How to Rethink Your Relationship with Alcohol: Real Talk for High-Achieving Women
If you’re considering cutting back on alcohol or already wondering about your drinking habits, this conversation is essential listening.
Alcohol use among women, especially in midlife, is on the rise. There’s a flood of conflicting information online, and the stereotypes about alcoholism often keep women from facing real-life drinking habits that impact their health, productivity, and well-being.
In this episode, you’ll hear what most people get wrong about alcohol, why labels can hold women back, and how small shifts in your daily routine can rewire your habits for lasting change.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
High-functioning, driven women are often most at risk for using alcohol to cope with stress.
The real challenge is not always excessive drinking, but an inability to relax without alcohol.
Changing your relationship with alcohol starts by addressing habits upstream, not just relying on willpower.
The “delay, don’t deny” method can help retrain your brain and reduce cravings.
Labels like “alcoholic” can both help and hinder recovery; self-awareness is more powerful.
Mindfulness and daily check-ins are keys to making sustainable changes.
“This isn’t just about alcohol. It’s about how we take care of ourselves and relearn what we actually need.” - Colleen Freeland
ABOUT THE GUEST
Colleen Freeland is the founder of Emotional Sobriety Coaching and host of the “Not About the Alcohol” podcast. She leveraged her experience as a high-functioning, long-term daily drinker to become a certified addiction and recovery master life coach. Today, she helps women rewire habits and restore a healthy sense of self.
RESOURCES MENTIONED
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
02:26 The Love-Hate Relationship with Alcohol
04:52 Mindful Drinking and High Functioning Women
07:55 The Impact of Labels: Alcoholic vs. Casual Drinker
10:40 Recognizing Personal Accountability and Boundaries
13:33 Understanding Alcohol's Role in Coping Mechanisms
16:06 The Delay, Don't Deny Method
21:59 Building Mindfulness to Change Drinking Habits
28:06 Self-Care and Checking In with Needs
TRANSCRIPT
Colleen Freeland (00:00)
you're drinking because you
are so productive and you don't know how to shut your brain off. You sit down for five minutes and you start thinking about everything that you could still be doing or didn't get done or need to do tomorrow. You don't know how to just be and rest and relax.
Natalie Tysdal (00:14)
Hi everyone, it's Natalie Tisdall. I'm a former television journalist, and for 30 years, I've been asking tough questions about science and health.
Helping women separate evidence from hype so they can make decisions without fear and without confusion. And today we're opening up on a conversation that I think a lot of us wish we had heard years ago. If you ever wondered what your relationship with alcohol is really about, is it healthy? Maybe you're seeing those habits in someone you love and you're not alone. We're gonna go beyond labels and look at why so many high-performing, driven women.
End up using alcohol just to take the edge off. And why willpower alone barely makes a dent? My guest today is Colleen Freeland, and here's what makes her different from everyone else. She's not speaking from theory. She secretly struggled as a high-functioning, heavy daily drinker for almost 20 years. But here's the insight that changed everything for her and for thousands of women that she has now coached.
It wasn't about weakness. It wasn't about willpower. It was a symptom of chronic self-neglect fueled by stress and perfectionism. And she's not the person who says you have to just stop completely and never have a drink again. She has a different perspective. And it's what I really appreciate about her. She wants to help people understand their relationship with alcohol so they can get healthy, improve their relationships, and their self-worth.
Her methodology is skills-based. It's rooted in neuroscience and nervous system regulation and neuroplasticity. Basically, retraining your brain to work for you instead of against you. If you're not already following the podcast here or getting my weekly newsletter, I'd love for you to join me there. I have a ton of information and resources free to help you get your life on track.
And it will help you start feeling better. You can find everything at Natalie Tysdal That's Natalie N-A-T-A-L-I-E, Tisdell T-Y-S-D-A-L dot com. Let's get started today.
Natalie Tysdal (02:26)
Colleen, so good to have you on the show today.
Colleen Freeland (02:28)
Good to be here, Natalie.
