Sobriety Prayer: A Grace-Filled Path to Healing from Addiction

Speaker 1: 0:00 I didn’t understand the concept of grace, because grace as a controlling person, grace is free. It’s unmerited favor and I didn’t earn it and that didn’t make sense to me. I thought my value and self-worth. I needed to earn a sense of pride and it is playing God and saying we know better than God what will work. You know, suck it up. Speaker 2: 0:17 You don’t get to control that Over 21 million adults struggle with addiction in America, and yet only 10%, reportedly, are receiving the treatment that they need, and I think there’s actually more of us that struggle with an addictive mentality even if we are not addicted to external substances. With over 25 years of experience helping high-performing individuals overcome self-sabotage and redefine their goals, Chris has worked with everyone from athletes to entrepreneurs, helping them break free from addiction and live with purpose. Chris, welcome. I would love to get a little snapshot just of your story how, regardless of anyone listening, whether their struggle might be similar to yours when it comes to alcohol or any other addiction what I’d really love to focus in on is helping us diagnose the areas in our life where we might actually be struggling with addictive type mentalities. They’re just not showing up in the same way, but they are debilitating us just as much. Speaker 1: 1:31 Thank you for having me. Yeah, I want to start by saying I’ll be clear. I’m not an addiction expert or a sobriety coach. I’m a life coach. I have a master’s in counseling psychology. That is my background. This is my second book and until I wrote this book, a lot of my closest friends and family members did not know my story with alcohol addiction. Speaker 1: 1:55 It’s not because I was ashamed of it, it’s because I have a very solid, strong community. That’s a recovery community for alcohol addicted people, and so you know, I didn’t feel the need to take take it outside of that, because not everyone, if you’re, if we’re not dealing with the same thing, not everybody understands it. So, um, I talk a lot about community in my book. It’s really important. So, that said, being a life coach, and the reason I did share my story with recovery and alcohol my alcohol addiction in this book is because I wanted to present these coaching tools. This is a second coaching book I’ve written now and it’s very interactive. I share a lot of my favorite tools for getting people unstuck. Speaker 2: 2:45 It is very interactive, you guys. Yes, the links, of course, will be everywhere, but yes, there’s a lot of writing sections. Speaker 1: 2:52 Exactly so, like getting a hard copy as opposed to an e-book is very helpful because there’s fill in the blanks. It’s not a workbook that you need to feel stressed or overwhelmed about. It’s. You can also just read it and not fill in the blanks if you want. But it is interactive. And I chose to share my story with addiction because I realized these coaching tools I want to present in this book are really about overcoming controlling thoughts, perfectionism, high standards, self-sabotage thoughts. Perfectionism, high standards, self-sabotage, rigid thinking. I’m an. I’m a high achiever. I coach high achievers. Speaker 2: 3:29 Um, I help people get out of uh, performance pressure things and which is pretty much every lady in early morning habit by the way, like you’re speaking to the right people, the women attracted to early morning habit, are precisely who you’re speaking to. So, ladies, listen up. This is you. Let’s just own it. I figured that. Speaker 1: 3:49 And those are also the type of ladies that hire a coach right, these are the type of people that sign up for a life coach. So those are my clients. So, in order to present these tools, I thought you know what the best example I have is is my own story with addiction, and so I someone doesn’t need to be addicted to alcohol, or even in an active addiction, to get a lot of benefit from the exercises in the book. It’s just that I say, okay, here’s, here’s how this got me in, stuck with my alcohol addiction. Now let’s apply it to you, and so we can definitely talk about some of those things. If you want that keep us stuck in high standards and perfectionistic thinking, I’m happy to share tools with you if you would like. Whatever would be helpful. Speaker 2: 4:41 Yeah, I think a question to start is give us ideas or ways to self-evaluate, because I think sometimes we live in denial. We know we’re high achievers. A lot of us as women, and maybe some of us, if we’re really self-aware, can acknowledge that we struggle sometimes with controlling tendencies, behaviors that are secondary to mindsets and thoughts. But I think for a lot of us we can acknowledge that but maybe are not as self-aware of how it is actually detrimental to us and our families. Meaning we might be aware of those things. But give me some thoughts on how to sort of reflect on how some of those tendencies and mindsets could be negatively impacting not just us but also the people that we love, because at the end of the day, that is probably going to be what is more effective at highlighting. Speaker 2: 5:50 Okay, I have a