We’ve all been there, angry at ourselves for drinking too much, for being stupid, for making choices we wish we could take back. But here’s the truth, regret about your drinking isn’t practical. It’s like hauling around a heavy backpack for no good reason. It doesn’t help you change.

This is episode 434 and we’re talking about how to finally set that backpack down, how to understand why you made the choices you did, redeem regret, and use its lessons to move forward.

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.

Rachel Hart: Alright everybody, welcome back. I am so excited today because I have Adriana Cloud joining me again. She coaches along with me inside the membership, and we have been talking about something that’s been coming up a lot that we hear people struggling with. And in fact, as we were getting ready for this episode, we both struggled with this as well. But it’s the idea of being really angry at your past self for being stupid, or the stupid things that you did while you were drinking.

And where we particularly see, or I’ve noticed this come up a lot, is people will start making progress. They’ll start really changing their relationship with alcohol, and this often feels like something that they just can’t let go of, a thing that they can’t move past. And what I have found is that can actually really stall people’s progress because it’s like, “Well, okay, I’m doing so good, but I can’t go back and undo all the stupid things that I did in the past.” So that’s what we’re going to talk with you guys about today. We have a lot personally and just working with people to share about this and to really help you understand if you’re in this place, how to start to move past it, because it’s something that we have both personally done a lot of work around.

Adriana Cloud: And I think this comes up for everybody. And yes, everybody who is changing a habit and they are looking back on how they behaved while they were still engaging in that behavior that they’re trying to change. But I think all of us, regardless of whether we have a history of drinking or drugs or any other mind-altering substance, we all have done things that we look back on and we think, oh, that was so stupid. How could I have done this? That was not okay. Why can’t I let go? How could I have done that? It means something about me. 

And so this shame spiraling, it shows up for all of us, maybe in different guises, but it can be problematic as you said, because people are changing their habits and yet they’re still stuck on this idea that they haven’t earned feeling good about themselves because there’s that thing that they did in the past.

Rachel Hart: Yeah. So I just want to really hone in on this piece because I think it’s easy for people to hear you say this and not really focus in on how important it is to remind yourself of the universality of this feeling. Even if you never touched a drop of alcohol in your entire life, you would still have moments where you would look back at your past self or past behavior and get that kind of like that grimacey feeling or that like, I wish I hadn’t done that or feel angry that you did it.

That really is just part of the human experience. There is no one going through life that does not have an experience like that. And the reason why I really just want to start here and really drive this point home is because so often what happens, especially I think around the topic of drinking, because people feel so much shame and that shame leads to hiding. And hiding, of course, makes it seem as if you are all alone, that no one can relate.

And the more that you can see, oh, this is actually very, very common, what I’m experiencing. Now, not everybody may, you know, have the same specific regret, but everyone has regrets. Everyone has moments that they wish that they could go back in time and change. And I think that piece is something that we miss a lot. I talk about this a lot with cravings. You know, I am always trying to remind people that every single person, everyone, struggles with impulsive and compulsive behaviors. Now, they might not might not always manifest around alcohol, but they are there. That is very universal.

So I just like that to me is always the starting point whenever I’m really in my own kind of shame spiral or my own like, oh, I wish I didn’t do that. I wish I hadn’t said that. Why was I so stupid? When I notice myself going there, I always think that the most powerful place is to just see if you can pause for a second and acknowledge that this is very universal, that you’re not alone in it. Because when you feel alone in it, that just always makes it feel worse.

Adriana Cloud: Yes, and people tend to think, oh yes, but yes, you don’t get it. Mine was worse. You don’t understand how specially bad it was or how it was so dumb. And I have so many dumb stories of things I’ve done and unsafe things that I’ve done and hurtful things that I have said and done when I was drinking and also when I was not drinking. I have been sober coming up on five years now, and I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff the past five years that I look back on. I’m like, maybe this was not my best moment.

And I was just thinking about, you know, when I was in, I forget like what grade, but basically I wrote this love letter. I think I was maybe 13 or 14, and I wrote a love letter to this boy that was going out, going out, you know, at 13 with my best friend because I imagined myself in love with him. And like I just cringe to think about that. So this is one example of people of all ages do things that in hindsight appear ridiculous or worse. But that’s part of the human experience.

