Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
Just Count Me In is a podcast designed to help us navigate and flow with our lives through conscious awareness. When we live with less resistance and more receptivity it is easier to express who we came here to be and enjoy life. We are all walking each other home.
Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
#80: The Cost of Belonging, How Fitting and People Pleasing Make You Lose Yourself
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Have you ever said yes when your heart wanted to say no?
This may be the most important episode I've recorded because it isn't really about alcohol. It's about every time we've abandoned ourselves to belong.
This isn't an episode about judging people who drink.
It's an invitation to ask yourself one powerful question:
"Am I making this choice because it aligns with who I am...or because I'm afraid of what people will think?"
If you've ever felt pressured to be someone you're not, this conversation is for you.
For many people, alcohol isn't really about alcohol.
It's about belonging.
It's about fitting in at work, at family gatherings, on first dates, at celebrations, and even among friends. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that saying "no" meant risking judgment, exclusion, or being labeled as different.
In this episode of Transform Your Life: Just Count Me In, Sari Stone explores the deeper psychology behind social drinking, people-pleasing, and the fear of standing out.
You'll hear powerful real-life stories, including:
- The Wall Street executive who hid the fact that he doesn't drink because it could have impacted his career.
- A 15 year old whose relationship with alcohol landed her in the hospital.
- Why so many intelligent, successful people ignore their own intuition simply to fit in.
- The neuroscience behind belonging and social acceptance.
- How living authentically creates confidence that no external approval ever can.
Journal Questions
• What would I choose if I knew no one would judge me?
• Where in my life am I performing instead of being authentic?
• What parts of myself have I hidden in order to belong?
• Who am I when I stop trying to earn acceptance?
• What would change if I trusted myself more than I trusted other people's opinions?
If this episode resonates, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs permission to be fully themselves.
Authenticity is contagious.
Thank you for joining me!
If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!
A Teen’s Near Tragedy
SPEAKER_00Welcome. Welcome to Transform Your Life. Just Count Me In. I'm Sari Stone and I'm your host. This week a 15-year-old girl almost died. The reason she's alive is not because somebody recognized alcohol poisoning. She's actually alive because she fell out of a car, broke her nose, and luckily, by some twist of fate, was taken to the emergency room, and it made me wonder how many people don't get that second chance. This episode is not an episode about alcohol. It's actually an episode about all the ways we abandon ourselves to belong. Whether your version is alcohol, saying yes when you mean no, staying quiet to avoid judgment, overworking for approval, or pretending to enjoy a life that doesn't really fit, you're not alone. This episode is about coming home to yourself. It's going to help you understand why fitting in often feels safer than being yourself and give you some tools to examine in order to come home to yourself. This episode is for you if you've ever said yes when you really meant no, if you have ever hidden a part of yourself just to fit in, or if you've ever worried more about being accepted than being authentic. If you've ever wondered when did I stop living my own life, this episode is for you. For many people, alcohol is not the root problem. It's the solution that their nervous system discovered for another problem. And we're going to talk about why this happens and some ways to get out of this situation. The other problem might be loneliness, shame, anxiety. It could be perfectionism, trauma, social fear, feeling like an outsider. There's different people, and there's one solution, and that is coming back to ourselves and feeling better about ourselves.
The Hidden Cost Of Fitting In
SPEAKER_00But I got very curious like, why is this becoming normal? Why are my students more and more telling me that this is happening to their friends? Thank God it's not happening to them, but it's still somebody, it's a person, it's somebody's daughter, somebody's son. And then I looked around and it's kind of all around me, even as an adult. So I looked into it, and this is what I found.
