When the news feels overwhelming, the idea of reining in your drinking can feel kind of laughable because your brain will tell you, this is the exact moment when alcohol is most necessary. But that’s also what makes this underlying pattern and why you’re stuck so hard to see. This is episode 464, and I’m going to show you how not to give up on your goal of drinking less when everything in the world feels like it’s too much.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. We’re challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now, here’s your host, Rachel Hart.

How do you not give into the urge to drink or the urge for more when it feels like the world is falling apart? And is this even realistic to have this goal, to have a goal to work on your drinking with everything happening in the news?

I was working with someone recently, and she said to me, “If ever there was a good reason to drink, Rachel, this is it.” And I get it because this was my thought too for the longest time. And it makes a lot of sense why humans have a very long history of turning to alcohol when things feel overwhelming. And it doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything wrong or bad. This isn’t about judging or shaming or moralizing the decision to drink when you feel overwhelmed by life or anxious about the state of the world. It’s about understanding the real reason why you’re turning to a drink, why it’s hard to say no, and how not to get caught in this loop.

On the surface, it seems pretty obvious. I’m drinking because I’m really anxious about everything happening in the world. I’m overwhelmed by it all. When you feel freaked out, what does your brain do? It goes looking for a solution, a way to feel better. How do I fix this? What do I need to do to stop feeling this way? But when the problems that are freaking you out are too big, too entrenched, too systemic, when you can’t actually wave a wand and just fix the world, what are you supposed to do? At that point, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of, “Yeah, well, I might as well drink or have another or have more or finish the bottle.”

But what I want you to understand is that the surface explanation for what is happening in these moments misses something really important. You’re not actually drinking because you feel anxious about the state of the world. You’re drinking because you feel anxious about your anxiety. So let me explain. Somewhere along the way, your brain learned that the way to cope or take the edge off, to get a break from how you feel was to pour a drink. So, of course, alcohol starts to feel like the answer.

But we don’t drink because we feel anxious or afraid. We drink because of what happens next, what we make those emotions mean. So the emotion bubbles up, and then we have all of these unconscious thought patterns attached to them. Thoughts like, “Ugh, I hate this feeling. I need it to go away. I feel it too much. I feel it more than others. I shouldn’t be still feeling this. Nothing helps. It’s too big, it’s too much. I can’t handle it.”

And that layer, that additional meaning, interpretation, or story about the emotion that we attach to how we are feeling, that’s what makes the moment feel unbearable. Because you’re not just feeling anxious, you’re resisting it, you’re overwhelmed by it, you might feel shame about it, you might feel afraid of it. I remember realizing this for myself and how profound of a realization it was for me. It really was one of those moments. I still remember exactly where I was when I realized, “Oh my gosh, it’s not just that I have anxiety. It’s that I have anxiety about anxiety. I’m anxious about my anxiety.” And I also had a lot of shame about my anxiety, and sometimes I felt hopeless about my anxiety.

So it wasn’t just that I was feeling fear and looking for a way out. I realized I was afraid of my fear. And that second layer of emotion is what made everything feel so intense and so urgent to escape. Because now it’s, “I feel uncomfortable right now.” It’s, “I feel uncomfortable and I think I can’t handle it on my own. I feel uncomfortable and I think that something is wrong with me, or I feel uncomfortable and I don’t ever think that this is going to go away.”

This really is a hallmark of the Escape archetype. This idea that certain emotions are just too much, too big, too overwhelming to handle without a drink. And when your brain starts to believe that, when you don’t feel capable of handling your own emotional experience, then of course, the pull to drink is not only going to feel really strong, but it’s going to be really appealing.

So when you feel anxious about everything happening in the world, the answer is not to stop feeling anxious. It’s to first see if you can start to change the story you’re telling yourself about the emotion. I cannot stress how much of a difference this makes. And this is what I’m working with people all the time. When I start working with people when they’re brand new to my work, they want to just go right to the place of, “Okay, just tell me the thing that I need to do to make this emotion go away so that I can feel differently, and then I’ll be able to say no to the drink.” But what you have to actually do is back up and look at that story that you have attached to it and see how that’s creating so much of the problem for you.