problem. Yeah, I’ve never really thought about it that way. But yeah, this is a bigger problem than I’m giving it credit. For what? Might some of those assessments look like Simplicity is key. Speaker 1: 6:00 Keep a kiss, keep it simple, silly, right, like so. The simplest way for us to evaluate several times a day, throughout the day, taking an inventory throughout the day, is to constantly be asking ourselves is this thought or behavior moving me in the direction I want to go? Is this thought or behavior moving me to the person I want to become for the people I love the most? And if it’s not, then step two would be to take a deeper look at that and get leverage on ourselves and ask, because we need to be honest, if we’re letting go of something, it will be hard. So we want to choose our hard right. And so to do that, we want to ask is giving this thing up? Speaker 1: 6:50 Whether it’s getting up early in the morning or giving up, you know, for me it was quitting alcohol. Whatever it is, that’s not moving us where we want to go and we want to get rid of that habit. We want to go and we want to get rid of that habit. We need to ask well, is the pain of giving this up greater or less than the pain of keeping it? And most of us hit a pain threshold where we know, even if other people don’t know, we know in our gut that if we don’t let go of this thing or maybe it’s something we need to add into our life, do this thing like exercise, or get up early at same time every day, or quiet time with God, whatever that thing is, we know that the absence of it or the inclusion of it will be painful, so we’re weighing the costs, costs and that leverage is important. Speaker 2: 7:57 The leverage is important and also acknowledging some of the more subtle implications to the loss or the gain. I think you brought up perfectionism as a good example. Gain, like. I think you brought up perfectionism as a good example and it’s sort of understanding. What is that? How is that showing up in my life? How is perfectionism and some of the tendencies to not give myself grace, how is it not only impacting me, but how is that also then negatively impacting my family? And I’m just using this as one example. Speaker 2: 8:27 I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m a perfectionist. I would probably lean more towards like constructive criticism. I put it in clear quotes because I know my husband and my kids would sometimes say it’s not constructive, but like I’ll be very hard on myself to be like okay, ani, you could have done better, step it up, you could do better. But then it also gets transferred to other people, namely my family. So I’m using myself as an example, but if someone listening struggles with perfectionism, this could also show up in a similar way. Speaker 2: 8:58 But I have had to humbly recognize that even some of the things that I tell myself, I think I’m just limiting it to myself and it’s not affecting anyone else. But then I realized, like how often I unnecessarily say something to my kids and it’s like was that really necessary to say? I don’t know that it was right. Like maybe I don’t like the shirt that my kid came down with. It’s like is it really necessary to be like that shirt doesn’t match your pants? Do you know what I mean? It’s little things like that. So it’s when you compound those types of behaviors where then 10 years later, your kid can look back and be like yeah, my mom was kind of critical or my mom was kind of perfectionistic. It’s like how do we really take a look in the mirror and be like okay, the lens through which we see ourselves is going to be the same lens through which we see other people, whether we acknowledge it or aware of it or not. And how can that be a controlling mindset? Speaker 1: 9:57 that’s negatively impacting us. Speaker 2: 9:59 Yeah, and what does it look like to lose it, right? Speaker 1: 10:02 Right, and I have, and I have a tool for that. I think first we need to define perfectionism. So to me, there’s a big difference between a high achiever and a high growth person and a perfectionist, and so we’ll just go with that definition. So, an achiever, which we all here, are high growth wonderful, that’s great. We will do what it takes to get to our goal. We’ll tweak the tactics, we’ll tweak the strategy. Speaker 1: 10:27 A perfectionist will self-sabotage, crumple up the paper, throw it in the trash and shut down the whole goal altogether because it wasn’t perfect or one strategy didn’t work. So what we want to do is stay aware of that. It’s not wrong that we do that. It’s not wrong that we wanted to point out the shirt our child was wearing. We need to not call ourselves wrong for those things, but just celebrate our awareness and go is this the best? Is this? Maybe you do need to say something about the shirt, depending on where you’re going. There’s no formula. It’s going to be different for every child, every event, every situation. So we’re always running it through the lens of is this? You know? What do I have control over here and what don’t I? And if it’s something we don’t have control over. Like if people have fun at a party we hosted, let’s say we’ve got to let that go, cause that’s that’s a rule we have for a goal we hosted. Let’s