What if you could step off the rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows? What if the pain that comes with taking everything personally could taper and largely disappear? THAT’S the promise of emotional sobriety, and Veronica Valli is one of the most steady, sane, helpful voices when it comes to that murky topic. Veronica is a woman in long-term recovery, a therapist, a sobriety coach, founder of the Soberful program, a co-host of the Soberful podcast, and the author of three books, the most recent of which, Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol, will be published on January 25. On this episode of TMST, we get into how emotional sobriety does, and doesn’t, relate to abstinence from substance or process addictions. What emotional sobriety actually means, why it’s something everyone (not just people in recovery) has to do if they want healthy relationships, because no matter what, “the hardest thing any human being has to do is deal with other people.” Veronica’s site: https://www.veronicavalli.com/ The Soberful podcast: https://soberful.com/ Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2loOl3NNSDWcCu4P2eiYJL?si=8037f210931b423d&nd=1 Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
Veronica Valli on The Promise of Emotional Sobriety
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. If you're listening to this, you're not hearing the complete unedited version of this conversation. If you want in on that, you can get it by becoming a TMST Plus member. Just head over to our website at tmstpod.com and click support. All right. Enjoy this.
[00:00:37] Hey everyone. It's Laura. Okay. So who has heard or said the phrase? You know, it's not always about you. Uh, that kind of hypersensitivity and let's be honest, self absorbed worldview is so common. I fall into it far more often than I'd like to admit. Today I'm talking to Veronica Valli about what's underneath the perception that everything in life is personal, and why it's not only a painful way to live but how it causes a hell of a lot of unnecessary drama in our lives.
[00:01:18] In addition to being a dear friend, Veronica is a woman in long-term recovery, a therapist, a sobriety coach, founder of the Soberful program, a host of the Soberful podcast, and the author of three books. The most recent of which is, “Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol” which will be published on January 25th in the new year.
[00:01:47] For me, Veronica has been one of the most steady, sane, helpful voices when it comes to that murky topic of emotional sobriety. So in the conversation, we get into how emotional sobriety does and doesn't relate to abstinence from substance or process addictions, what emotional sobriety actually means, and why it's something everyone has to do, not just people in recovery, if they want healthy relationships because no matter what, as Veronica says, the hardest thing any human being has to do is deal with other people. Veronica has genuine encouragement to share about the comfort and relief that comes from living an integrated life. And as happens every time we talk after this conversation, I felt more grounded, clear, and hopeful. I hope you enjoy it.
[00:02:56] It's so good to see you.
[00:02:58] Veronica Valli: It's so good to see you and be connected.
[00:03:01] Laura McKowen: So I want to talk today about emotional sobriety. And yeah, it's this weird thing that I remember hearing for the first time. And I knew that it’s probably important, but I had no idea what it meant. And it's hard to define. It's hard for me to define, but I know I've heard you talk about it and I'm wondering if you can tell us about it. What is emotional sobriety?
[00:03:32] Veronica Valli: It's a great kind of conversation that keeps deepening and yeah, it's really an ongoing conversation. I knew what getting sober kind of meant, I knew that it was stopping drinking and drugs and all that kind of stuff. Then I came across the emotional sobriety and it kind of like got under my skin.
[00:03:55] Because I think I knew I didn't have it. And I knew it was really important and it is a big deal. Emotional sobriety is the work that we need to do when we stop drinking. And I'll give you my definition of it. Emotional sobriety is two things. It is feeling comfortable in our own skin and it's having appropriate emotional responses.
[00:04:22] When you first get sober, depending on what methods you use, you hear a lot about this. We never get done with this work. We, you know, we do this forever and when I heard that, I was like, well, that sucks. Like I just want to graduate. Like everyone just wants to graduate from sobriety.
[00:04:41] Right. They want to do the thing and then want to graduate and get on with my life. And what they're really talking about is personal development, which doesn't ever stop, personal development doesn't ever stop because all human beings are growing. But I want people to know in sobriety, there is a land that we get to, and that's the land of feeling comfortable in our own skin and having appropriate emotional responses to events.
[00:05:03] Laura McKowen: Let's first talk about what unsafe, sober behavior looks like or emotionally unsafe.
[00:05:09] Veronica Valli: It's when we take everything personally. I feel like we all go through this phase. You know, when I first stopped drinking, it's like, I didn't have any skin. I was fairly sensitive and easily, I could be devastated by like we had plans on Friday to do something friendly, casual, and then Thursday night you cancel, I could be quite devastated by that, which is an inappropriate response. Like I was so sensitive.
