How Honest Can You Be? | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 941
“You either drink, or you don’t,” Kelly’s husband actually said to her. If only it were that simple, like there’s a switch you can just flick and the desire to drink evap...
What happens when you finally want to stop using alcohol to cope, but the idea of facing everything without it feels almost impossible? In this episode, Kim and Liz bravely step into that very question. They open up about just how easily alcohol became a source of comfort — soothing a nervous system wrecked by family crisis and serving as the one reliable, familiar thing in the uncertainty of life. Astonishingly, what comes next isn’t a battle of willpower. Learning how to cope without alcohol becomes something else entirely – permission to feel, to choose your next step on your own terms, and to discover the strength that’s been with you all along.
Ready to take the next step on your journey? Explore free resources, programs, social links, and more at learn.thisnakedmind.com/podcast-resources. You’ll also find information about The Path and how coaching can support your goals. Plus, if you have your own Naked Life story, you can submit it there. Until next week, stay curious.
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Kim’s life fell apart around her in nearly every way possible. Her daughter was dealing with extreme mental health crises that consumed every aspect of Kim’s life. She was trying to be there for her while still showing up for her husband, her son, at home, and in her teaching career. The only thing she had to look forward to some days was pouring a drink and escaping from it all. When her teaching career became a victim of the fallout and the disagreements with her husband escalated due to the stress of it all, alcohol often became the only constant she could count on in the chaos.
She’d also tried AA before, and the shame from it had followed her in. Two months into The Path she was still carrying a question she couldn’t quite set down: did she have to fully work through all of it — the grief, the losses, the years of crisis — before she could actually start to change?
Coach Hayley spins that question around for Kim: what if it isn’t about letting go of those experiences at all? What if it’s about learning to live with them differently, so they become part of who you’re becoming rather than something standing between you and the person you want to be?
When Coach Hayley asks Kim to picture who she actually is right now, Kim starts with the image she keeps coming back to on her own: herself in pieces on the floor. Hayley pushes a little further. Who are you as you actually exist today — the woman who’s been showing up, getting vulnerable, doing the work? What does she look like? What comes back is a paddleboard. Kim is on the water near her home, sun out, paddle in hand, heading toward a beach where her family is waiting. She’s done it hundreds of times without alcohol. She knows what that version of herself feels like. She’s starting to believe she can get back to her.
Liz has been drinking her entire adult life — thirty years — and when Coach Cole asks her what alcohol means to her beyond the substance itself, she doesn’t hesitate: familiar. Not exciting, not even something she looks forward to anymore. Just familiar. This is what she knows. It’s the grocery store she’s shopped at for decades, where she knows every aisle without thinking, and the thought of someone rearranging it all is worse than whatever was wrong with the old layout. It’s safe.
On the surface, she’s doing the work. Shows up for Path calls, watches the replays, works through the reflections, and she can feel something starting to shift. The problem is she has a pattern she can’t seem to break. It goes something like this –
1) Make a sincere commitment to take a break from drinking
2) Create a plan. (Her husband even offers to come home early to help her get through the hard hours in the late afternoon.)
3) Cue the sabotage. (She wakes up that morning and starts drinking before he can arrive. She heads it off every time.
4) Rinse, Recycle, Repeat. She’s stuck in a loop.
Cole gives Liz her aha moment here. She’s not rebelling against alcohol. She’s rebelling against the feeling of being told what to do. Even when it’s her calling the shots. The moment he takes forever off the table entirely — nobody is asking you to decide anything permanently, this is just an hour, and it’s yours — that inner tantrum subsides. There’s nothing to fight against now.
He also asks her to use that hour differently than she expects: not white-knuckling it, not putting on a show to keep her mind occupied, but actually getting curious about what’s going on inside. What does the discomfort feel like? What is it saying? Examine what the discomfort thinks will happen if she doesn’t drink right now. Write it down. Get interested in it. See what’s actually there before deciding anything.
“There’s no need to be rebellious about something I’m choosing to do.”
For a deeper look at why those feelings can be so physically intense in the early stages and what your brain is actually doing, navigating your feelings when you stop drinking covers the neuroscience in plain terms.
Hayley Scherders Hayley Scherders is a certified TNM Coach with training from the Canadian Addiction and Mental Health Association. Drawing from personal experiences, Hayley understands how tough change can be and provides a safe, compassionate, and judgment-free space where her clients can feel supported. She believes that with the right mindset, anyone can change their life at any time.
Learn more about Coach Hayley: https://thisnakedmind.com/coach/hayley-scherders/
Cole Harvey is a certified Naked Mind Senior Coach. For years, he felt lost and used alcohol as a way to cope, until he decided to go alcohol-free and focus on finding his purpose. Through curiosity, self-compassion, and adventure, he transformed his life. As a habit change and mindset coach, Cole helps young men understand themselves, build better habits, and find meaning.
