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I was an alcoholic…

I thought that once I quit drinking in May 2012, the skies would open up, sunshine would envelop me in its warm rays, and birds would perch themselves on my shoulder singing happy songs in my ear. That was farthest from the truth. I thought alcohol was the issue. It was the problem I needed to fix. So, I did. But it didn’t work. It didn’t fix what was actually going on inside. I was still miserable. I was edgy, irritable, depressed, angry, and I still hated myself. I was sitting there asking the Universe why? Why was I still in the depths of self-loathing, depression, anger? Why didn’t anything change? That day, and quite a few other days, I contemplated giving up sobriety. Just drink one more time to numb it all out.

My perfectionism, people pleasing, self-doubt, and limiting beliefs

didn’t disappear when I put down the drink. As a matter of fact, those parts of me got louder. And all those hurt parts of me were coming to the surface. The buffer of alcohol was no longer there. At least with the alcohol, I could sometimes quiet those parts or quiet the part of me that was hyper-critical. Now this critical part was front and center demanding my attention. Did I mention I was feeling miserable? I didn’t feel deserving of being happy or having a fulfilling life. I definitely didn’t think I was worthy of one. These feelings ran deep to my core. “Just go back to drinking” a voice inside told me. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to move forward. I was determined and a bit stubborn. I was going to do this. Even with this internal struggle going on. This war that was endless.

That’s when I knew I had work to do.

I started digging deeper into personal growth, spirituality, therapy, and yoga. I dug up everything I could on inner child work, shadow work, and building self-worth. I later learned about Internal Family Systems and realized it had all these elements in one model. I started seeing a crack of light shining in. I learned how to work with the parts of me to end the self-hatred, negative self-talk, limiting beliefs and self-sabotage.

Then I spent so much time healing those vulnerable parts of me that were holding all of this hurt and pain. I had to look at the situations and events from my past that I tried for so long to ignore, dismiss, reject. The same situations and events that spawned my perfectionism, people pleasing, self-doubt, and limiting beliefs and my low self-worth. I went through the work with compassion for my younger self and then I was finally able to process it and let go. It was so uncomfortable. There were so many times I wept for my younger self. And there was so much gratitude for the parts of me that were just trying to help me navigate the world based on the things I went through.

I reparented myself.

By doing this internal work, I learned how to trust my intuition, my True Self, my truth. With each time I listened to my gut, to that voice, it got stronger, louder. It became my guiding force. Finally, I was able to trust myself. I was no longer held back by past programming and conditioning, limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging like perfectionism, people pleasing. That harsh inner critic became my cheerleader!