Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (02:27):
Wild sobriety is for
the woman who has outgrown
alcohol and was never meant tofollow the script.
I'm Mary Wagstaff, a holisticalcohol coach, and after 20
years of daily drinking, Ifinally made alcohol irrelevant
in my life.
And now I help women just likeyou do the same through my
proven five chips process.
(02:48):
Welcome to Wild Sobriety,Feminine Freedom Beyond Alcohol.
Welcome back.
In today's video, I am going toreveal to you the third blind
spot that is secretly sabotagingyour sobriety and your all of
(03:11):
your efforts at quittingdrinking diligently.
I know that you are thinkingabout this day in and day out.
And this third blind spot is thecriticism that you have been
giving to yourself secretly, thewords that you say to yourself
when you are by yourself.
And those words are the wordsthat are in your head.
Hi, if we haven't met yet, myname is Mary Wagstaff.
(03:33):
I'm a holistic alcohol coach forwomen.
I have brought all of my workover here to YouTube and I am
thrilled to introduce wildsobriety to you and create a
community here.
(04:08):
And because I'm getting to knowyou here and we're getting to
grow a community, something thatI wanted to share with you, this
little insight tip about me isthat I own a farm.
My family and I purchased a farmin the Columbia River Gorge in
Oregon just about a year and ahalf ago.
And I spent the entire summer,it was crazy, growing flowers to
(04:30):
sell.
And right at the end of theseason, we discovered that we
had a different product, whichis pesto.
It's a funny little insight toinsider view into my life.
My husband had been trying togrow basil for about 12 years.
We've had a garden everywhere welived, and the basil just never
did great.
(04:50):
And where we are is in the highdesert, and it is just sun, sun,
sun.
And I made a spiral herb gardenand I planted some basil and it
took off.
It's like these tiny littlebushes right now that he has
been pruning like bonsai trees.
We have made pesto in the pastwith various things, and he
created this beautiful recipe.
(05:11):
It's nut free, dairy-free,gluten-free, allergy-free.
And we're calling it Dad'sGarden Pesto.
And we could tell you a littlebit more about dad.
I'm sure he'll make a guestappearance on the channel at
some point.
But it is a hit.
Just like with anything, evenour journey into sobriety, we
have to be open for the how.
We went into this farm decidingwe're gonna grow flowers, we're
(05:34):
gonna grow vegetables, we'regonna see what happens.
Flowers was our main focus.
We're gonna do the market, we'regonna sell on the property,
we're gonna not have a lot ofexpectation.
And this is what I want from youtoo for your journey so that you
can see what lands with you.
This internal criticism issabotaging because you are
(05:57):
carrying yourself around allday, every day.
You are in your thoughts.
So the words that you say toyourself when you're by yourself
are literally happening all day,every day.
And I have mentioned this beforein a previous video that words
are spells.
The words that we say create anactual vibration in our body
(06:17):
that's called an emotion, andthose emotions create
sensations.
When we try to beat ourselves upor judge ourselves or compare
ourselves to anyone about ourjourney, that vibration in our
body isn't positive.
And what happens when we startto add, we start to compound
(06:37):
negative emotions.
Well, we want to find relieffrom that.
We will inevitably end up havinga drink.
We kind of say, screw it.
There's all of these otherthings in life that you do not
have control over that are gonnadrain your battery of resiliency
throughout the day.
And the one place that you dohave control are the words that
(06:59):
you say to yourself.
I've been there, all my clientshave been there.
The regret, the shame.
How could I do this again?
I'm never gonna be able to quitdrinking if I could only drink
like this person, so on and soforth.
And those actual words, I can't,I'll never be able to not drink.
I'm always going to want todrink.
That alone, how could I havedone this again?
(07:20):
What does that feel like in yourbody?
And right away, I want to tellyou my free guide, you have to
get this and you have to try itand use it, is called 60 Seconds
to Calm.
The link is right here in thenotes.
It will help you find reliefquicker than it takes to pour a
drink.
One of the key phrases in thereis nothing has gone wrong.
(07:44):
When you say those words, I justwant you to say them out loud to
yourself.
Nothing has gone wrong.
