Alcohol Awareness Week – Alcohol and Connection

In his second blog contribution for the month, Rapid Transformational Therapist Marcus Matthews talks to us about alcohol and it's impact on our connection to self and others as part of #alcoholawarenessweek

Many of my clients come to me due to anxiety, confidence and self-esteem, but many also have put in place their own coping mechanisms and alcohol and smoking are often interchangeable as the top two.

As we enter the festive season maybe you are starting to think about a change, we’ve all heard of ‘dry January’ but did you know that it’s important to have three alcohol-free days a week, to allow your body the time it needs to repair itself?

Often though we just need to take the edge off right?

A couple of glasses of wine after a stressful day or maybe for some Dutch courage.

But did you know it takes up to 21 days to form a new habit, good or bad and often that one or two drinks a week becomes a habit and before you know it, it’s out of control.

Want to gain control and freedom from drinking?

Many of my clients achieve freedom from a range of sabotaging behaviours, including addictions and alcohol. It’s not just alcoholics that need to manage their drinking - anyone who relies on a drink to relax or have a good time could benefit from knowing how to cut back on alcohol.

Willpower alone is not powerful enough to change behaviours long term, we need to get to the root cause and work with the subconscious mind, which is ten times more powerful, as this is the way to achieve lasting change.

Addiction is about connection

One of the major factors causing alcoholism, is the feeling of disconnection.

People often find places like Alcoholics Anonymous useful because it’s a place of connection, a shared experience.

We are hard wired to seek connection and avoid rejection. If you dig deep enough into the emotional problems of almost anyone, you can trace their issues back to a lack of fulfilment of those needs.

Many of the clients I work with in this area find the root cause to be linked to family and that doesn’t mean they have a history of alcoholism, but culturally alcohol has been a bond, the glue connecting people.

When we miss that connection with people, the mind remembers alcohol was helpful.

I had a clients last year who had spent many years in pubs as a child and as an adult. His drinking socially had become part of his life and his health was suffering. So much so that the day of his session he was rushed into hospital.

On his return we did the session and you may think “well he has been in pubs all his life that’s the issue”.

In fact the route cause was that as a child his father spent much of his time in work and then would go to the pub in the evenings, he was a socialable drinker, but spent little time with his children. He believed that it was the women’s job to raise the children, just an old fashion attitude.

Desperate to connect with his father once he was old enough he found himself working in the pub trade. Consciously he didn’t choose this trade to bond with his dad, in fact his dad left him and his mother when he was in his teen years and he never really got to know him, but his subconscious mind realised to feel safe and connected he needed a father figure. With no one around his mind made the link between alcohol and his father and so started his drinking career.

As a publican he became very successful, he was popular with many people and this further re-enforced the mind to believe that alcohol was serving his need for connection and survival.

With the onset of ill health he could no longer work and with a lack of connection to his old life the only thing still left was alcohol, the constant in his life.

You see the mind does what it thinks is in your best interest, it doesn’t know good or bad and as soon as this 60 year old man realised he drank to connect with his father he gave up.

Any addiction serves a purpose, but often these programmes run in our subconscious and unconscious mind so we can find ourselves consciously knowing we need to change but emotionally something drives us to keep the habit going.

Willpower alone won’t work, because the conscious mind runs 5% of what we do, whilst our subconscious emotional mind runs 95% of how we feel, so in the battle of emotion and logic, emotion always wins.

If you want to reduce your alcohol intake and are struggling then why not get in touch. With many successful clients beating addiction it doesn’t have to be hard when you understand the root cause.

Your mind truly wants what is best for you, but it just needs some guidance.