First show of the New Year! Lindsay overthinks working her way out of a rut, her relationship with alcohol, and Dry January.
In this episode, grab tips on:
Working yourself out of a rut
Drinking less
How to tackle Dry January & Overthink your own addictive behaviors
Let me put this right here because I completely misquote it in the podcast: From Wikipedia.
"Dry January is a campaign delivered by Alcohol Change UK where people sign up to abstain from alcohol for the month of January. The term "Dry January" is a registered trademark with Alcohol Change UK and was first registered in 2014."
More overthinking? Listen next to: Alcoholism, sobriety, recovery and Ryan's trip to Peru.
Transcript
Welcome to overthinking in your underwear.
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I'm Lindsay and this week we are overthinking a lot of things like just look at the title because I lumped this into a lot of things for the new year.
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If you have just made your way to my podcast, thank you.
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I appreciate it so much.
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Let me tell you a little bit about it.
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This is a self-help podcast that doesn't take itself too seriously is what I like to say.
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I launched a book last year about this time, Overthinking in Your Underwear, and this kind of just continues the conversation with you guys.
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So the book is a self-help podcast that kind of takes you through my personal growth journey.
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And that's what I'm continuing to do here, just kind of sharing personal stories and personal advice in a way that's easy and accessible, not obsessible, but maybe.
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What I like to say is outside of clinical talk and spiritual wackery, it's just kind of straightforward and to the
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So I hope you like it.
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You can go back and listen to some episodes from last year if this is your first time here or just let's roll now, you know.
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Occasionally I bring on experts or friends that I think have had some experience in whatever we're talking about.
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And sometimes it's just, you know, me rolling solo like today.
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So first of all, I just wanted to talk about a little bit of a rut I had.
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in the middle of December.
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So ruts are just getting down a little bit.
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And I wanted to talk about that because it happens to all of us.
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And what happened was I got sick in the middle of December.
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And for all of my chronic illness babes out there, I feel you.
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I have chronic migraines and with it comes a lot of fatigue and nausea.
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And sometimes I can't get out of bed for a long time.
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And it was about two weeks that I was down.
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And it can really get to you, you know, physically and emotionally when you feel like that.
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And I'm not asking for a pity party because I know people have.
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way bigger things than that.
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And I'm grateful that it's only what it is.
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But when you feel like that, sometimes what happens, and this is what happened to me, like the physical part starts to wane and you start to feel better.
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And then you're battling the emotional part, you know?
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you're battling the emotional part of, okay, I know I'm physically feeling better, but I feel really down now just because I'm trying to like wrap up my body again.
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Sometimes I think like some of the medicine that I take for my migraines gets me down too.
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So I had to like, I felt like,
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start from square one, maybe not square one, but go through a lot of those practices that I have talked to you guys about.
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I literally went back and listened to that seven steps to happiness that I shared with you guys.
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And I was like, okay, what do I need to do to get happy?
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In that, I say something that it
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I think is so important, which is build a foundation where happiness can find its footing.
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And that one is the most important.
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And it's really just like creating happiness habits.
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And I had to just remind myself, get up, go to yoga, eat good food, get good sleep, do these things, and you will feel better.
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And one thing I did that I think helped me was
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It was just a Monday, which Mondays are never good.
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And I said to myself, okay, do the things you know you need to do, those happiness habits.
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And by this time next week, you might feel bad for a week.
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Just don't overthink it.
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There's that word.
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Don't overthink it.
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But by this time next week, I guarantee you will be better.
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There's no way you're going to feel as bad as you feel now if you do those things.
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And I did.
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I got up and went to yoga, even though I didn't want to.
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I ate good food, even though you want a pizza when you feel like that.
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I was productive, all the things, right?
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All the things you know you need to be doing.
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I don't drink anymore.
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So it wasn't a matter of like, okay, don't drink.
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But if that is a place you are in where you're trying to pull out, I would say do not drink.
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Drinking is a depressant.
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So I did those things.
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And a week later, I am not saying that I was like at my all time best and feeling the happiest I've ever felt.
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But I was like, I moved the needle.
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I definitely moved the needle.
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And that was a great lesson on just the power we have, that we are in control and that our happiness habits work.
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And so I kind of just was like, OK, let's keep going.
