The Part of Sobriety We Don't Talk About Enough / EP 137

The Messy Middle

Nobody tells you sobriety has a tough middle season. In this episode, Susan Larkin and Ruby Williams talk about what happens after the initial excitement fades and the real work begins. They normalize the awkward, discouraging stretch where progress is still happening even when it does not feel glamorous. They discuss why the messy middle is a normal part of alcohol-free life, how self-compassion helps more than shame, and why coaching can keep you moving when your brain wants to quit. 

Key Topics Discussed:

• Messy middle - The middle phase of alcohol-free life where progress is real but rarely glamorous.
• Window of tolerance - The growing capacity to feel stress and discomfort without drinking.
• Data points - Reframing slips or urges as information instead of failure.
• Co-regulation - The stabilizing effect of support, accountability, and being witnessed by a coach or community.

Susan shares this is her favorite part to coach women through! 

If you are struggling in the messy middle or you went back to drinking and want help getting AF again, book a clarity call to chat with Susan: here: https://calendly.com/susanlarkincoaching/30min 

Don't forget to follow and subscribe and leave a review! It helps to get the word out that living sober is lit! 

Listeners have said that our podcast has helped them get alcohol free!
Join our private community! 

Connect with the Podcast Hosts:
Susan Larkin Coaching https://www.susanlarkincoaching.com
Ruby Williams at Freedom Renegade Coaching https://www.freedomrenegadecoaching.com/

Follow Susan: @drinklesswithsusan
Follow Ruby: @rubywilliamscoaching

It is strongly recommended that you seek professional advice regarding your health before attempting to take a break from alcohol. The creators, hosts, and producers of the The Feel Lit Alcohol Free podcast are not healthcare practitioners and therefore do not give medical, or psychological advice nor do they intend for the podcast, any resource or communication on behalf of the podcast or otherwise to be a substitute for such.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Nobody tells you sobriety has a boring middle season. No pink club, no rock bottom, just you, a Tuesday, and a craving you didn't expect to still have. Today we're talking about the messy middle, my favorite place to coach a woman through. Welcome to Sober and Lit, the podcast for women who want to get sober, stay sober, and live a life that's way more lit than it ever was with wine.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

We're your hosts, Ruby and Susan, two alcohol freedom coaches keeping it real with stories, tools, and zero judgment.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Whether you're sober curious or all in, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Let's feel lit alcohol free.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Welcome to the Sober and Lit Podcast. We're so excited to be here today with you. And today we are talking about a part of the journey that we don't talk about that often because we're usually talking about staying lit and you know the cheerleading part. But there is this part, and it's so interesting that this came up on a coaching call today, a group coaching call, where one of the members said, you know, I was feeling so good, like every day. I was just feeling so fabulous. And she's about six months in now, and she's like, and now I'm just sort of like, I don't know, I'm going through some stuff and I'm just sort of not feeling it, you know? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm talking about this on the podcast today. This is called the messy middle, right? And what are your thoughts about that, Ruby? Do you remember your messy middle time?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yeah, that's where you spend a lot of time when you're doing the work, when you're getting those firsts in, when things are awkward. I equate it to almost like a butterfly learning to walk before it flies. And it can be a long time. I I don't think it's a long time for a butterfly, but it can be a long time when we're on this alcohol-free journey of being in the messy middle. And it can show up. You can feel real good and then it can show up again. Yeah. Yeah. Mini middles, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Like bumps in the road. Yeah, this is the time where we're putting the reps in. And like some analogies I like to use are like it's the summer season. So when I do my sacred rhythms, when I do the seasons of life, like the spring is the pink cloud. It's all the newness. It's like, oh, now I'm waking up hangover free. I feel amazing. It's noticing the little shoots are coming up, and like, oh, there's the daffodils, and ooh, there's the, you know, the hostas and all the different plants that are coming up, and that's so beautiful. And then the summer, the hot, long summer, where we're weeding and we're watering and we're deadheading and we're doing the work, or the analogy of the gym, like when you first start going to an exercise class and you're like the new girl in the class, and you're like, ooh, and you start to see some of the benefits. And then it's like, okay, now this is what I do every Tuesday, Thursday, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And some days you don't want to go, you know. And but you're putting the reps in because you're building those alcohol-free muscles. And that's the work part, and it's not the sexy part, and it's not necessarily always the lit part, right? It's the work part. And it is, though, my favorite part to coach women through because I love when they've gotten some progress. It's my favorite part to encourage, to run alongside, to cheer on the work to keep them in action around their goals. So, one of the things that I just I was first of all want to normalize that this is part of the journey. That's the invisible work, right? It's it's the reps, it's the time, you know, like you're climbing the mountain. At first, you're like, oh, this is beautiful. Look at all this nature. And then you get to a point where you're like, it's hot and I'm tired and I'm thirsty, and we're still climbing. Like, really? How long am I gonna climb?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

