The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Meg and Bella discuss the ups and downs of navigating an alcohol free life in Australia's alcohol centric culture. This highly rated podcast, featuring in Australia's top 100 self improvement podcasts, is a must for those that are trying to drink less alcohol but need some motivation, are curious about sober life or who are sober but are looking for some extra reinforcement. The Not Drinking Alcohol Today pod provides an invaluable resource to keep you motivated and on track today and beyond. Meg and Bella's guests include neuroscientists, quit-lit authors, journalists, health experts, alcohol coaches and everyday people who have struggled with alcohol but have triumphed over it. Our aim is to support and inspire you to reach your goals to drink less or none at all! Meg and Bella are This Naked Mind Certified Coaches (plus nutritionists and counsellors respectively) who live in Sydney and love their alcohol free life.
The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Breaking Free With Natalie West: Reclaiming Your Self-Worth Without Alcohol
In this transformative episode, I’m thrilled to share insights from Natalie E. West, high-performance integrative psychotherapist and guest speaker during Week 2 of my (Bella's) November Alcohol Freedom Challenge. Natalie captivated our group with her profound understanding of how attachments—to substances like alcohol, food, and drugs—are often rooted in unmet emotional needs and external validation. Sharing her personal journey with alcohol, Natalie delved into the emotional and psychological factors that shape dependency and provided strategies for creating lasting change.
We explore the groundbreaking connection between nutritional psychology and emotional regulation, revealing how the gut-brain axis plays a pivotal role in breaking free from habits that no longer serve us. Natalie introduced tailored nutritional approaches, such as ketogenic and carnivore diets, that not only stabilise energy but also improve mental clarity and overall well-being. Her expertise sparked dynamic discussions and inspired the group to reframe their perspectives on cravings and dependency by focusing on internal values and purpose.
Natalie’s empowering philosophy of replacing “I should” with “I choose” invites us to approach life with intention, authenticity, and self-prioritisation. By embracing conscious decision-making and fostering a stable emotional environment, Natalie shows how we can build self-value, navigate change, and create a life aligned with our core beliefs. Her talk was an unforgettable highlight of the challenge, and I’m excited to share her wisdom with you today. To learn more about Natalie’s impactful work, visit [natalieewest.com](https://natalieewest.com).
MEG
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BELLA
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Online Alcohol Self-...
Hello, dear listener, I hope you are well today. Today I am sharing a talk given by Natalie West. She was recently a guest speaker during week two of my November Alcohol Freedom Challenge, and her session was nothing short of transformative, which is why I thought it incredibly important that I make it accessible here to you as well.
Speaker 1:Natalie is a high-performance integrative psychotherapist. She works in the space of nutritional psychology and she helps people with attachments such as alcohol, food and drugs that they hold outside of themselves. She runs through her own experience with alcohol and how she helps people remove alcohol from their lives. Her expert understanding of how nutrition and diet can accelerate habit change, combined with her insights into how early experiences and value systems influence our subconscious and our habits. Well, it was just so engaging, so inspiring. She essentially helps people rake the habit of their former or old selves, which thereby opens up space to enter into newer, healthier versions. The group found her talk incredibly motivating and empowering. So, yes, I'm sharing this here with you today as well. I hope you enjoyed it as much as me and my November Alcohol Freedom Group did.
Speaker 2:So hi everybody, my name is Natalie West. I am an integrative psychotherapist and I've worked in the space of nutritional psychology and helping people with attachments and addictions is probably the word that you would most be familiar with. That can be from alcohol, food, drugs, anything that's holding an attachment outside of ourselves. Really, just going to run through my own experience and my journey, but also to really what I help people with from a root cause especially when we're talking about removing alcohol from our life, and also to food, goes hand in hand with that sometimes. So that's one of the things that I will also join together.
Speaker 2:So my talk tonight's really about breaking the habit of our old self, because that was my own experience and that's my experience when I've been working in this space for the last 20 years. So really what we have to do is break old habits, which is then creating, opening new doors, which we can actually then create new habits and become a whole new version of ourselves. So let's just start with really what we're dealing with to start with. So 10% of removing alcohol from our lives or making the conscious decision to remove alcohol from our lives is 10% really saying no, but the 90% of that is actually understanding our emotional regulation, and that's an internal and an external environment. So our internal environment with ourselves, understanding how our minds work and how our bodies work, but also our external environment. So really, our emotional regulation is one of the most critical things that we have to understand. So one of the other things that you may find quite interesting when I talk about this but a lot of people feel like they've got a problem with one with themselves and you know, an attachment or an issue with alcohol, drugs or sugar or junk food. Right, we really don't have an issue with those things. What we actually have, we have a relationship value problem with ourselves, and that is something that we learn from our environment, and I'm going to go through that in a little bit more depth just for help to people understand that. We learn how to anchor our emotions and our environment through attachments and a lot of the time it's because we're emotionally dysregulated and we don't learn how to regulate our emotions.
