Welcome to the home of CLUB SODA’S COURSES TO CHANGE YOUR DRINKING

Back to the main site

Bad days will happen

Happier Holidays with Club Soda Paying attention to what Bad days will happen

Accept that you will have bad days

You will have them. They are normal. And as we discovered in the last lesson, our feelings and emotions will change, just like the tides do, and sometimes a good night’s sleep can mean things feel better in the morning. Even if we get pessimistic about feeling better, it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll feel differently in some way, because our thoughts and feelings change naturally by themselves. Moods will shift when they’re ready to.

We have also been fed a myth. That every day has to be joyous and never feel difficult. That is simply not true. We can go through many days of our life feeling ‘ok’. That is a perfectly acceptable life state and we rarely question it. In exactly the same way some days we feel a spring in our step, and glad to be alive, other days we’ll just not be feeling great. And that’s never a nice feeling, but it does make the days you feel immense joy seem more … joyful!

Particularly in the holiday season, if you’re having a rough day it might feel like you ‘should’ be feeling more joyful, and maybe a drink is just the thing to help. The thing here is to be kind to yourself. Your feelings are your feelings, and they are perfectly valid, just as you are for feeling how you feel. There are no ‘shoulds’ about feeling a different way, and feelings you suppress will take longer to shift, so give yourself permission to feel however you feel.

Reaching out to someone and telling them you’re feeling a bit rubbish and you’d really appreciate a chat is a really good way to help the feelings along their way.

Bad days are not due to lack of alcohol. There is nothing alcohol can do that will make a bad day better or help you build up a longer streak of good days. It just stores up the problems for the future you. Bad days might hurt but won’t kill you. Alcohol can make them worse.

Changing the routine

If the answer to everything was alcohol, what do you replace it with? Well, you replace it with many things. Because no one thing should be able to fix everything. Now is the time to get creative and even a bit experimental. You can use a WOOP for this task.

Start listing the types of triggers that mean you reach for a drink as a reward or comfort. Stressful days, celebration days, Fridays, sad days, lonely days, Uncle Bob snoring loudly in the chair whilst you’re trying to play a game after lunch on Christmas day…

Then work out what the aim of the drink was for that trigger, what was the payoff. For example:

  • Friday reward drinking is because you want to signal the break between work and relaxing
  • Sad days alcohol is a comfort
  • Happy day drinking is about heightening your joy
  • A glass will alleviate the stress of Uncle Bob snoring

Now – how can you reframe these, and replace them with something else, or with some logical ‘self talk’? What else could you do to alleviate the stress you feel at Uncle Bob? How about physically removing yourself from the room for a bit?

Previous Topic
Back to Lesson
Next Topic
Sign up to our regular email for all the latest Club Soda news and events.
Subscribe

Connect with us