If you’re high-functioning, capable, and holding a lot together, but quietly relying on alcohol or other coping habits to get through your days, this episode is for you.

I explore what happens when “it’s fine” actually isn’t, through a nervous system lens. You’ll learn why high-capacity women often use alcohol for relief, how stress and self-abandonment build over time, and why coping eventually stops working, even when life looks good from the outside.

This conversation is not about labels or rock bottom. It’s about understanding how chronic stress, productivity-as-worth, and nervous system dysregulation quietly shape behaviour and what your body is actually asking for instead.

In this episode, I cover:

• What it means to be a “high-functioning drinker”
• How alcohol becomes a nervous system permission slip
• The difference between coping and capacity
• Why stress drinking often escalates gradually
• How self-abandonment disguises itself as competence
• What supports regulation without white-knuckling

This episode is for women who are tired of surviving their own lives and ready to build relief, safety, and capacity, without forcing change.

Ways to continue the work:

🔁 Ongoing support: The Deliberate Practice — a steady rhythm of nervous system regulation, breathwork, and integration.

Free: The Complete Guide to Quitting Drinking .. a nervous-system-based guide for understanding cravings, stress, and stop/start cycles.

🧭 Personalized clarity: The Personal Power Map — a personalized nervous system and identity audit with a video walkthrough.

Explore everything at thedeliberateone.com
Connect on Instagram @thedeliberateone

If this episode supported you, you can buy me a coffee here

If you quit drinking and feel more emotional, anxious, or dysregulated instead of better, you’re not alone and nothing has gone wrong.

In this episode, I explains why quitting alcohol can initially feel harder, not easier, through a nervous system lens. You’ll learn how alcohol acts as a form of stress regulation, why emotions and anxiety often intensify after quitting, and what your body is actually asking for during this phase of change.

This conversation is especially for women who are alcohol-free or sober-curious and navigating the emotional aftermath, feeling raw, unsettled, or unsure why relief hasn’t arrived yet.

Inside this episode:

• Why quitting drinking can increase anxiety and emotional sensitivity
• How alcohol numbs the nervous system and what happens when it’s removed
• The difference between dysregulation and failure
• Why white-knuckling sobriety often backfires
• What actually supports nervous system healing after alcohol

This episode is not about willpower or labels. It’s about understanding your body, building safety without numbing, and learning how to support yourself through the middle chapter of change.

Ways to continue the work:

Free: The Complete Guide to Quitting Drinking .. a nervous-system-based guide for understanding cravings, stress, and stop/start cycles.

🤍 Community: She Walks Canada— an alcohol-free community for women navigating life after drinking.

🔁 Ongoing support: The Deliberate Practice — a steady rhythm of nervous system regulation, breathwork, and integration.

🧭 Personalized clarity: The Personal Power Map — a personalized nervous system and identity audit with a video walkthrough.

Explore everything at thedeliberateone.com
Connect on Instagram @thedeliberateone

If this episode supported you, you can buy me a coffee here

Drinking, stress, and the nervous system’s role in the stop/start cycle...

On January 1, 2019, I told myself I was done drinking.

By January 4, I said fuck it and drank.

In this episode, I share the truth about the year my drinking quietly became a problem I couldn’t ignore, not through a dramatic rock bottom, but through a slow erosion of self-trust, safety, and standards.

I talk honestly about drinking every night, blackouts, and making decisions I wouldn’t make sober. About grief, stress, and why willpower alone kept me stuck in a stop/start cycle for years. And about the moment I realized alcohol wasn’t the real craving, relief was.

This conversation isn’t just about drinking.

It’s about why change is so hard to sustain, even when we want it bad.

I explore:

• Why the stop/start cycle is so common, especially for women
• How stress and the nervous system shape our capacity for change
• Why we default to comfort and familiarity, even when it hurts
• Why “just don’t drink” fails without regulation and support
• What actually changed when I quit drinking in January 2020, and why it finally held

Our nervous systems are wired for survival, not success.
So real change doesn’t come from trying harder, it comes from feeling safe enough to stay.

If you’re navigating change of any kind, drinking, boundaries, relationships, work, or rest, this episode is an invitation to understand yourself with more compassion and less blame.

Ways to continue the work:

🔁 Ongoing support: The Deliberate Practice — a steady rhythm of nervous system regulation, breathwork, and integration.

Free: The Complete Guide to Quitting Drinking .. a nervous-system-based guide for understanding cravings, stress, and stop/start cycles.

🧭 Personalized clarity: The Personal Power Map — a personalized nervous system and identity audit with a video walkthrough.

Explore everything at thedeliberateone.com
Connect on Instagram @thedeliberateone

If this episode supported you, you can buy me a coffee here