Breaking the Cycle of Family Trauma and Emotional Triggers w/ Susan Keller
Back to Journey to the Sunnyside. I'm Mike Hardinbrook, and today we're picking up where we left off with Susan Keller, author of Mostly Sober, a love story and road trip. In the last episode, we dove into her personal journey with mindful drinking. Today, we're taking it a step further. We're going to dig into the emotional side of things, how family trauma and emotional triggers play a role in drinking habits, not just for Susan, but also for her protagonist, Annie Marks.
Speaker 1:For those of you who are new, Mostly Sober is Annie's journey as she tries to navigate the emotional impact of childhood trauma while working on her relationship with alcohol. The book is a mix of fiction, autobiography, and self help, and it offers a fresh perspective on reducing drinking without the pressure to quit entirely. So let's get into it with Susan. Susan, thanks for coming on today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mike. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Well, I I mean, I just think your book is so unique. So for those who aren't familiar with Mostly Sober, can you give us an overview of Annie's story?
Speaker 2:Yes. The book begins in 1983. Annie is a medical student. She is working very hard to become a physician, a pediatrician. And she's doing that as much to get the love of her father, which is not maybe the best reason to become a a pediatrician.
Speaker 2:But she was abandoned by her father when she was 12. He married his secretary, the way they do sometimes, and adopted her six year old daughter. So Annie was She was kicked to the curb. She was replaced. And I will say this is what happened to me in my life.
Speaker 2:And it was a trauma, a wound that I was trying to get out of for many years. Maybe I'm over it now. I hope so. I think so. Anyway, so that's Annie's a little bit of her backstory.
Speaker 2:But her mother also was most unkind to her. She had a brother, Hal, and he was by far and away the favorite child, whereas Annie was not. And I admit to a bit of that in my life as well. Anyway, so here's this wounded protagonist who is working very hard to go through school and is also working very hard as a waitress because her parents haven't given her a dime to get through school. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know that one too. Anyway, she needs to take a break because she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She cannot do this anymore. She fails a very important test and knows, Okay. She leaves med school on leave of absence.
Speaker 2:She hopes we'll be only ten months. She builds another life, waitressing, and she kind of hits a roadblock in that and ends up going to her physician who says, I think you're depressed. You need antibiotics. You need therapy. And why don't you volunteer?
Speaker 2:Because you'll get out of your own mind, and you'll help others. She does all of that. And she meets Dean, the man of her dreams, and knows that she must cut down on her drinking in order to accept his proposal of marriage. Then there's the road trip part of the story where she meets a lot of memorable characters on this trip and begins to start healing the relationships with her parents and begins to cut down on her drinking. And I won't give you the exact ending.
Speaker 2:It's a happy one. And and I'm so yeah. That's the thing. I I mean, I wanted to write this book to give people hope, to give them a vision of something different than just having to go to any any and quit entirely. And that's still a theme today in a lot of podcasts that I've listened to and books, etcetera.
Speaker 1:It's just
Speaker 2:you gotta give it up. And I don't believe that. I've been in this alcohol moderation life for over two years, and fabulous. I mean, it really is. It's oh, it's Tuesday.
Speaker 2:I'm not drinking tonight. It's, you know, Wednesday. No. We do my husband and I do have special occasions where we drink, and we know what those are. It's perhaps a birthday.
Speaker 2:We golf a little. It might be the nineteenth hole. It might be holiday, vacation. But then we get right back to our pattern of not drinking nightly, maybe having three or four happy hours, I'll call them, a month. And that we feel is fine in terms of our health, our well-being, our mental health, our physical health.
Speaker 2:And we just know the role that alcohol can now play in our lives. And it's really different than it was, And we're very happy about it. We have no intention of never having another drink in our lives. That's not our intention. But our intention is to be mindful, really mindful, and minimal.
Speaker 2:And it's working great. And I hope that my book will show people that is possible. They can do that as well. And so that's why I wrote it. I guess I wrote it because I wanted to tell my own story a bit, but I also wanna help other people find their way.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a beautiful story, and I commend you for yourself out there like that for and, well, I'm also sorry that you had to go through some of that. But I think that the angle here is that, you know, family trauma, that's a heavy subject. And when people think about family trauma with responses alcohol, usually, the I think the reaction is to more of an extreme view that it has to be the alcohol is gonna be as a heavier problem as the trauma, response. And so I think with your book, I'd be really interested to see how family trauma shapes Annie's journey or any of that you wanna include from your own and how maybe that reflects the challenges that many people face around alcohol as it relates to the topic we're talking about.
Speaker 2:The recent the the research that I've heard recently is that there isn't as yet a specific gene identified for alkali alkimilism or addiction. I have really seen this in my family. My father drank a fifth of gin a day. He died at 60 from complications of alcohol use disorder. He had a massive heart attack at 51, which almost killed him, but he managed to live for another nine years.