So really, the ability to remind yourself that however you feel is normal. We are meant to experience the full spectrum of human emotions. Nothing has gone wrong. Everybody feels whatever feeling you are experiencing. Everybody feels it sometimes. Now, I do this a lot with anxiety because that in particular is an emotion that I resisted for so long. I try to talk about it in a very neutral way. So I will say things to myself like, “My body was designed to process and handle cortisol and adrenaline on its own.”

So I actually change it so I’m really just talking about the stress hormones themselves. And I actually use this line a lot. So instead of just saying to myself, “Oh, I’m feeling anxious right now,” I will say, “Oh, this is what cortisol and adrenaline feel like in my body.” And the reason why I find that so powerful is because I have years and years and years of practice adding all of this story, all of this judgment to my own anxiety. Years of telling myself, “Oh, it’s too much, it’s too big.” Years of telling myself, “You know what? I think you have more anxiety than most people, Rachel. Something might be wrong with you.” Years of also telling myself, “It’s never going to go away. I’m never going to feel better. I’m always going to feel this way,” which creates a lot of hopelessness. And also years of telling myself and then acting on this belief that I can’t handle this feeling on my own.

Right? And when we believe we can’t handle our own emotional experience ourselves, that is going to create fear. It’s like having a fear response to your own emotional experience. So again, bringing it back to the stress hormones, saying to myself when I’m feeling anxious, “Oh, this is what cortisol and adrenaline feel like in the human body.” That’s it. Because I don’t have a lot of story about cortisol and adrenaline. I didn’t spend years shaming myself about my stress hormones or believing that they shouldn’t be there or I shouldn’t ever feel them.

But the bigger shift is just recognizing that you’re not looking to escape this moment by drinking because of the emotion. You’re looking to escape the moment because of the story you have about the emotion. When you make that shift, something really important happens. It gives you a little bit of space. Now, the anxiety is still going to be there. But it doesn’t have to be the anxiety plus the hopelessness, plus the shame, plus the overwhelm, plus the fear. It can just be the anxiety. Removing the layers of unnecessary negative emotions starts to turn down the urgency, the intensity, and also the belief of, “I need to find something right now to change the way I feel.”

Because instead of telling yourself, “I need a drink right now,” it becomes, “Okay, this is how I’m feeling and I’m also having thoughts about what this feeling means.” That is such a different starting point. And at that point, you can look at those thoughts for what they are. Maybe they’re not true, maybe they’re unhelpful, maybe they’re adding to the overall discomfort that you feel. That really is the beginnings of how it’s possible to start to teach your brain, “Yes, you know what? You don’t have to answer this moment of uncertainty, this moment of stress or overwhelm or anxiety, you don’t have to answer this moment with alcohol.”

It is possible to drink less or to not drink at all when you are feeling a lot of anxiety about the state of the world. Not because you can wave a magic wand and fix what’s happening in the world or make your anxiety go away, but because all of a sudden you have so much power over how you are relating to it. So you can name the feeling. You can ask yourself, “What am I making this feeling mean right now?” And notice, “Am I telling myself I can’t handle it, that it’s going to last forever, that I have too much, that I shouldn’t feel this way?”

Notice all of the story because that is the real issue. And the more that you can start to shift that story, the easier it is to be able to allow your cravings and your urges to drink without acting on them. The more that you start to separate these two things, what you are feeling versus what you are making that feeling mean, the more you create a little bit of space to make a different decision. Because really, the goal isn’t about having more willpower and more discipline when it comes to changing your relationship with alcohol and drinking less. It’s about reminding yourself that you were designed to handle every human emotion without a drink. Remembering that piece really is the key.

If you want to learn more about the Escape archetype, I encourage you to take the quiz at FindYourDrinkType.com. That’s it for today. I’ll see you next week.

—

Hey guys, you already know that drinking less has plenty of health benefits. But did you know that the work you do to change your relationship with alcohol will help you become more of the person you want to be in every part of your life?

Learning how to manage your brain and your cravings is an investment in your physical, emotional and personal wellbeing. And that’s exactly what’s waiting for you when you join my membership Take a Break.

Whether you want to drink less, drink rarely, or not at all, we’ll help you figure out a relationship with alcohol that works for you. We’ll show you why rules, drink plans, and Dry January so often fail, and give you the tools you need to feel in control and trust yourself.

So, head on over to RachelHart.com and sign up today, because changing the habit is so much easier when you stop trying to go it alone.