Sober Vibes Podcast

Shedding Alcohol Identities with Aneta Mruz

• Courtney Andersen • Season 6 • Episode 221

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Episode 221: Shedding Alcohol Identities with Aneta Mruz

In episode 221 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen welcomes Aneta Mruz to the show. They discuss shedding old identities from their past drinking selves and creating new ones in sober life. 

Aneta Mruz is a change coach and energy practitioner. She shares her nine-year sobriety journey and insights of what she has learned along the way with long-term sobriety. 

What you will learn in this episode:

  •  Exploring the concept of false identities we create during active drinking days, like the "party girl" persona
  • Discussion of how trauma and childhood experiences shape our tendencies to become "chameleons" adapting to others
  • Annetta shares her sober journey
  • The powerful understanding that "we are not our thoughts" applies to addiction recovery and mental health
  •  Three key tips for creating a new identity: awareness, understanding that thought changes chemistry, and recognizing everything is just a story

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Courtney Andersen:

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Sober Vibes podcast. I am your host and Sober Coach, courtney Anderson, and also your go-to guide of living life without alcohol. I have a great guest Living Life Without Alcohol. I have a great guest. First, it's episode 221. And today's guest?

Courtney Andersen:

Her name is Annetta Mraz and she is a spiritual change coach and energy practitioner. She is also nine years sober. She shares her story and how she got sober and then what happened after that, and she really shares her knowledge and gives you tips, too, on how to let go of false identities and create the reality of who you are. So, really, we're shedding old identities, especially the one that you create in your active drinking days. This was a great conversation.

Courtney Andersen:

I really enjoyed talking with her and this is a topic that is so important because you really like grieving your old drinking self. Right, that is an identity that you formed in your active drinking days. For example, the party girl. Who am I going to be without alcohol if I'm not this party girl? Right? But that is really a false narrative that you created in your active drinking days. And then how you need to then form a new identity and shift into who you are now that aligns with you in your sober, slash, alcohol-free life.

Courtney Andersen:

This type of work is huge and I highly recommend for a lot of people, for anybody, to work on identity work when it comes to a sober life Anything right. I had to work on this shit when I become a mom, and we talk about that in this episode too, so it is very impactful. If you haven't already, please remember to rate, review and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. As always, slide into my DMs and let me know what you think of this episode or the podcast and, as always, have a kick-ass day and keep on trucking. Hey, annette, welcome to the Sober Vibes podcast. I'm very excited for you to be here today.

Aneta Mruz:

Thank you, Courtney, so much. I'm very excited also.

Courtney Andersen:

So when did you get sober?

Aneta Mruz:

I got sober on. It's funny. I wrote down your sobriety date. I almost said that it's a very familiar date to me, so that's why I'm like, oh, I got sober March 11th 2016.

Courtney Andersen:

Nice, nice. And what brought you congratulations? So you are nine years, sober. Yes, just hit nine years. Did you do anything to celebrate? Do you celebrate that day, or is it just another day to you?

Aneta Mruz:

I acknowledge it. I don't know how to celebrate it because I kind of my whole life is now a celebration, so it's kind of I don't know, it's tricky, but I did this year. I just felt so prompted to reach out to communities on Instagram to start sharing my story. Okay, did you not share it before? No, I never did. I was very always open about my sobriety and even like on my coaching, instagram or personal, I would always notate March 11th, however many years of sobriety. But I went through a lot of other things after I got sober and that was kind of the focus and I've gone through that. So now it looks like I'm circling back around to sobriety.

Courtney Andersen:

Gotcha, gotcha, what was your moment? I do believe that everybody has what's referred to as a rock bottom. I feel like a rock bottom is just at the you're just at that point where you are just good and tired, like that's just it. Like where you're good and tired with the relationship, whether it's drugs or alcohol or gambling. Like what was your moment? Where you're like, okay, I'm done.

Aneta Mruz:

I remember it was and I will never forget this, because before I never quote unquote surrendered I never asked for help. There was always so much shame around the thought of asking for help, Although it was so blatantly obvious that I had an issue, but no one even said anything.

Courtney Andersen:

Right.