say We’ve got to let that go because that’s a rule we have for a goal we set that’s not actually attainable. So that’s an example of a high standard that’s too high and will get us into trouble. Speaker 1: 11:36 And I want to say, you know, when we have these tendencies, we don’t need to be hard on ourselves. They served a purpose. We, we developed this perfectionistic thinking or a habit, or, for me, um, alcohol, drinking alcohol. We developed it innocently, to meet some needs a long time ago and it maybe even helped us survive for a season. Maybe we had to be a perfectionistic child because we had abusive parents. We, you know, we’re all different, so we all have these things we have for different reasons and we don’t need to sit down and analyze all of that, but we do need to be kind to ourselves and say, okay, I see how I got this, is it serving me now and do I need it in the future? And if it’s not serving us now, and if it’s actually gotten to the point where it will cause more harm than saving us, then that’s time to change the pattern. Speaker 2: 13:40 You have. I’m trying to get where the chapter three. You talk about party people. Speaker 1: 13:46 Yes, I love that Party people. Speaker 2: 13:48 Mm-hmm, and you found, or you had, multiple labels. If you will Label is probably not the right word where I think you just highlighted some really, really good. What is the right word? You could probably come up with a better. What am I trying to say? Speaker 1: 14:07 I call them in the book of companiers. But it’s you know, I try not to get tied up in labels. Speaker 1: 14:14 I say that in the book, but we have to, but we have to talk and we have to write, so we have to have words. So there, there are things that over my 18 years of being in recovery that I have noticed are common denominators of people with addictions. We are. A lot of us are highly sensitive, a lot of us have issues with control, and maybe that started with a controlling parent A lot of us have. Maybe we apologize too much when it’s not necessary. We can be people pleasers Not everybody. Like I said, this is not a formula, it’s just something. I’ve noticed that it is a lot, especially with not just women. Speaker 1: 14:55 Men in recovery, too, have these things, and so I thought it was important to highlight these in the book, because I’m really only an expert at serving the person I once was, and those are all the person I once was, and they’re the things I check in about now. They don’t just go away forever, but I’m aware of them and I celebrate my awareness and go okay, there’s probably a better way to do this. Go, okay, there’s probably a better way to do this. Like judgment’s one, too, where, if you’re like as a child, I was a real, really hard on myself, high standards, perfectionist, and if something wasn’t perfect, it was trash. I didn’t understand how to navigate that, and so it’s so funny. I just totally lost my thought. Speaker 2: 15:52 You’re allowed to. It’s launch week and I’m doing my back. I had four cups of coffee today and I’m still not showered. Speaker 1: 15:58 It’ll come back to me. That’s hilarious. There’s no judgment here. Speaker 2: 16:03 Yeah, see, look, grace yourself, here we go, real time, all the grace. I. Um. This transition is definitely not smooth on my end, but I did really want to highlight one of the things that stood out to me the most and I kind of touched on this when you first um came on and we started talking is this idea of being sober minded. You know, you talk about these accompaniers, the things that we just mentioned, the comparison, the people pleasing, avoiding conflict how many ladies here are conflict avoiders or people pleasers? Or you have one in here about desiring approval. Speaker 2: 16:44 I think what is so powerful about this idea of being sober-minded not only is it mentioned a lot in scripture to be sober-minded, we are exhorted to be sober-minded but when you consider this definition that you give means that we do not allow ourselves to be captivated by any type of influence that would lead us away from sound judgment. Speaker 2: 17:13 And when you consider that definition, it’s sort of like ah darn, like that’s me. I mean I definitely struggle with that and I think a lot of us do. Like that’s me, I mean I definitely struggle with that and I think a lot of us do. Then, in another section, you kind of give examples of dangerous addictions and when you consider that being sober minded is anything that can influence sound judgment. I mean, if this list isn’t enough, you then go into the accompanier. So I’m just going to read this really quick for those of us who are not yet convinced that we can take something from Chris’s book and her message. You know, dangerous addictions could be alcohol, food, sugar, binging, purging tobacco screens, smartphones, tablets, tv prescription or illegal drugs, marijuana, gambling, shopping, self-injury. I added to this social media we’re the news talk about a potential influencer of sound judgment in the polarizing world that we live in. Speaker 2: 18:20 But here’s where it really stands out Rigid thinking, perfectionism, approval, junkiness over apologizing, comparison. When you consider that any of these can