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Let's keep doing this.
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And.
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Happy to report I'm much better, feeling good physically and emotionally.
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But I just wanted to share that with you to let you guys know we all get in ruts.
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We all get in low places, and we all have to kind of do a reset, whether it's like kicked off from a physical illness or an emotional thing from a breakup or something that happens within your family or a job setback.
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We all get in those places.
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And we have to just kind of start those happiness habits over again, whether it's exercising, doing a gratitude list, talking to ourselves in a positive way, eliminating things that bring us down, whether that's drinking every night and you go, well, why am I drinking every night when I know that I'm in a low place?
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Why am I adding something to myself that's making me feel worse?
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which kind of brings me to, um, the next topic of this podcast, which is dry January.
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So we are in that month of dry January.
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So I wanted to do a little topic about drinking, um, today.
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And if you've listened to this podcast, I talk about drinking a lot.
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I mean, you might say I'm obsessed with it.
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Dry January came about because it was a, I'm going to get this wrong.
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Cause I'm not looking it up right now.
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I just kind of know this fact.
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It was a campaign by.
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Like stop drinking UK or something.
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And their campaign was dry January, like go dry in January to get people to quit drinking less.
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It was like the British council of alcohol or whatever.
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Lots of times things kind of catch on.
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They kind of catch on in the culture and even spread over here to the United States.
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And we go, well, where did this come from?
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It kind of seems like it's something that's around all the time.
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And it was actually an advertising campaign.
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He was kind of saying dry January is great to remind people about the effects of alcohol, about the benefits of going dry.
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But at the same time, if you're just not drinking in January and then saving up, saving up, saving up, and you can't wait to go crazy in February.
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it's really not doing you any good and it's you know you really are you know drinking just as much the other 11 months of the year and you're sitting there in january thinking about all the things you're going to drink in february
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It's really not that great.
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If you're taking this month to kind of reset and think about how you're going to mindfully drink the rest of the year, if you're thinking about maybe resetting and revising your relationship with alcohol, great.
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That's really, I think, I'm sure what the British Council of Alcohol had intended when they started this, not that people would take a break and then, you know, have a go all out wild February.
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Um, so to back up just a little bit, to tell you a little bit about my relationship with alcohol.
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I am one of those people that is just not a good drinker.
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I do not think I'm an alcoholic per se, but I am a bad drinker.
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And I say this quote a lot because I thought it was really poignant.
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I was having a conversation with my therapist years ago, and I was telling her yet another story about, well –
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I blacked out and then I did this and it wasn't great.
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And I was like, I mean, you know, I drink all the time.
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It's not like I go home and drink a bottle of wine every night.
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I'm not a daily drinker.
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I'm clearly not an alcoholic.
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And she said, you can have a problem with alcohol and not be an alcoholic.
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I was like, and that hit me, and that hit me really hard, that statement, because I was like, I do have a problem with alcohol.
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but I'm not an alcoholic.
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And I had always kind of equated all of the things you need to be an alcoholic.
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You need to have, do you need to have, do you need to drink a six pack a day?
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Do you need to drink alone?
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Do you need to, you know, have alcohol affect your job and affect your relationships?
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Do you need to have all of this like checklist that we see all the time to be considered quote, unquote, an alcoholic and have to give up drinking.
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And no, that's not true.
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You can just have a problematic drinking.
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You can just have a problem with alcohol.
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You can just be not a good drinker and decide this doesn't suit my life.
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This isn't who I want to be.
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This does not make me the best version of who I want to be and decide that you don't want it in your life anymore.
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And that's where I came to with it was I have a problem with alcohol.
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And if there's something that I have a problem with, I do not want it in my life anymore.
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So I had kind of gone through my life and my, you know, 18 to 30 years old drinking, you know, at the same pattern and at the same rate I saw the people around me.
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My best friend who's been on this podcast is four inches taller than me, five inches taller than me, six inches taller than me.
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She's a lot taller than me.
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She's a lot taller than me.
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I was always trying to drink as much as she could drink, as much as she drank, because I really didn't understand when we were younger.
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I didn't understand that she was metabolizing things differently than me.
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Even without height and weight, genetically, you can just metabolize alcohol differently.
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And I think I just metabolized it differently and didn't handle alcohol well.
