Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome back. Today, I have with me Colleen Freeland. She is an intuitive drinking coach and the host of the globally top-ranked It Is Not About The Alcohol podcast. Colleen founded Emotional Sobriety Coaching for high-achieving professional women who want to reduce alcohol consumption by 80%.

She combines holistic and evidence-based strategies in neurophysiology, cognitive reframing, and spirituality to reprogram the mind and body so that you actually prefer drinking in moderation. She is also a twice-divorced woman, and we’re gonna have conversations about y- drinking, but also emotional sobriety and what that means and how it all ties into your life as you’re going through divorce.

Welcome, Colleen. I’m so happy to see you. It’s so good to be here, Kate. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Okay. So Colleen, I know that, I’ve talked on my show about sort of my journey through to [00:01:00] sobriety through my divorce, right? And how really I leaned on alcohol so much to get me through the trauma, really- Yeah

That I wasn’t facing. I didn’t have words for what I had experienced. This was, 16, 17, 18 years ago. I didn’t have, we didn’t, we weren’t having conversations about the kinds of things that I had been experiencing in my marriage, and so really the easiest thing was for me to drink.

Colleen Freeland: Yeah.

Kate Anthony: I wish I had some other tools. Tell me about your experience through this. I know that say that you suffered from alcohol use disorder for a number of years, and then quit drinking and now mindfully drink. What, t- tell me all the things.

Colleen Freeland: I grew up in a household without alcohol.

And, good girl, religious, and then my parents kinda left the church, and within six months I had completely flipped my identity, go off to college, and now I’m a partier, board-certified. And nobody had ever taught me to drink. I was I was trained by the frat house hazing specialists that were running, the parties.

And so [00:02:00] I jumped immediately into binge drinking culture. But I didn’t ever see that as a problem. I thought that was normal. I’m obviously, at that point I was still very immature in my life. I kinda thought having a hangover was cool ’cause that was what all the cool kids were doing.

And fast-forward, I moved into adulthood, graduated. I wasn’t a daily drinker. I had four kids, and I loved being pregnant and breastfeeding and all of the things. But slowly over time, I didn’t realize that alcohol’s an addictive substance. We grow up in a culture where you’re either an alcoholic or you’re a normal drinker, and if you’re an alcoholic you can’t drink.

Yeah. And if you’re a normal drinker, knock yourself out. So I was unaware that alcohol is a drug. It’s a biphasic drug. And I didn’t know that. I thought it was a food group and a party favor. And what happened is I progressed. In my first marriage I started daily drinking. Never made a decision, but I can pinpoint the [00:03:00] exact moment.

Kate Anthony: It just creeps up on you, doesn’t it?

Colleen Freeland: It does. And what, there’s something very specific that happens in the brain. So alcohol, like anything, can be both positively and negatively reinforcing. It’s positive, negative reinforcement. And when you’re drinking to enhance an already pleasant situation, then that is positive reinforcement.

But when you start to drink to cope, to tolerate, to minimize stress- Huh … deal with anxiety, that is a neurological shift in the brain. And the first time I ever drank alone was actually the day I can look back and say that’s when my daily drinking started. And I had gone to spring break, four kids, beautiful week.

I wasn’t getting drunk. Occasionally I was a little bit overdoing it as an adult, but it wasn’t a problem. I was just like everybody else. I get home from spring break and get all the kids to bed. We’ve got school the [00:04:00] next day, and I’m looking at that laundry thinking, “I’m not getting up to that.”

So I’m unpacking the car, and I find the leftover vodka and cranberry juice in the cooler, and I was like, “Game on.” I didn’t get drunk. I wasn’t hungover. I was actually super proud of myself because I know all my hot mess friends just went home and went to bed. Turns out that was actually the healthy choice, and that was the night that alcohol shifted for me from being something that I do on girls’ night outs or date nights or vacation or holiday.

Something invisible happened in my brain where I subconsciously s- associated alcohol that’s mommy’s little helper it became a coping mechanism. So the next night, I’m tired because I didn’t get much sleep last night. I wasn’t hungover, didn’t think of it like that. But I put a little bit of vodka in my Yeti to take the, walk the boys down to their baseball practice, and that’s when it began.

