"For better or worse, we humans have a genius for getting used to things, especially when the changes are incremental. The new-fangled verb “to normalize” refers to the mechanism by which something previously aberrant becomes normal enough that it passes beneath our radar."
I don’t know that self-sabotaging behavior in an effort to self-soothe necessarily passes beneath our radar (because we know when we’re doing dumb shit we’re not supposed to), but Maté has a point.
One of the things I had normalized in response to trauma built on top of trauma was drinking to self-soothe. I knew it wasn’t good, but I knew that I drank regularly to feel less stressed, depressed and anxious, and more social. Sitting at my local was a way for me to hang out with people I knew (or didn’t). I was that starved for friendship and to feel that I was part of something. That I was enough and mattered. That I was liked (because I certainly didn’t like myself).
Loneliness and sadness about the state of me and my life helped set the stage for alcohol being a way to fill that cup. Until a friend I hadn’t seen in 20 years metaphorically doused me in ice cold water over a WhatsApp video call. What she said rang in my head for 3 days straight.
“Where’s your drink? You’re always at a bar or have a drink in your hand when we talk.”
She didn’t mean it in a mean way at all – she was very upbeat and happy to see me. But I was at a loss for words. You know it’s bad when someone you haven’t seen since you were 10 more or less equates you to a glass of something or other. I guess on some level, I had deluded myself into thinking that my drinking to self-soothe wasn’t as much a part of my identity as it had become. It floored me to realize that this was part of my identity/reputation/image.
When someone thought of me, did they also think of me holding a drink or being at a bar?
The word “aberrant” that Maté uses above means “departing from an accepted standard.”
The frequency of my drinking and the way I had woven it into my everyday life to self-soothe was just that: a deviation from a social standard. Stressed after a day of work that I hated doing? Glass of red wine. Depressed and distrought after another disastrous breakup with the same guy? Gin and cranberry. Feeling lonely? Go two blocks down to hang out with my favorite bartender and order an Assemble the Empire (gin-based blackberry drink), which would invariably turn into two or three and at least one tequila shot on the house.
Loneliness permeated everything I did, thought and felt. Is there a quick fix? Hah! No. But here’s how I adjusted my drinking habits after my ice bath of a video call.
I was living with family at the time, as I had moved back to Sweden not 4 months earlier, and this was one of the rules one member had for herself, so I decided to join that program.
It was a stressful time for me and there were many times when I wanted to just walk into town and sit in a bar with a glass of wine or beer just to get out of the house and take the edge off my stress (i.e. self-soothe), but I refused.
I thought, “New life, new habits, and eventually, a me I actually want to be.”
Drinking was no longer an acceptable tool for managing everyday stress and all the emotions and memories I was bottling up to get through the day.
“Basta così,” as the Italians say.
This one was really hard to stick to a couple times because once one starts, it’s all that much harder to stop because it doesn’t feel like a big deal to have just one more. But given that I was basically only drinking occasionally with family, and it’s not like we were throwing ragers from the sofa, I was operating in an environment that was supportive of that boundary. I didn’t have friends inviting me out or who made it difficult to stick to my boundary, so that helped.
Once I moved into my own place, I didn’t buy a bottle of wine to have at home for an evening glass or two (my usual way to self-soothe).
On the occasion that family would visit, I would buy a bottle that we’d share. If we didn’t finish it before they left, I wouldn’t touch it until the following weekend. If I kept anything at home, it was non-alcoholic beer.
It was very tempting to curl up with a blanket and glass of wine at the end of the day, but I resisted. There were a lot of things going on that I couldn’t control, but I could control what I chose to do in response to all that. And I was not about to default to destructive habits again (because damnit, I had just moved across the Atlantic for a new life, I’ll be damned if I F it up because I can’t/won’t unchain myself from alcohol, get it together).
You might have noticed I like my fruity cocktails. I still do. Elderflower spritz in summer? Yas pls. But I just didn’t find it necessary to drink hard liquor. If I was going to have a glass of something, it would 99% of the time be red wine. Hard liquor is expensive, bad for you, and is like a gateway drug to other bad ideas. I can get my fruity and refreshing elsewhere.
Listen, almost any reigning in of destructive behavior is guaranteed for total failure if going from 100% to 0% overnight. It ain’t gonna happen, at least not for me. If you ban kids from eating candy, they’ll sneak it under their pillows and eat it at night (yes, that was me).
That meant that if I wanted to have more than one glass of wine on Christmas Eve, that was okay. If I wanted to have a cocktail on my birthday, that was okay. The point at the time was to decouple alcohol from everyday life by removing it from my self-soothe toolbox, not to cut it out entirely.
A lot of us trauma survivors adapt to our environments by normalizing destructive behavior in an effort to self-soothe. We want to escape the constant monotony of “everything’s shit all the time” (even when sleeping due to vivid dreams) and just, for one freaking moment, feel comforted by something. For me, that was a drink.
What are the things in your life that you have normalized (intentionally or not) to the point of them now being “normal”?
There may be a lot of things you want to change, and some ships take longer to turn around than others, but my suggestion is to pick one that affects your everyday life – that you’ll notice and be reminded of as you’re making “gains” in that department. Something that, as you work to change that behavior, you feel you’re doing it for you. Investing in you, not someone else.
Pick something that will make you smile to yourself, even if just a little, knowing that yeah, you can actually do this. You know you’re making real change when you no longer go to that thing to self-soothe. You’ll have chosen a non-destructive behavior to replace it with. My hope for you this year is that you identify and start to work on changing a destructive behavior that ultimately will lead to having one less thing cuffing you. Because honestly, there’s so much other shit to deal with.
P.S. I’m painfully aware that changing a destructive behavior includes removing yourself from an environment that enables that behavior. Easy does it. This isn’t for the weak. That’s why I recommend picking something that you’ll feel the effect of but that might not turn your world upside-down just yet (unless you’re ready for that, then go for it, with caution).
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