How Do I Make It Stop?

These short message were sent to subscribers by email october 9th.

Transcript.
OMM277 > How Do I Make It Stop?

Dear Belle, I was wondering if you could tell me how to get this voice in my head to stop? You know, the one that thinks that I should drink. 

And Belle says, “There’s no one thing. There’s no one pill. There’s no onething to think. There’s daily, repetitive reinforcement of tools, supports, and accountability. There are bits and pieces that you do every day. There’s no ‘way’. There’s no ‘thing.”

How do I get this voice to stop? You know, I don’t want a penpal and I don’t want to go to meetings and I don’t want to take medication, so can you just tell me the thing I need to think to make this stop?

And I say, “Daily, repetitive, accountability, support, tools.” You need to be able to talk it out with somebody who knows what you’re talking about. And you need to be able to get support from someone who’s done it, who can say, ‘Yes that’s normal. Yes, you’ll be fine.’ Because you know what? You’re not going to take that advice from someone who hasn’t done it. If you went to a boozer and you said, ‘How do I get this voice to stop?’ Would you trust their advice? They maybe have read all the books on the planet and maybe they have the right advice, it’s about your subconscious not processing it properly.

Your wolfie will say, ‘Well they don’t actually have a problem. They don’t actually know.’
Right?

So how do you get between your head and you?

You brace it open with a crowbar and then you feed it with new tools, accountability, support that is external to you. It’s not about what you think. Well, it’s about what you think, but it’s not about what you think alone, when it’s just you at home alone in your head with wolfie. ‘Could you just tell me the thing that will help me get me through the witching hour?’ I can’t give you an answer that will work permanently.

But I can work with you every day and talk about it. We can come up with a strategy every day. You can email me 4 times a day. We can tweak it. You can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then check in. Accountability. If you don’t have accountability, you’re running around in your head with wolfie driving the car.

There, I’ve mixed the metaphor.

(I’m not actually yelling at you. I’m yelling at your wolfie voice that thinks for a second that I can just tell you a ‘thing’ and it solves all of life’s problems.)

‘Hi, I was wondering if you could tell me what’s the solution to my husband putting the forks upside down in the drawer.’ OK well, there’s like a whole conversation we have to have. There’s no ONE-THING solution. There’s a part about about your perspective, and how you approach it, and how you talk to him about it. There’s something about how he sees it, and about how he sees you.

I can’t do it in one sentence. I can give you a perspective. You can listen to me talk for a long time. You can pull bits and pieces of it. Or you can ask me direct questions every day when things come up. That’s what this whole penpal thing is about. If you’re trying to figure out how to do this without having a penpal, my answer is have a sponsor. Have somebody else external to you. It doesn’t have to be me. Please, go find somebody. You’re just listening to my audio [reading the trasncript], so I’m telling you about me – that this is a thing that I do.

Because if we could do it alone in our heads, we would have done it already. And that you asked the question: Can you just tell me one thing … I already know that you need more than that. Of course you do, because I need more than that. I need reinforcement every day. So do you. Where are you getting your reinforcement every day? And maybe it’s time to do that. And maybe it’s about time 🙂