Alcohol Minimalist: Change Your Drinking Habits!

You're listening to breaking the bottle legacy with Molly watts, Episode 47. Hi, I'm Molly, after a lifetime living under the influence of family alcohol abuse, spending more than 30 years worrying about alcohol and my own drinking, believing I had an unbreakable daily drinking habit, I changed my relationship with alcohol forever. If you want to change your drinking habits than breaking the bottle legacy is for you. My goal is to help you create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, past, present, and future. Each week all focus on real science and using your own brain to change your relationship with alcohol. Nothing has gone wrong, you're not broken, you're not sick. It's not your genes. And creating peace is possible. I'm here to help you do it. Let's start now. Well, hello, and welcome or welcome back to breaking the bottle legacy with me your host, Molly Watts coming to you from an absolutely awful rainy cats and dogs, Oregon. For the past couple of days. It's just been, gosh, lots of it coming down and it's coming down this morning. But hey, it's Friday. So that's a good thing. And I am super excited about this podcast episode. I am talking with beach Christy Karpen and Beach is a certified transformational life coach. She is an alternative therapist. She specializes in harm reduction, psychotherapy, somatic experiencing mindfulness based stress reduction, and clinical hypnosis. So an alternative therapist and she is a sponsor for moderation management. She helps people who are drinking excessively to bring their drinking back into moderate levels. And she's been doing that for quite a while. And so BJ and I just had an aunt by the way she shared with me at the very end of this podcast that she is for before she did this, she is a professional oboe player. How cool is that lives in New York City is a professional oboe player and was a professional oboe player for most of her life until she started to take on this work. And so love this conversation. And I think you will enjoy hearing from her all sorts of resources on her website, which we talked about at the end. And she actually offers a free meditation every Tuesday, which is there available on her website as well, which I really encourage you to take advantage of a free meditation class. It's great. Here is my conversation with Beach, Christie Karpen. Good morning, DS. Thank you so much for joining me on breaking the bottle legacy. I just appreciate you taking the time. I'm super excited about the conversation we're gonna have today. Me too. Thanks, Molly. Thanks so much for having me. So, first of all, I just gave a brief introduction on who you are kind of what you do, who you work with your your commitment and help with moderation management, which thank you so much. Everybody appreciates that. But give me a little bit of the background on how you first decided that, because you've been working pretty extensively with over drinkers for quite a few years now. Where did that call to you come from? How did you decide this is where you want it to go? Well, you know, I had a funny experience myself, where I was wanting to explore my own drinking and feeling like it was at a point where it was a little bit too, more than I was comfortable with. But there just didn't seem to be a lot of middle ground like I found myself like, gosh, if I go talk to somebody, they're going to tell me I'm an alcoholic, and I need to abstain, you know, and it didn't feel right to me. And so, I actually actually did speak to a therapist that I was seeing at the time and she told me to go to AAA but that it to me that felt like such a I felt so betrayed in a way because I felt like you know, we're here talking about this divorce that I just went through and how I'm really having a hard time struggling with these emotions. And in here's, you know, good for me, I found a way of helping myself through them. But then now the solutions become a little bit of the problem. And instead of kind of treating that along with everything else that was going on with me, it was like well go over there, get let a fix that and then we'll work with everything else. It didn't make sense to me. Right? So it took another several years before I kind of decided I woke up one day and I said you know I don't want to keep doing this. And I feel like I cannot possibly be the only person in the universe who As you know, is like drinking more than they would like to, but it's not you know, whatever not identifying with the label of alcoholic. Exactly so. So I found moderation management, I found a harm reduction therapist, I found Buddhist meditation and pretty quickly became a moderate drinker. I love that. First of all, I love the fact that, you know, you didn't want to have to take on the label of alcoholic just to be able to address your what you felt was a habit that was probably just not serving you or something that you know, you weren't. You were turning to alcohol using alcohol in a way that then ultimately, as you said, kind of became more of a problem than a solution for you. I think that you're spot on. Obviously, we talked a lot about around here that there's, you know, there's a black and white mentality. And you and I were just talking about this a little bit before we started this whole idea of of overdrinking, right, or problematic drinking. There's such a narrative in in society on what that looks like. And what gives tell me your ideas around that. What is your you know, I know you said before, when I mentioned the disease and broken model to you, you know, you kind of just hurt your heart. Tell me more about I mean, yeah, well, I think people that use any kind of substance or eating disordered is also eating disordered, right people just very similar, right? Yeah, anything or over tweeting over shopping, you know, all of these things. There something to make the nervous system feel safe. There's some there's some way of how can I feel okay, I'm not handling my emotions or the situations in my life in a skillful enough way. I need something else to make me feel okay. And so people take on these addictions, quote, unquote, our habits buffering, buffering, buffering habit, you know, a buffering whatever, in your You're right. It's not I mean, smoking at, you know, food. Shopping. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't mean that you're some thing, or you have some disease, or you're some label, it just means that you're human. Right? You're a human being who's who has pain and suffering, like every other human being, it's just how you've taught yourself to cope with, with those that pain and suffering. And then it becomes habitual, right, then it just the habits get dug deeper and deeper. So you mentioned kind of the, the, the nervous system. So somatic experience, this is something that I know you've you're well trained in, and you've done a lot of research and and I'm not as familiar with, so explain to me what that means the somatic experience for us. Sure. The somatic experiences really has to do with how emotions are felt in the body. So I did a three year intensive trauma training called somatic experiencing through trauma healing network. And base basically, in a nutshell, it's boiled down through it's helping people have access to or understand and see clearly that they're always having a dual experience. They're, they're having the experience of what's happening out here in the world, you know, my boss is yelling at me or something, whatever is coming up. But they're also their body is responding, the nervous system is also responding. So it's a way of really tuning in to those physical sensations, we might call it the emotional body rather than the outside physical body, the physical body might might tense up to, you know, there might be things that happen when when you feel anger or stress, there might be a tension in the hands of the shoulders. But there also might be a more subtle experience going on, of like, oh, when you kind of deepen into that experience, you might notice, oh, my heart is feeling a little fluttery or my belly is feeling kind of Cherny, that kind of thing. So with somatic experiencing, if we really do an entire expense tire session on se, which I rarely do, I usually just take pieces of it, maybe 10 minutes or so. But what you would be doing is is really following your somatic experience, you would literally be tracking it and we might not even talk very much at all. We might start with a story that brings up the activation and then I might say let's pause here for a moment and just see how your nervous systems respond how your body's responding to this right now. and just let them really track and it's amazing because it feels sometimes when we feel these sensations, it feels like oh my god, this is solid, it's never moving it is, anger feels like this, you know, tight. But then when you kind of relax into it, you'll notice that our is constantly changing, it's constantly moving. And so you find ways to help the client. The idea is not to just do it in the session, but for them in life, when they when they feel these, these sensations. Oh, that's, that's my body telling me it's uncomfortable with something, let's see if we can find a way to discharge to release the sensations. And it might be simply by imagining it moving through the body, or just following it moves through the body, or it might be something more concrete, like getting up and doing a few, you know, Lion's breasts with with movement or something like that, it might be something to get the trauma out of the body because the body holds on to and the nervous system holds on to all of our past traumas and experiences. And by traumas, I mean, like the the wider definition it could be, it could be like capital T trauma, like actual, you know, events, single events, or it could just be like a pervasive trauma that of growing up in a family where you just somehow didn't feel you felt kind of like an orphan in your own family or you didn't feel connected with your caregivers, your parents or whomever was was giving you care, things like that can really stay in the in the body and the nervous system without us knowing it. Almost like a fish not knowing it's in water, right? It's just like, that's just how it is. But then when you bring attention to it, you see that oh, okay, and you don't have to go back to when I was three this happened, you know, you might but he does isn't necessary. What's what you're working more with is how your body's responding now? And how can you help move that that through so that you're able to clear things up in your mind and just move ahead living you know, with a more skillful life and more useful life. So this is really love all this is really, I mean, it's parallel, so much of what I talk about, and it I don't use the same terminology in terms of the somatic experience, that's very, I don't ever like I said, I don't ever I've never heard that. But that used to describe that way before. But it's similar to what I talked about in terms of being able to articulate how a feeling happens in your body. And