Aneta Mruz:

I was driving, this was 2016, and it must have been January. It could have even been December of 2015, but I was driving home from work and there was always a route I would take. There were two routes you can take home. Going through a neighborhood would lead you to a liquor store and at that point in my life it was consuming a lot of wine and sake.

Courtney Andersen:

And oh my god, you just made, like the back of my, like teeth, like I haven't thought about sake since I used to take sake down. Okay, terrible hangover. The sake is war, yeah, oh my God, yeah.

Aneta Mruz:

Oh, my goodness See, I loved sake because it gave me a particular kind of buzz.

Courtney Andersen:

Oh no, the buzz was great for me, but the hangover for me was awful.

Aneta Mruz:

Really Interesting.

Courtney Andersen:

Probably all the sugar, probably, I mean I'm sure it was also too like a mixture of I was probably doing doing like cherry bombs later in the evening after having that sack, so probably in the mixture of all the alcohol. But yes, right, right, right For sure.

Aneta Mruz:

So I would always go right into the liquor store. And it got to a point where one day I was like, oh my gosh, I can't not go right, I can't not turn into this parking lot. And these weren't the thoughts that I was thinking, but I was like I just like freaked out and I'm like I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm like God, please help me. And I wasn't religious. I had a background of growing up Catholic, but I had never asked for help and I didn't know who to ask. So I just asked God and I said I don't want to live like this anymore. And around that time that was, I would say I know that sounds like a weird rock bottom, but it's when I realized I wanted change.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, Right, yeah, right For sure, right. So then that was in January, and then finally in March. You're like I'm good Well.

Aneta Mruz:

I got pregnant. Oh, in March. You're like I'm good. Well, I got pregnant. Oh, okay, yeah. And maybe December or January, my husband and I I don't even remember how this happened, but the conversation of trying to he wasn't my husband at the time, he was my long-term boyfriend. We had just moved into a condo together, maybe a year ago, and I was like, maybe let's try to have a baby. I was 33. He was 35. And we got pregnant within a month. So February 26, I found out I was pregnant. No, I'm sorry, that's when I ovulated, that's when I must have conceived. I was doing the math. March 10, I found out I was pregnant. March 11 is like essentially the first day of sobriety.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah Well, what a blessing though you know what I mean Like how that all worked out, and that's where a lot of people for when they finally decide to start living an alcohol-free journey, your sober recovery that there is a moment, this spiritual moment, that happens to you right, Like, and for you that was also too. That what happened in January, but then also then what panned out and getting pregnant, that was definitely the universe. Having your back.

Aneta Mruz:

For sure. Yeah, and there's so much to say, even about that and what I do now and what I know now and how we talked about identity. It's just all very interesting.

Courtney Andersen:

Absolutely Well, you as a change coach and energy practitioner which I love, because I love all those things specifically with you, we're going to talk about how you get sucked into these false identities that then create your reality, specifically to when you're drinking, right, a lot of women fall into that quote unquote party girl when they start drinking and then when you know we stopped drinking, it's like, well, who the fuck am I going to be? Like who? This is what I did for so many years. How are people going to like me and all of that and where you're at and where I am at? Many people who have longer term sobriety realize that's just all BS, right, it's just like I have so much more to offer than that. But what would you speak upon about that? I'm getting sucked into those, that identity.

Aneta Mruz:

For sure, and I think we do it all the time. I think we have so many. I mean, psychology will tell you we have so many self identities. The problem with me and, I believe, a lot of individuals that get sucked into whatever type of self-image, is that I didn't know who I was to begin with. I didn't know who authentically I was. I didn't know gosh, it's as though I had no internal compass in a weird way.

Aneta Mruz:

So it was for some reason easier for me to almost become like a chameleon and step into some type of thing that is serving me in the moment. And had it not been? I mean, I always, I always told myself I would never do drugs because I was afraid of losing my mind, like losing control, in whatever experience I had. But alcohol for some reason seemed like I could regulate the high. I guess you can say, depending on how much you drank and what you drank. Right, but as far as I don't even so. I worked at a drink. Right, but as far as I don't even so.

