Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives, women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, Christie Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy-filled Catholic, and I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and I am so glad you're here I woke up this morning exhausted, and I knew exactly why. I am ninety-three days into a hormone recalibration program, and one of the most wonderful and unexpected gifts has been my sleep tracker becoming a truth-teller that I can't argue with. If you know me, you know I love data, and I have been very diligent about tracking everything that I am consuming as well as my exercise and my sleep. Now, early on, I discovered that eating sugar close to bedtime, and I'm not eating a lot of sugar, mind you. It's... And I've talked about it before. Like, I'll have a cup of tea and a little square of dark chocolate, but that is enough sugar, I found, to completely wreck my deep sleep if I have it too close to bedtime. And that is not a maybe, it is not a sometimes, it is every single time because I have tested it repeatedly. Chocolate before bed dropped my deep sleep from over an hour to under thirty minutes. I also figured this out with cherries, just natural cherries with nothing on them. I had, like, a handful of cherries at night, and I'm thinking, 'Fruit, that's good for me.' But it did the same thing 'cause there's a lot of natural sugars in cherries. So the data that I was collecting was completely undeniable. And yet, and yet, last night, I had a snack I knew better than to have. Not because I forgot, because this time, maybe I thought that this time would be different or it wouldn't affect me. My deep sleep did hold strong at an hour and twenty-one minutes, which was great. But I tossed and turned, my REM sleep crashed, and I woke up exhausted. I couldn't even go on my morning walk with my husband and my dog that we take every morning at five thirty because I was just so tired. And I knew exactly why. It wasn't a mystery. It was resistance showing up in my own life in a different context. Something I've been avoiding, something I haven't wanted to look at, and my body knew before my brain was ready to admit. That is what later stage resistance looks like. It's not because you don't know what to do, it's the negotiation, the avoidance dressed up as a reward. And it's exactly what I wanna talk about today because I see it happening with women in this work all the time. Resistance can be loud at the beginning as you're starting to gain awareness, and everything is new, and you don't have that buffer of alcohol. But it can get loud in a different way later on. It just gets sneakier, and around the point where you have enough awareness to know better, but enough comfort to think that maybe you can bend the rules a little. You have more tools than ever and more clever justifications than ever. The data doesn't lie, though, and neither does your body. The question is whether you are willing to keep listening even when you already know the answer, and that's what today is about. And I wanna talk about resistance today in a way that might shift how you think about it. Most of us treat it like an enemy, like something to fight off, white-knuckle through, and defeat. And when it shows up, especially after we've been doing so, so well, it feels like a betrayal, like we're all the way back to square one, like something is wrong with us. But here's what I've come to believe. Resistance, it's not your enemy. It's actually a messenger. So every time the pull comes back, Every time you hear that voice saying, "You deserve this," or, "One won't hurt," or, "What's the point?" That voice is telling you something, not the truth, but something worth paying attention to Because underneath every craving, every justification, and every moment of resistance, there is a real need, a real feeling, something that your body and soul are actually asking for. And alcohol has just been the fastest, most familiar answer to that ask. The work isn't to silence the resistance. The work is to decode it. So here's what I've noticed and what I want to warn you about if you're several weeks into this work. Early resistance is definitely loud and obvious. We talked about that in the last episode. It shows up the first few days when everything is hard and uncomfortable, and you don't have any tools yet. You know it's resistance. It feels like resistance. It's noisy. It's not subtle. But that later resistance, it's different. It's smarter. It sounds reasonable. It sounds like self-care and reward and permission and common sense. It sounds like, "I've been so good. I deserve this. It's just one. I know my limits now. I've worked so hard. This is just a little reward. I've already done so much. I can afford to relax a little." And here's what makes this version so dangerous. It's dressed up in the language of your own growth. It uses the awareness that you've built against you. It acknowledges that you've been working hard, because you have, and then it uses that as a reason to stop. And that is the enemy being clever. Not loud, clever. And this is exactly the moment I wanna talk about, Because this is where so, so many women lose the ground that they've actually worked really, really hard for. Not because they gave up, because they got comfortable, because the habit found a new angle. Now, I wanna spend a minute on a specific phrase, "You deserve this," because I hear it more than almost anything else, and I want to be really clear. That feeling underneath it is legitimate. When you hear, "I deserve this," you do deserve something. You're tired. You've been giving everything to everyone. You need rest. You need relief. You need something that belongs to only you. That need, it's real. But here's the lie: alcohol is not actually what you deserve. You deserve something much, much better. You deserve real rest, real relief, real nourishment, the kind that fills you back up instead of borrowing from tomorrow. Alcohol promises to meet the need, but it doesn't. It masks it temporarily and then leaves you more depleted than before. So tomorrow, the need is louder, and the resistance comes back even stronger So when you hear, I deserve this, get curious. Ask yourself, what do I actually deserve right now? What is my body, my soul, my nervous system actually asking for? Maybe it's twenty minutes of quiet. Maybe it's a conversation with someone who sees you. Maybe it's getting into bed early with something you love. Maybe it's movement or music or prayer, or just sitting outside for a few minutes doing absolutely nothing. You deserve all of those things. Give yourself one of those instead. Now, I wanna share a tool that I use with my clients that I think can help you work through resistance in a moment. I call it the resistance decoder, and it's built around a simple idea. When the pull comes back, don't fight it, decode it. So here's how it works. First, you name what the resistance is saying. Write it down if you can. The exact thought or feeling that