[00:05:43] It's like extreme sensitivity and I think it's taking everything personally. I think the reverse of that is the filter system that we see the world is everything is about me, everything you do. And you say, and what you, what you just shared about and the action that you just took was all about me, something about me.
[00:06:06] I just make everything about me. It feels. Really true. Like, you know that when you canceled the plans well, that's because Laura is this and she's that, and she's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and, and she, whatever. And I make up this whole story in my head and it feels really true. It just feels like it's gospel. That's I think is unsober.
[00:06:34] Laura McKowen: Yeah. Everyone knows what that feels like. Or I definitely know what that feels like. Why do we take things personally like that?
[00:06:45] Veronica Valli: That's a really interesting question. I think it's a defining characteristic of alcoholism and I use the word alcoholism to refer to the spiritual condition of alcoholism. Not, not really the drinking part. There's some really defining personality, characteristics, and this taking things personally, my best guess is we do that because in childhood, we weren't given role models or didn't learn skills that we needed to navigate life like to have boundaries and things like that.
[00:07:23] Laura McKowen: Building on that, not learning the appropriate coping skills. I think that it's a shame. There's a sense of shame underneath it. And if shame says that there's something wrong with me in this weird way, it becomes like the spotlight's on you all the time. Like you're going to do everything you can to prove that subconsciously, you treat me this way because I'm a piece of shit and everyone knows it. It's almost this obsession with how broken you are and this need to feel secure when you can't, you don't have that security.
[00:08:14] Veronica Valli: And we create a filter system that we construct in childhood based on our experiences and it’s that filter system and that we perceive the world. All sobriety is, and I'm talking like sobriety from substances is it's really two things.
[00:08:36] It's a shift in perception. And we get that shift in perception through consistency. And that sounds like quite a, not a big thing, but the shift in perception is everything because it shifts this filter system. So I've given an example of this. I remember when I was dating my husband and maybe we'd been together less than a year. I don’t know, still pretty new. And we had plans for a Friday night date. I think we're going to go for dinner. I don't think it was anything massive, whatever. And he called at the very last minute and said, there's this thing going on at the college, I really need to go to a speaker. I'm really sorry, you know, can we postpone?
[00:09:18] And I was like, oh, okay, sure. Yeah, no, I got it. No problem. Or find myself, you know, and I think I recall going to a meeting that I really loved. And we saw each other on Saturday, and we had a lovely weekend.
Laura McKowen: Were you sober at this point?
Veronica Valli: Oh yeah. I was like seven years sober. I remember coming to Sunday night, I thought I had that moment where I was like, oh my God. I, what used to happen in that scenario was canceling a date with me at the last minute meant that you didn't love me. So I would punish you all weekend. I will be distanced and aloof, but I would not specifically say what I felt. I would just, my behavior would be very off and that communicated to you that you needed to kind of grovel or turn cartwheels to make that up to me so that I felt better and I would ruin our whole weekend. And I had this moment where I was like, I didn't do that. And I didn't even think of doing that. I was like, you know, maybe if we did have theater tickets to a great show, I'd probably be more disappointed, but I knew it wasn’t totally about me. I totally got it. I did something else. We had a lovely time. And that's what I mean about the shift in perception. And that is everything, I've ruined so many relationships like that in the past.
[00:10:39] Laura McKowen: Oh yeah. Shift in perception changes every single thing that you do, say, encounter, every relationship. When you were talking about that, it struck me, and I want to say this in the kindest way, but it strikes me that this is a very immature view because kids think that kids are naturally self-centered. They think that they really can't differentiate at a certain point. I suppose another way to say it is that nothing is personal, like in one of the four agreements.
[00:11:16] So explain if nothing's personal, say you, because I want to give an example of kind of push on this a little bit, say your husband said he was going to cancel plans with you and you were fine with that. But then what you found out later was that he went out with another woman. So he lied to you.
[00:11:44] Where does emotional sobriety come into that? And how, how would we see something like that? Not personal.
[00:11:54] Veronica Valli: So that's an interesting question. So I would, if that had [00:12:00] happened, of course, an appropriate emotional response, that would be to be hurt, to be disappointed, to be angry, those are appropriate emotional responses to that event.