Aneta Mruz:

I worked at a bar, right, and I was in a really toxic relationship right out of high school 20, 21, 22. And that did a lot to create some type of self-identity, of lack of self-worth, unworthiness, unalignment, and I think that's what I was going off of, this degraded self-image that I had. And it didn't matter what I did to myself, it didn't matter, it just didn't matter. I had no goals, I had no ambitions, I had no future, anything at that point. And that's, I think, when you get really sucked into gosh.

Aneta Mruz:

I heard something the other day and it was very religious based. It was very how, if you and I'm not religious, I believe in God, but I'm not like by the book and they said something along the lines of they gave a metaphor of how your children, if they don't follow a certain scripture, they leave God and they call them soulless. And I'm like, oh my gosh, is this what religion believes? But at the same time, I could see how, in that experience, I wasn't living life through my soul. I was like this just destroyed personality, this destroyed identity, right.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, but in that of what you're talking about too for yourself is that's also somebody who destroyed that right. So a lot too. And even, too, when you talk about being a person who adapts to everybody else, that also, too, comes from if there's any type of childhood trauma or what you grew up in right, or if you had emotionally unavailable parents or if there was physical trauma, and then you just go to with the flow. So being in a toxic relationship and being I don't know if there was any physicalness, but emotionally beat down, then you are just taking down to nothing, and at such a young age, because 21 is young, it's young 21 is young.

Aneta Mruz:

Yeah, and that's not where it started. You're absolutely right. There were moments and it's so interesting because I think it does, at least for me it did have to do with maybe the way I was raised. The way I raise my son now, it's almost like I have to teach him how to be human. It's definitely different than the way I was raised. Was I taught morals and values, what's right, what's wrong? I don't remember any of that. I think we just lived life and I felt like this blob just existing and there was no direction.

Aneta Mruz:

And there were instances in my childhood that felt very traumatic, not physical, but mental, in the sense of, like emotional availability that was absent, but also just this I did something wrong, like this, always like this victim mentality, I did something wrong, dumb mentality. I did something wrong, I'm the cause of this, and that's literally so. Did the self-identity at 2021 morph? I believe it did, but it started somewhere. It for sure started somewhere. It had to do with something. The way I viewed myself because I mean, my reality is a reality of what's inside, right, the way I look at it now and I was living and perceiving all this like crap, right, as if I was trash Like not good enough. It was just bizarre to look backwards and see, oh my gosh, she did that to herself and then she continued to choose it.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, absolutely yeah, there's a lot. There's sadness in that when you look back at your younger self and to going even back further into your childhood. There's sadness in that, especially too, when you become a parent and you decide to treat your kids and raise them a different way than you were raised. So, and I'm sure in the periods because what he's nine, eight, nine, he's eight, yeah.

Courtney Andersen:

So then I'm sure there's been periods of him growing up where you've probably felt and some of those I can only speak for myself because this has happened to me with my little dictator and he's three and a half where there's been periods, and especially to, like last year, I went through like kind of an angry phase with my parents. I was like you, two sons of bitches, right, like so when you see that now as a mother and going back, there is sadness for what you didn't have and for that little girl, especially then too, at 2021. Like I have to say, I did not have, I did not have a healthy identity until a couple of years into my sobriety and a couple of years into my sobriety of like figuring out then who, what I was.

Courtney Andersen:

Because we have to rebuild, we have to now build ourself anew, rebuild ourselves into like okay, who am I going to be? What do I like? Right, like, how am I even going to wear? Like, maybe, too like, there's food you don't even like anymore.

Aneta Mruz:

Right, so, and life is incredibly different. I just did another, a different episode, maybe a month ago, and he talked about how you're literally like you have a new life. You're not the same person. There's aspects of you that are still in there because I do believe that, like the true, aligned identities that your personality is meant to exude and live out in this life, I believe those are within you and those are also built in childhood, right, or likes, dislikes, what we cater to, what we don't, but it's I mean, it's so very much all conditioning and programming for sure. And I even like, I mean because we're all so very different but we're all so similar, right, and I even have you ever heard of, oh gosh, what is called human design?

Aneta Mruz:

I just started going into that. I'm like, how are these like categories of humans and there's only five or six. There's definite structure to something that is self-identity, although, the way I see it, it's forever evolving, like we are constantly, every day, we're changing and rewiring, and back then I didn't know that was even possible. I knew change was possible, but I didn't know that we are here to live a life and to change and to redefine our self-identity or self-image constantly, constantly, and we are and we can, and it's not as difficult as one would perceive.