But I didn’t realize that, and I didn’t understand why it became [00:05:00] increasingly more difficult for me to take the night off. Yeah, I never, I did- I never took another night off. And then in our culture, because either you’re a normal drinker or an alcoholic, I couldn’t raise my hand and be like, “I think I’m drinking too much.”

I had to hide it- Yeah … and minimize it. And of course, that affected my marriage because, I had to pretend that there wasn’t wine. I used to put a teabag and hang it out of my Yeti and blow on it like it was hot. Oh, bitch, it was white wine. But so then now I’m a daily drinker, and that, that went on for 15 years.

I got divorce number one and went right into d- to marriage number two. And now instead of four kids and one husband, I got kinda two husbands and seven kids, all of them teenagers. And my life just was more and more stressful and chaotic, and I couldn’t get through an evening without drinking.

Kate Anthony: No. Yeah.

Yeah. I only had one kid, and I couldn’t get through an evening without drinking, but [00:06:00] he was like seven. Yeah. Yeah. Very similar story, and it is Ugh. Yeah. God, I just got this pit of anxiety as you were talking about it ’cause I just remember being there. And it does, it kinda starts out as, i, I remember the first time A friend came over for a play date, and our kids were, like, two, and she said, and she brought a bottle of wine, and I went, “We can do that?” And she goes we have to do that.” I went, “Oh,” ’cause I didn’t know that we were allowed to do that, right? And from that moment, play dates became

My, my best friend and I dubbed them drunken play dates. Yes. Which, like, how fucking sad is that, right?

Colleen Freeland: You weren’t the only one. The culture shifted. It was the culture. In late 2000s into the 2010s, the alcohol companies started marketing to the women. Yes. They had never done that before.

Kate Anthony: That’s right.

Colleen Freeland: My [00:07:00] first child was born, I would never take a wine to a play date. By the time I had my fourth child, it was rude to not bring a bottle of Prosecco, maybe two, because what if somebody didn’t bring their own? That was the culture shift.

Kate Anthony: Exactly. Exactly. It really was. And it … And looking back on it now it’s shocking.

I know. Shocking. My, I remember my friend and I, when we both got sober about s- almost seven and a half, eight years ago, and we started looking at the… Because we used to drink together on play dates all the time, and we started looking at the culture, the mommy wine culture. And we have a Pinterest board where we saved all the you know, mommy juice and, you know- Yeah

all the word art around- Yes … wine. I love it. And we wanted to make an entire line of glasses and, wall art, the whatever. What, what is it called when they put the, the words on shiplap or whatever,

Colleen Freeland: I don’t know what it’s called, but I,

Kate Anthony: yeah. Whatever. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

And replace wine with cocaine or heroin. Literally replace that [00:08:00] messaging, because that’s exactly what it is. And w- and the idea that it was so normalized w- is so horrifying to me now.

Colleen Freeland: And you weren’t still on the bus when it shifted even further, because during COVID-

Kate Anthony: Oh,

Colleen Freeland: it was- … that’s when, prior to COVID, drinking alone was kinda frowned upon.

During COVID, drinking at home and laughing and joking about everybody being drunk on j- Zoom without their pants on, the h- the social media feeds were filled with homemade cocktails. Yeah. Liquor stores were an essential service. And I made it about six weeks into COVID. I tried to drink through it like a good citizen, and that’s when I began my sobriety journey.

Kate Anthony: Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: So the, so it, the culture has just shifted and shifted.

Kate Anthony: And I’m I’m, I I love it so much, right? I remember going through COVID being like, “Thank God. Thank God I got sober before, ’cause this would be so bad.” And it was so bad for so many reasons already, [00:09:00] but it would have been, for me, pretty epic.

Pretty epic if I had still been drinking. One of the things you were saying about the fact that, and I relate to this so much, is that either you’re an alcoholic or you’re not, right? And I did struggle for years feeling like I don’t think I have a healthy relationship with alcohol. And because I have a lot of capital A alcoholics in my life, I’d been to a gazillion A meetings in my life, and I would walk in and, even at one point, I remember calling my friends and being like, “I feel like I’m struggling with my, with drinking.”