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It was not something that I could handle.
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I'd have a drink and I could immediately feel it.
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It made me feel bad.
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It gave me headaches.
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I had hangovers.
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I mean, I don't even know why I ever drank, okay?
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It was really just something that did not suit my life.
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I would black out.
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I would feel really bad about myself the next day.
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I would wonder what I said.
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I would wonder what I did.
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I would put myself in harm's way.
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There's a story that I have told on the podcast about I passed out in a cab.
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The next day, I didn't know how I got to my apartment.
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And I found out later that the cab driver and a neighbor had to walk me to my apartment, essentially.
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And that really, you know, all turned out well.
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But what really scared me was that I was in such a state that I was incapacitated in the back of a cab and I did not know how to get myself home.
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And that's a really scary thing to be at a place to put yourself in as a young woman.
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So that really scared, I really scared my, I really scared myself sober.
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I'll tell you.
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Um, I realized it just was not for me.
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Okay.
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So I got to the place in my thirties that I just realized,
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you know, I think I tried maybe to do, I'm going to have a drink here or a drink there.
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And I'll be honest, I would go out for happy hour and I'd be like, I'm going to have one drink.
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I'm going to have one drink.
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And I was just never someone that could have one drink.
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I would have two drinks that would turn to five drinks and it would just, it would end up at the same place that I was before.
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And I remember sitting there and telling myself, okay, you can go out tonight and have one drink.
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You can have one drink.
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But if that one drinks turns into four drinks and you're hungover tomorrow,
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You can't have any.
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Like it's, this is a trust exercise that you have with yourself.
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And that's something that I talk about a lot too, that like self-trust is the most important trust you have in your life.
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It is the most important thing you have in your life.
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And if you can't trust yourself, you don't have anything.
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And it really affects your self-worth.
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And I didn't trust myself for a long time.
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And I can't tell you how badly I felt about myself.
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The feeling of,
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I'm going to go out and have one drink.
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And I knew I was lying to myself.
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And I did not trust myself that that one drink wasn't going to turn into four.
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That was a horrible feeling.
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It was a horrible feeling not to trust yourself.
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And I went through that for a while.
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So I said that you could have a one drink.
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And then I knew I was lying.
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I knew I was lying.
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I knew I couldn't trust the most important person in my life, which was me.
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And I go out.
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and I'd have one drink, and the one drink would turn into four.
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And the next morning, I'd wake up, and I'd have a horrible hangover.
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I just had these horrible hangovers.
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And like I say in the book, the worst part wasn't
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the physical feeling, it was the emotional feeling that I had broken a promise to myself.
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That was a horrible feeling that I couldn't trust myself.
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And it actually seeps into every other part of your life when you think, well,
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If you go out with a guy and you say, well, I'm not going to call him back, you don't really trust yourself.
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Your word means nothing.
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You think, well, I don't trust myself about the drinking.
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I don't trust myself not to text him back if I say I'm not going to text him back.
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I have a work project.
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I say I'm going to get it done on by Friday.
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Well, I don't know.
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Am I going to do that?
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I'm not a trustworthy person.
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I am not a trustworthy person when it comes to me getting
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when it comes to me relying on myself and your self-trust, I cannot even tell you how important it is.
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And it takes time.
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It takes time to build that up and earn it back once you've broken it.
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So after I realized, I finally got to the point, when I finally got to the point where I said,
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Clearly the one, clearly this just having one drink doesn't work.
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Clearly you're not a trustworthy person.
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Clearly this doesn't, clearly your word means nothing.
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You're going to have to go, you're going to have to go nothing.
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Um, I, I did and I said, okay, I'm, I'm done.
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I'm done with this.
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So I quit drinking and at first it was hard.
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But it was hard because situationally,
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drinking alcohol is so woven into the fabric of our lives and our society, as you guys all know.
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I mean, everyone says, let's go grab a drink.
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Do you want to have a drink?
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I mean, whether in a dating situation, people want to have a drink, let's have a drink.
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If in a girlfriend situation, let's have a glass of wine.
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Let's have a wine night.
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Let's get, let's get drinks.
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And it's
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So awkward, I'll just say it's so awkward to not drink in a society that holds alcohol up as hero.
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It is very, very awkward.