How Drinking Became The Default
SPEAKER_00We normalize something we rarely question. We talk about beach vacations. I'm looking around, restaurants, sporting events, business dinners. Alcohol is not unusual, and not drinking is. There's some pretty staggering statistics here, and this bothered me. There's about 178,000 Americans that are dying every year from the alcohol use being excessive. I had no idea of this. Nearly 28 million Americans, like one in 10 people age 12 or older, met criteria for alcohol use disorder in 2024. About 4,000 people under the age of 21 die each year from excessive alcohol use. Alcohol remains the most commonly used drug among people under 21 in the United States. Among adults 18 to 25, and remember, this is when your brain is not even fully developed yet to make those choices. 14.4% met criteria for alcohol use disorder just in this past year. So those numbers establish alcohol as one of the country's largest public health issues. That's not what this episode it's about. We're just going to examine it and figure out what we can do about the problem.
Disconnection Is The Real Problem
SPEAKER_00Alcohol is not the problem. Disconnection is the problem. People drink for connection. They drink to relax. They drink to belong. They drink to numb. They drink to celebrate. They're having a good time and they have a drink. Or they have a drink and that way they can have a good time. They drink to avoid feeling awkward, to escape stress. It's the tool. It is not the root issue here. And there's pressures that nobody really talks about. And this is where I'm wondering why we've gotten ourselves into the state and what we can do to
Career Pressure And The Mocktail Mask
SPEAKER_00get out of it. So someone very near and dear to me works in an industry where relationships really matter. His job is nothing without relationships. People trust him with large sums of money. He doesn't drink, not because he's in recovery, but because he simply doesn't want to. But at the same time, there's kind of this invisible rule. It's like a tribe everybody's born into, and he feels pressure in order to order mocktails that look like cocktails so that nobody questions him. And you think about that for a minute. We are living with all of our enlightenment and all of our technological advances. We are living in a culture where someone feels safer pretending to drink than simply saying no thanks. And this is an adult, not a teenager. This is many adults. So I started to look into well, how come somebody else's choice makes us so uncomfortable? And that's the real question. People get very uncomfortable around you when you do something different sometimes. And then I also wondered like when did alcohol become a status symbol? This actually evolved over centuries. So I looked back.
How Alcohol Turned Into Status
SPEAKER_00It actually was safer to drink than the water. So back then it was no big deal. Then I looked in the 1800s and early 1900s, and whiskey, wine, and champagne became symbols of wealth at that point, but not until that, because they were luxury goods. After World War II, advertising came into it, and that started to connect alcohol with success, with being sophisticated, kind of with smoking cigarettes, masculinity, romance, and celebration, but not before that. Beginning in the 1950s, and this is I think when TV first became popular, and then accelerating through the 1980s and 90s, alcohol companies heavily sponsored events, sporting events, entertainment events, business events, concerts, reinforcing the idea that drinking was part of achievement, fun, and adulthood. So today's premium bourbon, rare whiskey, wine collections, luxury champagne, they still function as social signals in most professional circles. Well, this is a whole thing in the business culture.
Mirror Neurons And Social Contagion
SPEAKER_00This leads to another experience who that I can share from one of my clients, and he is a very successful entrepreneur, but he also has to get clients, he has to get sponsors, he has to get people that back him, investors. He's got happy hours, he goes to dinners, there's golf outings, there's drinks. Drinks are part of the relationship building process. So even who someone who wants to cut back can feel trapped because they worry that saying no will hurt their career. So why will it hurt their career if they say no? And it will. And I don't agree with it, but it will. So I've looked into the neuroscience behind that. People unconsciously mimic the behavior of people, those around him. It's mirror neurons and it's called social contagion. So if one's reasons, habits, good or bad, spread through social groups, if everyone around you is drinking, your brain is primed to see that behavior as normal before you consciously decide anything. That helps explain why one person being the weirdo ordering a non-alcoholic drink can sometimes make others pause and even reconsider their own choices. When I've been in crowds and I'm that weirdo that does that, I've even apologized for I've been like, well, I drank really successfully, you know, and I don't do it now. Or I mean I've just felt awkward being that person, and this explains why.
