Ever questioned your relationship with alcohol but haven't been able to categorize it in the conventional categories of alcoholism or sobriety? You're not alone; the gray area of alcohol consumption is a vast, less explored terrain teeming with individuals who don't necessarily align themselves with problematic drinking but grapple with a less than ideal relationship with alcohol.
In today's minisode, you'll learn how to gain self-awareness around your drinking habits, starting from creating a pros and cons list to tracking your drinking patterns.
The journey also encompasses identifying your triggers and replacing alcohol with healthier coping mechanisms.
Be sure to sign up for my 5-Day Sacred Sobriety Kickstart which provides h a workbook filled with helpful tools, including a triggers and urges worksheet, daily check-in sheets, and a list you can make of activities to do instead of drinking.
So, gear up to redefine your relationship with alcohol. Let's walk this path together, towards a healthier you.
I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!
Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!
Ever questioned your relationship with alcohol but haven't been able to categorize it in the conventional categories of alcoholism or sobriety? You're not alone; the gray area of alcohol consumption is a vast, less explored terrain teeming with individuals who don't necessarily align themselves with problematic drinking but grapple with a less than ideal relationship with alcohol.
In today's minisode, you'll learn how to gain self-awareness around your drinking habits, starting from creating a pros and cons list to tracking your drinking patterns.
The journey also encompasses identifying your triggers and replacing alcohol with healthier coping mechanisms.
Be sure to sign up for my 5-Day Sacred Sobriety Kickstart which provides h a workbook filled with helpful tools, including a triggers and urges worksheet, daily check-in sheets, and a list you can make of activities to do instead of drinking.
So, gear up to redefine your relationship with alcohol. Let's walk this path together, towards a healthier you.
I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!
Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!
Welcome to the Catholic sobriety podcast mini-soad. These shorter episodes provide quick tips and information that you can refer back to when you need it most so you can achieve and maintain your desired level of sobriety. I am your sobriety coach and host of this podcast, kristi Walker. Let's get started. Today we are delving into a topic that touches many lives but it seldom openly discussed, and that is gray area drinking. So gray area drinking can be a really confusing space to navigate, and if you're there, if you are wondering, if maybe you're a gray area drinker but you're not really sure what that is, believe me, you are not alone, and that's why I want to explore what it is and then provide some tips and strategies that can help you navigate that. So if you're not quite sure what a gray area drinker is, it's a term that often describes those who don't necessarily identify as having, like, a severe alcohol problem, but their relationship with alcohol isn't entirely healthy either. So they kind of exist in this gray area between sobriety and a disordered attachment to alcohol or alcoholism. So gray area drinkers might not even drink every day. However, when they do drink, they tend to really overdo it. Now they may have tried to set rules for themselves or boundaries, and moderate, you know, things like only drinking on weekends or not having wine during the week, limiting the number of drinks, but the thing is they just keep struggling to stick with these rules. Gray area drinking can also be categorized as moderate alcohol consumption that leads to negative consequences in various aspects of an individual's life, such as their physical or emotional, mental health, personal relationships, self-esteem and overall well-being. So how do you even navigate the gray area?
Speaker 1:
Well, it's really what I do with my clients, which is to help bring clarity around the drinking, to get some self-awareness, because this self-awareness is key. So to do this, I generally ask my clients to first start out by making a pros and cons list what are some of the pros that you find by consuming alcohol, like, what is alcohol giving you? And then make a cons list. What is alcohol taking away? There's a variety of things. So just make this pros and cons list and then, at the end of the pros and cons list, just draw your conclusion. Do you have more pros than cons or cons than pros? What Does having this written out tell you about your drinking habits?
Speaker 1:
The next thing that I would recommend that you do is to start tracking what you're drinking, when you're drinking, how much you're drinking and why you're drinking. Are you drinking out of habit, out of stress, just because you're bored? Knowing all of these things and really thinking about it, and journaling and I Highly recommend taking it to prayer Will help you to identify Patterns and triggers that lead you to drink. So once we also, once we have awareness about when we're drinking, how much we're drinking and why we're drinking, that will help us identify patterns and triggers that lead to those urges that Cause you to react and drink, even if maybe you don't want to drink or you've made the decision that you weren't going to drink or you weren't going to drink as much. So another thing that I work with my clients to do is to find Alternative ways to cope with emotions, because so many of us turn to alcohol to deal with stress, anxiety or we just don't want to feel uncomfortable feelings. We use alcohol or scrolling or TV or food or whatever it is, but the key is to find healthier coping, coping mechanisms like exercise, prayer, meditation, talking to a friend. You know there's all sorts of things that you can do instead of drinking.