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So at the beginning, I didn't at the beginning, I didn't know what to do.
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I'll be honest.
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You go out to happy hours and I say this in the book.
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In the beginning, you have to tell every person you ever happyed your hour with that you don't drink anymore.
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Every person that you used to, I mean, we all have those party friends.
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We all have those.
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We all have those friends that we used to go out and drink with and used to stay up late and order another bottle and get another round.
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We all have those friends.
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As great as your friends are, I think they're taken aback.
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And I understand why that's hard for them.
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And they kind of go, oh, okay.
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All right.
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And at first, it's very hard.
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And eventually...
0:17:44.925 --> 0:17:45.986
Eventually they get it.
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And I think at first they don't really believe you.
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They don't really trust you because you know what?
0:17:51.229 --> 0:17:52.530
You don't really trust yourself.
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And then they get it.
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They get that you really are going to order water or deny the drink or just have a Diet Coke.
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And before the waiter can even give you the wine list, they say, she just doesn't drink.
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And sitting through those social situations and those happy hours, they're itchy.
0:18:11.861 --> 0:18:14.263
I have to tell you, it's itchy at first.
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And you're like...
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I don't know what to do with my hands.
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I don't know what to do.
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Like, this is very weird.
0:18:23.471 --> 0:18:24.151
It's awkward.
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Now I will, let me just tell you now, I don't find it awkward anymore.
0:18:29.396 --> 0:18:31.378
A few years later, I don't find it awkward.
0:18:31.418 --> 0:18:32.719
I always order a Sprite.
0:18:33.259 --> 0:18:37.123
I kind of like nurse the Sprite or I have a Diet Coke.
0:18:37.543 --> 0:18:40.566
And those aren't things I normally drink, like just in my everyday life.
0:18:41.808 --> 0:18:43.690
So they're kind of fun, I guess.
0:18:44.932 --> 0:18:46.453
I love to have an appetizer.
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So I'm just like, those are my treats and I'm eating my appetizer.
0:18:51.839 --> 0:18:54.482
I'm drinking my drinks.
0:18:54.963 --> 0:19:00.249
I'm drinking my sugary drinks while my friends are having their cocktails.
0:19:00.449 --> 0:19:01.930
And that's fine for me.
0:19:02.031 --> 0:19:02.891
And I don't feel...
0:19:04.643 --> 0:19:06.145
I don't feel awkward about it.
0:19:06.405 --> 0:19:12.431
Now, I'm also at an age where happy hour really is a few hours.
0:19:13.512 --> 0:19:17.275
If it was longer than that, I'm not going out till two in the morning with anyone.
0:19:17.335 --> 0:19:21.439
I'm not staying up till, I'm not going, I'm not bar hopping and going out till midnight.
0:19:21.499 --> 0:19:22.080
So if you're at
0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:43.894
you know, if you're 25 and you're trying to stop drinking, I have a lot more sympathy for that because I have a lot of sympathy for you because I understand that, you know, your friends will start happy hour and then they want to go to the next bar and they want to go to the next bar and they go to late night bars and they want to go to after bars and keeping that momentum and keeping that energy is really, really hard.
0:19:44.915 --> 0:19:46.656
Whereas I'm at the age where
0:19:47.544 --> 0:19:51.848
My friends and I go to happy hour or dinner, and it's a few hours.
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And they want to go home.
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They have families.
0:19:55.612 --> 0:19:57.034
They have work the next day.
0:19:57.154 --> 0:19:58.015
We're all busy.
0:19:58.275 --> 0:19:59.897
We are all in our 40s.
0:20:00.978 --> 0:20:04.602
No one's staying out until 2 in the morning, no matter if they're having cocktails or not.
0:20:04.678 --> 0:20:08.341
But if you are younger, I understand how that's so hard.
0:20:08.501 --> 0:20:10.783
And what I will tell you if you are younger,
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Go to the happy hour.
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Go to the party.
0:20:13.632 --> 0:20:18.034
When it gets to be 11 o'clock and your friends are staying out till 2, go home.
0:20:18.514 --> 0:20:25.857
I mean, if you want to stay out and you have fun being sober and dancing till 2 in the morning and it's no problem, absolutely do it.
0:20:26.418 --> 0:20:29.939
But if it's 11 o'clock and it's painful, go home.