Rachel Hart: I think the other piece, and I’m glad you brought this up is when you notice the knee jerk of, oh, but mine is worse, to really get curious what that’s about. Sometimes what I have found, I watch myself do this, I watch people that I work with do this. It’s kind of like we fight for our pain. We fight for our shame. And, you know, I actually, whenever I notice that I’m trying to say like, “No, but you can’t possibly understand, or they can’t possibly relate because my situation is worse.” It’s just again, really powerful to see, oh, I’m trying to separate myself. I’m trying to create distance. I’m trying to hold on to this for some reason.

And to just get curious about why that is. Now, I personally think that in my own life, I have kind of fought for, you know, the things that I did while drinking, they were worse, they were stupider, they were more embarrassing. I think I sometimes fought for that unknowingly because part of me really believed that the answer was, I just needed to feel really, really bad about myself and to have a lot of shame. And that was actually going to be the thing that was going to lead to change. 

And so I wasn’t consciously aware of this, but I do think because we have such a strong, we get such a strong societal message that, you know, if people just get to the point where they feel bad enough about their behavior, if they feel bad enough about their drinking, then that’s the thing that’s going to precipitate change. Sometimes I think that’s why we hold on to it because there’s a part of us that almost thinks that it’s serving us or that it’s protective.

Adriana Cloud: And this carries on too because even people who’ve already made the changes that they want to make, then they tell themselves, oh, but I must not forget all the things I did and how bad it got because if I forget and I start to feel good about myself and celebrate my progress, then I might just slip back into those old behaviors. So I must constantly have this reminder of how bad I was because that’s what’s going to keep me in check.

Rachel Hart: It’s this idea that you always need to be on guard against yourself. And I think that is a really, that again is a really important, important thing that we, like both of us in our work are really trying to help people undo this idea that the only way to be safe with yourself is to be on guard against yourself. And I will just say, again, I, of course, at points had that belief as well, because that is another thing that we get in so many ways and so many different places. We get this message that, you know, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, one sip will set you back. This idea that you must constantly be vigilant. You must always be on guard.

And not only is that exhausting, I actually don’t think that it’s true, but moving through the world from a place of I cannot trust myself, I am not someone to be trusted. What I have found and what I have just seen this pattern show up again and again and again is that when people will really argue that they cannot trust themselves, it’s not just, they aren’t arguing for this just around alcohol. This is kind of like a, it’s an overarching identity. And by the way, it’s one that I held for a very long time of just, no, no, no, I can’t be trusted in all of these areas, right? 

I can’t be trusted with money. I can’t be trusted in relationships. I can’t be trusted with food. I can’t be trusted with alcohol. I just, the identity that I carried for so long about myself was one of just like, oh, I have to be vigilant against myself because, you know, deep inside of me, I’m bad. Deep inside of me, I want things that are wrong and harmful and bad and not going to serve me. And so that is such a radical shift of, you know, our approach and what we really help people with is, you know, just even starting from the point of, what if your cravings aren’t bad?

What if they’re actually really useful? What if they have information and wisdom for you? What if your desire and your desire to have more and your desire to drink is not this thing that you need to beat out of yourself? It’s not this thing that you need to be afraid of. It’s actually this thing that really opens, it can open the door into so much insight to understand what has the brain learned from drinking and what does that drink represent? And what’s happening underneath my desire beyond just, oh, I like the taste or I like the way it makes me feel.

Adriana Cloud: Yeah, and one way I talk to my clients about this is to think about separating the act or the thought or the desire from the person, because we tend to think, oh, I did this thing and therefore I am that thing. So I did something “bad,” and therefore I am a bad person. I did something shameful. I am a shameful person. And it’s so helpful to separate what we thought, what we felt, what we did from our identity and how we think about ourselves and what we make it mean about ourselves.

And this is why I love the exercise you have in the guide, Math, not Drama. And it’s almost like applying that exercise to our behavior. Okay, what is the math here? And of course, in the exercise, it’s about how many drinks did you have? That is the math. What do you make it mean? That’s the drama or the story we add on top of it. But when we think about past behavior, it’s the same principle. What are the facts here? What did you do? You got on a bus when you were drunk, or went home with somebody you wish you hadn’t gone home with, or any other number of things I have done and I’m sure other people have done that they now think better of. 

But those are the facts. But what do I make that particular behavior mean about me as a person? That is the part that is optional. And if we could understand that, that opens the door to so many different interpretations. And there’s so many different ways to tell yourself that story and what do you make it mean about you and how you move on from that experience, which you cannot change what happened in the past. I cannot change what happened, but I can change what I make it mean about me and how I talk to myself when I remember that experience.