[00:12:12] What we don't want to do is stay stuck in that. And an emotional sober response to that would be all of those feelings and you have revealed to me who you are, and that is devastating. I believed you to be someone else. And now you have shown me who you are, and I will believe who you are. There's no rationalization or explanation for this. This is sad. This is unfortunate. And Laura, to be honest, you're fucking loss.
[00:12:43] Laura McKowen: Well, right then there's that? Yeah, but, nothing in what you said is this is about me because there's something wrong with me.
[00:12:55] Veronica Valli: Yes. And again, that's interpretation. I always used to make, oh my God, he did that because I wasn't thin enough. Pretty enough. Good enough. Whatever. Instead, I would see that as like, that is so sad because we had such a nice thing going on here. And clearly you have some stuff going on where like lying and being deceitful and something about getting, you need to have attention from women. Like, oh, I'm glad I saw this now. That's about you. And, you know, again, I wouldn't like skip off, like an hour later, I would be hurting, disappointed and angry for a little bit of time. And I would move through that. I would take that away and probably work on that and look at like, okay, so how, why did I not see that earlier?
[00:13:46] Laura McKowen: Right. And is this a pattern and have I done this before? So emotional, back to just the baseline of emotional sobriety, does it have anything to do with abstinence from substances or drugs or process addictions?
[00:14:05] Veronica Valli: Yeah, I'm going to have to say yes. I don't think you can be emotionally sober and still drink alcohol. It's about the abuse factor, because going back to what you were saying about that this behavior is actually very childish, that you're right. When people stop drinking, we are very raw and childlike in our emotions and, and we're emotional teenagers. And the reason for that is we have very quickly defaulted to alcohol as the fixer of anything that's unpleasant or uncomfortable or difficult.
[00:14:44] So we just haven’t developed skills to deal with frustration, anger, this point in blah, blah, blah. We have just used alcohol as the solution to those things. Widely speaking, emotional sobriety takes up bandwidth. And so we need all of our bandwidth and also the other thing is the consequences of emotional sobriety are so rewarding that what chemicals can bring me just really pale into insignificance compared to what I can create organically. So why would I bother with a toxic substance?
[00:15:27] Laura McKowen: Yeah. Is honesty part of emotional sobriety?
[00:15:31] Veronica Valli: For sure. And honesty, I think, is all evolving. Do you know what Johari's window is?
[00:15:41] Laura McKowen: Yeah. Explain it though.
[00:15:42] Veronica Valli: So Johari's window. you kind of need a visual, but it's basically, if you imagine a rectangle, that's divided up into four squares and we have, this is what I call process work. This journey of sobriety is all four squares and it’s about self-awareness. So we all have the first square, it would be known to self, known to others. So for us, it would be like, I know you're in recovery. I know you're a mom. I know you're a writer, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then the next square would be known to self, but not known to others. So that might be like years ago when you really wanted to write a book, but you didn't, you weren't going to talk about it.
[00:16:25] Like you knew it, but you weren't telling people that, for example, and we all have things that we don't talk about for very various reasons, some of it's shame, fear, all of that kind of stuff. Then we have another box, which is known to others, but not known to self, which is always interesting.
[00:16:47] And we all have people in our lives where, oh, if so-and-so comes along, you know, they're going to do X, Y, and Zed. But they can't see it, but we have things that we can't see in ourselves. So for my blind spots, yes, blind, basically our blind spots, that's it. And then we all have the last corner which is not known to self, not known to others. And the work of being human is to shrink three of those boxes down to as small as possible.
[00:17:20] So we are known to self, known to others, which is about transparency. We still have privacy. We still need privacy, but you're not hiding anything or keeping secrets. When the other boxes are out of balance, that's when we're leaving dual lives, like how we show up in the world is very different to who we are inside, for example.
[00:17:49] Laura McKowen: I don't think you have to have a visual. It's very easy to see those four aspects of Johari's window and if you think about the one field, the one square expanding to fill the rest, I always think there's one version of me in the world. And it's not that everyone gets the same version and tons of people don't know a lot about me, but I'm not keeping anything from them. It's just a matter of, like you said, privacy. I choose to because you don't want intimacy with everybody. But that doesn't mean you’re going to think something that's so outrageously wrong about me. You know, because I present as opposed to when I was drinking, it was so much unknown to self and unknown to others.
[00:18:44] Veronica Valli: Yeah. And that's when we're lost, that's when we've lost ourselves.