Speaker 2:So I asked him once. I said, Tad, weren't you always hungover? And he said, I was never hungover. I was never sober. He got up at five in the morning.
Speaker 2:He was a successful businessman. I don't know how he did it, but he I was no company, etcetera. And he was an engineer, and he would get up at five in the morning, drive into San Francisco, and start drinking gin at five in the morning. He would have it in a container of milk, most of which was gin, little bit of milk, and he would sip on that all day until midnight. He'd go to sleep, get back up at five, and start all over again.
Speaker 2:I mean, how do you live through that, which you didn't? And this is bizarre and weird, but I often think of what if I met him now in heaven or wherever we might go? What would I say to him now that I'm an adult? I'm older now than he was when he died. And what would I say to him?
Speaker 2:It's just oh god. It just it breaks my heart that was his story and how it affected me, but I'm stronger for it. I really am. And I'm I have gratitude for some of the struggle that I went through because it's given me strength and hope and another life.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. That's a beautiful way of putting it in. I think that breaking generational patterns is really hard, and it's I think that's amazing that you're here as proof that you've done that. And here at Sunnyside, many of the founders, all both of the founders, come from families where alcohol deeply affected their parents and their lives as well and everyone around them. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think what are some of the key steps that people need to start to take to break those generational cycles, do you believe?
Speaker 2:Well, I never went to therapy as my protagonist Annie Annie did, but that may be one source. Another source, as I mentioned, are all the communities that are available now. And there's a list of those at the end of my book resources. There there's so much help. So much help.
Speaker 2:That can be very important. Also, find a partner if you can. And I am so grateful to my husband for all of his support. He's he can be I mean, I drink very little, but he drinks even less than I do. And I'm not saying that's the end all and be all.
Speaker 2:But he's so good at this, and it helps me. Every night I see him, he a big nice glass of water on the table for dinner, and I say, yeah. Oh, I must tell you, though. My one of my hacks, I don't know if that's the word, who drink less is that I have gotten very fond of nonalcoholic wine. And it's a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.
Speaker 2:It's called Giesen. Giesen or Geisen. Giesen, I think. And there's only a hundred calories in the whole bottle. But usually, a glass of wine is a hundred calories by itself.
Speaker 2:So that's a good thing. But also, I I had this beautiful tall blue, dark blue glass, and I pour it in there with some ice and sometimes the splash of mineral water. It's a ritual ice fever. I love it. And I don't miss the the dopamine.
Speaker 2:I don't miss it. And the more mindful I believe that we come we become about alcohol is that when we really start to say, okay. What am I feeling? What is this? The dopamine, no.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't amount to a whole lot.
Speaker 1:Your colleague's still getting a little bit. You're just not getting on artificial surge of dopamine, but now your brain is associating. Yeah. This isn't something I like. This is something that gives me pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yes. It one of the things that people overlook that you said there is, like, glassware, and making it presentable is even part of that ritual that you can now replace the old one with the new one. Yeah. And because you don't have all that artificial surges every time you sit down and wanna kinda unwind, you have other ways. And so I love that.
Speaker 1:But before we get off the topic of the I wanna stay on the book because, a big theme in the book is self acceptance.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yep. So let's talk about that in your journey towards mindful drinking and and maybe what role that played with Annie's story as well.
Speaker 2:Yes. Self acceptance is a is a theme for sure in her book. And I've had an experience. This was years ago. And I was actually, I was in Greece.
Speaker 2:And then I lived abroad for a year after college because I was lucky enough. I could do that. But I was walking through this little Greek village, and all of a sudden, this thought came into my mind so clear and so loud. I am not guilty. And I thought, where did that come from?
Speaker 2:And I said it out loud, and I realized this is a big moment. And I took that experience, and I gave it to Annie. And this was after she had a session with her therapist that she had this breakthrough. I am not guilty. And that is a lifting of so much negative self talk that it's a freeing.
Speaker 2:It's a a beautiful moment. So that was one of the things that Anghani was able to experience. And this, again, was something that I experienced. The other thing that happens in the book is that Annie is on the flight from San Francisco to Palm Springs where she meets a rabbi with a rosary. And this gentleman this never happened to me.
Speaker 2:This is pure fiction. But this gentleman is he's what shall I say? He's a guide for her. And he's been through his own trauma with an alcoholic father, etcetera. And he comes up again and again through the book to assure her that it wasn't her fault, that all of this trauma that went on when she was a child was not her fault.