Courtney Andersen:

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Courtney Andersen:

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Aneta Mruz:

So after you that makes me wonder, after you had your so August 18th right, your alcohol-free life, as you put it on your podcast, do you? Did you get into psychology? Did you try to understand, like the self more?

Courtney Andersen:

I've been into psychology since I started going to therapy. When I was in middle school I went to therapy. So like the thing of psychology and too because of my mother has suffered from bipolar and from mental I mean I knew what bipolar was at seven, so like that was very much relevant. I knew what a mental breakdown was. It was very much relevant into my life. So I was always curious about psychology. I also wanted to be a therapist at one point in time, so I did have the awareness of psychology.

Courtney Andersen:

And then, just as you go through life, and there's people who are very in tuned with human beings and I was a bartender for and worked in the industry for 20 years and when you're in that industry or one of where, if you're doing hair, this like you know of a service-based right you understand human beings for sure. Like you can see an asshole walk in from a mile away. You can, yeah, good-hearted person from a mile away. You. There's a vibe about people, how they carry themselves, how they speak, where you're, you're like, okay, I get it, so yeah.

Aneta Mruz:

So I've just always been into psychology yeah, I guess I didn't know you were a bar center and you were in the industry. So I was in the industry for 15 years and that's where I feel like it was so just readily available and the owners didn't care if we were annihilated while we were serving. Like it was my downward spiral of that time of my life in my 20s and early 30s. So that for sure had an impact on me because it was just, it was there and it was fun, like not getting annihilated but being with friends, like waitressing with friends. I waitressed in a town that I went to school with, so all of your like high school friends and everyone would just go in there and it was fun. So that was interesting too.

Aneta Mruz:

But I will tell you in the beginning of the episode you mentioned like, like crawling away. I guess I don't know why I'm saying crawling, like tearing away from this like persona who you thought you were. Honestly, I think if someone doesn't realize that they can change and they are not who their mind tells them they are, that it's going to. What is difficult is the detachment from the personalities versus actual change. It's detaching from who you think you are, from who you think you are and a lot of individuals think they know who they are, but they don't realize that it's all stories we tell ourselves, it's all freaking stories we tell ourselves. It's just what story is serving you and which one is not. Which one do you want to base your reality on and which one should you say goodbye to? So walking away from?

Aneta Mruz:

I got sober and obviously then I have the nine and a half 10 months of pregnancy. I had no craving for alcohol, no desire to drink. I was happy during pregnancy. I felt the most grounded and balanced that I could possibly Like. If I'm, like in my imagination, looking back at myself pregnant, I just see a smile on my face. I remember, in the moment that I got pregnant, like, so I'm telling you, like you had mentioned, it felt like divine intervention because it happened so quickly and it saved me, but it more so was, I remember, thinking I'm finally free, right? So what does that tell you? Thought changes, chemistry, right? So something happened where, like, that identity of needing to drink completely collapsed and disappeared. In that moment, that version of me was gone. And where did she go? She didn't go anywhere. She just I didn't feed her anymore. I didn't follow that narrative anymore of I need to drink right Because I had a reason not to so Right.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, for though this is very interesting because a lot of women it's like okay, they get pregnant. Some women drink through their pregnancy yeah, this is facts, but so for you? And then it's like okay, and I just had this conversation with people the other day where it is like as soon as you pop out that child, here's the wine and people are giving you gifts of alcohol and it's like that is the worst time to be giving a woman. Alcohol is during that, that most vulnerable transition in period in her life. But how was it for you then, in that first year of motherhood Because it's not easy how was it for you to not then be like go back to drinking than be like go back to drinking?

Aneta Mruz:

Right. So well, I had a C-section. They put me on. Oh gosh, I forgot what they put me on, but it made me like super chill, super relaxed. And then I realized they didn't tell me when to stop taking it. So I called the hospital. I'm like how long am I supposed to be taking this for? And they're like, oh, stop now. I'm like okay. So I stopped taking it and my world turned upside down. It was insanity in the sense of full-blown anxiety, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts. I was actually suffering with the diagnosis of OCD Girl.