really just the the noticing the sensations and noticing what happens in the body when you are experiencing an emotion because I think that something that you're touching on and something that I talk about in terms of just managing your mind is a lot of us are really scared of our emotions, right? I mean, some of those big emotions like they they sound really bad. By the way, every one of you can't beaches in New York City, I can hear it there in the background. I don't even hear it. I know of course, I love it. I can hear it. Awesome. Anyhow, we're afraid of like, we can't handle these big emotions. But when you become more skilled at recognizing what's going on in the body with just you know, with, let's say, anger, you know, anger is one that scares people. We don't want to experience anger too much, right? What I've noticed is when people become more skillful at recognizing and articulating and understanding what's going on in their body, even just that, that knowledge, being able to see it and feel, you know, describe it often helps it dissipate. You know, it's not quite as scary if you can just say, Okay, this is what happens. I can handle this. You know, I can do this. Yeah. Would you agree with that? That some absolutely. Yeah. That being able to articulate and see things like that. It helps us become better, better mind managers are better able at processing those emotions. Mm hmm. Yeah. It's like the rain practice. You know, you're familiar with that. Rei Ed? No, tell me. Okay, that's a mindfulness practice. It's kind of what you're saying. It's R stands for recognize recognize emotions here. Oh, hello. I've seen you before. Hi anger. Sometimes when I teach this I teach it with puppets like have this lion for right lion puppet, but you recognize it's here and then the A is for allow and accept It's okay. It's part of being human. We all feel anger from time to time sometimes when it just feels so solid it feels like this is me right now. And instead of saying you know I am angry you might just say oh angers here. So it's like a way of it's Oh, it's visiting. It's gonna move on eventually. I know. It's it hasn't stayed the last time you know, it goes comes and goes. So and then the AI is for investigation exactly what you're talking about. So you investigate And where in your body but also the stories that the mind might be creating around the anger, you know, like, and this involves also the second arrow, the Buddha would talk about, which is the one we're pointing at ourselves, right? We might be criticized, someone else might criticize us, it makes us angry, but that we realized that Oh, is actually because I'm criticizing myself to it. Like, there's a part of me that's going getting on board and going, Yeah, and, and your second grade teachers said that too. And you're, nobody likes you, you know, and all this stuff that goes on. So you certainly kind of recognize some of that stuff, too, that's happening. And then you kind of unpack, you know, peel it back a little bit and say, Okay, what's happening right now is this person said this, to me having this response. And then the end is for nurture, where you can actually maybe go to that part of the body that's feeling activated. And there's nothing like self touch. It's crazy that in the trauma training, the last module was supposed to be a touch module, but we couldn't do it in person. So they switched it around. To Self touch, which was so much more helpful for people because this is something they can do on their own. And plus, we're seeing everybody virtually anyway, now. So. So and this is, this is an incredible, powerful thing, even one hand on the heart for 60 seconds, it brings up they say, Enough oxytocin to stave off a panic attack. Wow. So just finding or maybe it's in your belly, where you're feeling the anger, maybe put a hand and the hard hand in the belly, just breathe gently into those places. And notice anywhere else that's tensing in your body might be your shoulders, maybe you could tighten them up a little more than, ah, let them go relax. And it's amazing how you can shift your experience of your nervous system just by doing a few little things like that. I love that that just probably helped to rein everybody. I'll make sure we call that in the show notes. But you definitely that probably just help people write their parent. Tara brach does a wonderful meditation on it. So I highly recommend Tara brach rate. Okay, awesome. I love it. I love it. So we were talking a little bit before we started about a training that you had done. And I really want to have this conversation because I thought it was extremely interesting about mindfulness based stress reduction, you are trained in mindfulness based stress reduction, which I think is an A, we're sort of hitting on that, too. It's a somatic experience. And it's all intertwined. But you told me that it was interesting, because this particular training, you have worked pretty extensively with people who self described over drinkers, people that are drinking more than they want to for years. And you were told that it's basically not appropriate or that people that can't do MSP are like, did I do MBSR? Again, MBSR, that they can't do it unless they're a year out of recovery, like, like, with alcohol, because people are because practitioners are concerned about the whole addiction side of it. And I thought that was really interesting, not because I mean, of course, we have to be always mindful of people that are truly physically dependent on alcohol. And I say that all the time, this podcast