Learn more about Coach Cole: https://thisnakedmind.com/coach/cole-harvey/
Episode links:
nakedmindpath.com
How To Stop Drinking To Avoid Emotions | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | E845
Alcohol Addiction and Shame | Hayley’s Naked Life | EP 679
Trusting Yourself Again | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 760
A: More common than most people realize. About 1 in 5 adults in the United States report using alcohol to cope with stress, and when there’s real trauma in the picture, it goes deeper than stress relief. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, and research published in PMC describes what happens after a traumatic experience: endorphin levels spike during the trauma and then crash afterward, sometimes for hours or days. Alcohol compensates for that crash. The brain learns that association quickly, and before long it’s not really a choice anymore — it’s just what the body reaches for when things get hard. Kim puts it plainly in her session: she wasn’t drinking because she wanted to. She was drinking because at the end of those days, it was the only thing that didn’t ask anything back from her.
A: Most approaches to alcohol try to change what you’re doing. Affective Liminal Psychology (ALP) asks why you’re doing it, and works from the premise that if you don’t understand the emotional function a behavior is serving, you can’t sustainably change it. Annie Grace developed ALP after years of research into neuroscience and behavioral psychology — she holds an MS in Marketing and wrote the bestselling book This Naked Mind — and it’s the methodology behind everything This Naked Mind teaches, including The Path. You can hear it at work in both sessions in this episode. Hayley doesn’t shame Kim for giving alcohol a job during the hardest years of her life. She helps her understand the job. Cole doesn’t set Liz a goal or a timeline. He removes the pressure of forever and asks her to get curious for one hour. Both approaches work because they start where the behavior actually lives, not at the surface of it.
A: The Path is This Naked Mind’s year-long program built around the ALP methodology, and the thing most people say sets it apart is that nobody is telling them what to do. Kim has been through traditional recovery programs, a partial hospital program, and years of AA. She says in her session that she’s never felt safe in a program the way she does here. Coach Hayley holds additional training through the Canadian Addiction and Mental Health Association. Coach Cole is a certified senior ALP coach. But credentials aside, what you hear in these sessions is two coaches following the conversation wherever it honestly goes, asking questions instead of giving directives, and leaving each person with a next step that actually belongs to them. Learn more at nakedmindpath.com.
A: Liz has the same question, and what she and Cole figure out together is probably not the answer most people expect. She’d make a real plan, feel good about it, set up accountability with her husband — and then wake up the morning of and start drinking early specifically so the conversation couldn’t happen. Over and over. She knew it was a loop. She said so out loud. It kept happening anyway. What Cole identifies is that Liz wasn’t rebelling against alcohol or even against the goal itself. She was rebelling against the feeling of being told what to do, even by her own intentions. The moment he reframes it as her choice — nothing permanent, no rules, just an hour she’s freely choosing — the resistance disappears. If you’ve run a version of this loop yourself, the related episode on trusting yourself again is worth a listen.
A: Kim’s session is a pretty direct answer to that. She came into The Path still in the middle of it — her daughter more stable but not certain, the grief still going, the losses not resolved. She hadn’t worked through any of it first. Two months in she’s already experiencing real shifts, not because the hard circumstances cleared but because Hayley’s approach doesn’t ask for that. The question Hayley turns around for Kim isn’t “have you processed your trauma?” It’s “what if you don’t have to put it down before you move forward — what if carrying it differently is the same thing as moving forward?” Those two things can happen at the same time.
A: Cole makes this concrete in Liz’s session — not white-knuckling through an hour or finding a distraction, but paying attention to what’s happening inside when she doesn’t immediately drink. What does the discomfort feel like? What is it saying? Write it down. Ask it questions. The urge turns out to be more informative than powerful once you stop trying to overcome it and start treating it as something worth understanding. That’s the core of ALP — and usually what feels most different to people who’ve spent years trying to out-muscle their own habits.
Did This Naked Mind, The Path, or The Alcohol Experiment help you find freedom from drinking? Share your story (you can remain anonymous!) and you could be featured on an episode of This Naked Mind Podcast to inspire others.
Special music thank you to the Kevin MacLeod Funkorama (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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This Naked Mind was founded by bestselling author Annie Grace, whose book This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world change their relationship with alcohol — without shame, without rules, and without feeling like something is wrong with them.
This Naked Mind’s approach is rooted in neuroscience, psychology, and the lived experience of real people who’ve been exactly where you are. The podcast, the books, The Alcohol Experiment, and The Path program all operate from the same core belief: that you are not broken, and that lasting change comes from understanding — not willpower.
Whether you’re sober curious, trying to figure out how to stop drinking, or looking for a way to finally feel at home in your own life, This Naked Mind meets you where you are.
