don't ever feel like you're trapped somewhere because you are not. Remember that you were a grown-ass adult and you have to do whatever you need to do to protect your sobriety, because that is number one and being somewhere where you feel stuck and or crawling out of your skin is only going to trigger you to want to continue to drink more.

Courtney Andersen: 9:52

And going back to something I touched upon of, it is really when you enter the sobriety space, it's a healing process that takes some time. So during these, this festive season for the month of December, it really is of. That's where I was talking about like detaching even two from childhood bullshit that you're still carrying on and it's not even your stuff, it's your parents stuff that maybe was projected on you, or still thinking that you need to do those same traditions. You do not, and if they're gonna place guilt on you for that, then that's their problem. That is not your problem. And that's where you have to heal from it and look at it like what am I gonna do next and how am I gonna make this new part of my life and how these holidays are gonna look for myself? You don't have to keep going with what you were going with. There is one Thanksgiving it's Thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure it's Thanksgiving.

Courtney Andersen: 10:53

That man and I went to like four or five different houses in a matter of a couple days and I was like in a matter of like two days. I'm like I'm done doing this. I'm done. I'm not going to drive all around town just to show up and say hello and whatnot, like I'm done. And if that makes me, if people get pissed off about it and that makes me be perceived as somebody who doesn't want to participate, well, I don't give a fuck. Why am I rushing around all of Detroit, metro, michigan, just to see people that I don't see majority of the year? You know like I want to spend the holidays and this is also two.

Courtney Andersen: 11:32

At the time I was also working a nine to five in the 40 hour a work week grind right. So it's just like when you had and still and or in the restaurant business and when you're dealing with a bunch of fucking other people. So if you're in some type of service business, the service industry, where you're dealing with other people's energies during the holiday season, it's fucking exhausting and then it's your only day off because people are trying to get in their appointments before Christmas and then Christmas ends up being your only day off. So if you want to sit at home and order some Chinese food and watch fucking elf or non Christmas movie at all, then do that, then do that and that is okay because that is what you want to do and what you are craving. So just keep remembering that this is all a process and you, if you feel a certain type of way around these holidays, or you show up and you feel a certain type of way around your family and you start seeing like oh, oh, this is not as cool as I thought and I I did a One of my previous one.

Courtney Andersen: 12:54

I'm one client. She just celebrated a year sober and Her and I jumped on a call and she was saying she was like I feel like I'm like I was living in a delusion for some time. I'm like well, you weren't living in delusion, it was just. You know, what happens with alcohol is like it. It it fogs a lot of stuff. You know, I was like so you're waking up and now you're in the point of Emotional sobriety where now you're trying to figure that out because there is a bit it's a huge switch that happens to after your first year of Of living sober. That first year all you need to really focus on is just living day by day, without, without the hooch.

Courtney Andersen: 13:36

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Courtney Andersen: 14:21

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Courtney Andersen: 15:12

You might be a couple months in and you might go over to your parents house, your dad's house, your mom's house, your brother's house and being like you guys aren't that cool and that's okay. But then you might go and be like I have a, really I'm in a really good time and I'm so happy. Then I'm sober and this is the fucking Cats pajamas and that's great too. Everybody has a different story and that's where this is not a one size for all. So this episode really does talk to more of the person who maybe just has a bitter taste in their mouth about the holidays because so much went on with it, or remembering past episodes of being hammered and being like, oh my God, that one Christmas. You know, I mean, if you listen to the last living on the L edge series, we talk about the stories of the street of like and I share about my last drunken Christmas party. I was asking a grown man if he liked blowies. Like you know, that's it. This shit happens when you are intoxicated and under the influence of alcohol. So the holidays it can bring up a lot of emotions for people.

Courtney Andersen: 16:31

And go back to that episode too, because I know I said that my next solo would be more about triggering triggers in the holiday season, but I felt like my sister and I really kind of touched based on that. But this is just more of if you're just feeling a certain type of way in your first couple rounds of the holiday season and you kind of you want to put a different spin on it. Put a different spin on it and start embracing it and, like you know what I'm gonna make. I'm gonna get festive this year and I'm gonna start doing shit that I wanna do and that's where I challenge you to start looking up stuff in your community. That's what I did when Greenfield Village. If you ever visit Detroit, michigan, meet you at Greenfield Village Henry Ford Museum, emsco, and we are big fans where then I started doing the holiday nights and it's something that I look forward to every year.

Courtney Andersen: 17:28

We're not going this year, it's okay, just cause it starts later. And you all know me, I'm stickler with bedtime. It's like nope, we're not staying out past CJ's bedtime cause he needs to sleep, so, but maybe next year we'll do it cause he'll be a little bit older. So this year we're not doing it, but I'm gonna look into a little bit more of some other things in the area that are starts earlier. So I challenge you to look in your backyard, become a tourist in your hometown and do something festive for yourself this holiday season.

Courtney Andersen: 18:07

That gets you out in a new environment where there's not I mean, there might be drinking involved, okay, but where you're not participating in drinking, but you just check out the holiday markets, see if there's like cookie, cookie, christmas cookie, baking classes, reef making classes, all that. Go to a museum, whatever the case may be. Go do it. Go see a holiday movie inside a movie theater, something, and see how you feel okay, and then message me and let me know how you feel after you try something new that now you're gonna incorporate in your own traditions, even if it's just sitting there on Christmas Eve, christmas ordering Chinese food in your comfy cozies. Maybe you bought yourself a new pair of Christmas bachamas from Tufirget, because I did and you're sitting in there and you're kicking it and with your dogs and you got the Christmas tree up with some candles and it's relaxing and zen and you're not part of any type of dysfunction. You're doing what you wanna do, okay, I hope this episode helps you. Please make sure.

Courtney Andersen: 19:20

If you haven't already done so, make sure to rate review, subscribe to the podcast. If the sobriety circle sounds something that interests you, come and check it out Again. For the month of December, you get $10 off. After that it's $35 a month. Okay, and I hope to see you in there because there's lots of meetings and it's a great supportive space. Thank you for listening today, as always. Kick some ass and stay healthy out there. Saker.