Belonging Is Your Birthright
SPEAKER_00So we have to realize we came into this world already worthy of belonging. And the more I realize that, the more my clients and students realize that, the more we lean in and we don't care as much about what other people think. Kind of let them. Before anyone told you that you were too much or not good enough, before anyone taught you that you needed a drink to relax, that you needed a drink to fit in, that you needed a drink to celebrate or be successful, you already belonged. The journey isn't about earning your place, it's about remembering you never really lost it unless you choose to give it away to other people and outsource your self-worth and belonging to the opinions of other people. Lying about drinking happens all the time. People order mocktails that look like cocktails, and I've done that because they're fun, and then it looks like I'm having a drink, and nobody gets weirded out. Humans instinctively avoid behaviors that could lower perceived status within their group. So every time that I did that, I was just making sure that it didn't lower my status within my group. The fear isn't alcohol, it's social cost. The brain asks, will this affect my opportunities? And for someone in a culture where drinking is expected, that fear is very real. They might not buy from you, they might not listen to you, they definitely might not want to hang out with you, they're just not comfortable. And to the extent that other people aren't comfortable with me not drinking, is the extent that they might not be comfortable with why they are drinking. I know this is a very controversial episode, and again, this is not anti-alcohol, this is pro you, this is pro you feeling good about being you. This is pro-raising kids that feel okay about being themselves without endangering themselves. Every three weeks in North America, we lose as many teens to alcohol and drug overdose as were killed in 9-11, close to 3,000 teenagers every three weeks. It's time to do something about that. And when we build lives that we don't need to escape from, when we create relationships where we can show up exactly as we are, when we feel like we belong without having to put on some kind of show, alcohol becomes a choice, not a requirement. My hope is not that everybody stops drinking. My hope is that every single one of you feels free enough just to decide for yourself and feels fine without it.
Rejection Fear And Brain Wiring
SPEAKER_00Humans evolved in tribes, so we know why we want to fit in. Thousands of years ago, being rejected wasn't just emotionally painful, it was life-threatening. And our brains still treat social rejection as a threat. So research using MRIs have shown that social exclusion activates many of the same brain regions involved in physical pain, particularly the anterior cingulate cortex and insula. People who are more sensitive to social exclusion also are more likely to conform to group behavior. That means when someone says, come on, just have one. Your brain is not simply making a decision about alcohol, it's making a judgment. Hey, am I gonna belong? Are they gonna think I'm judging them? Am I gonna be left out? That's your survivor circuitry, and that helped me a lot, and this is helping my clients a lot. Another factor to take into consideration is that your brain changes through repeated behavior, habits strengthen neural pathways, but the brain also remains capable of change through neuroplasticity. So the good news is repeated experiences of authentic connection, emotional regulation, purpose, self-acceptance can make you want to try this a little bit more often. But if you have those experiences of really feeling connected, really feeling purposeful, really accepting each other, if you relate those to only when you're having alcohol, self-acceptance can gradually weaken that association between alcohol and belonging.
Why Non Drinkers Make People Squirm
SPEAKER_00This is why people become uncomfortable when you don't drink. And this is fascinating, and this is not just teenagers, people, this is business associates, this is future clients, this is neighbors, this is friends, this is even family, and I didn't really understand it. Now I do. If everyone is drinking and one person isn't, the non-drinker becomes a mirror. They unintentionally, without even doing anything or really frankly caring what other people are doing, they're asking questions that no one's saying out loud. Am I drinking too much? How come I need this? Why is this making me uncomfortable? Most people are not consciously thinking those thoughts. Instead, they're feeling uncomfortable. The easiest way to eliminate that discomfort? Have a drink. Get everybody drinking. This is called normative social influence. People feel safer when everybody behaves the same way. It's why people pressure each other to drink even when they don't consciously care whether you drink or not. But there's this pressure, there's this subtle pressure. They're restoring the group's equilibrium.