Natalie Tysdal (02:30)
So let's talk all things alcohol.
it's a love-hate relationship for a lot of women. and some people are just fine with their relationship with alcohol, they might not know that they actually have an issue. So let's let's start with your story
Colleen Freeland (02:45)
I'm a mindful drinking coach. And so I work with women who want to reduce their alcohol consumption, often because they think that will make them more productive, which is actually part of the problem. But I work with women who are very high functioning, very goal-oriented, very driven, and they're using alcohol to take the edge off.
They're using it to relax, to transition from go mode to relax mode, because underneath it all is they've forgotten how to relax. They have trained themselves to always be on, to check their emotions at the door, to go, go, do, do, get, get. And they don't feel comfortable. You know, I often say for myself, when I was struggling, I would wake up and I'm like, I'm not going to drink tonight.
And then I'd land in happy hour, popping the bottle of wine, like that was a plan all along. And it wasn't that not drinking was hard, you know, where we start thinking, what's my problem? Am I an alcoholic? You know, i is this I can't control it. But the reality is what's hard is the not doing anything. Like when you're not drinking, you're not even doing anything. That requires no effort, that requires no skill set.
that's what's showing you the purpose of alcohol is that you don't know how to sit still for five minutes without your brain telling you you're lazy, there's more you could be doing, you forgot this, you know, get more done today so you can have more time to get more done tomorrow. Like it's that sense of urgency that I think really driven women live with, and that becomes our normal. And then of course we need something to cope with that, whether it's alcohol or something else.
Natalie Tysdal (04:23)
I find in my friend group and in all of the interviews that I've done that it is usually high functioning people. It's it it's not lazy people whatsoever. It's I have to do a lot of things and we've we've gotten to a place where we have lists and and we're used to checking them off and we're taking care of everything else. And it's like that's the it for many people, it's the one thing they just can't
they can't control. They can control a lot of other things.
Colleen Freeland (04:51)
Right.
And that's the that's the hamster wheel. That's the slippery slope, is because they're trying to control the wrong thing. You know, what what I the approach I take is a very upstream approach. If you felt more relaxed and regulated and in control of your time and your agenda and everything, you would drink like somebody who feels that way. You know, so the behavior is more of a signal.
It's a canary in the coal mine sort of thing that something is out of balance in the way you're operating. And the strategies that got you here, push, push, go, go, do, do, aren't going to get you to the next level. It's like life becomes something that you have to manage and endure instead of enjoy. And so, to your point, it's people are trying to change the symptom of the problem instead of addressing the real problem that's causing the symptom.
And that's then where the harder you try, the worse this gets. Because if you're using alcohol to take pressure out of the system, and then you're telling yourself you're not gonna drink tonight, and that feels hard or complicated, you're just adding more pressure to the system, which makes it more likely that you're gonna use the coping mechanism that you're relying on to deal with the pressure. And so it's a it takes a very counterintuitive approach.
And one that is not being talked about until now, you know, I've created the the system that I needed when I finally was willing to raise my hand and say, I need some help here.
Natalie Tysdal (06:26)
When w tell me about that. how how old were you and and where did the light bulb go off? How did you get the help and what does that look like now?
Colleen Freeland (06:34)
I it was COVID and six weeks into COVID, you know, I was the rules shifted in COVID. The liquor store the liquor companies came out and they normalized drinking at home. You know, prior to COVID, it was a faux pas. You know, you didn't admit that you were drinking alone, very often at least. And so all the rules changed. And so for for me, six weeks into COVID, every night happy hour got earlier. I drank more.
I slept later, my window of productivity shrank. And I just woke up one day and I was like, the only thing that sounds worse than the idea of quitting drinking is the idea of not quitting. Like I can't keep up with myself. This is not fun. But at the time, I didn't know there were any options. So I called the AA hotline, got myself into a meeting that day. I was like, I'll say anything to make this stop. Fine, I'm an alcoholic. But then I went through that for a couple of years and realized.