Aneta Mruz:

I had that too. Oh my gosh stop. So it was like postpartum OCD, never knew about it, never knew about it, never knew about it. And I mean, people have it not postpartum but but these medical journals.

Courtney Andersen:

nobody is talking about postpartum OCD. They beat in your head postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression. So, yes, that was what I was looking out for. Meanwhile I'm like having this battle in my head of seeing the craziest, most gruesome, most disturbing thoughts about my kid and I'm like, oh, that's supposed to be normal.

Aneta Mruz:

Totally so what I learned actually. So I went through that. So if you go through that, there's no way in hell I'm picking up a drink Like mind you, I did truly feel like I was healed from addiction after I stopped drinking because it went away. Like it went away is the only way. So the thought just never came up, but also I didn't think it had an opportunity to because of the postpartum OCD. And so I finally got diagnosed and I'm like what the heck is this? It's so insane too, because there's this will tell you so much about we can change what we create and we create all of it.

Aneta Mruz:

Because I remember speaking with my psychotherapist and I told her I finally went to get help because I'm like I can't do this, right, and you have a newborn and it's just the most insane experience. I would not wish it upon anyone, especially a mother, right. So she finally she's like oh, that's OCD, it's just OCD. You're having intrusive thoughts. Everyone gets intrusive thoughts. Your brain just doesn't take the thought from point A in the brain to point B, where comprehension and understanding happens. So that was a neural pathway that was misfiring. I guess you can say and I'm like, as soon as she said that I'm like oh like, okay, well. And I'm like. As soon as she said that I'm like oh like, okay, well. If I created this, I can just change it. That was my mentality. I'm like, I'll just, I don't want to live like this, so I'll just change it and a lot of it's.

Aneta Mruz:

This goes to like me semi being naive about existence and what is it is to have like a human condition Right existence and what it is to have like a human condition right, because I didn't know that people suffer with depression and anxiety. But why did I feel that it was so easy for me to change it? And I did within. I mean it also for some women just goes away, right. You have to constantly work on yourself and it's so incredibly difficult to not react to those insane thoughts, right? But interestingly enough. So I'm so glad we're talking because, as far as the postpartum OCD, I'm like what is this suffering? And looking back, I'm like it was all just suffering. It was suffering but at the same time, I think it was a time in my life where all my metaphorical demons were coming to the surface, so I could rid myself of anything that was not me, that was not true about myself, that was not in alignment, and I went to therapy for two years.

Aneta Mruz:

But then I stumbled upon Yoga Studio and this woman who's a medium. She, I mean, she's so much more than a medium, she's a spiritual teacher, and she kind of was just like she taught me about self-love. She's like this isn't just OCD, it's essentially it's just energy. Like all thought is just energy, yeah, and you're just very receptive to this negative type of thought and you react to it which attracts more of it. I'm like what are you talking about? But it all like pans out, all makes sense. So I really started studying the brain, psychology, understanding what it means to be human chemistry, and also the metaphysical, like energy, just the fact that everything is just energy. And when you simplify thought to like this massive craziness of postpartum OCD and intrusive thoughts to it's just energy, it makes it so much smaller makes it so much smaller.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, the therapist I worked with, she told me these two things, which that's what I took away from that. When she told me when she was like Courtney, we have like 30 to 40,000 thoughts a day. Yeah, she's like sometimes it's just a thought and it does not mean anything, that one really helped me. And then also too, because then I was like could I have had OCD before? And I just didn't know what it was Right. And she said it's quite possible. And I was like because I've had some intrusive thoughts like right, my whole thing of OCD. I was thinking I didn't know about the intrusive thoughts with OCD. I just thought it was like locking the door five, six times, like the rituals, right, like right. But then it was like well, that was very naive of me with not not just thinking that it was something, because again it's like well, cause I don't know anybody who has OCD.

Aneta Mruz:

Right.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, so, and so the other thing she said to me was that because there was a period in my sobriety, I had super bad anxiety. She said because I don't know, this is what I'm telling you. I don't know Because when you were talking about pregnancy, I was on bedrest. I went on bedrest at 23 weeks pregnant, from like week like eight to about week 17. I was sick as fuck. However, I felt even though I felt terrible that it was like a rough pregnancy.