[00:18:50] Laura McKowen: So let's talk about emotions. Since we're talking about emotional sobriety. So people get on this. When we are, especially in the first year of sobriety, we have these powerful energies of emotion often come up and out, and our hormones are regulating our brains realigning.
[00:19:19] I always think of it as becoming unthawed. You're just kind of thawing out. It feels like this. It almost feels like you're being attacked like this onslaught of energy and emotion. And that you're just kind of riding a roller coaster. I want to ask from a certain angle, like this can be scary for people who are around you when you're experiencing these highs and lows, and it can cause people to feel like they can't really trust you. Or maybe that you're more, that you're just unpredictable. So what do people who are going into their first year of sobriety or the people who live with them or around them need to think about as they're going through this rebalancing process, recalibration process, that I think it's the first sort of part of emotional sobriety.
[00:20:15] Veronica Valli: I think in the first year of sobriety, it's just about finding your feet and creating a foundation. We are so all over the place. Aren't we? I mean, I can look back. I mean the stuff I used to come out with, you know, I know it's that rawness, you know, it's, it's like going back into the world as a newborn baby, but in an adult body and just feeling so utterly clueless, how to navigate and be in the world and my brain keep wanting to default to alcohol to fix it. And I'm not going to do that, but not knowing how to fix this? I mean, I really felt and I know a lot of people I've worked with felt like this. It's just like, we're so vulnerable.
[00:21:01] Laura McKowen: So how do you think about emotions? Like what's a helpful way to look at emotion.
[00:21:06] Veronica Valli: Emotions are programmed into us. They're in our DNA and there's some debate about them, but it's like fear, for example, is programmed into our DNA. We couldn't live, we wouldn't live if we didn't have fear because fear forces us to make lifesaving decisions. Disgust, joy or anger, and there's a debate about a couple more, but they're all those are emotions.
[00:21:37] And the thing about emotions is that we feel them physically in our bodies, they are physical sensations that trigger thoughts. And there's a sort of circuit between thoughts and emotion and the feeling, these emotions that we experience in our bodies. So they feed off of each other that the, you know, the fear or the anger gets more intense and then the thoughts will get more intense, but the thoughts will get more intense and that actually triggers more of a physical response. Feelings are our subjective response to the emotions.
[00:22:16] So if you were at work and you knew that a lot of people were going to get fired and you could be one of them, the appropriate emotional response would be to feel fear, maybe anger as well. And you would feel that in your body, the feelings you have about that, for example, this always happens to me. I just know my boss doesn’t like me, my wife's going to leave me. Those are subjective feelings based on your history, your personal experience, your limiting beliefs that are responding to that emotion that you're experiencing.
[00:22:55] Laura McKowen: Starting out these emotions can feel very overwhelming. How do you look at them or help people work with those energies? I want to give people some idea of how to work with those emotional energies.
[00:23:08] Veronica Valli: So this is one of the most helpful tools that I have found, and it's very simple. Observe yourself with curiosity, not judgment, so observe what's happening in your body, that there I'm having a response here, whatever it is.
[00:23:23] I think it's anger. It might be fear. It might be both whatever. And then ask yourself the question. What is the story I'm telling myself about this? That's the most powerful tool that I have found in that it just, and because there's a real pull with those physical and the thoughts and that question kind of cuts through it.
[00:23:46] What is the story I'm telling myself about this and to ask it of someone else or to ask it of yourself. Then we can begin to see, well, I'm telling myself a story, it's happening because I'm not good enough. And because….and is that true? No, actually half the department is getting laid off because they lost half their business. It's really sad and unfortunate and it's appropriate to feel angry and upset about that. But this has nothing to do with you being good enough or not.
[00:24:15] Laura McKowen: This is one of the primary things I learned from Buddhism. They call it Shempa, the hook that you get. So there's that initial, energetic impulse in the body. Anger. Jealousy, whatever, but then there's the Shempa, which is the hook that starts spinning you into the story. And that's where the suffering is. We usually don't know that that's happening. I mean, this is very, it's fast and it's very subconscious. So as you know, because we talked a lot about this while I was going through it, my stories around romantic relationships and what I would perceive as rejection from someone and the almost instantaneous spiral that would happen inside of me because of all these stories that for, I didn't even realize that I had them. It just feels like torture. It just feels like pain. It feels like being annihilated. That's what it felt like to me.
[00:25:17] Veronica Valli: It also feels like truth though. Right? It feels like it’s a fact.