At least for my population, my personality, you know, admitting that I have a lifelong disease, identifying as an alcoholic when I don't even drink anymore seemed very twilight zony to me, you know. And so I wanted to be free, not identified as a drinker or a non drinker. You know, I'm not in seventh grade. I don't need to lead with how much I do or don't drink. And so that then became
A
trip into neuroplasticity and science and realizing all of the cultural stigma and assumptions that we make about being dependent on a coping mechanism like alcohol. there's a lot of misinformation. You know, AA was invented, created, established before we even knew what neuroplasticity was. And what really needed to change for me and most of my women that I work with is the ability to.
move through my day, relax, the people pleasing, the perfectionism, the overfunctioning, you know, constantly focused externally. Things we care more about how things look than how they feel. And we've lost a relationship with ourselves. And that's what needs to be repaired. When you repair that, again, you drink like somebody who's good with herself, who takes care of herself.
Natalie Tysdal (08:44)
Boy, that there's a lot packed into everything you just said because so many women and and of course this applies to men. We're speaking about women, but there might be women listening who are like, That's my husband. Like, I mean, you're you're s you're you're talking about a lot of things all at once.
Colleen Freeland (08:59)
Yeah.
Natalie Tysdal (09:00)
I wanna go back to something you said about being an alcoholic versus I'm just not sure I have
a healthy relationship. I think that label, no one wants that label. And where where's that line?
Where's that line for someone of I'm an alcoholic versus I probably just don't have a good relationship with alcohol? Or is it all the same?
Colleen Freeland (09:20)
Well, there is there is a line, but it's a self-generated line. So alcoholic is a label, and I the way you identify yourself is then what aligns your beliefs, your actions, all of your behaviors, your thoughts, your feelings. You don't do anything that you don't see yourself as somebody who would do that. So a adopting the alcoholic label at first.
Can be a safety net. And there are people who should adopt it. You're an alcoholic, stay away from it, but that creates safety, right? And but it also backfires for a lot of people. 90% of people who start the year sober don't end it that way. And so, like my approach is more about learning how to trust yourself to know what you need in this moment.
As opposed to sticking a label on yourself that you have to identify as for the rest of your life. You know, like Brad Pitt just was sober seven years and now he's coming out and as he's reintroduced alcohol. And everybody in the sober industry is just like, you know, he's hurting people, he's giving people permission. No, he's not an alcoholic. alcoholic is a self-defined label. You know, there are people who who process alcohol differently, just like there are people who are more.
Inclined
to get type 2 diabetes from sugar, where some people eat a lot of sugar and they don't get diabetes. You know, so there are certainly genetic factors that influence your drug of choice. But the bottom line is the biggest predictor of somebody over drinking in the future is the belief that they're one of those people, air quotes are on that, who can't control themselves. In which case, identifying that way.
In the future predicts binge drinking. So coming out as sober. And that's why it kind of becomes a hamster wheel for people who do seek treatment because now they're identifying as somebody who can't control themselves. And then they have one drink and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas I do the work to identify, I'm I identify as a less is more person. I identify as a woman who learns from her mistakes. I identify as a woman who takes care of herself and who allows my needs to change.
So the alcoholic label is a story you're telling yourself that may serve a purpose and it can be positive and it can also create problems.
Natalie Tysdal (11:45)
Yeah, but the but do you think there are some people who they just don't know how to put that label on themselves? And I think this is probably where you help people where they think, I'm fine. It's just fun to have a glass of wine. But then what they don't realize is it's not just one that you know, they they they label themselves as just fine or they label themselves as a casual drinker, but it's actually a lot more than that and it's not seeing that.
Colleen Freeland (12:09)
Here's the thing. If it truly isn't a problem, then you're not asking the question. You know, somebody who's maybe a simoliaire or, you know, lives on a beach, like if it's not a problem, nobody gets to define a problem for you. It's a neutral circumstance. How much you do or don't drink is just a fact, and there's
Natalie Tysdal (12:28)
And
Colleen Freeland (12:29)
consequences and results. So that's where the the problem is subjective.
Is it causing problems in your life? And I know for myself the the reality is if you're asking the question if this is a problem, you already know the answer. Something's out of balance.