And they’d be like, “All right come to a meeting.” And then I’d go to a meeting and I’d be like I don’t, like-

Colleen Freeland: Yeah …

Kate Anthony: the other program 100%, but this one, like I don’t… And they’re like, “Yeah, you’re not an alcoholic.” And I’d be like, “Yeah, I’m not an alcoholic.” And then I’d go off and be like, “Okay, I guess I can drink,” right?

But then I didn’t feel good about the relationship I had [00:10:00] with it and ha- but it was like, “Oh you’re not an alcoholic,” so there’s, there was no help, there were no resources. There wasn’t a problem. The important thing, I think one of the important things that you said was that, like alcohol is the problem.

It’s not me. For me, at least, the path stopping drinking led me to the path of emotional sobriety because I had, like I was giving up my crutch. So how do you define emotional sobriety and do you- Okay … feel that’s the path or does it lead you there? Like-

Colleen Freeland: Okay …

Kate Anthony: cart horse.

Colleen Freeland: So what I’ll start with is pushing back a little bit on something that is just a reframe, but you said, “I’m not the problem, alcohol is the problem.”

Here’s my neural pathway. Yeah. No, alcohol is the solution. The problem is, like you think about that night when I stayed up and s- powered through the laundry till- … halfway through the middle of the night before having to get up and get four kids to school by 8:00 AM. The question is not should [00:11:00] I pour myself a drink or not.

The question would be why the fuck don’t you just go to bed?

Kate Anthony: You’re right.

Colleen Freeland: Over-drinking is not a sign of overindulgence. It’s a symptom of self-neglect. You’re running on a deficit- … and the demands on you are greater than your capacity to cope with those demands. If you weren’t be drinking, you’d be doing something else.

And so the path to emotional sobriety- Yeah … for me is total responsibility. And so I say this without any, I don’t wanna trigger anybody, but if you’re the problem, you’re also the solution. And recognizing that it’s that perfectionistic, women in general are trained to, take care of everybody around them.

They can’t sit down and relax. I remember one time I drank an entire bottle of wine in less than an hour, and I felt nothing. Wow. And I remember thinking either my husband has watered this down or does wine expire? Is that a thing? Because I felt nothing. So I took a breath- The alcohol

Kate Anthony: had had, had- Right

[00:12:00] had evaporated.

Colleen Freeland: It fell out. You been, the alcohol fell out. So a- after drinking an entire bottle of wine I had a breathalyzer in my purse because of course I did, and I blew twice the legal limit Even though I felt absolutely nothing. The problem here is not that alcohol wasn’t affecting me.

The problem is I had trained myself to ignore it. Because I was so used to, “Everything’s fine. All good. Let me run 87 laps around everybody around me.”

Kate Anthony: Oh, sure.

Colleen Freeland: Women get disconnected from their felt sense. That’s why, like in my program, it’s not about willpower, it’s about mindfulness. Your body never enjoys finishing an entire bottle of wine.

Nobody does. But you’re not listening, you’re not tuned into your body because, of course, your brain is always three steps ahead of you because you’re planning and figuring out and carrying this huge mental load. You’re not present for the actual experience because you have to check- Yeah … your emotions at the door and run 100 miles an hour a day.

So emotional sobriety is basically [00:13:00] when you’re no longer intoxicated by all the bullshit, your own or anybody else’s, and you’re not telling yourself a story. Even for me, I always thought I was drinking for a reward. I was a- adding pleasure. But in re- in reality, I was drinking for relief, and I wasn’t being honest with myself.

I was drinking to bridge a gap, a very wide chasm, where my needs were just down there in the void, and I had no idea that I even had needs. Women aren’t trained to think about their own needs. Yeah. We’re trained to please and produce and be very productive. That’s the problem, and that’s- … that’s how I address it with women.

It’s not about the alcohol.

Kate Anthony: A- and it is addictive, like you said. The sort of conundrum here, in my brain anyway, is that- You ha- you’re taking a substance that is addictive. You have one of them, and it’s fine. You have two of them, and now you’re starting to lose the [00:14:00] ability to discern, right?

