3 Tips for Female Health Care Professionals to Overcome Overdrinking Habits and Reset Their Relationship With Alcohol

3 Tips for Female Health Care Professionals to Overcome Overdrinking Habits and Reset Their Relationship With Alcohol

If you are reading this, are you female healthcare professionals who since the Pandemic in 2020 found yourself drinking more often and more amount of alcohol when…

- feeling burnout due to increased work-related stress?

- feeling lonely and bored even though you are married or in a relationship?

- finding alcohol relaxes you as you come home from a long day at work?

- looking forward to days off or the weekend so you can drink more?

- having a girls' spa day or night out is not fun without drinking?

- feeling mentally drained and physically exhausted from juggling family and work life demands?

- feeling angry and frustrated with the imbalanced workload between you and your partner?

- feeling empty and lost as you wonder what else you can do to feel more content, fulfilled, and have a life purpose that does not have anything to do with your career?

- feeling guilty and shamed because you feel ungrateful for what you have going well in your life?

- feeling guilty and shamed because you can’t wait for your kids to go to bed so you can enjoy your wine or cocktail?

Do you notice that you are drinking more than before the Pandemic started, but you know that you are not an alcoholic? You want to try reducing your drinking, but you found yourself going back to the same routine. You started to wonder if drinking less is more difficult than you think. You are convincing yourself that you don’t need therapy and that you don’t need AA because you are not an alcoholic. You tell yourself that you have a great career, make good money, are a highly functioning member of society, and you just like drinking alcohol occasionally…but wait a minute, drinking a few times a week every week is not occasionally, is it?! You booked yourself an appointment with a therapist and shared your concern about your increased drinking habit. After your therapist asks you a list of questions, you are told that you do not meet the criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder, so you don’t need therapy. You feel relieved but deep down you know you need to cut down your drinking habit before it gets out of control. Where do you go for support? AA…No!! you are just told by a mental health professional that you are not an alcoholic and don’t need therapy. Why should you go to AA? Imagine if you see your patients there, that would be a nightmare. What would they think of you? You are feeling ambivalent about wanting to cut down your drinking yet you still want to enjoy having a drink. You don’t want to give it up but you heard that for some people it’s easier to drink completely than to stop stop. It’s like eating potato chips or chocolate. It’s hard to stop when you eat just 1, you just want to continue eating and before you know it you eat a lot more than you plan.

Sometimes it can feel like you just don’t know where to start, or who you talk to.

Hello, I am here for you, and let me introduce myself! There is nothing I am more passionate about than helping other female healthcare professionals like you to take control of your over-drinking habit before it takes control over your life.

3 Tips for Female Health Care Professionals to Overcome Overdrinking Habits and Reset Their Relationship With Alcohol.

Tip #1 Understanding your unique and personal underlying factors (consciously and unconsciously) that lead to your over-drinking habits.

Identifying and understanding the underlying factors that drive you to drink excessively are super important! I firmly believe that part of the solution is identifying the root of the problem. We can’t change something we are not aware of! We can’t change something we don’t want to acknowledge! We can’t change something we don’t know that needs to be changed. We don’t know what we don’t know! Is it internal or external factors that trigger your excessive drinking? Is there a consistent pattern of your excessive drinking habit? Is it your work, lifestyle, or social pressure or is it your personality? Are you someone who struggles with saying no because you feel that you hurt people’s feelings, or do you feel that you let down other people when you decline their invitation to have happy hour after work? Are you someone who tends to overthink everything that you just want to shut off your mind and you need to drink to do so? Or are you the life of the party and you feel that a party without drinking is impossible and boring? Different people have different reasons that drive them to need alcohol. But the commonality is that alcohol is the common denominator across these different reasons. So, what are you going to do once you identify one or more of these reasons as the factors that drive you to have an excessive drinking habit? Or maybe you don’t want to do anything about it, and you are willing to risk your health, your career, your relationship, your future, and everything else you have been working so hard for in your LIFE at the expense of your excessive drinking habit? If you care about your life and future then please continue reading, but if you want to continue your overdrinking habit and gamble on your life and future, do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time. Stop reading here.

Tip #2 Learning how to discern and choose what serves you best (moderation or abstinence).