You know, I love the the mountain analogy too. And it's not like shoots and ladders where you go to the bottom of the mountain. You just you can take breaks and like, and we call those the data points in our program where you're getting data from it and you're learning from it, and you're not just you don't have to go back to the bottom of the mountain, start over day one. We don't like day ones. We like to like keep moving up the mountain, keep one foot in front of the other. Maybe you need a breather for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I hear people are like, I'm just sick of thinking about it. I'm thinking of sick of working on it. It's like, okay, yeah, take a break. No, not drinking, take a break, but just take a break from reading all the quitlet and listening to all the podcasts, read a novel, go out and enjoy nature, go, you know what I mean? Do some of the just you don't need to live completely inundated. Keep listening to our podcast, but you know, but yeah, but what I love about coaching in this space is like this front row seat to someone discovering that they can feel hard things, not drink, and they're not gonna die. They're not gonna fall apart. And that's where they start to be able to trust themselves again. Like this is the work, this is building resilience. And there's a therapy term for this, which is called window of tolerance. So we used to drink, and our window of tolerance was very small because anytime we felt something we didn't want to feel, we would drink, or anytime hard things happened, we would drink and like numb that down. And now we are learning how to deal with those things without drinking. And every time we do that, our window of tolerance grows and grows, and our resilience is growing, and you start to trust yourself again. And, you know, we still want to have that positive emotion around our behavior change, and we still want to be cheering, but we're cheering not necessarily just the win, we're cheer cheering the rep. And I think sometimes people feel like, well, I'm not having a lot of FFTs here, or it's just regular old life, and I don't, whatever, you know, like they don't celebrate the those, but we're celebrating the rep. The tenth time you don't drink over a hard conversation matters almost more than the first time, almost more than their day one, day two, day three, right? This is the hard work where the rewiring is happening.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah. And what can happen in the messy middle too is that you forget your you're kind of your bottom, like your everyday used to wake up and have a hangover and feel like crap. And then when you start to feel better, you're you're like creating a different bottom. All of a sudden, you know, waking up feeling good isn't it's just it's just normal. It becomes the normal.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

And that's great.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Right, but you forget, it's like this. You forget that, oh, and then maybe I hear this with clients sometimes, like then they get the flu or something and they go, Oh, yeah, this is what it was like every day. It was like having the flu every morning. And you kind of forget, you know, that fading effect bias can come in too in the messy middle, and you start to wonder, hmm, was it better? You know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, yeah. So those thoughts start creeping in, those sneaky permission giving thoughts, right? That are like, wait a minute, is this all there is? Is yes. I remember about six months in getting the COVID shot. Maybe it was even more than that, like nine months and feeling so crummy after the COVID shot. And but my realization was like, my gosh, I used to do this to myself every weekend. I used to feel like this, and it was a huge awareness, it was a reminder of like feeling good every morning when I wake up, like it's pretty darn good, you know. So that's how I what I always wanted.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

But it you always want more. You want a little more. There's like get get a little higher on that mountain. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