[00:25:20] Laura McKowen: And it's so intense and obviously trauma really plays a part in this because it can send you right into that state even, even more quickly. I've had that feeling where you're swallowed up into it, you're in the hole you're gone. And so would you say that the first step is just knowing that there are stories, like there might be a story in here and actually the story is causing you some.
[00:25:49] Veronica Valli: I really liked what you said about the Buddhist, the hook. When we ask ourselves that question, what is the story I'm telling myself? And we can begin to see the bullshit, but sometimes when someone holds a mirror up and we, it collapses quite easily, we can sometimes see like, oh God, this is so ridiculous. Of course, you know, blah, blah, blah. But they're so seductive. It's kind of fascinating how our brains work that way.
[00:26:13] Laura McKowen: I love that you say they're seductive because it's, there's this vision of like the siren, you know, this come here, come here, come here. And, and before you know it you're being pulled like this gravitational force pulling you in this direction. It's always very familiar.
[00:26:34] Veronica Valli: The familiar is the seduction because there's a familiarity and it’s very comfortable. I think a lot of the weight of the seduction is in the familiar, the most obvious way for everybody is in romantic relationships. That's where it's most pronounced, but you're right. It happens in friendships and all sorts of different things as well.
[00:26:53] The thing is it's all about patterns. I remember there was a meme on Facebook. I saw it recently where someone posted it's like, I don't care what you say or what you do - What's the pattern? And I think, as a therapist, there's always a pattern. When I've had clients like with the philandering husband, you know, she'll say what you know is promised, promised is sworn on the Bible. He's, you know, he's started exercising. He’s had two sessions with his therapist. I know it's different. And what's the pattern because this has happened before, right? About every nine months he promises and does like three weeks of intense activity on something. But what's the pattern? The pattern in everyone's behavior will tell you everything you need to know.
[00:27:55] Mikel Ellcessor: Hi, I'm Mikel. I'm the executive producer of Tell Me Something True and I co-created the show with Laura. We built TMST and our online community with the hope of creating a sane spot on the internet. We're really passionate about the ad-free nature of this work. Our belief is that this project works best if we're not hustling to keep advertisers happy, and we keep our attention on you, the TMST community, and this is where you can play a major role. TMST Plus is the membership group that helps to keep this podcast going. Whether it's through a monthly membership or a one-time contribution, TMST Plus members are vital to this experiment. As a TMST Plus member, you get to join Laura for member only events, send in questions for the guests, hear the complete unedited interviews and connect with other TMST community members. You know, sometimes we feel like we can't make a difference in the world. With a TMST Plus membership, you can keep this space alive and thriving for a one-time gift or for as little as 10 bucks a month. You can find the link in the show description and then please head over to tmstpod.com right now to support the show. And thanks.
[00:29:24] Laura McKowen: So we're saying that there are patterns and then we're saying also that people can change, that they can change. So what's the difference? What happens for people that are able to change?
[00:29:41] Veronica Valli: Which is emotional sobriety, it's Johari's window, it's that we have expanded the corner that is known to self, known to others.
[00:29:51] But I think there's some key things to emotional sobriety. And this is for me personally. What changed my life is these are the key elements to it, you and Brene Brown's work demonstrates this. And she said it many times, you have to have cast iron boundaries in order to be happy and successful.
[00:30:15] You cannot be happy. You just cannot be happy unless you have good boundaries. So we have to specifically learn how to have boundaries and go through the process of applying them, which can be messy and a bit scary and all those kinds of things. We have to be able to deal with our resentments, and what’s key to that is that resentment work shifts our perception from what other people do is personal. We have to be able to change our limiting beliefs, which is the story that we tell ourselves.
[00:30:51] And this is work that all human beings have to do. All human beings are called to this work. It's just, most people don't answer the call, but when you have a substance abuse problem, it forces you. It kind of be your backs against the wall. And this is laid out in front of you in many different ways that it's not just stopping drinking, you're going to have to do some work. Which is why we are the luckiest.
[00:31:19] Laura McKowen: I love that you say that. I always love when you say that this is work that all people have to do. Let's just go a little bit deeper in each of those. So boundaries without having a whole discussion on boundaries. I think a lot of people think that boundaries are going to keep people further away. And if I have boundaries, I'm going to ruin my relationships. So what do you say to do that?