Speaker 2:So when I talk about internal, that again is the relationship value with ourselves, and then, secondly, it's the relationship value with externalized people, places or things, and that includes alcohol. So what happens is we tend to have a higher external value on things such as alcohol, junk food, places, people, things versus the internal relationship value that we have with ourselves. So what really happens is we hand over our authority to things outside of ourselves instead of actually owning our authority and learning about how crucial our relationship is with ourselves. Now I'm just going to take everyone back a little bit so we can understand where that starts from. And really, when I talk about environment and this is one of the critical things that I learned about myself growing up and being attached to alcohol, but also other addictive substances as I grew up so for the first seven years of our life, it's the most critical programming and value of our whole entire stage of life.
Speaker 2:So by the time we're seven, our conscious and unconscious are actually built already with our self-image, our value structures and our belief structures, which are actually not ours. Because, as a child, up until that first seven years, we have no ability to actually remove anything. We have no cognitive or analytical ability to say, hey, that doesn't work for me or that's not mine, that's mum's, that's dad. But what happens is, though, we're energetic beings, so we actually absorb everything in that environment. So if you've ever grown up in an environment which I have also too. This may relate to people here that's had alcohol abuse or drug abuse or anything like that in a very, very dysregulated environment. What tends to happen is we actually learn that data and we believe that that data, through those authoritarian figures, is basically what we absorb and what we believe is true about ourselves. So it's not uncommon as we grow up that we learn unconscious patterns and behaviors that we have learned from our environment that have held a very big value and or we have seen alcohol or even food you know, food is a huge addiction as well when we've seen that used to numb or to push down emotions, so that becomes also dysregulated. You become very emotionally dysregulated and again, we don't learn as children how to go through our emotions. We are taught how to go around them and as adults, a lot of the time if we feel whether it's you know anything in our environment, whether it's guilt, shame, anything that kind of pops into your head as I'm saying this we learn to numb them and we learn to go around them. So what we do when we go around them, we will then anchor that behavior in something outside of ourselves every single time.
Speaker 2:Now one of the things about our mind. It loves doing something consistently. Our mind, it loves doing something consistently. So in our environment, as a child, we learn everything through thought, vision and what we feel. Now we get into a pattern where I call a waking state of hypnosis. So we'll actually do the same things over and over, and over and again, even though consciously we know, hey, that doesn't really serve me, why do I do that? And then what happens is then we self-sabotage ourselves and then we actually think that there's something wrong with us and, by the way, there's nothing wrong with you. We just learn certain thoughts, feelings and patterns, but then we use something outside of ourselves to fill the void.
Speaker 2:So, again, anyone in authoritarian to you mom, dad, caregivers that's where we learn beliefs and values about ourselves, and a lot of the time they're not great, they're quite dysregulated. Does it mean we can change them? Yes, of course we can. So the other thing that's really important for people to know is your mind literally works on a reward system. So whatever we repeat, it gets rewarded over and over and over. So that's again a waking state of hypnosis, where we're hypnotizing ourselves to stay in the same state, even though consciously, as I said before. It doesn't serve us, but unconsciously it has.
Speaker 2:Well, this is the data I have. This is how we feel. We're going to keep doing the same thing because that's safe or familiar. The other thing is, anything that we need to fill a void with outside of ourselves comes at the cost of not understanding the relationship values with ourselves. So, again, we're putting the authority in the alcohol, food, junk, whatever they become attachments. Okay, so then what happens is then we become familiar with that attachment and we don't know what's on the other side of that being unfamiliar, everything in our mind and our body that goes into the unfamiliar feels unsafe and unknown, and that's why, a lot of the time, you can say, hey, I'm going to make a decision, and it may only last for a very short amount of time, and motivation doesn't work, and willpower doesn't work either, because that basically white knuckles everything.
Speaker 2:What we have to do is understand what are our thoughts, our feelings and our actions, whether they're internal or external. So every single thing in your mind is a process and it's like data Thoughts, feelings, actions creates the same outcome. So, again, if we're doing the same thing over and over and over, your mind and your body are going to give you the same outcome, same evidence. What we have to do is go from the familiar into the unfamiliar, which, again, we need to create new thoughts, new feelings, new actions, but they must come from inside your own environment. They cannot be anchored outside of yourself.