Natalie Tysdal (12:46)
Mm-hmm. That's a that's a really good point.
But I guess that that's where I was going with that is I think l often, very often, people don't want to admit they have a problem and it takes other people to see it. So if you're saying, I'm just having one glass, but your tea you're you know, your your glass is actually three glasses in a great big glass.
Colleen Freeland (13:06)
Yeah. Yeah. It and and that's where we get into relationships and it's helpful to maybe it's not a problem, but even there I would poach somebody if somebody else's drinking is also not your problem. Like if you're in a relationship and there's a lack of boundaries or you're putting up with stuff, like it's not their drinking that needs to change. It's your tolerance or your allowance or your lack of boundaries. You know, there's
I'm
very much about personal accountability. And thinking that you're stuck because of how much somebody else drinks, you need to take your power back, you know, and that can be hard dis hard decisions, hard lines in a relationship, but someone else's drinking is never, unless you're a child, of course, but in terms of two functional adults in a relationship, you know, thinking that someone else needs to change their drinking so you can feel better.
Is a slippery slope to codependency.
Natalie Tysdal (14:03)
That's
that's that's probably a another part to to this conversation. I mean we're talking a lot about accountability and self-accountability and being honest with yourself, how many times a week are you drinking, how much are you drinking, which I want to go back to that, like when you know you know when you're drinking alone or if it's multiple times a week, like when when is that something you should go, I need to wake up here.
or you're worried about your mom or your dad, but say it's your husband, and it does directly affect you from it's every night and things aren't getting done or, you know, outside of abuse or things like that. But it's it's starting to affect you. That that's a different dynamic and and that's a difficult thing to deal with when you see it in someone else, but you can't really do anything about it.
Colleen Freeland (14:49)
I guess I would I would say there's always something you can do. And the idea that I have to put up with this or I don't have a choice, that is very disempowering. The reality is that the definition of a boundary, like, you know, one person might say, I would like for you to not drink during the week, or I would like you to only have two drinks, or I would only like you to have beer, not liquor. Like if you could do that, but there's a difference between a boundary and a request.
You can request somebody alter their behavior to make things more comfortable or palatable for you. But a boundary is where you define what your behavior is going to be in the event of. So, you know, if you are drinking more than two, I'm not going to stay at the event with you, or I'm not going to get in the car with you. Like you always have control over what you do. You can't control what some how much somebody else drinks.
Natalie Tysdal (15:44)
Yeah, so setting that boundary and and pre thinking it probably when it starts to become a problem. You're not I find, and at least when it comes to this issue or anything else, having pre thought what you would do versus how do I deal with something in the moment? It's really hard.
Colleen Freeland (15:59)
It is, it is. But you know, I'd like to go back and answer the question that you asked about how someone knows
if
Natalie Tysdal (16:06)
Yeah.
Colleen Freeland (16:07)
if so alcohol is reinforcing in the brain in two different ways. There's positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is when alcohol is adding to an already pleasurable event. It is a paired glass of wine with a delicious five-course meal.
It is champagne at the wedding where you're toasting and it's social. You could do without it, but it's kind of like a cherry on top. You don't need it, you might want it, but if somebody said you can't have it, then you're already enjoying yourself. Here's what happened in my brain where alcohol use disorder took over. I know the exact moment where there was a neurological shift. And I had just gotten home from spring break, four little kids, 15-hour drive home from Florida.
And then, you know, I have to get them all into school the next day. And I stayed up that night because I didn't want to wake up on Monday to a mess. And while I was unpacking the car, there was left over gray goose and cranberry juice. And I thought, mm, I know how this could be more fun. I didn't get drunk that night. I wasn't hungover the next day. I stayed up and powered through the laundry, got everything done, and landed on Monday morning ahead of the game. But something shifted that night.