is not is not directed at people who are physically dependent. And if you are physically dependent, there are medical precautions that you might need to take before you address the psychological dependence. But I will say many times there, you know, there have been studies done and most heavy drinkers, most people who could be considered heavy drinkers, and probably people that are drinking more than they should be, are not nine out of 10 of them are not physically dependent. They probably have a psychological dependence. I know I sure did. And that is where I think mindfulness based stress reduction would be so important, so helpful, right, ad in theory, yeah. You know, it's, it's funny, because not funny, but when I was studying harm reduction, psychotherapy, which I have a certification in. Our teacher Andrew TYSKIE, used to say people generally aren't addicted to the substance. They're addicted to what they're getting from it. Yeah. So if you really understand what am I getting from this and, you know, really deeply explore that issue. It's so important. And so that getting back to the MBSR, which is mindfulness based stress reduction is an eight week program. Two and a half hours. It's a great program, highly recommend it. Unfortunately, they're a little short sighted or maybe they're maybe they're going to come around now, but they would have there was something that you had to fill out that said, you know, how many drinks you have per week or something. If it was over a certain amount, then you were not invited to participate in the program. This was something I didn't find out until I was part way through my training to become an MBSR teacher because I thought, Great, I'm gonna offer MBSR to problem drinkers, because what a great thing, right? And then I was told no, actually, they're not allowed to take MBSR which I was, you know, it's still just I'm kind of speechless. Well, it I think it's whatever, you know, at this point, it's kind of like for you, you're like, well, great, I won't teach them the whole class, but I'm gonna certainly incorporate elephants into your own SAP, which is just what you know, I mean, whether or not they get the titled doesn't really, ultimately matter doesn't matter at all. Right? So I took a lot of those elements and use them in my conscious drinking workshops. But but the point is that I think people are afraid of, you know, addiction, because of this black and white thinking that's been perpetrated for perpetuated, sorry, for so long, it is kind of perpetrated, but that people don't understand it's a spectrum that if people are drinking problematically, it's because of something, it's a response to something. And if they can learn mindfulness based stress reduction, if they can learn ways of regulating their emotions and their nervous systems, then they're less likely to drink. I think they're worried that Oh, MBSR might trigger something they might they might have to go and have a drink after class. Yes. So what, you know, a lots of things are going to trigger them emotionally, they're going to, but they might learn a little bit more about what it is that's triggering them. What, what, what feels intolerable for them? Well, and you know, I know you, you know, of the work of Dr. DE Jaffe, and I spoke with him on the podcast, his whole book, the abstinence myth, and this whole idea that our focus with even with recovery, so even if you take it back to people that are physically dependent, the focus of most recovery programs are simply that don't ever don't ever drink again. You know, that's I mean, it's like, we're not addressing the core, those core issues, we just simply say, Okay, if you never drink again, you're, you're cured. So that's, you know, what I mean, that's the focus, and the same. So what then we just take it, scale it back right to people that are not physically dependent. Alcohol is a progressive, you know, alcohol use, disorder is progressive. So if you are problematically drinking, and you're still in the mild to moderate disorder, eventually you could if you continue down that pattern with enough time and repetition, develop severe alcohol use disorder, develop a physical dependency, it so why not address it way back in the beginning, which is what you're talking about. It's like, that's, and that's the whole thing. That's where all of the work that I do, too, I really, even for myself, who I would have never even identified as a problem drinker, I would have never identified the only reason for myself personally, I think that in terms of the physical outcomes, right, I was still very successful, I had a successful career, I had a successful family, I was, people would have never looked at me and thought, Oh, she struggles with her with alcohol use, but because of my living with my alcoholic mother, I add for 40 years of my life, I had an overwhelming amount of anxiety with the amount that I was drinking all the time, carrying it with me worrying about it worrying about whether or not I was going to cross the threshold and become physically dependent, worrying about just, you know, my alcohol use because of a very of my upbringing. But it was interesting that I never looked at it and thought, I literally thought well, like, like, I can't do anything about it. Like, I can't change my drinking habits. I don't can't change my drinking habits, I'm never gonna be able to get rid of the anxiety because of my alcoholic upbringing. And so I just accepted it as Okay, well, that's just the way that my life is gonna be, I never really understood the connection of