Courtney Andersen:

I look back at pictures or think back at times and I was like I mean, I was like you were hot, like I just looked at this picture the other day where I was like I actually did not like feel bad, right, and I don't know if this is a thing with boys, but I also too, during that pregnancy I did not have anxiety and I've not had that anxiety Like I used to get ever since I was pregnant.

Courtney Andersen:

So maybe there's just something with those hormones that wax your brain around and changes the chemistry in your own body, right. But she said to me she was like maybe that anxiety that you used to have just went somewhere different and it is showing up differently in you now. So, like, even with people where you know, sometimes too, especially too in this sobriety it's like sometimes too, people get really angry, right? So it's just like it is what you're saying, like this energy is showing up somehow to get out. So it's like anxiety being anger, like, but that's what you have to. It's like what you do with that and how you nurture that for it not to be such an issue.

Aneta Mruz:

For sure, and I wholeheartedly believe that, because I think it will manifest in one way or another, right, yes, it will come out because it has to Like it's a must. You're not aware of it and you suppress, suppress, but that still will manifest in one way or another and it will create a certain type of habit, right, any kind of habit. So, even if it has to do with, like, a personality trait, it's still like a habit of something that you do. But that is very interesting about, yeah, because I had a boy too and I actually, so I started a Facebook group. So I was like this is like, literally, courtney, I was in shock that this can happen to people.

Aneta Mruz:

Like how can they number one? It put a whole new perspective on we are not our thoughts. Yeah, like you are not what you think. So, even going back to addiction, can you imagine I'm getting like goosebumps? Can you imagine how many people stay in addiction because they have thought after thought after thought entering their awareness and people assume they are these thoughts or they are thinking these thoughts?

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, yeah, I tell a majority of my clients to tell themselves to shut the fuck up. Some days you got to tell yourself to shut the fuck up because it's such a thinker's disease and just like it is very easy for you to just be consumed by these thoughts. And not all of these thoughts, a majority of these thoughts aren't reality, it's just it's met with assumption. It's met again with where, maybe even to not even the story you told yourself, but the story that was told to you back when you were young and in your formative years, and then that's just what you think and then you carry that on and you're carrying on somebody else's story that was printed on you. That now is leading you into a world of self-sabotage, totally.

Aneta Mruz:

And you know what, even with you saying that how I call myself, like this chameleon, I'm like maybe there's just a group of us, like humans living here on earth, that have this way of being this chameleon, if they are, and I don't know how. I know you said that your mom suffered a lot with mental illness when you were younger, but I don't know. I feel like there's a commonality as to why this hits certain people and doesn't hit other people, right? And I think there's more than just one thing to it, like your human condition, the way that you are designed. I think it goes beyond that, obviously, environment and society and all that stuff. But it does make me think that these narratives that we attach to are definitely there, are these stories that we are allowing ourselves to take on. And then it cripples us and I will tell you, when I came out of gosh, the stories I told myself when I came out of the OCD, because I tend to say healed. I know a lot of people don't. Doctors can't legally say healed, a coach can, an energy practitioner can.

Aneta Mruz:

Did the OCD become dormant? No, I think it's subsided, I think it's gone. I really do. But at the same time, it opened up this next journey of redefining who I want to be, what self-identity I want to take on, and at the time I didn't know that would be the next step of my life. You have to recreate yourself. You have to Out of addiction. You have to recreate yourself. You have to Out of addiction. You have to recreate yourself.

Aneta Mruz:

And I heard the most amazing thing, and I think anyone that is suffering with addiction or whatever addiction, whatever you want to call it social drinking, but you can't stop, like choosing to keep drinking because you can't say no, whatever it is right, because you can't say no, whatever it is right, I feel like I heard out of chaos comes rigidity. Out of chaos, the personality, the psyche tends to lean towards rigidity and rigidity can be attachment, right. So even in knowing that you have to recreate yourself, don't attach like, don't attach to any way of being. But then again, it's you know what I found? Spirituality. I found out that I can read energy and we all can. It's just I became very good at it because I chose to develop it.