It’s like the alcohol is also, besides the fact that we are, as women, are trained to not be in connection with our own selves and to trust our intuitions and feel what’s happening in our bodies and all of that, you’re also then layering in a substance that disconnects you from it. So how do you reconcile that it’s actually also doing that to us?

Colleen Freeland: First of all, you’re not wrong, but it is not… Science shows it is not the addictive properties of alcohol that cause the addiction. Everything’s addictive. Your phone’s addictive. We interact with addictive substances all of the time. Your ability to self-regulate is really the issue. What predicts somebody falling into over-drinking and getting dependent or addicted, it’s a spectrum, on alcohol, is the belief that there’s two types of people in the world: the type of people that can control themselves, and the type of people that can’t.

It’s the belief in the loss of control. [00:15:00] And I work with women all the time and I will just say, first of all, it, being sober is awesome. I did it for three years. I very much enjoyed it. But I will also say that when I hit that, I can have about two glasses of wine, and my… I don’t want any more.

I’m not trying to control myself. I can start to feel it. The biphasic line for alcohol, it’s a biphasic drug. Small amounts and large amounts have opposite effects. 0.055 is the bloo- is the blood alcohol line specifically. And so the buzz you’re looking for is the first drink or two.

But for me, I can tell when I start to feel disconnected, and I don’t like that feeling. So there’s a self-correcting mechanism, as there is with cookies. Sugar’s eight times more addictive than cocaine. There’s a self-correct- we all have self-correcting mechanisms. So while some people for sure find it easier to just take it off the table-

Kate Anthony: Yeah

Colleen Freeland: it’s also not impossible to [00:16:00] learn how to drink mindfully because you’re mindful, just like you would not fall into a plate of cookies you can have one cookie and stop. I don’t ever want more than one, or maybe two if I’m there for a while, drinks. My brain just says, “No, I’m good.” I’m not thinking or controlling or negotiating with myself.

I drink by feeling, same way we eat by feeling. It’s intuitive.

Kate Anthony: Now see, w- what do you say to the people that feel like, that are so disconnected that they don’t have that intuition, or they don’t have that con- that mind-body connection?

Colleen Freeland: So to me, in my approach, and it’s very counterintuitive, that’s what has to change first.

My program, for example, is one year long. We… I tell you, “And stop trying to change your drinking. Do what you’re already doing. Manage it. Do the best you can to not wake hu- wake up hungover tomorrow.” We start, for the first three months, it’s nervous system regulation, it’s mindset [00:17:00] work, it’s perfectionism, it’s putting time and space in your day, and that works.

The… Because here’s the thing, the more connected you get, the less you have a desire to get numb and dumb. So we have an opposite approach where the behavior is more of a side effect, and you start no- if you over drink, it’s basically your report card of how connected you were throughout the day.

It’s just data. It’s neutral. In my program, we have a very neutral attitude towards drinking. There’s no right or wrong way to drink. There’s just the way you drink and the way you feel about that, and what would you like to do better next time. So we actually work on the reconnection, the reg- regulating of the nervous system, and that’s been shown to be very effective for substance use.

If reg- if you are more regulated, you drink like somebody who’s regulated. It’s… The cause and effect is reversed.

Kate Anthony: Yeah, and and like you said I was always so dysregulated partially because I [00:18:00] was drinking more than… I was, drinking at the level that it was having the negative impact on my hormones- and it was producing all of the stress hormones that then- … I needed to drink to calm down later in the day. I was in this constant- Yes … I couldn’t possibly… It’s interesting. Do you see people, ’cause you did what, you actually quit for three years, right? Going b- we can’t Sliding Doors it, right?

But going back if you could think about do you think you could have gone from drinking in a, in a disordered manner- Yeah … to mindful drinking without the three-year break?

Colleen Freeland: That’s impossible to know. I will tell you, I work with clients who drink as heavily as I did, and while it’s not the f- w- we don’t take the alcohol away from them initially.

Usually, over the course of a year, we have a f- a six-week pull out sober program. [00:19:00] We help them get ready for it. Now, for me, I was such a heavy drinker, I was re- I would’ve been ready on day one. “Please take this.” “Get it. I wanna commit.” Yeah, me too. But what, what also happens with women who do that is they feel so much better that they’re on that, this is what happened to me, of course I felt better for two months, but once I realized that not drinking was not a purpose in life and sitting on sobriety meetings every single day talking about it, I was like, “I feel like we got better things to do.”