where that disconnect was that I was creating these feelings in and of mice in in myself by what I was thinking about all the time. And once I figured all that out, then then it was like the same. I was like, oh, okay, you know what, I can actually handle these emotions. I can actually do this. Yeah. Yeah, I need to keep drinking. And, by the way, if I stop, if I can change this habit, I'm going to have a lot less anxiety would Yeah, right. And so many people don't seek help, because they don't know. You know, traditionally, there's only been one way or the other. There's only been either you join a program and quit or you keep drinking. Right, you know, up until recently. Leave, there hasn't been this idea of harm reduction, and moderation in ways tools that you can learn to actually drink less in every kind of situation. And a lot of that does involve emotional regulation. Some of it involves like to say it's the external tools and the internal tools, right, the external tools would be like, pace yourself with the slowest drinker count, you know, track your drinking. Plan ahead. I had all of those things. Yeah. There's always things you can't plan for, there's always some emotional thing that's going to come up that you can't plan for. And the other thing you have to plan for my opinion, is the appearance of the inner negotiator. Yeah. Which is the part of you that shows up after you've made your perfectly well thought out plan that you're only going to drink to or you're not going to drink at all, or whatever it is. The inner negotiator comes up, says, Hey, I got this really, really good idea. Let's drink more. Do you have to plan for that? But yeah, I call that my toddler brain. That's my toddler. My, my little my, you know, my person who just my little toddler who just wants it now, who needs it? Who wants that instant gratification? Who has no concern for long term goals or higher level thinking? They just, she just wants it now. Yeah, and I hope that you're nice to that little toddler. Give her a little hug. Say I see what you're trying to do. For me. You're just kind of misguided that saw Yeah, trying to help out. You are sweet to your I Am? Yeah, I guess I tell her I don't. I think I'm more like, the the parents or the stern parent? Well, the parent that's like, at no, sorry, that's not you know, that's not where we're headed here. This is my you know, I know what my, my logical adult brain wants my, the goals that I have in place. And I mean, I also think that and I talked about that a lot here is, is being prepared ahead of time for, for when the toddler wins that war, you know, because as a parent, I certainly we can, at least for myself, as a parent, I know. You know, I've given into a toddler, right? So the adult doesn't always win in this scenario, even when it's interesting that you bring in the toddler because you one of the things I think you asked me about previously was about the use of hypnosis. Yeah, definitely. And what I've, what I found is that, when I work with someone with using hypnosis, and I use the term loosely, because really, hypnosis is about being very present, it's really about understanding, going deeper into one's experience and being intensely present not absent. It's not like I'm doing something to put you in a trance or something, I'm really just providing a space for my clients to relax deeply into themselves and, and to access deeper wisdom. And, and sometimes what will happen is, we'll go back and they can talk to me, while this is happening, they can tell me about what they're experiencing. And so I might say to somebody say, let's say somebody has their issues, binge drinking, you know, they can drink a lot less glass of wine with dinner, no problem, but there's that occasional time out with friends where they just crazy, you know. And so we might regress back to, you know, what does this feel? First of all, what's the somatic experience of this? What, what does it feel like in your body to sort of, ah, you know, keep this going kind of thing, and then they might regress back to college days or something? You know, that makes sense. Okay. And then, maybe there's something else, let's see if we can go a little bit younger. And then Then suddenly, they're five years old at McDonald's with having the time of their lives playing, I don't have kids, so I don't know what they have to do at McDonald's. But I understand these places have things to do. Yeah. Yeah. So they're playing with all the stuff and just having like, crazy happy, crazy excited, never wanted to end never wanted to and, and then I'll say well, then then what happens? And there's like a, their face changes. I start to well up, breathing shallows, and they'll say, My mom says, We have to go home. And I'll say, what, what is home? What does that mean? And so home for this person might be mom stares out the window all day depressed, doesn't pay any attention to me doesn't connect with me. So I'm lonely. So there's a point at which you can sort of like what does that child need, you know, to go in to kind of heal that situation heal that that poor child that's wanting this happiness and scared of what's going to happen at the end. Because it's so interesting to see how that influences the adult when they're out binge drinking, right? There's something that doesn't want, they don't want it to end because they don't want to feel this, this terrible loneliness or whatever it is, that's going to happen that they think because the five year old thinks that, so then they can, once they understand that, and they heal a