In my brain with my relationship with alcohol, I wasn't using alcohol to add to an already pleasurable event. I was using it to tolerate a negative, stressful, I was using it to reduce the pain of what I was doing, which was ignoring my body that it was bedtime and I was tired because my brain was like, we can't wake up to all this laundry. I don't want to do that. And so when you start using alcohol to
Tolerate, you know, to stay longer at the party you don't want to be at, to sit through the holidays with one more stupid political conversation you don't want to have, to force yourself to be in an environment that isn't fun for you, that is when dependency takes hold, because that's when alcohol, your brain learns that alcohol makes a bad situation a little less bad, a little more tolerable. That's when it becomes a coping mechanism, and that's the slippery slope.
Natalie Tysdal (18:18)
Wow, that's really powerful to be able to think, am I doing this to enhance or am I doing this to tolerate? Why okay, so let me push back on that just a little bit. Why is it so bad to to to have a drink
Colleen Freeland (18:32)
Perfect.
Natalie Tysdal (18:32)
to tolerate one bad situation?
Colleen Freeland (18:35)
Okay, it's not bad, but it is the how the habit forms. So many of my clients, it's not even how much they drink that is bothering them, it's how much they think about alcohol. There's a back and forth, am I, am I not? Did I, how much are other people drinking? And I call the thinking about alcohol, you know, we might refer to them as intrusive thoughts, but I call them alcohol commercials. So your brain's always trying to help you solve a problem.
And if you get into the habit of using alcohol to solve the stress problem, then every time you're experiencing f stress, your brain plays an alcohol commercial. You know, and it might be 10 o'clock in the morning and you're at work and you're not gonna drink at work, but your brain's like, as soon as we get home, I'm gonna have that Chardonnay. So your brain's always trying to help you solve. All of your problems are emotional. You know, you're trying to solve for a feeling. And so just thinking about having a drink later.
relieve some of the pressure. Okay, there's a reward at the end of my day. And so the more you use alcohol to tolerate difficult situations, the more your brain will suggest that. The more you think about it, the more tempting it is. And the the more your other coping mechanisms start to atrophy. You know, why would you go to the gym after work? Because that that bottle of wine's just waiting. And it's it's very much like the algorithm on social media. The more you click
Natalie Tysdal (20:00)
I was just
thinking the exact same thing. I had this algorithm in my head of yes, you're gonna get more dog videos.
Colleen Freeland (20:03)
Yeah. The more you click on the dog videos on Facebook, the more
you think Facebook is all about dog videos. The more you
Natalie Tysdal (20:11)
Yes, yeah.
Colleen Freeland (20:12)
choose alcohol to de stress, the more you think that alcohol is necessary to de stress. I mean, that's habit formation in the brain.
Natalie Tysdal (20:21)
Wow. And so replacing it with other things means you're changing that algorithm. You're gonna start getting more positive things or other ideas, just like our social media algorithm. Yeah.
Colleen Freeland (20:32)
Yeah, you have to reprogram
your your drop down, like you've gotten a default. If you're in the habit of drinking every day or on a regular basis, that's now your default. And that's the easiest habit. It's not hard to not drink. Like I said, you're not even doing anything. But now the work is building out the other options again, which is why one of the most powerful tools that I teach women is the delay, don't deny method. And so let's say you're in the habit of pouring a glass of wine as soon as you come home.
Well, just delay, don't deny. You can have that glass of wine, but take five minutes, 15 minutes to do something else. Take a walk, lay down on your bed. And there's two parts to it. It's not just delaying in terms of watching the clock. Okay, I said I'm not going to have a drink before 6:30 and it's 5 30, so I've got a white knuckle till then. It's actually making sure that whatever you're doing, you're actually enjoying it.
You're having a felt sense of connection, of it does feel good just to lay down on my bed or to you know go out and sit on my deck and look at the flowers. You have to retrain yourself to enjoy other things. And that is one experience at a time. So five minutes, 10 minutes goes a long way because you want to leave yourself wanting more. So the delay don't deny method, you know, you just say, All right, I'm gonna skip the first round, I'm gonna have a non-alcoholic beverage or a glass of water.