What Alcohol Changes In The Brain
SPEAKER_00Alcohol actually does reduce social anxiety temporarily. It does. And I wondered why. And it increases the activity in the brain's reward pathways while reducing activity in parts of the prefrontal cortex responsible for judgment, inhibition, and self-monitoring. So people often describe it as I can finally be myself. Just get me a drink. As a teenager, I drank to take the edge off of what was going on at home. I was drinking because my parents were fighting. I was drinking because they were going to separate, and I just did not want to deal with it. I just wanted to be a little bit numb. I got a little numb and then I could just relax and enjoy myself. I was also really shy, and I recognized that when I relaxed, I was a lot less anxious. Neuroscience tells us something different. Alcohol temporarily quiets the part of your brain that's constantly evaluating social threat. It doesn't create actual confidence, it suppresses your anxiety. That is a really important distinction because when it wears off, all those feelings come back. So why does fitting in feel so addictive to all of us? And everybody wants to fit in. Every time we're accepted by a group, whether it's a religious group, a social group, a work group, a neighborhood group, a family group, a friend group, our brain releases dopamine and other neurochemicals associated with reward and connection. The brain learns acceptance is equated to safety. If alcohol repeatedly becomes associated with acceptance and experiences where you feel good, like Friday nights, business dinners, parties, concerts, networking events, any kind of celebration, the brain begins to link alcohol with belonging itself. Now you're not really craving alcohol, you're craving what alcohol has come to represent. It represents times where you felt connected. It represents feeling accepted. It represents part of your identity.
Breaking Cycles And Counting The Costs
SPEAKER_00There's also a whole generational cycle. And I've watched families affected by alcoholism across generations. My husband's family was very much affected by alcoholism. And he made the decision to stop that cycle. And those choices changed the way we raised our children to an extent. They changed our marriage. They changed an entire family tree. Alcohol really does affect judgment, reaction time, sleep quality, anxiety the next day. It spikes. It does affect your emotional regulation, blood sugar, and recovery time after exercise. Now, this is not, again, this is not anti-alcohol. This is pro you. This is a very hopeful trend going on
Sober Curious And Better Questions
SPEAKER_00right now. And this is my favorite part. I noticed on the beach this past week, more of the younger adults were drinking non-alcoholic beverages. It was so interesting. And more of the older people were actually just drinking regular alcohol, but younger people were choosing not to drink just because they didn't feel like it. And to me, that's hopeful. And there's this whole movement starting called um sober curious. And it doesn't mean that they don't ever drink. They maybe try sobriety on for a month, they just take a look at why they're drinking, and when they drink, maybe they drink a little bit less, or maybe they just are sober. Like what happens if I actually stop drinking? And they they're very curious about it. I'm gonna leave you with some questions. So if nobody cared whether you drank or not, what would you honestly choose? And what traditions are you creating in your generation? And if you're a parent, what traditions are you creating for the next generation? Are you choosing things in your life because they align with you? Or are you choosing because everyone else is? A 15-year-old recently ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. The only reason she lived is because she fell, broke her nose, and somebody took her to the emergency room. She would have died had they not gotten her to the hospital. And it just stopped me in my tracks. It was right during summertime. And my eyes filled up with tears when I heard this, and it made me wonder how many young people aren't that lucky. So before we finish today, I'm not asking you to think differently about alcohol. This really is not about that. It's to elevate your awareness about what's going on with alcohol, but invite you to remember who you were before you ever believed you had to dim your light. Whether alcohol is part of your story or not? Is it part of your personality? And when did ordering water or sparkling water become something you had to explain or apologize for? When did saying no thank you, whether it's alcohol or drugs, require a defense on your part? Why are we uncomfortable around somebody who makes a different choice than we're making? If I need something to feel like myself, is that really myself that I'm feeling like? Think about it. Who would I be if belonging didn't have to be earned? If nobody judged me, would I still be ordering the same drink? Maybe the greatest intoxication is not alcohol. Maybe it's finally feeling safe enough to fully be yourself.
Share It With Someone Who Needs It
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for joining me today. If this episode spoke to you, I'd really love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram or on my Facebook page, just count me in. And if someone came to mind while you were listening, please share this episode with them. Sometimes one conversation can change everything. Thank you for being here, for choosing growth, and for doing the inner work. I look forward to being with you again next time. Remember, we're all in this together. Hit that subscribe button. Just count me in.