little bit, and maybe tell the five year old, whatever it needed to hear. Then they can bring that five year old with them into the drinking situation and just say, I know you're here. Let's update you a little bit. I'm an adult, and I've made this decision. And you know, it's not going to be we're gonna go home and you're gonna cry and things are gonna be horrible. Okay, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. So you just want to bring that that child and and just let it know if everything's gonna be okay. Wow, that is absolutely fascinating. I'm so sorry. I have to I have to ask you beige does it? Does it work on everyone? does hypnosis work on everyone? Because I have this intense skepticism of hypnosis. I'm being completely transparent here. But that's I as as much as I'm interested in mindfulness and having practice. You know, a lot of this hypnosis, to me feels like something that I could just that I would never be successful. Like, I could never let my brain get there. I don't know why. Yeah. And you might not I mean, it, it really, I think. I don't know that it can work for everyone. I haven't tried it on everyone. But But I can say that there are certain clients of mine that I've had for years that I would never do that work with, because I feel that they're not a couple of reasons. One is that I feel like it might just be might just flood them a little too much to feel those things from the past. It might not have the healing effect that I wanted to have that I'd like it to have. And but as far as can, you know, can you be hypnotized? It's like, can you relax? Is the question. You know, it's really not about me, like I said, it's not about me doing something, it's more about, are you comfortable enough with me? To let me go on this journey with you? It's more like that. Okay, interesting. Very interesting to me. I'm, I love that. I mean, it's really cool that you are able to help people tap into that, you know, that toddler type experience and the older type memories, and I love the fact that you were like, Okay, we're gonna update you now. You know. I love that. I love that concept. So talked with him more about so you in the you've been, as I mentioned in the intro, you've worked with moderation management for years. And I know in the beginning of the pandemic, you kind of saw a need for more assistance, you've worked a lot with people one on one, but you kind of developed a new program going into the pen because of the need, really, that arose I think out of the pandemic, is that accurate? Yeah, I wanted to be able to offer the all of the tools that I've learned that has helped with my clients. To in a group setting, this is something I've really been passionate about wanting to do, since I took the MBSR training, that was my idea. And then it just kind of got sidelines got busy with other things. But when I realized how well the Zoom meetings, zoom, and then meetings, moderation management meetings, were working how well that transferred online, I thought this is a great opportunity to try my group program. Because this is this is a way for people to to learn these tools in a in a group setting be not to have to pay me individually for all those sessions. And to end there's something about the group experience that is so enriching and just to for them to come in and and get to know really get to know people that are struggling with the same issue and to take away some of that shame that we've learned that that's what we should feel about this unfortunately. And if there's one thing I want to do before I die, it's taking take away that but um, yeah, so but so so what I've done is I created this program contest or one on one and coaches are going to do their each for session workshops where people work in a group setting on using these mindfulness practices and and learning to apply them to to drinking. I love that. I love that. You know I don't know about you, but this is from what I say with the work that I talk about with people and and I don't do any type of coaching yet in any way. But when I am on the podcast, I talk a lot about this kind of being a man At a skill, learning this type of because I think that once people figure out or for me, I know that, that overcoming this unbreakable habit for me, the drinking was the place I needed to start, because it was just that was were kind of like I said that I did not realize how much anxiety I actually carried around that was created by the drinking habit itself. And so for me, that was where I needed to start. And also because I really felt passionate about being able to, to tell a better story about drinking, drinking, you know, about changing that habit, again, St. Crona. Like you, it's just like, you know, this shouldn't be this shouldn't be there's a lot of gray area there, folks, there's a lot between black and white, and a lot of people who would be better served and would be feeling a lot better about their, their lives, if they, they had a better answer to changing their drinking habits. But the sorry, I got kind of off track, they're going in a different direction. But what I was gonna say is that the conscious drinking is, once people gather the skills that you're teaching in these two courses, one on one and 202 the the things that you're teaching the mindfulness practices that you're teaching, they can be applied to life, you know, absolutely a meta skill. That's what was really going with that. Yes, absolutely. And so, are you. And I'm very gratified, actually, to see that people are, are one of the things that someone cautioned