Abstinence is not for everyone. So in moderation! I don’t believe one size fits all. What’s the situation or reason for you to choose abstinence vs moderation? Maybe some of you, you want to be abstinent while others prefer moderation. Remember the example of having potato chips or chocolate I mentioned above? Maybe in some situations, being abstinent is key while in other situations, moderation works just fine! Whichever may be the case, set up your own unique personal goals and rules. Once you identify your triggers, you need to think very specifically about creating rules and strategies around those triggers. Remember what I mentioned previously, you can’t change something you don’t know that needs to be changed. Same principle here, you can’t set up goals and rules if you don’t even know the problems aka triggers (the conscious and unconscious factors that are behind your excessive drinking habit). That’s why uncovering these factors is very important for your goal. You can’t implement tip # 2 without understanding tip #1! Does this make sense?  Learning to set SMART goals is the next step. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant/realistic, and time measured. Your goal needs to reflect this acronym! Once you set your SMART goal, set up the rules that are specifically tailored to your SMART goal. Consider the following when you are setting up your rules:

Are there situations where you will not drink (you choose to be abstinent for that specific situation) such as when you are invited to your kid’s friend’s party, or when you are eating at the restaurant with your boss or a difficult colleague, or if you are having a dinner with a difficult family member or friend? Do you have any off-limits drinks which you tend to drink too quickly, and you get drunk fast when you drink them? Do you have any off-limit drinks which alter your personality, the one that makes you become a drama queen everyone hates hanging out with when you drink that drink? If you have this problem with a specific drink, maybe you should be abstinent from that drink and choose a different type of drink when socializing. How do you keep track of the number of drinks you have weekly? Do you use an app or mark it on your calendar? What is the limit you allow yourself in a day or a setting? How many alcohol-free days do you want to have in a week? Can you see that having this awareness can help you discern whether you should choose abstinence or moderation?

Tip #3 Make some critical life changes to transform your relationship with alcohol and support a new habit of drinking less.

Once you try implementing tips # 1 and # 2, what other areas in your life may be out of balance, and that makes the implementation of tip # 2 more difficult to do consistently? When it comes to habit change, consistency, and support are keys. Typically, we don’t like change although we know change is very much what we need. Am I right? And do you know why we don’t like change? Because change is uncomfortable! And we don’t like feeling uncomfortable! I have never met anyone who says I LOVE feeling uncomfortable, have you? Many people prefer to stay the same although they know things need to be changed but deep down, they fear change, they don’t want to feel uncomfortable, they expect a miracle and wished that things change on their own. This is what insanity is about. Some of you may have heard this before. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

So, do you know what other areas in your life need to be changed or modified so you don’t need to overdrink as a coping mechanism? Do you have a supportive community and people who become your accountability partners? We are becoming the average of 5 people whom we hang out with the most. You can’t change your excessive drinking habit if the people you hang out with the most have the same drinking habit as yours or worst.

How about your attitude and mindset? Can you benefit from working on them? Alter your attitude, it will elevate your altitude. When you are getting yourself together, it gets lonely. It is up to you whether you choose growth over the company. The good news is that I have created a supportive community that gets you and shares the same goal as you, so you are not alone in this journey of creating a new habit of drinking less!

If you’re reading these tips and having that moment of “wow…this is ME and I need to work with this coach…,” and you are a female healthcare professional who is ready to invest in your guidance, transformation, and high-level support to help you overcome your overdrinking habit and reset your relationship with alcohol… I’d love to explore the possibility of working together. I have a limited number of spaces available in my high-level coaching program, so I prioritize those who I feel I can best serve and will enjoy working with the most. If you’re ready to explore what that might look like, click here to watch this free 20 min video (https://whillma-quenicka-phd.mykajabi.com/watch-this-video). Upon watching the video, let’s set up a time for us for an interview.

After submitting your application, I’ll review it to see if you’re a good fit. And if so, I’ll reach out with the details about your best next steps. Either way, I hope you enjoyed these tips… And I hope we can stay connected. It’s been an honor and pleasure sharing these tips with you.

Let’s WIN life together!

Dr. Q

Info: Whillma Quenicka Ph.D., M-RAS

A psychologist at Elevate Mental Health Camarillo, drquenicka@elevatementalhealth.com

Life Coach at Win Life Coaching with Dr. Q https://winlife-coaching.com, (805)312-8681, drq@winlife-coaching.com