Speaker 2:And he also helps her find release from this burden, this bully in her brain that was always telling her something was wrong with her. And she had to work harder and try harder because she wasn't good enough. And so there there was Benjamin, the rabbi with the rosary and the therapist, and it just led her to understand that she was a kid. She wasn't causing all of this trauma in the family. She finally was able to accept that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's one of the things that I've had to do for myself is to I was talking about this earlier today is that sometimes at a point early on, I used to sit and live in regret maybe of my decisions that, you know, of my old self, I guess you'd say. But then I have to accept myself and say, I did the best that I could with the tools that I had at the time. And I just have to accept that because, otherwise, you you sit in that you sit in the past, and you don't keep moving forward.
Speaker 2:Yes. Very true. Very true. And one of the podcasters that I know you're involved with, and that's Molly Watts. And she always says, meet yourself where you are.
Speaker 2:And you have to accept where you were in a day. You can't expect to be some different person tomorrow. We deal with the tools we have, with the people we are. We might look back with regret, but we tomorrow's another day. Today's another day right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It is. And so I think self acceptance is part of that, but also in the book as well are emotional triggers. How do you think that readers of the book or you speaking from your own life can interpret these triggers when they do pop up?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll be perfectly honest. I mean, on occasion, I still feel an urge to have a drink Even though I'm down to maybe, you know, eight or 10 drinks a month, I might still feel the urge. And oftentimes, I'll just say, never mind. Sometimes, I don't say that, and I'll have one. I'll There'll be something in the day that, oh, wow.
Speaker 2:That was so great. I'm gonna celebrate. Or there was something that was disturbing. Usually, it's the celebratory drink that I have. But yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's because you're human.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. We you're gonna
Speaker 1:I don't care who you are or what changes you've made. You're still human, and you're never gonna be perfect. No. It's maybe in how you respond to it in a different way than the past is the difference.
Speaker 2:Well, so well said, Mike, honestly. It's did say sitting where you just take that feeling, and you're the one who said ride the urge wave. I thought, oh my god. That is so good because sometimes I'll feel that, the urge to have a drink. And then I'll think about, but Mike said you're right.
Speaker 2:The urge for you know? And so, okay. I'm going up there, and the wave goes up, and now it goes down. Kids, that is so helpful because on the one hand, okay, you're feeling something emotionally, but mentally, well, it's not gonna last that long. And the more we this moderate lifestyle, the less time that urge will visit us.
Speaker 2:And happy hour is a flirt. It comes and it goes. The desire to have that drink comes and then it goes. Goes to somebody else. So the more we resist that urge, the easier it becomes, which is the good news.
Speaker 2:Right? It's very true.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Urge surfing is a great strategy. And, yeah, in the I think the more that you can get past those and the more wins that you have, like you said, the easier that they can get. So
Speaker 2:It does. It does. And this is the thing that people who haven't really gotten into this journey, they, of course, they won't understand. And it's an important bit of information, of knowledge, because at the beginning, it might be really hard to resist. But the more you resist, the less energy it takes to resist.
Speaker 2:So you know?
Speaker 1:Well, this has been an incredible episode, and I wanna give you the stage one more time before we go to what would you give as far as one piece of advice drawing from either your book or from your own journey for anybody that's thinking about making these changes? Or I'll throw this in. Or somebody that's on this journey to kinda reinforce what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Always be part of a community. Whatever community that is most comfortable for you, whether it's an online community, whether it's being what I like to do is I like to create my own community. And I do that through listening to podcasts, responding to those podcasters with what really moved me. Now I do that as part of a way, of getting my book out into the world.
Speaker 2:But people who just want to reduce their alcohol consumption, get cozy with those people. Get into their coaching programs. Tell them how much their work means to you. That is so important to create a community of like minded people. It is it's priceless, really, to have people who you can look up to who have done this journey, who have who are farther along than you might be.
Speaker 2:And just so you have people to celebrate your successes with and to complain when you feel like it's just too damn much. So I don't know. Community, change is possible. Those things, the more we get into it, the more those things are they're imperative to understand and to become involved with. The truth of the help that one gets, it's huge.
Speaker 2:It's just it's fantastic. And a lot of these organizations or communities are very low cost. It's not gonna break the bank to join up. And the help they provide is tremendous.
Speaker 1:So well said.
Speaker 2:That's my firm belief. Honestly, Mike, that is I firmly believe in the help that's available today.
Speaker 1:That's it for today's episode of Journey to the Sunnyside. A huge thanks to Susan Keller for sharing her story and offering insights into the emotional aspects of Mostly Sober. If you're struggling with family trauma or emotional triggers that are affecting your drinking, remember, small changes can lead to big results. Susan's story is proof that it's possible to break free from even those patterns. And before you go, head on over to sunnyside.co and take our three minute quiz for personalized insights into your own drinking habits.
Speaker 1:And don't forget to follow us on Instagram JoinSunnyside for more tips, inspiration, and real life success stories just like you. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And until next time, keep taking small steps towards a healthier, more mindful relationship with alcohol.
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