Rachel Hart: Yeah, and so if we were to kind of break it down for people, you know, perhaps that first piece is, okay, I notice myself really deep in regret. I’m really hanging on to being so angry at my past self, or I’m feeling a lot of shame. And can I start to see just as step one, how this is a universal thing? That there’s just, no one escapes this in the human experience. And then I think probably step number two is just, what you said, which is, let’s maybe stop wishing that it didn’t happen.

Could we just start there? Can we start from the place of, I don’t have a time machine. You don’t have a time machine. I’m not going to build one. So if I can’t go back and change what happened, can I just get to the point where I stop wishing that it hadn’t? And that seems so simple, but it’s not. I think about how many, how many things in my life around drinking and around alcohol, where I would just hold on to this idea like, if only I hadn’t done that, if only I hadn’t wasted all that precious time, if only I hadn’t been so stupid. I really devoted a lot of time and mental energy wanting to go back and rewrite the past.

Again, I think unknowingly doing that because part of me thought it was protective. Part of me thought if I feel bad enough, then I won’t make the same mistake in the future. But the truth is, the only way not to repeat the same behavior is to understand why it happened. To really understand what was going on. And this is a thing where I think people often believe that they know why it happened. And so there’s this sense of, well, I don’t need to understand why it happened because I already know the answer. The answer is, I just make dumb decisions when I’m drinking. The answer is, I’m just someone who can’t control myself. The answer is, I’m just someone who can’t learn my lesson.

So that’s the other thing to also recognize is that so often, there is a part of you that is or has decided, no, no, no, I know why this happened. Right? I’ve always been like this. I’ve always made bad choices. Whenever you get into that kind of like black and white thinking, the like always or never, you start to see that there is a part of you that it knows why it happened. And that part of you is not explaining it with a think-feel-act cycle. They’re explaining it with some sort of core belief about who you are as a person. And so to stop wishing that it didn’t happen, and then to start saying, let’s understand why it did. 

That’s one of the pieces with the math not drama exercise that I have is, okay, so we look at the math, we see the drama, and then the next thing to for people to understand is, can we understand the archetype that was activated? Right? Can you just start to take a guess there? Because that often is a just a good jumping off point to say like, oh, I think actually what was going on, I was feeling a lot of social anxiety, or I had been so overwhelmed about something happening in my life, or I had been feeling like I was going to be missing out if I didn’t have another. to just understand, oh, there was actually something happening here behind the scenes. But to start there, and then of course, we always want to, I always want to drill down with people and get into the nitty gritty, like, let’s try to understand what was that think-feel-act cycle? What was going on there? 

Because if we don’t want to repeat the behavior, we need to understand why it actually happened. And it happened because of what you were thinking. And yes, your prefrontal cortex may have been impacted by alcohol. Your inhibitions may have been lowered. But when people really start to do the work and it’s kind of like being a detective and put the pieces back together of what was I telling myself in that moment, or how was I thinking, or what was I feeling? You start to see there is actually a lot still happening even when a lot of us, myself included for a long time, just be like, I don’t know, I was drunk, so like, who knows? I wasn’t even thinking. 

But to be able to piece it back and see, oh, this is what was actually going on. Then you, it’s like collecting the breadcrumbs, right? So that you have a path to follow to know, oh, well, if I don’t want to create this outcome, here’s where I need to intervene. Here’s where I need to have a new thought. Here’s how I need to respond differently in this situation.

Adriana Cloud: And I want to underscore that to do this work, to look for these breadcrumbs and to understand what happened, you have to be willing to look at what happened, and that means you have to let go of the shame and get curious about it. because it’s really difficult to get curious about it if you’re shaming yourself and judging yourself for what happened and telling yourself it shouldn’t have happened. Because our instinct then is to just run away, brush it under the carpet, not talk about it, just try to discipline and scare ourselves into not doing it again somehow. 

But in order to not do it again, we have to get curious and be willing to actually look at what happened, as you say, to understand what was I thinking, what was I feeling that drove me to do this thing, and to take a guess, because sometimes we don’t know. Sometimes it really is, well, who knows why I did that? But to really try to guess what was going on. And one way I think about it is, what need was I trying to fulfill or what desire was I trying to fulfill? Because that part of me who made a “stupid,” choice, she needed something. And this was the best thing she could think of at the moment to get what she needed. 