I wanted to move on. But I still had all of the stress and the anxiety and the perfectionism, and now I’m just more perfect because I’m sober. And shame is a really big part of… And you can heal shame in a lot of ways, but getting sober can also be a bypass for the shame because you’re going around it with perfect good behavior, can’t touch me.

And so there’s just no right way to do it, [00:20:00] Kate.

Kate Anthony: Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: Some women need to take a break for six weeks. Some women can ease down and then at some point take a break. We do a 10-day reset. We do a six-week reset. So I think a break at some point is really good.

Kate Anthony: Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: But there’s just layers and layers of thought processes, a lot of emotional things to unpack with the shame and the guilt and all of the things.

So could I have done it if I had my program? It, my program, as any coach knows, is an ode to myself. Sure. 100%. This is a, a, to what I needed, six years ago. Oh. My program delivers now.

Kate Anthony: Yes, absolutely. I very much relate to that, 100%. I think it’s interesting ’cause my- when I quit, I certainly didn’t feel perfect or like, “I’m great.”

I, I was then hit with the wall of everything I had been drinking to suppress- … for 10 years. So there was that.

So tell [00:21:00] me what, w- we have been talking a little bit about emotional sobriety. What do you feel like that… What does that actually mean? And why might it be important for women who are navigating divorce or c- or questioning?

Colleen Freeland: So when it comes to divorce-

Kate Anthony: Yeah …

Colleen Freeland: I divorce number one, divorce number two.

Divorce number one, it was his fault. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I wanted a marriage, not a divorce, and that guy wasn’t showing up. Emotional sobriety is when you take complete ownership for your own emotions. Nobody causes you to feel frustrated or upset or stuck or trapped or bad. Your emotions are a product of your own thought processes and your, traumas your learning throughout life of what’s good and bad and right and wrong.

So emotional sobriety is understanding that you are the cause of your own feelings. I didn’t know that, which is how I ended up married so quickly to [00:22:00] somebody else. Then I realize that I want to get a divorce, but I had the emotional sobriety to know that divorce isn’t gonna make me happy if I’m not happy in the life that I have, like he wasn’t abusive.

He was a jackass, but he- I was safe, everything was good. And so I decided before I left that marriage, I was gonna work on myself. Because if I couldn’t be happy, I knew I’m getting custody myself when I walk out the damn door. And so it’s learning to take radical ownership of your own thinking processes, and blaming other people for your emotions is a zero-sum win game.

Understanding that your expectations, your unmet needs, nobody can make you happy. You’re responsible for making yourself happy, and that is the superpower, is realizing that you are the source of your own stress, and you are also the source of your [00:23:00] own peace.

Kate Anthony: And then through that process, you did end up also divorcing your second husband, right?

I- Because it’s not, it, I think the, the… Sometimes people hear that and go, “Okay I guess it’s just me. I’m- … it’s my I’m unhappy, so I need to, like…” And that’s not was, what you were experiencing nor what you’re saying. No.

Colleen Freeland: Let me put it in context. I got sober six weeks into COVID. And one of the reasons I decided to get sober w- was because fuck that guy, I’m done, and I wasn’t gonna go through another divorce drunk. So I put it down. I went through exactly everything you did. The wall came at me. And PS, it’s COVID. I’m not going anywhere. I was financially dependent on him.

He was a neurosurgeon. I was a stay-at-home mom of seven fucking kids.

Kate Anthony: Oh, geez.

Colleen Freeland: I wasn’t going anywhere. There was no me going and getting another job.

Kate Anthony: Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: And so because I was [00:24:00] s- physically and somewhat emotionally safe, I moved out of our bedroom, moved upstairs, but I was there another four years. I didn’t…

Because I started my business, and I started this program, because I knew if I wanted to leave, I would need to be able to support myself. And I was always real honest with him, “I’m gonna leave you as soon as I can afford it,” and he didn’t believe me. He didn’t think I’d ever s- whatever. Yeah. I, but I stayed four years, and then finally one day, it was, “It’s not you, it’s me.