Speaker 1:
One of the things, one of the tools that I have. And actually, if you go to my show notes and you sign up for my five-day Sacred sobriety kickstart, I have a workbook in there that has all these tools. So it has a triggers, an urges sheet, it has a pros and cons sheet, it has some daily check-in sheets so that you can start to get a clarity about your drinking, and then it also has a Another sheet that is called things I can do instead of drinking, and on that Worksheet I generally recommend you list all of those things that fill your cup, that make you happy. Is it reading a book, is it knitting, is it painting, is it going for a walk? Just, and you don't have to fill it out all in one shot either. Just as something comes to, you write it down. That way, when the urge comes up to you know, reach for a bottle, grab a drink, you can go to that list and you have plenty of options to select from of what Would be a better coping mechanism in the situation that has come up for you In that workbook. I also have morning after questions, so when you do drink more than you wanted to, you can ask yourself these questions, and Not with judgment, to be a scientist, to get curious, to gain information so that you can make a plan for the future.
Speaker 1:
And then the last option, the last tip that I'm going to recommend for you today is to seek support. So if you're trying to figure out what level of sobriety works for you and Kind of gain clarity of am I really a great area drinker, do I have? And, you know, am I more severe in my drinking or am I more of a social drinker? Like, where am I at and what do I need to be able to meet my goals so that I can live a life being a hundred percent present instead of like numbing out, and Having support is so critical for that. So you know my clients. They hire me as a coach To help with support and accountability and to give them tools and resources. But even, you know, having a good friend that is supporting your endeavors of course, your spouse. Sometimes it can be hard to find that support and other times it's very easy. So just find those people who will love you and support you in reaching the goals that you want to for for your own health and well-being.
Speaker 1:
The other thing that I want to urge you to do is again, I just mentioned it a little bit ago. But not to judge yourself, just be gentle and remember that change takes time and effort. Like it takes time to build those sober muscles, it takes time to, you know, maybe not reach the goal, but then not look at that as a failure and instead look at that as a learning opportunity that you can say, okay, well, this is what happened, this came up. Maybe next time, if I do this or do that, then I think I'll be more successful. That is what it is. It's just being compassionate, being loving and knowing what voices are from God and the ones that are just self-sabotaging right. So if you are thinking thoughts that are loving, kind, convicting and those types of things, that's, you know, going to be from God. But if it's condemning, shaming, that's not helpful and that's not going to help you get the results that you need.
Speaker 1:
Again, sign up for my five-day Sacred Subriety Kickstart. It has. I have videos. There's one video each day. There's again a great workbook just filled with tools that you can use. You can do, you know, one video a week. You could do one video a day. However you want to do it. It's completely up to you and you have access to it like all the time, and when I update it, you'll have access to the new videos as well.
Speaker 1:
But here's the other thing that's coming up. I also have the Sacred Subriety Lab, and you can go to my website, the Catholic Subriety Coach, and learn all about the Sacred Subriety Lab. That is a deep dive even more tools, even more resources, five modules. We kick off with a novena to the Holy Spirit and I have tons of bonuses in there. I'll be talking more about that on Tuesday, december 12th, our Lady of Guadalupe. That is also the one year anniversary of my podcast, which is so exciting. I hope that you are finding value in this podcast. If you ever have any topics that you want me to discuss, feel free to reach out to me. You can definitely send me a message on Instagram or Facebook by searching the Catholic Subriety Coach, or you can contact me via my website, thecatholicsubrietycoachcom. Well, that wraps up today's episode of the Catholic Subriety Mini-Sode. Thank you so much for joining me and please be sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss a thing. And remember I am here for you, I am praying for you. You are not alone.