me about or said to me, which I think was really interesting is that, and I'm so I love the fact that you do the work that you do. And we we agree and align on these things. Somebody said to me, you know, your message would be stronger. And I quote, My message would be stronger if you were not drinking at all. I said, Huh, interesting. Well, I guess, you know, I don't know what to say to that other than that wouldn't be true. So how could it be stronger? If it's not true? And again, isn't that interesting that that's the thought process that it's very black or white? Like, you either are or you aren't? Yeah. So yeah. The group that the group dynamic to I love that I hope that their learning, I think is, is enhanced when we are all in a group setting. Definitely, because you hear people having insights, and then that evokes your own insights. Another thing that we really learned about is in love, I mean, the reason I went with conscious instead of mindfulness and mindful drinking, which it is mindful drinking, but first of all, that word is just way overused. But anyway, so it's like really bringing subconscious and unconscious parts of ourselves to consciousness. So what we work with, there are four parts in particular that we work with the inner critic, the inner negotiator, the inner rebel, the inner perfectionist, so it's really spending some time getting to know and like bringing them up into the conscious mind. So like when your inner negotiators here, you know, it's here. Oh, hello. Hi. And it comes in so many different forms for so many different people. And I don't know if we have time to go through any of these. But what these are kind of, there's a bunch that are kind of that show up for a lot of people. Like the rebel, the rebel, you can't you can't tell me what to do, screw it. This is too long, you can always cut it to just the bully or the critic, you're gonna screw up anyway. So just go ahead and drink the enabler. You've already gone over the limits. You might as well toss moderation out the window, right? The empathetic friend comes up. I'm sorry, you're feeling sad. They shouldn't have treated you that way. This will make you feel so much better. Or pass. You've been working so hard. You deserve this. Or the whiny kid that you mentioned, I want this everyone else is doing this. Why can I or the reasonable mentor? Well, you've only had 6.75 drinks this week. So I don't see any reason to drink this evening. And the list goes on. Right? So but it's for people to kind of get an A do some exercises around this for people to see like, what is theirs look like? What did they dress like? How do they talk? How do they sound? So you recognize them when they show up? And then I have them in pairs kind of play around with this a little bit like play around with each other's inner negotiator so that they actually have a face to it too. And they'll remember that oh, yeah, that Suzy that yeah, that's funny. You know this person showing up now this inner negotiator. I love that and it's so true. I love my my favorite das to be the inner whatever the last one was the analyst to the the mentor, mentor. Yeah another one Oh, wow. Well be You and I could probably talk all day long about Absolutely. Because this this is just right in both of our wheelhouse is and, you know, this is it's it's an important conversation for so many reasons. Because you're absolutely right. It is should be our mission to just get rid of shame. You know, I know that Dr. Jaffe has, you know, has pretty clear sentiments on his on what he meant because, you know, he says, F shame for the whole Yeah, that's like, you know, his bracelet, say it and watches for me, I would have never associated with I also want to talk to the people that that aren't necessarily I guess shame is one way of looking at it more than anything. It's It's like they don't even know if they really have a have a they don't want to identify as having a problem even because it's like, you know what I'm saying that's like, I guess that's maybe because people have a fear of being shamed based by by society and what we what it means to have to not be happy with your drinking habits, right? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I I want people to know that the resources exist, they exist. Moderation management exists and beach Christie, Karpen exist and you can go check her out she's a you're a sponsor over there at MLM you can find out more about your your both your one on one coaching and then the group coaching efforts as well. Is there any place else that you want people to connect with you? You could take a look at my website if you'd like it's in sight out. I NS IG HT o ut nyc.com. Yeah, just right off the tongue inside out nyc.com and I will link that in my show notes. Everyone. Beach, thank you so much for being here. I know like I said, people, your that just the rain and the whole putting your hand on your chest for 60 seconds, all of these things. Just those little tidbits out of this conversation. They're gonna be super helpful for people. And thank you, Molly, for the work you do. It's so important, so important, really. Well, I appreciate it. And, you know, maybe you'll come back again and we'll have another conversation I'd love to. All right. Awesome. Thanks, B's. Thank you. Take care. Thank you for listening to breaking the bottle legacy. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Take something that you learned in today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol. Now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com