And when I think about that, it opens the door for more compassion when I think about, oh, past me just needed something. She was trying to take care of herself in some way. And when I can access a bit of compassion, then again, it becomes easier to be willing to look at what happened and understand, okay, maybe these were not the best decisions in hindsight, but this was what was available to me. This was what was accessible to me, or this is the information I had at the time. And could I possibly offer some kindness to that version of me who was just doing her best at the time?

Rachel Hart: I often have the statement kind of bouncing around in my head that I was doing the best that I knew how with the information that I had. And we’re just given so little information about alcohol, about how habits form, about how the brain works, about the think-feel-act cycle. And to, you know, have that as my starting point, because I think nobody sets out to do something that they’re later going to regret. I mean that really, that’s to just really understand that truly, that’s where we’re all starting. We all we all want to do the best. Right? 

We’re not like, okay, so my goal here is to make a decision that I’m going to feel bad about tomorrow and the next week and the next month and for years after that. That’s nobody’s starting point. And just sometimes I think to understand that regret is just not practical, certainly the way we are taught to understand and use regret, which is just, you know, if you feel bad enough, you’re finally going to change. I think of it a little bit. I’ve heard the analogy of it’s like carrying around this really heavy backpack. And it’s just filled with rocks. You’re just you’re just carrying around this really heavy backpack. It’s not helping. 

But if you can take the backpack off, if you can be able to say, you know what, there is actually something very universal going on here that I’m experiencing, that everyone else has experienced. I didn’t set out to make a bad decision. I didn’t set out to do something that I was later going to regret. And if you can for a moment try to step away from, well, I think I already know the answer. I think I already know why I made the decision and it’s reflective of me. If you can just be curious to say, I wonder what was going on in that moment. I wonder what I was thinking, what I was believing, how I was feeling. And I wonder how I can use that information to create a different result. 

So, I mean, I think about this a lot, you know, especially when people are working with archetypes that they feel particularly, you know, feel particularly challenging. And so maybe it’s like the mask archetype, and it’s this idea of like, I don’t want to get really drunk when I’m in social situations. I don’t want to be, you know, using alcohol as a way to deal with my social anxiety. You can read all about the mask, right? You can have all the exercises. We can talk about it and you can have all of the information, but you’re still going to have to go do the work of going into the social situation where you’re feeling a lot of anxiety, where your inner critic is probably on overdrive, and then in that moment with all of that happening, learn how to respond differently. 

And I think what I notice happen is when I work with people, they’ll kind of come back and they’ll be like, oh, okay, like the first half of the night went well, but then it like all kind of fell apart at the second half, right? And so they want to very quickly look at it and decide that it was just a failure and it just didn’t work and then use it as more evidence that they’re never going to figure out and learn instead of, okay, let’s figure out why the first half went well. Let’s figure out what the turning point was. Where did something change here? Because to me, it’s like we are detectives and we are finding that moment where something happened, they thought something, someone said something, they were feeling something, something in the situation changed, right? We’re trying to piece back all the different things that happened to understand, okay, what did you tell yourself in that moment? Right? What changed? What had you go from the point of, you know, saying like, oh, who cares, screw it, it doesn’t matter.

And that requires that you’re able to look back and see that there’s something to be learned from the situation and to understand that it’s never going to be, okay, well I learned all about the masks, so now I can perfectly implement all of the tools on my very first try, on my very first go and I’m not going to have any issues from here on out. There’s this, it’s so fascinating when I think about all the places in which we’re totally okay with having a learning curve. And then when it comes to something like alcohol, it’s like, well no, I should know better. I should have learned my lesson by now. And really helping people see there’s going to be a learning curve here too. There just is. There’s no two ways about it.

Adriana Cloud: Yeah, what’s just coming up for me is this realization, I’m not just realizing it now, but again and again, we see it with people in the membership and I see it with my past self, like the conditions we place on ourselves for when am I allowed to think that I’m doing well enough? Or when am I allowed to think that I’m making progress is if I perform perfectly. And therefore I must never do a stupid thing ever again. You know, I’ve done it once. Okay, I can’t change the past, but I must ensure that I will never do anything stupid again. But that’s an impossible condition to fulfill. 