[00:31:49] Veronica Valli: Okay so in my book, I write about the five pillars of sobriety. One of them is balance and actually balance and boundaries go hand in hand and you can't have one without the other. Keeping other people away is not a boundary. I come across people every so often who say I've got really, really good boundaries. What they have is a steel wall with barbed wire fence around themselves, that's not a boundary. Right. So boundaries just keep the good in and the bad out. And they manage my energy and they improve all of my relationships. I am so appreciative of people with really good boundaries.
[00:32:29] I love a no, I'm really happy with the no because then I know where I stand. I can move on and get onto plan B. What I cannot stand is wishy washy yes. Because I kind of suspect it's a wishy-washy yes and I'm not sure if you're going to do the thing, or maybe you will, maybe you won't or you would. Don't give me that bullshit.
[00:32:51] So boundaries and balance go hand in hand and it balances our needs, which we're all trying to meet our needs and when our circumstances change as they will, how we manage and meet our needs is going to change. We have to have both of those things at the same time. So what you were describing is not, that's not a boundary. Boundaries are good for everybody and they are nurturing for relationships and they benefit us and they benefit everybody else around us. And I say to my clients, if you do one piece of work, like just one thing, we'll just work on your boundaries, that will revolutionize your life.
[00:33:36] Laura McKowen: Well, you can't really work on boundaries without working on everything else that you're talking about because it touches everything. If you run into a place where you're stuck with a certain relationship where you feel very trampled on, you have a resentment, say, you're taking it all personally. You're already touching on resentments. I can see why you would recommend boundaries because they touch everything. It's impossible to work on boundaries. No more about yourself, not have a lot of inquiry about what do I want. I mean, that's what is underneath? What do I want and what do I need?
[00:34:15] Veronica Valli: Right. The hardest thing that any human being has to do is deal with other people. It's just hard, right? We need tools to deal with other people because other people show up in the world. Based on their history, their story, their trauma, their limiting beliefs, and that comes out in their behavior.
[00:34:40] And then their patterns of dealing with other people is the biggest life challenge I think that any of us face. So for example, going back to something we were saying earlier, I was raised in, and maybe you were as well, like as a woman, don’t make a fuss, my feelings aren't important, that doesn't matter. What other people think of you is the most important.
[00:35:03] Those were the things I absorbed. Behaving on those belief systems was really damaging to me.
[00:35:11] Laura McKowen: Now that I have good boundaries in my life, and it took years, I really don't have patterns of relational trouble. I have things that come up here and things that come up there, but it's much more peaceful. So has that been your experience and is that your experience with other emotionally sober people?
[00:35:34] Veronica Valli: Yeah, you're right. Boundaries will transform all of our relationships. It's amazing. So resentments are the story that we tell ourselves about what we think was done to us. I call resentments the free drunk.
[00:35:58] Laura McKowen: Free drunk. Oh God.
[00:36:01] Veronica Valli: Yeah, the free drunk. And this is why there's no, in the big book of AA, it talks about resentments being the number one offender.
[00:36:07] I don't think a truer word has been said. They are the free drunk. So on Monday, my boss really does or says something that makes me really angry and resentful. And I spend all week having that rent space in my head. I'm going over that conversation. I'm planning revenge. That's when we know when we have a resentment, it’s renting space in our head and we're planning revenge.
[00:36:37] And then it gets to Friday and I've been sober six weeks, three months, whatever. I don't want to drink. And I've had an awful week. My boss has been awful. This terrible thing that they said. And then on Friday night, someone says, do you want to go to cocktail hour? And I'm like, yeah, I do. And I will have a cocktail.
[00:36:53] Cause I freaking deserve that. Like I freaking deserve it. Like I have had a terrible week. People have been terrible to me and it's not fair. It is not fair. I'm a really lovely person. And I try really hard and nobody sees that and I'm telling, and I have seven cocktails and you know what, none of that. That is not my fault.
[00:37:14] The reason I had some cocktails and got drunk is because of what my boss said on Monday. So resentments are the fuel to a free drunk. That's why they're so crucial for sober people to get the specific skills to deal with resentments. It’s such freedom, because it's all about what we rent space to in our minds. I have far more interesting things to think about than what my boss said on Monday.
[00:37:42] Laura McKowen: I know, when you were describing what resentments feel like and how we know we have them, I cringed a little, cause I know it's like the easiest, easiest thing to do. To blame someone. We don't have to, to look at ourselves. We don't have to take responsibility. And so on. The free drunk. Yeah, it is very intoxicating. Talk about seductive.