What happens?
You can use that in any moment.
One of my favorite thoughts Isay to myself is if this is the
worst thing that happens to metoday, I'm still doing really
good.
So you have to get on the phonewith customer service, be on the
phone.
I was on the phone for two hoursa couple of weeks ago with the
(08:07):
printer company, or someone cutsyou off, or it's raining when
you were gonna have a party.
This is all low-hanging fruitthat we have to learn to brush
off so that we can, we have tosimply watch our mind and notice
the perspective and the angle atwhich our thoughts and the words
(08:30):
that we say are taken.
Now, this isn't about bypassing,this isn't about toxic
positivity.
Although as I move through mylife, I'm really not sure how if
there is any real pot toxicposity.
Now, if you're never willing tolook at the shadow, never really
(08:54):
willing to confront the storyand avoiding things, but I think
we can always be positive.
One of my clients uses herthought, this is for me.
Everything is for me.
What a gift! What can I learnfrom this?
And so just like we decided tolet the farm show us what was
(09:14):
available and what was going tobe easy.
I want you to try on some newthoughts.
I want you to try on words.
And that's what the free guide,the 60 seconds to calm, is going
to be.
And not just around yourrelationship to alcohol, but to
every other relationship in yourlife, to your relationship to
(09:35):
money, to work, to your spouse,to your children.
Because all of these things aregoing to compound, and your
battery for resiliency is whatis necessary to grow that
capacity so that when it doescome time where you would have
habitually have a drink, you canhandle it.
(09:58):
And you don't have that onething that just puts you over
the top because you know now Ican handle it.
That's another beautiful thoughtto say to yourself.
And I want to tell you a quickstory.
This blind spot, probably out ofall of the blind spots, which
I'm going to let you in on alittle secret, are actually the
five shifts of sustainablesobriety in my program.
(10:21):
This one, out of all of theother ones, is what made the
biggest impact in my life for myjourney.
It is what flipped the switchfor me.
I had been going on, gettingpretty serious about quitting.
I was, I was looking at allsorts of podcasts.
I had never done that.
I had started coaching.
I was working with a spiritualmentor, not around alcohol, but
(10:44):
diving deeper into the shadowwork, getting curious.
And I had started taking somelonger breaks than I ever had
before, where I would mostlyjust say, Yeah, I'm not drinking
tonight.
And then inevitably I woulddrink.
So what happened was when I wasgetting very serious, I knew,
like I talked about in the lastblind spot, I knew what was
(11:07):
waiting for me on the other sideof alcohol.
I was no longer quittingdrinking.
I was committing to becoming thewoman that I knew I could be,
that knew I was underneathalcohol, the mother that I was
underneath alcohol.
That was really my goal.
I knew that I wanted to teach.
I knew that I wanted to show up.
(11:28):
I knew that I wanted to take allof my gifts and my passions and
my desires to the next level andthat I would never have the
confidence to do it as long asalcohol was in the way.
Not only that, but alcohol wascompletely contradictory to
every single value that I had.
And when I uncovered those, andwe'll get into that in another
episode, when I uncovered those,I started really leaning into
(11:53):
personal responsibility.
So when it came time where thaturge came up in my day and where
I had said I wasn't drinking,and then inevitably there was
that little tug of war, Ichanged the conversation.
Instead of going back and forthand shaming myself and saying,
I'm always gonna want to drink,there's no way I can't drink.
(12:14):
How could you, you're nevergonna be able to do this, or
having regret the next day.
What I told myself instead was,Mary, you clearly don't want to
stop, but you are a grown woman.
You are grown.
This decision is yours to make.
And guess what?
You've done this for 20 years.
(12:37):
You know exactly what's gonnahappen.
You know what's gonna happenwhen you drink, you know the
impact of it, you know how it'sgonna feel, you know what it's
gonna feel like during themiddle of the night, you know
what it's gonna feel like thenext morning, you know what the
results are of this, and youknow what you really want and
what your intentions have been.
So if you drink, and this wasthe conversation I had with
(12:59):
myself, and this is what we haveto be willing to do, and even
writing it down will make itthat much more powerful.