0:20:30.239 --> 0:20:31.660
You're not going to miss anything.
0:20:31.845 --> 0:20:33.716
If you've been someone who's drank, and I'll tell you as someone who's drinking, no one really even remembers.
0:20:34.036 --> 0:20:35.137
No one is going to remember.
0:20:35.217 --> 0:20:41.321
I mean, I've been in those situations and I've ducked out and my friends have said the next day, they think I'm there.
0:20:41.542 --> 0:20:42.843
They go, oh, do you remember this?
0:20:43.123 --> 0:20:44.204
Oh, were you there for this?
0:20:44.464 --> 0:20:47.046
Oh, did you do this?
0:20:47.086 --> 0:20:48.126
Did you go with us there?
0:20:48.166 --> 0:20:49.507
Did you go with us to the next bar?
0:20:49.547 --> 0:20:51.569
And I'm like, I went home at 11.
0:20:52.149 --> 0:20:53.290
They don't even remember.
0:20:53.530 --> 0:20:54.251
Like, don't.
0:20:55.057 --> 0:20:58.199
make yourself think you have to stay up for your friend's blackout.
0:20:58.339 --> 0:20:58.879
You don't.
0:20:59.539 --> 0:21:00.320
Go home at 11.
0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.622
When you're ready to go home, it's completely fine, right?
0:21:04.902 --> 0:21:05.942
You don't have to stay up.
0:21:06.238 --> 0:21:14.943
And I will say the quitting of the drinking is one of the best, if not the best thing I have done for myself.
0:21:15.304 --> 0:21:16.044
It really is.
0:21:16.644 --> 0:21:17.825
If you are struggling with...
0:21:19.454 --> 0:21:30.706
anxiety or depression, self-worth, and you're drinking too much, it is the one thing you can do to really shift things.
0:21:31.226 --> 0:21:32.668
I can't emphasize it enough.
0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:41.108
I don't mean to get on a soapbox, but I just want people to know it's such the secret sauce that you can do to really change things.
0:21:41.308 --> 0:21:42.108
It really can.
0:21:42.149 --> 0:21:43.430
I mean, it gives you clarity.
0:21:43.450 --> 0:21:46.712
It gives you, it alleviates depression.
0:21:46.733 --> 0:21:50.376
Oh, I held up my thumb and it did a thumbs up.
0:21:50.536 --> 0:21:51.577
How strange.
0:21:51.857 --> 0:21:52.544
Okay.
0:21:52.544 --> 0:21:56.451
And for me, you know, you make all these mistakes when you're, for me, someone who's like an overthinker, like a big time overthinker.
0:21:56.471 --> 0:22:02.136
And when you're drunk, you do these things that are outside yourself and you feel bad and
0:22:02.716 --> 0:22:25.705
you said something stupid or you hook up with a guy that you shouldn't and then the next day you're beating the next week you're beating yourself up you feel terrible you're overthinking how you acted it takes so much time and so much effort to get yourself back on the right path like you're always correcting for the mistakes you made on the weekend how can you ever get yourself
0:22:26.265 --> 0:22:29.893
on the right path if you're always correcting for the mistakes you made on the weekend.
0:22:30.294 --> 0:22:32.840
I mean, I just don't, it just, it doesn't work.
0:22:32.940 --> 0:22:33.622
It does not work.
0:22:34.729 --> 0:22:41.511
So I also think that the not drinking was such a crucial element to the self-trust.
0:22:42.111 --> 0:22:43.792
The self-trust took time.
0:22:44.752 --> 0:22:54.895
It took time for me to believe that I really wasn't going to drink when I went out to a happy hour or I had to go to a Christmas party or whatever it was.
0:22:55.255 --> 0:22:57.615
It took time for me to earn that trust.
0:22:58.075 --> 0:23:02.617
But with every kind of event or social gathering or whatever it was,
0:23:03.977 --> 0:23:07.883
I earned my trust back in little increments and elements, right?
0:23:08.384 --> 0:23:12.189
So I started to trust myself and that felt so good.
0:23:12.330 --> 0:23:18.278
And that did so much for my self-worth and it bled over to other elements of my life where I trusted myself.
0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:24.664
I knew my word had weight and I knew if I said I was going to do something, I was going to do it.