[00:38:12] Veronica Valli: And resentments are very seductive because they allow me to have my blame story and, and they also keep us stuck because there's no growth there. You know, it's just, she did this, he did that.
[00:38:26] And what we do is we co-opt other people into it, right? Like, well, what did you both say? Well, let me tell you, let me tell you. And I go into the whole store and everyone's like, oh, and that kind of fuels it. We're all fueling it. And I'm feeling more that it's the seduction, self-righteous anger.
[00:38:45] It's so seductive. It's a weird feeling. We want it, but, but it doesn't feel good, but we want it.
[00:38:53] Laura McKowen: It feels better than feeling whatever it is that we are feeling behind it in the moment. I think that’s what it is. It's a lot easier to be angry than to be sad to admit that we're afraid that we're not going to get what we want.
[00:39:10] Veronica Valli: Yeah. One of the methods I teach people in my programs to deal with resentment is based on rational, emotive, behavioral therapy, our EBT, and the way that it processes. One of my clients calls it the resentment grinder. It's like a sausage grinder. Like you put it in and out the other end, something else comes out and it's very tied to the limiting beliefs.
[00:39:33] Resentments are very tied to the limiting beliefs in the story that we tell ourselves. There's a strong relationship there and it's like, it's easier for me to just have my story. It's easier if you change or if you're wrong and you apologize or change. And then everything would be fine. Resentments are also based on, I just want everybody to be the way I want them to be. Don’t you all see how much happier I would be if you did things the way I want them to be done.
[00:40:10] And you said what I wanted them to say. And the funniest thing about resentments is, and this is very common and this is such a massive shift in perception is we have reoccurring resentments against people we know very well and we know how they are, we know their patterns, we know how they show up, we know how they're going to behave in most situations.
[00:40:35] Yet we wake up and we think today they'll be completely reasonable and sane and they will say the right thing and do the right thing. And then we're angry and resentful at them despite knowing them for decades and knowing that they're always going to say or respond in this way and they're not capable of giving us what we need yet.
[00:40:57] Freedom really came for me when I began to see. So for example, with my relationship with my mother, I would be constantly resentful and angry at her because today she didn't become an appropriate, sane, reasonable person. When I was able to accept that's how she is and I know how she's going to behave my whole life changed. It was incredible. That's kind of, and that's where they're quite amusing. It's like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? This is crazy.
[00:41:28] Laura McKowen: I know it seems so obvious when you, when you say it like that, but it's almost like we're waiting for them to do the thing that we know they're actually going to do so that we can keep up the story.
[00:41:40] Veronica Valli: But they're self-serving because that's what we get. What we get from that is then, then I am justified in drinking, doing drugs, spending money I don't have, overeating, whatever it is. I am justifying, that's the paradox of them is that I don't want to shift this dynamic because they justify me in my behavior. I can keep doing this thing because it's not my fault.
[00:42:10] Laura McKowen: My number one hint that I'm going in a bad direction, an unhealthy direction, is when I start nursing a resentment about someone or something. Because it can get you to a place of causing such pain that it does require relief eventually. It does require some kind of relief, not just that it's, you know, annoying. It's actually quite painful.
[00:42:36] Veronica Valli: Well, just one last thing about. What it comes down to is I can't change other people. I have to have the ability to feel better about myself regardless of what anyone does or doesn't do. And that's the key to freedom is I, I get to choose my response. I can't, you know, I get to choose my response to this so I can feel okay.
[00:43:01] Laura McKowen: Yeah. And that's, that's something you, you talk about a lot and was actually one of my questions coming up is emotional sobriety, you might not have said these exact words, but you talk about it as being responsible for your experience and what you just said, owning really your own peace, your own freedom, your own happiness, your own wellbeing. Despite what, what goes on around you or what comes at you or who acts in what way is being responsible for your experience. What else does it mean?
[00:43:46] Veronica Valli: It means, being emotional sobriety is about being responsible for the experience that I want to have. And I want to say there's a caveat to that because it depends on how much privilege we have for sure.
[00:43:57] You know, that differs for everybody, but it's that, you know, lots of people come into sobriety with some very bad and dysfunctional relationships and the belief system, but if those people changed, they would feel better and it's the other way round. We actually have the tools, the personal development work is the tools so that we boundaries dealing with resentments, limiting beliefs, all of them.