And sometimes during this time, even though we've made tons of progress, we may still have a craving to drink. The thought to drink, the urge to drink, and that is also normal. So a lot of times the thought then that we beat ourselves up with is shouldn't I be over this by now? And freaking out, like, oh my gosh, I still I had an urge to drink. Oh my gosh, you know, like what's wrong with me? Does that mean I'm not making pro progress? Does that mean, you know, I'm not doing well? It's totally normal. Totally normal to have the urge to drink in that moment, totally normal, maybe even to have a data point, and that's okay as long as you don't allow that to derail you, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah. I was just coaching with someone yesterday that equated an alcohol-free journey to a marathon. But in a marathon, I was saying it's so different. A marathon is like your body physically training, you know, just running, walking, you know. But it's so different in the brain with addiction. It's totally a different, it's not, you can't just force, it's not as easy. She's like, I can run a marathon. I can do this, I can run a company, but this alcohol addiction, I can't figure it out. So it's it's very different. And yeah, wanting, yeah, I did have a data point at six months alcohol-free, and it was when things got really, really hard. I didn't intend to, I didn't go out to, I didn't seek it. It was put into my hand. A drink was put into my hand, and I just was so we call like below 50%, like low, that I had a drink. And I still don't count it as like I didn't go back to day one. It's like it happened. I learned from it. Actually, nothing, you know, nothing bad happened. I just decided to be alcohol free again the very next day and kept going. But yeah, it was really great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah. We yeah, I love it when somebody shares, like, I have a hundred days and one data point. Yeah. You have the hundred days, you know what I mean? You don't lose any of your alcohol-free days. And that was the perfect mindset to just go, wait, I didn't want to do that. What happened? What happened here? Dissect it, move forward. It's like we do talk about like if you tripped when you were on a marathon, you go get some first aid, put a band aid on it, keep going, keep going back to the starting line. And you don't want to limp off and quit. You want to keep going once you're ready to, you know, once you rested and ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that it's just normalizing that. And that, so the thought that you want to be questioning is shouldn't I be over this by now? Like then I say to clients, like, think about this. How many times did you drink over hard things? Because I remember at a year into alcohol freedom going on vacation and having a huge urge to drink. Like, I call it like a tsunami. I was surfing every single trigger of mine that could be triggered was triggered. And like I was like losing it big time. And I remember coming back and then getting on a coaching call with my coach and being like so upset with myself. And I didn't drink, but I was so upset that I felt like drinking, that I had the urge to drink. Like I was so beating myself up. Like, how could I even be like in coach training? How could I even like my gosh? I almost drank and I didn't drink, but just the fact that I felt like it, I was beating myself up. And and I remember the coach going, How many times have you been to Cancun and had your flight canceled and had no way to get home and dealt with that like without drinking? And I'm like, zero. Plus, it had other things where I was people were like, just get over it, you know, like wanting to be nice to people, being ticked off at my husband, like every, like I said, every trigger that would trigger me to drink. And then I think I don't know if I shared this and then I went down to like the cantina after dealing with this whole mess and ordered a lemonade, and it came in a giant margarita glass. And I was just like, Are you kidding me?