Maybe you won’t make the same, I don’t want to call it a mistake. You won’t do the same thing again. But it’s part of the human condition to have these moments that later you look back on and you realize, okay, that did not unfold the way that I wanted and I wish I had made a different choice. That is always going to be the case. So the question is not, how can I avoid doing a stupid thing quote unquote in the future? But how can I live with myself and make it okay for me to do stupid things sometimes and still love myself and still show up with curiosity and learn from that? Because if nothing else, regret is such an unproductive emotion. It’s the most useless of emotions. 

Perhaps maybe not the most, but when you are stuck in regret and shame, you are stuck looking at the past. You’re not really carrying any lessons forward. You’re not changing your behavior. You’re not, you’re not focusing on what can I learn here? What happened? What do I need to do differently? You’re still stuck reliving that and punishing yourself in perpetuity for it. It’s just not productive if you want to change anything.

Rachel Hart: And I think it goes to the bigger idea of when is it going to be okay for me to make mistakes? I have a radically different relationship with alcohol. I mean, it blows my mind still to this day to be like, oh, yeah, I can manage my cravings and watch myself have a drink and just be done with it. Like just be like, that’s it. That’s all I need. It’s mind blowing to me. And also, I’m a human person that makes mistakes, and I make mistakes with parenting, and I make mistakes with my husband, and I make mistakes in business, and I make mistakes with money, and I mean just make mistakes in all places. 

It becomes this kind of bigger question that I think that all of this is pointing you to, which is what is your relationship with your humanness, with the fact that you’re not going to do everything right. You’re not, not everything is going to be perfect. You are going to make mistakes. You are going to do things that later on you’re like, ugh, God, wish I could take that back. You are going to put your foot in your mouth. You are going to, you know, have these moments of wanting to build the time machine and being unable. And I think the biggest kind of freedom is just the freedom to understand it’s okay to make a mistake, and it doesn’t mean anything about you, and you can actually use this moment to your advantage.

Adriana Cloud: I think it’s also helpful to acknowledge that the mere fact you’re now thinking differently about something in the past means that you’ve grown. And what a sad and weird experience it would be if you felt amazing about every single decision you’ve made in the past. It means you haven’t grown. You haven’t learned anything. So, like, I am a poet and sometimes I read poems I wrote like 20 years ago and I’m like again, like, oh my god, so cringe. But I love that because it means I’m now a better writer. 

And if I read something I wrote 20 years ago and I still thought, oh, this is really good, how incredible a writer I was back then, how sad that I have not grown at all. And I think we can take this lesson to our own behavior too and to think, okay, the mere fact that I am acknowledging that this was not me being my best self, means that I have the capacity to be better and already I am in a different place from where I was and that’s a win. That’s a win in itself to be able to now to look back on something and evaluate it with different eyes. I think that is a gift.

Rachel Hart: I was I was talking with someone recently and she was, we were the same age and, you know, in our mid-40s and she was joking like, oh God, don’t you wish you just like had your brain that you have now in your 20s, right? Kind of like the implied message of like, then we wouldn’t have done all those stupid things. And I was like, but I don’t think I could have the brain that I have now in my 40s without the brain that I had in my 20s. Like, this brain, it needed all of that.

And so I really do think that when you’re feeling angry at your past self, when you’re wanting to build that time machine, when you feel like you’re so stuck in regret, part of what you are missing is you need these moments to grow and evolve. You can either just wear the regret backpack forever and have it weigh you down and it’s never going to get any lighter and you’re never actually doing anything with it. It just feels heavy, or you can use this moment. 

And this is the thing that in The Ultimate Guide, with the drink archetypes, when we’re working with people inside the membership, I feel like this is what we are always really trying to drive home is the idea, if you want to change, if you want to create a different relationship with alcohol, it’s not about, okay, so like, how do I just learn how to never make a mistake? It’s how do I learn how to take the results that I don’t like, the behaviors that I don’t like, how do I learn to understand why they’re happening, and then how do I start to shift them? How do I start to change them? And there is always going to be a learning curve, always.

So we have to really let go of this idea, not only that, you know, the only way that I can feel good about myself is to just do it all perfectly and never make mistakes, but I think we have to ultimately let go of the idea that carrying around regret is going to be the thing that helps you change. It truly isn’t. You have to take that backpack off. You have to understand what happened. You have to have that willingness to look, and it starts I think with just the understanding of this is universal and wishing that it didn’t happen isn’t going to help you. But we definitely can learn and grow and understand and create a new way forward. 

So, with that, thank you so much for joining today. I’m sure we’ll be back soon talking about more things that are coming up for our members.

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.