This is no longer a good fit- … and I’m done.”

Kate Anthony: Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: But the version of me who was happy, I trusted her to make that decision. Yeah. Going back to that dysregulated, disconnected, she doesn’t need to be making decisions. That’s right. And when you are deciding to get a divorce out of panic, and urgency, and anger, and resentment the more intense you feel, the less accurate your perspective is.

So the best thing you can do is get emotionally sober, and then let the [00:25:00] version of you who understands herself and her power- Yes … let her make the decision- Yeah … instead of knee-jerking back and forth, because if I’m over here, I’m gonna be happier, and then you get there, and turns out you’re not. Or then, just like I did after my first divorce, you just end up in another relationship having the same damn fight with a different name.

Kate Anthony: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And, the statistics unfortunately bear that out, right? That, I don’t know what they are now, but, it used to be around 78% of second marriages end up, end in divorce, and something like 84% of third marriages do, too, right? We are not getting better at this.

I think it’s 68 and 74. Whatever. We’re not getting better at it if we’re not examining ourselves and coming to that place of emotional balance before making more decisions- Yeah … for sure.

Colleen Freeland: Yeah. Yeah. And I have to tell you, going through a divorce emotionally sober, I would tell you that my ex-husband is the most non-emotionally sober, and yet because of the [00:26:00] way I was able to show up- We had a prenup, so had already negotiated our thing, but it was the most pleasant…

We never got a lawyer. W- we decided on divorce. He was moving three months later. We continued to cohabitate. We had the kids all up for Christmas and did it all together. We st- we still went on our date night because he was fucking paying for my dinner, and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll go.” It was the best divorce you could possibly get because I was no longer attached to h- being right.

I under- I’d also been through divorce. I know this is a business thing. It’s it’s 50/50, and that’s what we’re doing. Yeah.

Kate Anthony: And you spent four years coming down off of the emotional impact of making the decision. You had decided- … and then it was four years before you actually…

and I think that is it’s so important to have that emotional regulation before you go into the process, right? I talk ad nauseam about not rushing the process [00:27:00] because even if you have gotten to that place of emotional regulation, once you tell your spouse, it, they are now emotionally dysregulated, and you need them to come down, too.

Otherwise, we can set the tone for as much as we can. There is still another person involved, and-

Colleen Freeland: Yeah …

Kate Anthony: we don’t

Colleen Freeland: need this- But you have to learn not to take the bait. Whether they are never texting you back or they are psycho texting you 87 times in an hour y- emotional sobriety is realizing I’m gonna set the boundaries when I’m gonna look at these communications, and I’m not going to engage if I am dysregulated.

I, only the powerful version of me talks and texts. That’s it.

Kate Anthony: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And it takes something to get there. It absolutely- Oh … does, right? To become- Oh … emotionally sober and, and, emotional sobriety is not like quitting drinking, right? It is not something that you pick up.

It is a way of [00:28:00] being. So you’re gonna fall off that wagon a million times. I said it earlier, but- … I define it very simply. Emotional sobriety is when you are no longer intoxicated by your own emotions.

Yeah, I like that definition. Yes, ’cause we do get intoxicated by them, don’t we?

Colleen Freeland: Yeah, we get hijacked. Yeah. Every single emo- emotion, if it’s really good, life is good. If it’s really bad, life is bad. We are just on this emotional rollercoaster.

Kate Anthony: Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: And it’s not that you can’t enjoy life. You have to feel everything, but you don’t have to think in those emotional states. You can let the energy move through you, and then make sure that you’re thinking…

‘Cause you think how you feel, so if you feel pissed off, all your plans are gonna be a reflection of being pissed off and not a reflection of what your higher self needs and wants from a place of power.

Kate Anthony: Yeah. It’s inter- the, the work that I do in my Should I Stay or Should I Go program and in my book is all about that.

Everyone, should I stay or should I go? Should I stay or should I go? I- is he bad enough? D- [00:29:00] is this, does this marriage rise to the level of bad enough, right? I ask my clients and in my book t- just let’s put that aside. We start with you. For exactly the reasons that you’re saying. We start with you.