actually influence our ability to be sober minded because we are allowing them to take too much of a position of control in our mind, I think it creates a very different narrative when you read her book Grace Yourself and really gives you tools to think how. Which of these is most applicable to me, when do I land? And I just think it totally changes the way that I read this book and thinking where my areas of not being sober minded. So to me. I almost read this whole book and came out being like, okay, I think the call is actually to be sober minded to me, Like that’s what I, oh, that’s beautiful. Speaker 1: 19:18 That makes me happy, and my thought did come back to me that where I was going with that trailed off. That was it. As a young person, I was very judgmental and really what that came down to once I did self work was that I was so judgmental of myself only takes so much on our shoulders and then it has to spill out onto other people or events, like where we’re blaming people or events for things that are outside of our control. And so you know, I want to mention it’s important why I call it grace yourself, because that that it’s much deeper than it sounds. Um, yeah, as a young, I was always bracing myself like white knuckling. I thought I needed discipline and control, and you do in some areas. You do if you want to be healthy and exercise, yes, discipline’s great. But you can’t take all that and apply it to things like alcohol addiction or these other addictions that really have us trapped. And so we’ve got to let go of some of the control, admit some powerlessness and let God the first three steps of the 12 steps. We summarize them in recovery. As I can’t, God can, so let him. Speaker 1: 20:41 And so, as a young woman, I didn’t understand the concept of grace, because grace as a controlling person. Grace is free. It’s unmerited favor and I didn’t earn it and that didn’t make sense to me. I thought I needed to everything about my value and self worth. I needed to earn. So I didn’t get the idea that I could have these things for free because I thought I had to control my worth. And we just don’t get to do that. We don’t get to say I’ll tell you if I’m worthy or not, because in a sense that is another sense of pride and it is playing God and saying we know better than God what we’re worth. So the real theme in every page of this book is accepting God’s grace on ourselves and knowing that you know, suck it up. You don’t get to control that, yeah. Speaker 2: 21:37 Yeah, amen, amen to that, and you touched really beautifully I think you worded it well in the book a struggle that I think many of us can resonate with, even if it’s not alcohol, is trying to out work our addiction, or I would take it so far as to say outwork our sin. It’s like as long as our intention is right, then our behavior is justified type of a thing. It’s like as long as I have the right intention, I should be able to you know out, discipline my addiction, or outwork my sin, or, and. And really what you’re saying is, and what you point out in your own story is no, actually it’s this idea of being still and recognizing I can’t, for whatever reason and whatever situation we’re facing. It’s like, where is that power in actually finding stillness and accepting grace? Speaker 2: 22:44 that is unmerited, which is hard, because then you feel like well, I didn’t earn it, which is a pride thing. Speaker 1: 22:51 You just said it beautifully yeah right, if we can’t shit on ourselves, so it’s just another shit. I should be able to do this. No, not with. Not with some things in life. Addiction is a beast. There’s a lot of things in life that we are not meant to be able to conquer by ourself, without a community of other people and without God’s help, and some of us need tools to know. Speaker 1: 23:18 I used to think I was letting God help me, but then, in recovery, I learned how to let God help me, and some of us need those tools. Speaker 2: 23:27 Yes, yeah, I just so the time of this recording. Most of us need those tools. Yes, yeah, I just so the time of this recording. Most of us just watched the Eagles crush the Chiefs in the Superbowl and there was a image that went around that I just thought was really powerful and it was Jalen Hurts kneeling on the field. And the quote just says if I kneel first before God, I can stand before any man. And it’s just such a beautiful example of really what you’re saying is this idea of you know, if we really want to stand, then probably the most effective thing that we need to do is kneel first. I love that and you know. Speaker 2: 24:09 You talk about prayer, you talk about this idea of coming to the end of your rope, and I think it’s a call for all of us in the areas that we might be struggling in right now. What would it look like for us? We’re trying to stand in our own power, we’re trying to make it happen, we’re trying to fix it, figure it out, and maybe the call is to just kneel and ask for grace, literally grace yourself through the power of Jesus Christ. What did that look like for you? Just tell me briefly how. Kneeling? Talk about sobriety, prayer, serenity prayer. But what did that moment look like and feel like to you? Speaker 1: 24:53 And you were finally like