I'm
just gonna decompress. That's part one. And the second one is I'm going to enjoy, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look for evidence that this is actually helping and soothing. And then you don't have to make it a full night. You know, I work with often daily drinkers, and the idea of going the whole night, it's like, no, we're just gonna begin to build out those neural pathways that you have other options, and you're learning and expanding those other options because.
You probably knew them before. We just have to re reopen those neural pathways.
Natalie Tysdal (22:32)
Yeah. So you're working with women who aren't trying to just cut it off. They're not like I need to stop drinking. And you think there are ways that you can delay and you can change your relationship without completely cutting it out.
Colleen Freeland (22:49)
Yeah, there's no one right path. You know, like I shared, I did do a period of sobriety and I learned so much. I also learned it's not about the alcohol. You know, like I said in the beginning, most women want to drink less so they can be more productive. Wrong goal, sister. They're you're drinking because you
are so productive and you don't know how to shut your brain off. You sit down for five minutes and you start thinking about everything that you could still be doing or didn't get done or need to do tomorrow. You don't know how to just be and rest and relax.
Natalie Tysdal (23:23)
Are you able to just have a glass of wine with dinner and that works because you've trained yourself and your brain?
Colleen Freeland (23:29)
Not only am I able to do that, I have no desire. That's the mindful drinking component, is okay, so for me, I learned to drink in a frat house. So I was trained to think more alcohol equals more fun. Nobody ever teaches, at least in America, us to drink like a grown-up, right? So we're sneaking it, we're getting as much as we can. And then those habits kind of they follow us into adulthood, and a lot of people self-correct.
I just wasn't one of them. And so I always tended to drink more than I should because I was just operating on a lot of stupid beliefs. And that's where, like in my program, we do a mindful drinking experience where we get together and we have one drink and then we switch to non-alcoholic. Cause for my women, that's often the hardest. Once they have that first one, it's kind of a slippery slope. You know, they're gonna have two, three, finish the bottle. And they don't, they feel like stopping is hard.
When you plug your brain back into your body, there's a 0% chance your body actually likes drinking to the point of being numb and dumb. Alcohol is a biphasic drug. Small amounts, large amounts have opposite effects. Below the 0.055 blood alcohol line is that cozy, warm, buzzy feeling that you want. But your buzz is like a bucket. Once it's full, it's full. And then what if you keep drinking, the negative side effects start to compound.
Because alcohol is a depressant, slowing the central nervous system. So your brain has to release stimulants like cortisol and adrenaline. So you don't get so relaxed, you forget to breathe. Once you begin to experience the difference between a buzz and being intoxicated, you'll realize you don't want, you actually prefer drinking in moderation. Like you have you just have to learn how to drink like a grown-up. Like that's what I do. I teach people how to drink in a way that adds pleasure.
without overdoing it because it doesn't feel good to overdo it.
Natalie Tysdal (25:30)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. There's that's such good points. Well, I've I've learned a lot, but I I wanna be sure that we are giving women a way to walk away from this today with some easy things to start right away. Like they might already be listening to this and thinking, I was gonna go home and and open that bottle of wine, but now I give them a couple of actionable things. I the delay method I think is a one. That's a great one. Like just wait, do something else first. Mm-hmm.
Colleen Freeland (25:57)
Delay, don't deny. And then the
other thing I would do is go to the opposite end. So instead of trying willpower at six o'clock at night, this begins in the morning. This begins with how you start your day. This begins with keeping don't check your phone. Delay, don't deny your stupid phone in the morning. Like set an emotional intention of peace or ease or whatever you want to walk through your day and prime your nervous system.
That way in the morning, your brain will help you get whatever you think you want. And high achieving women think they want to get everything done so that eventually they can relax. And they go through their day like a bat out of hell trying to get. And if you realize that what I really want is to feel grounded and clear, I don't want to operate in that sense of urgency all the time where you know my brain is three steps ahead of my body and my
My I'm three drinks ahead of myself in my here and now. So the first thing I would recommend is starting your day with 10 to 15 minutes of not allowing yourself to be bombarded by agenda and noise and just connecting with a felt sense of peace. And then do that again at lunch. Actually turn off your phone, walk away from your desk, chew and eat your food, stay present.