[00:44:26] When I do that work, I feel comfortable in my own skin. And then what happens is when things bounce off me, like I, it's not very often I get a resentment and I have to kind of look at it, but most after doing this for two decades, I really don't interpret other people's behavior personally, very often.
[00:44:45] I just don't have that sensitivity anymore. And, and that, that's why I'm comfortable in my own skin. And there's no, that's the destination. There's nothing better in the whole world than that feeling. I wouldn't give this up for anything.
[00:45:02] Laura McKowen: One of the things in your book, one of the five pillars, is process. Can you talk about why that's a pillar, why that's one of the most important things, what process is, and is it internal, external, both?
[00:45:16] Veronica Valli: Everything is process. We are always in processes. So process work is really understanding our patterns and understanding how we were formed, why we became, why do I have these feelings?
[00:45:35] Why do I have these experiences? Why do I feel that way? When X, Y, and Zed happens, it's understanding that because our past shows up in our present every single day, and some of that is unhelpful. And we can change it and we change it through process work and process. It really means it's not like we have a conversation and you're enlightened and everything is changed. It happens by inches, like we were saying about when I first heard the word emotional sobriety. I had this physical reaction, like I had fear, but I also had intrigue and, it took years to understand fully what that meant and blah, blah, blah.
[00:46:20] So it's just layers. Process is just going through the layers. It's healing our past. It's getting to a place of peace and acceptance so that I don't carry this burden around with me. And everybody has to do process work because everybody has to understand themselves. I think it was one of the Greek philosophers, I can't remember which one, maybe Plato that said something like a life lived unexamined is not a life worth living. And it's really about observing ourselves with curiosity not judgment.
[00:46:58] Laura McKowen: It’s the examination. That's what you're [00:47:00] talking about. This sort of commitment to examining the ongoing, never ending curiosity of why we are the way we are, how we can undo things that aren't helpful.
[00:47:16] Veronica Valli: Process work is inextricably linked to growth and growth is the reward. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for doing all of this work in the first place. I fairly early on made the connection with, you know, when you get sober and I had to learn how to boundaries and I was doing some journaling and step work and blah, blah, blah.
[00:47:40] It felt like work. You know, I felt like it was necessary, but I very quickly saw a connection between things sort of shifted and my life improved in ways that were very tangible. And I saw that connection with when I put some effort into this, some really good stuff happens for me and I'm all about the good stuff. So.
[00:48:12] Laura McKowen: I want to ask about your book though, because this will air shortly before it's out. It's coming out January 25th.
[00:48:22] Veronica Valli: What I wanted to do was provide the, how for people it's a book written by a therapist, but I hope in a way that's really easy to understand, and it really mostly lays out a program, the five pillars of sobriety. And it's basically if you do these things you will be able to stop drinking it. Alcohol will no longer be an issue and your life. And that’s just 10%, 90% is you will expand your life, you will be comfortable in your own skin, it’s personal development work and it's broken down into these five pillars that the people can practice. There's a little bit at the beginning about changing our perception of what alcohol is and, and talk a little bit about the mummy needs wine culture and that kind of stuff. But it's really, I wanted people to have this because I see lots of people saying I'm sober, but now what. I'm sort of floundering a bit. I don't understand why I feel this way. It’s the how. It's a program and, and it can stand alone or it can accompany, you know, if you're in the twelve steps or women of sobriety or whatever, it's really the therapeutic work. And there's lots of journaling prompts through it to help you kind of understand and shift your perception and all that.
[00:49:42] Laura McKowen: It's really, really well done. I think it's very hard to create a book like yours and have it be as engaging as yours is. And I think that's just, like I said, your, your publisher did a great job of letting your voice come through. And so it is very accessible and for anyone it's really for anyone, that's also what I like. It feels modern, but also rooted in just ancient wisdom and, and what we understand about modern science and trauma and psychology.
[00:50:18] Veronica Valli: Yeah, lots of people said that it really is a personal development book for anybody. If you're just getting started there’s stuff to just get started with, if you want to go deeper there’s stuff for that as well. So I'm really pleased with it. I'm always amazed that I can write anything that's semi-intelligent cause writing's really hard for me.
[00:50:35] Laura McKowen: So it's called Soberful.
[00:50:38] Veronica Valli: Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol.
[00:50:43] Laura McKowen: And everyone go out and buy her book.
[00:50:47] Veronica Valli: You can find me at Soberful.com. I'm on Facebook. I have a group Soberful, so just Google my name, Veronica Valli, you can find out more information there.
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