What, what is… Who are you? ‘Cause we don’t know. Yeah. We don’t know- Yeah … anymore, and we’re mothers, first of all. We’re women. We don’t- Yeah … know who we are anymore in this phase of life.

Colleen Freeland: I stayed for four years, but to be clear, I didn’t make the decision and wait four years.

Kate Anthony: No.

Colleen Freeland: I was in that, should I stay or should I go?

And I just was committed to healing myself, and now- Yeah … I am so grateful that he was so ridiculous. Because if he had been 25% less ridiculous, I would still be in that marriage. And- Yeah … not living the life. I would’ve settled. I would’ve settled. And it was just are you kidding me, that I…

That one day I was like, “Not doing this [00:30:00] anymore.” Yeah. But that should I stay or should I go is such a limbo, but I learned to get comfortable in it. I, I remember saying, “I completely trust myself to know when it’s time to go.”

Kate Anthony: Yes. And- Absolutely. Absolutely … one

Colleen Freeland: day I did.

Kate Anthony: And w- if you are doing the personal internal work towards that, it will show up.

It will absolutely show up. If you’re just sitting there waiting and doing nothing, then you’re gonna be repeating the same patterns till the, the cows come home.

Colleen Freeland: One of the best ad- pieces of advice that I have for my own clients, because of course I work with women who are struggling with marriage as well, w- they’re just coming to me for the alcohol, and it’s like you have to figure out if you were getting a divorce “Oh, I need to get a divorce,” all right, what would you be doing differently?

Oh, I’d take ballroom dancing, or, oh, I’d meet up with my friends and go to the farmers market, or, oh- Do that now … I’d start making myself start doing it now. Absolutely. Yeah. Imagine you’re getting a divorce. Go ahead and [00:31:00] start building all the habits and the practices and the self-care and new habits and hobbies and all the things.

Start now. You don’t have to get a divorce to change yourself.

Kate Anthony: No and often what that does is when you become more of your authentic self and all of the things it really shines a light on how much this relationship doesn’t align, right- … with your values, with what you want, right?

Like you said your husband was so ridiculous that- … when you are standing in your own emotional sobriety, emotional integrity, and the other person is, like- it’s so cl- it becomes so clear, right? Yeah. Oh my God.

Colleen Freeland: Yeah.

Kate Anthony: That so is not the thing that I want for my life. But unless you know who, what you do want for your life, you still, you don’t know that that’s-

Colleen Freeland: And know what’s blocking you from getting it.

The moment as I… Now I’m a coach, I’m running a seven-figure big [00:32:00] business at the time, right? The moment I realized the only thing keeping me in the marriage was fear- Yes … my own fear-

Kate Anthony: You’re like, “Oh, shit.”

Colleen Freeland: I was like, “Oh, shit, I know how to deal with that. That’s a feeling, not a fact. Oh my God. Oh my God.

So turns out it’s not me, it’s you. Bye-bye.” But the only thing keeping me in the marriage was the fear that I wasn’t gonna be able to support myself- … that I was gonna break my kids or, his kids and our fam- it was like crazy. The moment I realized the only things, the last tether I was just scared.

I was like, “Oh, hold my beer.” I got this. “I got this.”

Kate Anthony: Exactly. Exactly. And to be fair, for many women, the fear is crippling. It’s par- paralyzing- Oh … right? It’s not like-

Colleen Freeland: Oh, 100% …

Kate Anthony: to be like, “Oh, it’s just fear. Oh, no. But-

Colleen Freeland: Yeah …

Kate Anthony: for who you were- Yeah … at that time-

Colleen Freeland: Yeah. Yeah …

Kate Anthony: yeah, that felt like-

Colleen Freeland: Three weeks after I told him for sure I was getting a divorce, no go- no takesies-backsies, you know- Yeah

get the prenup out, we’re done. [00:33:00] Three weeks I had to go to my bed every day and lay down and basically digest this energy. It felt like there was a stabbing… And I, but I moved through, I had the capacity to deal with it, but please don’t get me wrong, I didn’t skip out of there on, a bed of roses.