Because the solution to drinking is not willpower, it's mindfulness. So the more you can increase mindfulness throughout the day, the more likely it is you're going to drink like somebody who is mindful in the evening.
Natalie Tysdal (27:36)
Yeah.
Colleen Freeland (27:37)
You cannot be crazy and overdrive all day long and expect yourself to drink like a Zen master or not need to drink at all. Like that's the solution. It's upstream.
Natalie Tysdal (27:49)
Yeah, I that boy, that's powerful and so, so true. Because we are just so used to being busy. And especially there I know there are a lot of women who maybe their kids have gone off to college or kids are now back in school and they have a little bit more breathing room and they don't know what to do with it.
Because they are so used to being so busy that they're I
Colleen Freeland (28:05)
Exactly. Exactly. Right.
Natalie Tysdal (28:10)
I I need a list. And it's
Colleen Freeland (28:12)
Yeah.
Natalie Tysdal (28:13)
it's it's a programming issue. We've programmed ourselves and the world has programmed us to be that way.
Colleen Freeland (28:19)
And we need to normalize taking the time and transitions of life. I mean, I would say every five years, but let's go every five days, you know, checking back in with yourself. You know, do I need anything? I'm not giving myself. Am I still wanting what it is I'm doing? Most of us in our 20s and 30s program our GPS to where we're supposed to land at 60. And we don't ever stop to check in to see is that what I still want? Have my values changed? Have my needs changed?
You spoke in before we got started about hormones and sleep and stress. You know, the way my body reacts to alcohol is so different. You know, and I have to be so much more aware and mindful because it I can't just blow I can't keep running, shooting myself in the foot every day and running through my life like it's a marathon and not paying attention. So we have
Natalie Tysdal (29:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen Freeland (29:10)
to normalize checking in with ourselves. And as mothers who raise kids, we forgot a long time ago.
That our needs actually matter.
Natalie Tysdal (29:20)
It's so true. We're so used to taking care of our husbands and our kids and people at work and we don't know how to take care of ourselves. That
Colleen Freeland (29:30)
Yeah.
Natalie Tysdal (29:30)
that's come last. I mean, sure, we might go for a massage or go work out, but to really stop and say, what do I need right now? That can be hard
Colleen Freeland (29:38)
Yeah. Yeah.
Natalie Tysdal (29:40)
to do when you're not used to doing that.
Colleen Freeland (29:42)
And that's the skill. That's the skill you have to build. You know, all needs exist in the present moment, which is weird. Cause like if you said, what do I need? I need a bag of money. I need my house to sell. I need my dog
Natalie Tysdal (29:53)
Okay.
Colleen Freeland (29:53)
to be potty trained. No, no, no, no. You have a physical human body. Think about needs like you would the needs of a two-year-old. You need more or less stimulation, more or less sleep, more or less food, you know, more or less connection.
Natalie Tysdal (30:07)
Yeah.
Colleen Freeland (30:08)
All
needs can be met right now. And as women, we have gotten so used to deferring our needs till the end of the day, until the kids go off to college, until the kid like school is out. And we go for long periods of time. Over drinking is not a sign of self indulgence in in our population of women. It's a sign of self self neglect. It's a symptom
Natalie Tysdal (30:29)
Yeah.
Colleen Freeland (30:30)
that you are running on a deficit and that you need to tune in. And it's it's not easy, but it's pretty simple.
Natalie Tysdal (30:37)
Yeah, yeah. Colleen, thank you so much. So much great information. And I am going to link your your website, your information in the show notes because I know there are people who are listening thinking, I need a coach for this. It would be really helpful to have someone right beside me helping me through this. Not that they might be alcoholics or just b coaching through it, just being able to do this in a r a responsible, healthy way.
Colleen Freeland (31:05)
Yeah, definitely.
Natalie Tysdal (31:06)
Yeah.
Well I appreciate you. Thank you so much for your time today.
Colleen Freeland (31:09)
Thank you, Natalie.