okay, that moment it was a moment and it was when I found I’d been trying for 20 something years to quit drinking on my own, since I started it in high school. I was 37. I looked up online a recovery meeting, went to the meeting. It was an all women’s meeting and this woman in the group I knew nobody in recovery. No one in my family drank. I knew no one that identified as an alcoholic. I was very confused why I couldn’t figure this thing out, because I figured a lot of stuff in my life out. Speaker 1: 25:23 So this woman in the group said to me it’s not your fault, you have a condition, it’s like an allergy, and you never have to have another drink again. And that in that moment all that shame and guilt I’ve been carrying flew off my shoulders. She said stay here with us. We’re going to teach you the solution to this. We’ve been there before. We know what to do. And I stayed in that community and that’s when my continuous sobriety started. So it was a moment for me and I know it’s not that way for everybody. That’s how God did it for me. I came in and needed to hear you never have to have another drink again. Some people come in and hear you never get to have another drink again, and that’s good too. We all come in where we come in. Speaker 2: 26:11 Yeah, there is another point in the book where you talk about alcohol as liquid poison and you, you know, again give grace to everyone’s journey being a little different. You talk about how, for yourself, the wisest course was just going alcohol free, and I’ve I mean, it’s no secret on here, I am very much a proponent of everyone being alcohol free and I’ll do my own and I’ve not done a live training on that yet but in individual conversations there’s a lot of biological reasons for it to not drink alcohol. Just aside from you know the other issues, but there’s actually biologically a lot of good reasons to not drink um at all. But you talk about something that I thought was really interesting how, um, it’s almost weirder to say no to alcohol, or almost like harder. There’s more questions around that Um, rather than like no one questions why you say no to mayonnaise, I think was the example in the book and um just a funny story. Speaker 2: 27:25 So I’ve never liked the taste of alcohol personally. It just it never gets down the throat. It makes me gag every time and, like I was the, I’m stubborn, and so for me it was just like, okay, I don’t like the taste and I’m not willing to acquire it. And I worked in emergency medicine for 10 years, so I also had the unique position of watching alcohol destroy lives, of watching alcohol destroy lives. And you also talk about the mind’s eye of what an alcoholic looks like like the person with no teeth rotted, wearing rags, not having bathed, in days where I saw very functional, high functioning CEOs down to, you know, fathers and mothers who looked just like my parents having just destroyed their lives. Speaker 2: 28:18 Um so for me it was also like I’m just not even willing to acquire the taste for this, or coffee. Speaker 2: 28:26 I was like, okay, I also couldn’t stand the taste of that either, and I was like I will acquire this for good or for bad. Um, but I would love to just hear your honest take on why, in your experience, alcohol is liquid poison, and I know that you would not be as adamant to say, like you know, you should never drink. Um, but, in your experience, just give us an honest take on alcohol that maybe some of us would not have considered. Speaker 1: 28:56 Yeah, so I want to. I’ll start by saying I’m not anti-alcohol. My friends drink. They don’t have a problem with it. My husband I don’t gravitate toward people that are big drinkers that get drunk, but my husband I call them normies, right? People that can drink alcohol and leave like, have a sip or a half a drink and leave it there, right, it doesn’t ignite this obsession to have more like it does for people like me. So there is a difference. And I’m not anti-alcohol. I say I call it liquid poison and in the book I want to make sure it’s all in context that I’m really working to empower the reader who is like me, to be empowered to know look, if you’re stuck in this snare, that there is nothing wrong to saying no to a liquid poison. Right, there is. There is more. Speaker 1: 29:49 The question I used the example is what you’re referring to of my one of my kids is just never drank there. My kids are all. I have three. They’re all in their twenties and one of them just never was interested, went through college. Everything is just not his thing and, um, you know, back. It didn’t used to be like it is now where we have mocktails and people know the harmful effects and a lot of people are alcohol free and there’s no nothing wrong with that. It used to be. When I got sober was like you were weird if you didn’t drink. So the only reason to not drink was you had a problem with it and there was a stigma attached. So the only reason to not drink was you had a problem with it and there was a stigma attached. So with my, our son, you know, the kids at one point were like don’t you think you should try alcohol? Kind of kind of like so he’s not weird or so he’s socially accepted in college. Speaker 1: 30:43 And I said no, like the. A