Aneta Mruz:

And did I find myself attached into that self-identity? For sure, right, and I'm literally just coming out of even that and just being even more grounded. Even, like you mentioned, your mom had bipolar. It's very like this, like detachment, like high highs and like ungrounded low, low, and I think a lot of individuals can veer towards that when they come out of nothing bipolar, but like this, like rigid. So, if anything, just it's important for people to be self-aware, to recognize that there's nothing wrong with it Safety right but to kind of calm yourself out of that and it might take time. For me it took about four years to stop trying to be as rigid, maybe even longer. My husband would probably say longer.

Courtney Andersen:

But I don't know, but that happens. The rigidness happens because that's a process you have to go through, and especially, too, with anybody who has a quote unquote addicted mind. You got to find your balance with that rigidness because it's very easy to get stuck in that. So what would be three tips to help someone create a new identity that you would suggest.

Aneta Mruz:

I think the most I mean I had mentioned this earlier but awareness, the most I mean I had mentioned this earlier, but awareness, awareness to the fact that you're doing it already, you're creating an identity based on a self-image. A part of you, whether you're conscious of it or not, has gravitated towards. So awareness is massive because when you become aware, you start being the observer of everything in your life. Everything in your life. I think that's so important, just to you know what, and it's you can. Someone can sit here and be like how do you become aware? And it's like number one you desire to become aware, you, you desire, you intend to and when you intend to. You desire, you intend to and when you intend to. It is the function of the brain to keep adhering to your command, and energetically also, but intend to right, and then you just step into recognizing when different parts of you are coming up, and that will train the brain, this habit of self introspection, self awareness, and that I believe that is the biggest thing that helped me truly with the awareness, yeah, yeah.

Aneta Mruz:

Another one is I had mentioned this thought changes chemistry, and this can be whittled down to everyone speaks to mindset, changing your mindset, but the why I think is so important. Why is mindset so important? Why is what we tell ourselves so important? Because not only does thought change chemistry, but your entire being will adhere to your thoughts. And even with, like I said, with the OCD, I know I created that Like, yes, chemistry hormones. But my negative thinking was so bad that it got to that point where change had to happen. Change had to happen right. So thought changes, chemistry was massive in understanding that. Well, I can choose what thoughts I agree with and what thoughts I don't, and then my chemistry will change from there.

Courtney Andersen:

Yeah, totally yeah. And what's your third? Oh?

Aneta Mruz:

gosh. This is very like and this is not to minimize anyone's experience anyone's suffer, my own experience, my own suffering but I believe everything is just a story. Oh my God, everything is just a story. Oh my God, everything is just a story. It's gosh, and there's reasons for it. There's reasons why I mean that's not to say we don't have our own values, our beliefs, all these things, but those things were once thought also right, right, it was all a story. It was all a story and we can sit in our imagination.

Aneta Mruz:

And he said something about I think he said the word distortions. If everything is just a story, how much of our time are we spending in our imagination, being sucked into illusions, distortions, exaggerations, or even just the imagination? Right, a lot of the time, a lot of the time, we are creating stories in our mind, in our imagination, of a non-existent reality. Right, right, yeah, when we can just bring even awareness to this. That's why awareness is number one. Just bring even awareness to this, that's why awareness is number one. When we can bring awareness to that, life will radically change for you, your perception of your human experience will change for you, because you will start recognizing your own patterns. You'll be able to ask yourself why is this coming up? And the answers always come. The answers always come. They have to, they always come. So it's just, I believe, the path to just a more balanced and peaceful life.

Courtney Andersen:

Yes, yeah, I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. This was an awesome conversation. Where can the good people of the world find you?

Aneta Mruz:

Of course. So I am primarily on Instagram, so it's center of solace, okay, center of solace, all right, and I do have a website also and that's linked, everything's linked in there. I have a podcast that is coming out. It's called Soul Shift and that is primarily on Spotify, but I'll send you. I don't know if I notated that, so I'll send you the information, sure.

Courtney Andersen:

And I will have all of your information in the show notes below. So thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation. I did too. And again, good people of the world. I hope you enjoyed this conversation.

People on this episode

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Courtney Andersen

Host
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Kimberly Elledge

Co-host