I had to process all of that fear. Yeah. And it was like eating an elephant, and it took me three weeks before I was not in physical pain.

Kate Anthony: Been there.

Colleen Freeland: Yeah.

Kate Anthony: Before we go, I wanted to ask you, when you’re talking about feeling that fear when you realized it was fear- … how do you know, how do people know the difference between fear and intuition?

Because- … I think they can kind of-

Okay …

Kate Anthony: get a little- … overlapped, convoluted. Yes. It’s like- Okay … am I scared, and I can manage the fear, or is my intuition telling me something really important right now?

Colleen Freeland: Your intuition is an awareness that this is not like that. Intuition is [00:34:00] neutral. It is not emotionally charged.

You intuitively know something is off. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, it doesn’t mean it’s good. But your intuition is just a felt sense that there’s more or something isn’t what it seems or something… So intuition is n- is not usually, like, giving out directions, like you should leave or you shouldn’t leave.

It’s more intuition is the awareness this relationship isn’t healthy, like this relationship isn’t serving me. I have need… Like y- you, what comes out of your mouth is not what I see happening. Intuition is just an awareness- But it’s not necessarily a call to action. What you should do about it is not the intuition part.

The intuition is just the awareness. Yeah. So the fe- how do you know if something is fear is it dysregulating? Is your mind racing? Is there tension and tightness? Read your own [00:35:00] body language. Women are taught, we can tell the facial tick on somebody or the tone of their voice changes, or the slightest little shift, and we know all what they’re thinking.

We can’t read our own body language. Like- … look at your body. Fear, are your pupils dilating? Are… There’s physical symptoms there. Intuition is very calm and grounded.

Kate Anthony: Yes. There’s a, as we talk about the inner knowing. It’s just a knowing.

Colleen Freeland: It’s just

Kate Anthony: a knowing. As opposed to when we get, when we are in fear, our heart starts to race, we get tense, our bodies tense up.

We might feel that stabbing feeling Yeah … in my sternum that “Ugh.”

Colleen Freeland: Yeah.

Kate Anthony: Which is very different from an inner knowing.

Colleen Freeland: Yeah. Fear- Which is what- … is blocking your inner knowing. And- Fear is what’s keeping you from acknowledging this isn’t like that, this isn’t on point. Yes.

Kate Anthony: Yes. And fe- in- tu- intuition to me feels like clarity, and fear- Yeah

feels like [00:36:00] complete muddiness, and a blocking. Or

Colleen Freeland: urgency. Or urgency. Or

Kate Anthony: urgency,

Colleen Freeland: yes. Fear is very urgency, like I gotta do this really fast. Yeah, there it… Your nervous system kicks on. The cortisol, the adrenaline, your mind starts moving really fast. There’s an urgency to take an action or avoid.

Fight, flight, fear. Or fight, flight, freeze, fawn, fix- Yeah … figure it out. All the F words. Fuck it. Fuck it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh so it’s interesting that you said that a lot of women that are in your program that are dealing with their relationship to alcohol and drinking are also dealing with… it do you find that it just as they get more connected to themselves, they start to it starts to reveal that the marriage- Yeah …

maybe isn’t- At some point when I get swag or whatever- Okay … like I wanna be like, “Emotionally sober. Warning, may cause divorce.” May

Kate Anthony: cause

Colleen Freeland: divorce.

Emotional sobriety may cause

Kate Anthony: divorce. May cause divorce, [00:37:00] 100%. Yeah. 100%. Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

Colleen Freeland: Yeah.

Kate Anthony: Oh, my goodness. Colleen, where can everybody find you? I know you have a wonderful and sort of prolific presence on social media, on Instagram and the

Colleen Freeland: places. Yes, I’m on all the platforms. Yeah

thehangoverwhisperer is my handle, so Facebook, TikTok, so- Instagram. Then my podcast is It’s Not About The Alcohol. And my website is emotionalsobrietycoaching.com.

Kate Anthony: Awesome. Colleen, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I loved having you on.

Colleen Freeland: It was so good to meet you and see you in person, so I guess now I’ll listen to myself on your podcast.

Thank you.

Kate Anthony: That’s right. Thanks, Colleen.