unknown 12:16

Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_01 12:18

It was so funny. I was just like, Okay, thank you. Thank you. Oh, this is hilarious. But again, like, don't beat yourself up. It's so important to have self-compassion and to understand that this is the hard work time, but this it grows your window of tolerance. Every time you feel something uncomfortable and you don't reach for wine, you're widing widening your capacity. You know, it means faster recovery from stress, better functioning under pressure. So it's not just for your sobriety, it's for your whole life. This you know, widening your window of tolerance for dealing with hard things. But I think again, we always come back to this. The secret sauce is self-compassion in these moments because that actually speeds up the process and shame that shame and blame, like I was feeling for that time in Cancun, shrinks it. Self-compassion, honoring your feelings, honoring yourself, going, yeah, that was really hard, expands it. Beating ourselves up does not work at all.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah. So I know self-compassion is just it is, it's the secret sauce, just like you said, for moving through this messy middle when things get hard. And and I a lot of times we hear too, and I think you might have mentioned it earlier, and I want to go back to it was people will say, women will say, This should be, I should be done. I should, this, yeah, this, I should, you know, like when is it done? It's it's not like it's not you guys, there's not a start and stop time in sobriety, in alcohol-free life. It actually, we're playing the game of life now. We're actually in the arena, playing the game. It actually goes on until we pass away. Like we just keep, we keep learning, we keep growing. And I think that can really deter us in this messy middle if we think we're we're trying to get to like an endpoint. And what would that endpoint be? Is it one year alcohol free? Is it six months? I mean, when do you cross the finish line? It's it's life. It's uh absolutely and you get to play big in life, and that's what's really cool. Well, that's the the feel lit part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and this is why, you know what, uh, you know, we want this so badly for you. And this is where I think coaching can come into play because there's this thing with coaching which is called co-regulation, where when someone is co-regulating with you or just normalizing what's going on with you, cheering you on, cheering on the reps, not just the wins. Like coaches, we cheer you on with the wins in the beginning, and now we're cheering you on with the reps. We're coming alongside you during the hard slog time. And I think sometimes people feel like, okay, well, I, you know, I don't need a community. This is where community coaching can be so important because there's other people who say, I see you, keep going. We can't take the rep off your plate, we can't do it for you, but we can be a steady presence with you, again, co-regulating with you and and you know, helping you keep going and keep growing and keep increasing your capacity to feel those hard things, to do the hard life without drinking, because life isn't perfect.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah. So everyone struggles, and that can be a normalizing too. That's why group coaching is really fun and really supportive, is you realize, oh my gosh, I'm not alone. Other people share similar stories, or and you can just relate to their story and realize so many women, especially in midlife. I think this is I we're at the perfect, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Like that is when people finally maybe they started drinking in, you know, their teens or 20s. And but it's after maybe a few a couple of decades when you finally realize, wait a minute, I can't keep doing this anymore. It's right just not working in my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah. Yeah. And we see what you can't see for yourself. Sometimes progress feels invisible, right? From the inside, or we like to minimize it. I was always like, oh, no big deal, you know, whatever. You know, I don't need to celebrate everything. You know what I mean? But but a coach can reflect back and go, wait, you didn't drink over that. And six months ago you would have. You know, a coach can help you just see your progress. We can also help you interrupt a shame spiral before it hardens, like the shame spiral I was in when my coach went, wait a minute, Susan, how many times have you done this? And I'm like, zero. I mean, like I was bawling on this call, like, I'm a failure. La la la. And a coach can help you keep from quitting right before the shift happens, right before the miracle happens, as we say, right before the alive stage happens. This is the part you have to go through to get to alive. You know, this is the part you have to go through before it becomes easier. It's the messy middle. And this is the part where most people give up and walk away.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

If the accountability is so key. Yes. I would have given up, but I had someone, you know, and and just having that person to walk beside you makes all the difference.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

All the difference. Absolutely. I would not have been able to do it without accountability, without community, without a coach. Absolutely. I totally know that for sure for myself because I just gave in to those little niggling thoughts that were like, oh, whatever, you know, this is too hard. You don't need to do this anymore. Maybe one, maybe one won't hurt. Like, let's see. Or just to go back into hiding. If I did have a data point, I would just go, okay, forget it. I'm too embarrassed to even show up here. You know, so a coach also helps you not disappear back into the old patterns while you're building the strength.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah. Yeah. I had a a client this week also that said, because she had gone away on a family trip for several weeks and had multiple data points. And then her brain went to, I'm gonna give up. I'm gonna just cancel on Coach Ruby. And but she didn't. She showed up and we got recommitted because the brain starts to do that. You have a few data points, and then all of a sudden you're back to the old patterns. It can happen quickly, you guys. So that's a coach can just like, if you can just show up. In fact, what I say to my clients is when you think you should cancel on your coach, that's when you really need to show up for yourself. Because yeah, you're starting to like, I'll just, you know, not go to coaching anymore. It's not working, or but it is working. That's what I kept saying to her. It is working, it's working. You're here and now you're recommitted. Let's keep going. You know, if it's feeling hard, then it's working.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Exactly, exactly, Susan. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because yeah, every time you feel something hard and you don't drink, you're not just getting through that moment. You are again widening that space inside you that can hold hard things without breaking. And that is your nervous system. That is you, you know, your nervous system strengthening and literally rebuilding its capacity for peace, its capacity for just be. I mean, it's it's like superpower. That's where people talk about be sobriety is now their new superpower, right? So the messy middle isn't a detour like you screwed up or something. It's the construction site where your resilience gets built, where your nervous system starts to be reconstructed and strengthened. So you're not stuck in a messy middle, you're building life resilience and strength that's gonna serve you for the rest of your life in every area. You know, people are gonna know you're the person to go to, you're the strong, you're the strong person that they can go to when things get tough, right? And that's that's everything. Like one of my coaches said the the person in the room with the most regulated nervous system is the most powerful person in the room. It's like you're unflappable, right? Because you think nothing is going to derail you. You know you can handle hard things. And I think women especially, like, we know you can hard do hard things. We've done a ton of hard things. And that's another thing a coach can do for you is remind you you can do hard things. Yeah. So what I want to just say to you is if you've given up, if you've gone back to drinking, if you gave up in the messy middle, I would love, love to talk to you. I would love you to book a clarity call with me because you are so close. You're right on the cus and you can get back there. And I coach so many women who have had some alcohol free time, went back to drinking, know that's not what they want to do, but then they just feel stuck because they're just like, you know, what happened? And a little bit of coaching like can go such a long way. So many women I have coached where they had alcohol free time, then they drank, then I get them back going, and then they just fly. They just go. And it just takes a little bit of accountability. It takes a little bit of that co regulation, it takes a little bit of that, you know, the coaching to get you through that messy middle. Over to the other side, and then you're good. You know? So I would love, love, love to help you get there. Like I said, this is my favorite part to coach in is to see people just make it to the other side of the messy middle and to see their growth. It's just so amazing and so beautiful. So you could book a call with me, look for the links. I would just love, love, love to talk to you about this and see where you're at. So, Ruby, this is the time in our in our podcast where we share the things that are helping us feel and stay lit. So, what is going on in Ruby's world?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