0:23:24.984 --> 0:23:36.191
And before I didn't know that, before I didn't believe that because I had lost so much, I had lost so much trust and I had lost so much credibility with myself.
0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:53.948
If you're trying to quit drinking or smoking or anything and any kind of addictive behavior, a little bit of advice that I can give is in the book I have, I always have like these exercises that go with things.
0:23:53.968 --> 0:23:59.091
So take a blank sheet of paper and write down at the top like
0:23:59.551 --> 0:24:00.172
quit drinking.
0:24:00.772 --> 0:24:05.736
And on the right side, write down everything you get from, from stopping drinking.
0:24:05.776 --> 0:24:07.037
What would you gain from it?
0:24:07.118 --> 0:24:07.778
What would you gain?
0:24:08.679 --> 0:24:12.962
Clear head, better sleep, more self-confidence.
0:24:13.543 --> 0:24:15.865
Maybe I would perform better at work.
0:24:16.125 --> 0:24:17.646
Maybe I could get to work earlier.
0:24:18.227 --> 0:24:19.648
Maybe I could start working out.
0:24:19.728 --> 0:24:21.029
Maybe I could work out better.
0:24:21.289 --> 0:24:22.910
Maybe I'd lose weight.
0:24:24.051 --> 0:24:25.472
Maybe I'd have less anxiety.
0:24:25.892 --> 0:24:32.755
And then on the other side, write what you would gain from keeping your behavior.
0:24:34.376 --> 0:24:36.156
Social situations are easier.
0:24:36.477 --> 0:24:38.677
I'd still have wine night with my friends.
0:24:39.335 --> 0:24:46.680
Uh, you know, just write down what you gain from quitting and what you gain from keeping it and then see how it, see how it weighs out.
0:24:47.320 --> 0:24:47.881
And you know what?
0:24:47.981 --> 0:24:51.483
Maybe wine night with your friends outweighs all the benefits.
0:24:52.296 --> 0:24:53.698
I'm not here to tell you anything.
0:24:53.718 --> 0:25:02.386
And you'll get to the point where one side weighs out the other and you'll decide what's best for you and your life.
0:25:02.927 --> 0:25:10.895
But I think kind of seeing that on paper can sometimes push you in one direction or another, or at least help you see the benefits.
0:25:11.796 --> 0:25:13.698
And I think when it comes to
0:25:15.487 --> 0:25:23.672
Addiction or drinking or behaviors that we all know, you know, we all know drinking is a bit of has its downsides.
0:25:25.516 --> 0:25:27.717
It's very personal.
0:25:27.777 --> 0:25:32.318
It's not like I drank through my 30s thinking, this is a great behavior.
0:25:32.398 --> 0:25:33.499
I should continue this.
0:25:33.539 --> 0:25:36.260
You just get to the point where you're like, enough is enough.
0:25:36.320 --> 0:25:37.400
I've had enough of this.
0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:39.221
I'm ready for something better.
0:25:39.241 --> 0:25:45.683
So it's all just very personal when you decide that you're done with something.
0:25:45.883 --> 0:25:47.944
It's the same with a partner, right?
0:25:48.024 --> 0:25:51.965
When you're done with a problematic partner, I'm done with this.
0:25:52.005 --> 0:25:53.486
My friends can tell me for years,
0:25:54.941 --> 0:26:13.875
that this is this should be over that this is enough that you that you're going to be better off but not until that moment that it really hits you that you've really reached your limit are you going to stop for yourself right so it's the same with drinking it's the same with smoking it's the same with whatever it is it's all so personal and you really can't do it for someone else you know um
0:26:13.875 --> 0:26:15.483
It really is just something that lives with you in your life and you have to figure out what's best for your life.
0:26:15.860 --> 0:26:18.505
So those are kind of my thoughts on alcohol and dry January.
0:26:18.565 --> 0:26:19.967
I'm sure I'll talk about alcohol again.
0:26:19.987 --> 0:26:20.848
I'm obsessed with it.
0:26:20.888 --> 0:26:21.248
Sorry.
0:26:21.268 --> 0:26:24.872
And thanks so much for overthinking with me this week.
0:26:24.913 --> 0:26:27.536
And until next time, wishing you all good thoughts.
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