better question would be why do people drink, Not? Why don’t you drink when you have all the information? And then I quoted that funny Jim Gaffigan skit in the book about people don’t say why don’t you eat mayonnaise? Should I go outside and eat the mayonnaise? Like, is there right? Speaker 1: 31:04 And so just thinking, I think it’s helpful for the reader who is like me, who needs help in that way, who we really can’t drink because it will kill us and we do get this obsession for more drinks once we’ve had one sip, which gets. It’s a progressive condition, so that gets worse over time and it even with age. Even if you quit drinking for 20 years and start drinking again quit drinking for 20 years and start drinking again, it’s going to have progressed so and that’s that is a fact. So I want to empower those people to know there’s there’s nothing wrong with you, that you can’t drink like the next person, or I should say that you can’t moderate like the next person. Because I spent years thinking something was wrong with me. Am I undisciplined? I don’t have enough willpower, which is was really crazy thinking, because I have a ton of discipline and willpower. It’s just when it comes to things like addiction, we can’t apply the same rules to those to that. Speaker 2: 32:35 Yeah, and thank you for sharing that perspective. I mean you are speaking to a very specific group of people who, you are right, have a biological, physiological response to people, why you are. And I’m going to also say then on my end, to the people who feel the same pressure actually they just don’t respond physiologically. But I mean I have definitely I’ve gotten that question so many times Like people think I’m recovering, I like a recovering alcoholic, because I always say no to alcohol and I just simply I’m like no, I’m just not willing to acquire the taste, you know, and they look at me like I have, which is so great, that’s so great. Speaker 2: 32:55 You know it’s just like I’m not willing to, and I think so. Similarly, I think more people need to feel permission, because it’s not the same, and I’m going to throw it out that alcohol as a substance has killed and destroyed more people’s lives than any other substance that we currently have or ever have. So you do not have to apologize for not drinking is where I’m going with this. You don’t need to apologize if you struggled with it or if you’re like me and you just simply are not willing to acquire the taste because it’s not even worth the risk. So I just appreciate you being so open about sharing your story, because you mentioned how the power in sharing stories even if everyone’s story is slightly different, there’s pieces that resonate because we’re human and the core emotions and struggles are the same. Speaker 2: 33:52 human and the core emotions and struggles are the same. How they play out just might look a little different. So it was just such an honor reading your story. Where would you want people to go right now to learn more about you and to follow you? Speaker 1: 34:02 Well, if it’s today, before the 18th, because it’s launch week started today. Yes, that’s true. Yes, I mean. Pre-orders this week are so important to the message, so you can go anywhere. Books are sold online. Get the book pre-order and they’ll ship at the 18th. Chrisjansencoachingcom is my website, so all things books are, everything’s updated there, and my coaching services are there as well too. Speaker 2: 34:36 Awesome. We will, of course, have all of that linked. Before we close out, I want to read this part from Chris’s book Grace, yourself, y’all need to get yourselves a copy and get a copy to give away to somebody as well. Grace is yours to embrace the moment you set down your illusion of control over your own worth, seeing yourself as the valuable, bright light you are. Radiate that light out of your body. Every beam is a ray of worth and value. Condition this visualization daily. Go, shine and show up for the sober life that you desire. Let me close us out in prayer. Speaker 2: 35:14 Lord, I thank you so much for Chris. I pray that you would bless her work. I do pray that this book would get into the hands of those who need it. I pray that you would be preparing hearts and minds to read the truth that you want them to hear through Chris’s story, through her words, and that it would make reading the book that much more powerful and that much more meaningful. And, lord, I pray that you would pave the way for that to happen. Speaker 2: 35:45 I do pray your blessing over Chris’s heart, her home, her story. I ask that you would also clear the path for her to walk forward and share the message that you are calling her to bring to the world and really that we would just feel exhorted to live sober-minded, to have the humility to ask for conviction over the influences in our lives that are negatively impacting that and maybe even keeping us that light diminished ultimately, your light at work in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. So, lord, I do pray that for your glory, we would shine with the incredible influence that you have given us as women, and I thank you so much for Chris doing the work that she is In Jesus’ name, amen. Speaker 1: 36:35 Amen.