What is helping us? I'm gonna go back to an one of my oldies but goodies. I used to do this for years, like probably two years every day. And I and I stopped. So recently I moved houses. And so I was was living out in the country in a vineyard, and it didn't have any grass anywhere. And now I have this little community dog park, which is amazing in my in my townhouse kind of little community. And we all can use this dog park, and it's all grass, and trees are lining it. And I just was like, oh yeah. I used to like take off my shoes and put my feet in the grass every day. And so I've been doing that. I've been here uh as we're recording this, I've been in my new place for about three weeks, and I just have been doing that every day now and looking at the trees. And when I when I put my feet on the ground, I feel connected, really connected to the trees, really connected to the earth. It's like I can feel that. And I got all geeked out, you know, a couple years, a few years ago around earthing and what it does for you. And and I realized, I mean, there's a probably a lot of reasons why I'm sleeping better, you know, but it's quieter here. I know you'd think out in the country's quiet, but it wasn't. There was like the vineyards have vineyard workers and tractors and middle of the night like spraying and all kinds of like there's a lot of noise. And I don't know, it maybe it's the feet on the grass, you know, and and it just being in nature. I started hugging trees again. Like my I went to my son's house and there's this huge tree, and I just I guess nature. I'm going back to the I know every almost every uh guest like comes up with some sort of nature thing, but it's so true. And just being and sitting in the grass and putting my feet in the grass and watching my dog play and seeing all the different trees and hugging trees, and that's where I'm at right now. I'm really loving my new place. And I know we talk about like, what is it? When you move, you know, you still are yourself, or you can't just, you know, change everything. But a lot has changed just by moving. I think you you create new neural pathways too. It just doing different things, seeing different things. I don't know. It's been really great. So I'm not saying you should all move, but there's been some positives for me anyway. So that's good.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

I'm so glad. I'm so glad you found a more peaceful place. Yeah, your environment is huge to your sleep, but also the grounding, yeah, getting out there and putting your feet in the grass can really be helping. And yeah, it's soothing to your nervous system. So of course you might be sleeping better. I think that's amazing. I'm so glad. So glad. Yay! And I know you love it too. Like feet in the grass. Yeah, we both do. I do. I go out, and whenever I garden, so then my toes get all dirty and I go like get pedicures, and they're like, but you know, I go, so you know, it's summer. This is the perfect time for us to talk about the summer, the messy middle, the heat, the, but you know, that's what I do. I go out and I put my feet in the grass, then pretty soon I'm deadheading, then pretty soon I'm pulling weeds, I'm doing the work, I'm spring. Oh my gosh, I'm in a battle with the beetles, the Japanese beetles, but I'm winning. So yeah, the work, the messy middle, right? The messy middle of summer. So, yeah. So thank you so much for listening. And yeah, go take your shoes off, put your feet in the grass, and do something today to help you feel thanks so much for listening to the Sober and Lit podcast.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you would subscribe, rate, and review. It really helps get the word out. And remember, do something today to help you feel lit. See you next week.