If you choose to drink, you needto own it because you already
know.
You need to not wake up.
I told myself, there will be noshame, there will be no
judgment, there will be nobeating yourself up.
You wake up and you get on withyour day because you consciously
(13:23):
made a choice.
I am making the choice right nowto drink and to take every
single consequence and everysingle impact that comes along
with it.
And I believe that I did drinkand I woke up the next day and I
remembered the conversation Ihad with myself, and I was like,
oh, okay.
Wow, I don't have to beat myselfup.
(13:44):
And that lessened the impact.
And guess what?
When I stopped judging myselffor drinking, and I actually
gave myself permission from thatplace of being fully honest, not
just screw it, you deserve it.
That excuse, oh, you deserve it,you've worked so hard.
No, full permission and from anhonest perspective, everything
(14:07):
changed just like that because Istepped into my power, I stepped
into personal responsibility andownership, and I told myself,
nothing has gone wrong.
Everyone drinks, everyonedrinks, and alcohol is an
addictive substance.
There's nothing that you didwrong to get here, and we have
to work backwards to unlearn it.
What I offered myself wascompassion.
(14:30):
I learned how to have my ownback.
So you are replacing shame andjudgment with compassion and
learning how to have your ownback, no matter what, with
alcohol, with your emotions.
And this is the feminine way.
This is the way of wildsobriety.
(14:51):
Our emotions as women that riseup, whether or not they're valid
and whether or not they have astory behind them, they are
real.
And when we offer ourselvescompassion, we can actually get
to the core because right thenwe find relief.
We don't need externalvalidation.
We don't need to explainourselves.
(15:13):
We actually let the energy ofthat emotion rise up inside of
us and move out rather thanshoving it down with a drink and
pretending like it's not thereand never really fully
understanding what need we havethat's not being met.
In the end, your judgment isreally one of the things that is
fueling the craving to drink.
(15:35):
It is compounding the negativeemotions that you need relief
from.
Compassion alone is creatingcontainment of your nervous
system.
When you offer yourselfcompassion, you are creating the
safety that you're seeking inthe world.
And part of why you keep goingback to alcohol is because
alcohol is known.
(15:57):
Now, we will go back to thethings and repeat the things
that are known to our detriment,but in some way, we feel safe.
We know the outcome of alcohol.
We've been there before.
It feels safe because we'redoing it in a group.
We're doing it with our spouse,we're doing it with our partner.
Compassion will override thatand create that sense of
containment and safety that isrequired to go on this journey
(16:20):
of sustainable sobriety andfreedom from alcohol.
The other pivotal piece of whatit really does to offer yourself
compassion over shame andjudgment is it starts to create
that trust in yourself that hasbeen lost through the broken
promises of yourself.
So even if you are breaking yourown promise to yourself of I'm
(16:41):
not drinking today, when youoffer yourself compassion, it
starts to build trust inyourself that I can rely on
myself to not abandon me in mytime of need because we don't
want that from anyone else.
We don't want that abandonment.
That's what can create trauma inour lives, but yet we're doing
it to ourselves.
So we have to be willing totreat ourselves the way that we
(17:02):
want other people to treat us.
Make sure you go and downloadthat free guide and use it.
It is going to be a gamechanger.
And I forgot to mention, thereare a couple other bonus goodies
in that portal that are going tohelp you on your journey, a
meditation, as well as myperimenopause must-haves.
These are other ways toritualize and support your
(17:24):
nervous system as we continue toage and go beyond alcohol.
Make sure you subscribe.
Please leave a comment in thenotes here of what you were
taking away, what you wouldlove.
And I would love to hear a storyabout you.
As a thank you for being such animportant part of this podcast,
I want to gift you my brand newfree mini course, The Permission
Protocol.
It is a five-part journey tohelp you rethink everything you
(17:47):
believe about the pleasure thatis possible in sobriety and the
radical freedom that is requiredto get to the other side.
And it's available for you rightnow inside of my free wild
sobriety community where we canhang out, support one another,
and grow by honoring ourauthentic expression as women.
Everything you need is righthere in the description.
(18:09):
I will see you inside of thecommunity.