showed up. Maybe it's, "I deserve this," or, "One won't hurt. This is too hard. What's the point?" Get it out of your head and onto paper where you can actually look at it. The second is to ask what is underneath it? What emotion, need, or fear is actually driving this? Are you tired? Are you lonely? Are you anxious or bored or grieving something? Are you overwhelmed or angry? This is the what am I feeling question that I've talked about before, and it matters more than the craving itself because the craving is just the surface. Underneath it is the thing that actually needs attention. And the third is asking what is true. What is really true? This is where you fight the lie with truth, not with willpower. Truth from scripture, from your identity, from what you know about yourself after all this work. If the resistance says something like, "I've tried before and it didn't work," what's actually true about that? What's actually true, what's actually true is that you have tried hard things before that didn't work the first time or a second time or a third time, and you kept going, and eventually you got there. You have evidence of your own resilience. So use that. If the resistance says, "You deserve this," what's actually true? What's actually true is that you deserve rest, not depletion. You deserve to wake up tomorrow feeling clear and not foggy. You deserve the version of yourself that shows up fully, and alcohol, it's just not giving that to you. And the fourth thing is to decide what you do next. Take one concrete action right now. Not a plan for the whole evening, just the next right thing. Make a list of things you can do instead. Activities that actually bring you pleasure or calm without the cost. Go for a walk, make a cup of tea, call someone, pray, put on music. Give yourself something real, something that will truly fill your cup instead of depleting it. And finally, pray. Even just one sentence. "Lord, I feel blank. I trust you with blank." That's it. That's enough. Hand it to Him and take the next step. Now I want to speak directly to the woman who is sitting with this thought right now. I've tried to quit before, and it didn't work. What makes this time any different? First, I want you to know that this is one of the most normal thoughts in this entire process. I am convinced that a hundred percent of humans who have ever tried to change their relationship with alcohol have had this thought. So you are not-- So it's not just you. It's something that we all think. And second, I want you to ask something. Think about something else in your life that you've tried and failed at, not once, multiple times, something that felt impossible for a while. Maybe it was a physical goal or a skill or a habit, a relationship pattern, something that you were learning, something where you fell down and got back up,, and then, fell down again before you finally got it. You have those stories. I know you do, because everyone does. And what made the difference wasn't that you were suddenly more talented or more disciplined or more worthy of success. What made the difference was that you kept going. You got comfortable with the discomfort. You stayed in it long enough to get to the other side. This is the same thing. The attempts that came before this one, they weren't failures, they were practice. They were the earlier chapters of a story that isn't finished yet. You're not starting over. You are going deeper So here's what I want you to actually see about where you are right now, even if it doesn't feel like progress. You have tools you didn't have before, real ones. You know what your triggers are. You know what the chatter sounds like. You know what you've been reaching for underneath the craving, and you know what questions to ask yourself. You know what actually helps. That is everything. And here's what I watch happen with the women who do this work over time. The resistance doesn't disappear, but they have learned how to start coaching themselves through it. They hear the voice, they recognize it, and they pause, and they ask the questions. They reach for something real instead of something familiar, and that helps them get through it. Not because it got easier, but because they got better at it. And that's you, even on hard days, even on the days when the resistance sounds totally reasonable and the justifications sound smart, and you're tired, and you just want one easy thing. You are better at this than you were at the beginning, and that matters. So I wanna say one thing about what's available to you in the moment of resistance that no tool can replace. You are not doing this alone. When the resistance is loud and clever and it sounds like self-care and you're tired and the craving is strong, you have access to something the habit does not. You have a God who wants your freedom even more than you do, who is in this moment with you, who is not surprised by the craving or disappointed by the struggle. Hand it to Him, even just the next twenty minutes. Lord, I feel this pull right now, and I trust you with this moment. That prayer is not weakness. It's one of the best things you can do So if this episode is resonating with you, if you are in that sneaky resistant season and you want support going deeper, I want you-- I want to invite you to book a clarity call with me If this episode is resonating with you, and you are either in the beginning stages or you're in that sneaky resistance season, and you want more support going deeper, I want to invite you to book a clarity call with me. It's just a conversation. You get to tell me what's going on, what's coming up, and where you're stuck, and I get to tell you what I see. And together, we figure out what you actually need and whether working together even makes sense. And whether you end up working with me or not, you will leave that call with much more clarity than you came in with, and that I can promise you. The link is in the show notes, or you can go to my website, thecatholicsobrietycoach.com, and it's free. There's no pressure, no pitch, just an honest conversation. So here's what I want you to carry from today. The resistance getting louder or sneakier, it's not a sign that you're failing. It's a sign that you're far enough along that the habit is working harder to hold on, and that's actually progress, even when it doesn't feel like it. You have tools, you have awareness, and you have a God who is in it with you. When the resistance shows up, decode it. Name what it says. Ask what's underneath it, and find the truth. Take one concrete action and pray one honest prayer, and then take the next step, just one. you can do this, not because it's easy, but because you've been doing hard things your whole life, and you're still showing up. I'll talk to you again soon. Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer, visit my website, thecatholicsobrietycoach.com. Follow me on Instagram @thecatholicsobrietycoach. I look forward to speaking to you next time. And remember, I am here for you. I am praying for you. You are not alone.