Speaker 2:Where that becomes a challenge is understanding. How do we respect ourselves, how do we feed and fuel and nourish ourselves? And it's not just by what we put in our mouth. It's also what we watch, what we see, what we say and also, too, we absorb everything. So if you think 90% of what you do is autopilot, 90% of every single thing that you do and say is autopilot, which will go over and over and over.
Speaker 2:Now the other thing is, if you walk through the world with the conscious belief and also a very heavy unconscious structure that you believe that you're not good enough or nothing will ever change, what happens is your unconscious will find that evidence for you every single time. So just be really mindful of your language, narrative, the words that you use, because they also come with emotional content. So the other thing is never say I should or I shouldn't. I always say to people never should, all over yourselves, because what happens is the energy of, should has enough information from all the things that you should have done before, and guess what? You're back in the loop over and over and over.
Speaker 2:Now this is where repeating patterns are really, really important. So, again, like I said earlier, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken and you don't need to be fixed. But what you do need to understand is your external environment versus your patterning, and also understanding the familiarity of instability and chaos. So if you've come from an environment that's felt very dysregulated, what will happen is your unconscious mind and your body sees that as normal. So anything that's calming or grounded feels out of familiarity. So what will happen is you will seek and hunt the things that will make you feel either fight or flight, response, high anxiety and or chaotic. So, again, if we have a chaotic environment, consciously and unconsciously, every single thing that you choose outside of yourself will also meet that chaos, even though at some point you've said, hey, I really need to move this or change this, but until there is given a whole new structure of the why behind it. But it can't come from outside yourself, it has to come from inside yourself. Now the other thing is understanding how we form neural patterns.
Speaker 2:So the more unhealthy pattern that you abstain into you will strengthen it over and over and over. So it's like you know, when we say, hey, we go to a social event and we're not going to choose some you know, alcohol, we're not going to choose some junk food, every single person will have an argument in their head even before they get there. And even when they're there, you've got this conflict going on in your mind and your body and go. No, I shouldn't, I can't. So even when you say you can't, your mind will give you every single reason to focus on the things that you can't have. Every single time we do a diet, guess what happens? It doesn't work. So it's the same thing with alcohol. Never, ever, ever, allow something outside of yourself to hold authority over you and to hold a value over you. That does not work.
Speaker 2:The other thing, too, is 95% of the people in the world and you know it's everyone welcome to the world's biggest club, because I was also in this as well 95% of us don't really like or even love who we are, and the reason for that is because we've learnt that from our environment. So most of us are also raised with external outcomes. So we have to respect others, love others, be kind to others. But are we taught how to do that with ourselves? And when we don't, we actually build emotional voids which then we will use food to comfort with or alcohol to numb, which ultimately what that's doing. It's giving us a solution, because we haven't learned to sit with ourselves and feel what that emotion is, and even if it's ours that's the other thing too our value structures. A lot of the time we don't own them. They have been given to us, about what we believe, who we are.
Speaker 2:Now, the other really big thing is about being cared about what other people think, especially when we start to remove alcohol from our lives, because it's such a social expectation and really it's the only thing, apart from junk food, that we ever have to explain why we're not doing it. You know, and that, again, if you don't really have a high value in yourself, where you you really love, respect and value your mental and metabolic health, every single time you're going to put yourself in a vulnerable position in an environment where you're going to be like oh, what happens if I? You know if somebody asked me for a drink, or you know if someone asked me to have a piece of cake, you're like no, thank you. But what? That's unfamiliar and that's going to feel really, really uncomfortable because that's sitting out in the space of the unknown. And what happens when we're in the unknown? It's like oops, I don't feel up, I will actually need to pop back in and fit in with everyone. That doesn't serve anybody fitting in with anyone.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing is because we don't have a relationship value with ourselves. And the thing is, if I get people to think about what a relationship value is for yourself, I will guarantee you your mind will go externally every single time. It'll be about what you do for others, how you see and feel others, not about yourself. Like I said earlier, 95% of motivation will fail within a three to four week period because it has to be deemed as a high value, consciously and unconsciously, and has to have a why behind it, and the why must come back from a value structure. It's non-negotiable and it has to be seen as a high purpose. And when I use the word purpose, your mind may have just gone outside of itself, but what I mean by purpose, it's got to be your internal purpose.
Speaker 2:Now the other thing is it's really important that no one really talks about is never underestimate the power of poor nutrition in your healing journey when it comes to removing attachments from alcohol, sugar and junk food, because these are all huge dopamine sources. So we're in a very high dopamine dominated society and also, to you know, alcohol and food are not just one part of it's our phones, it's our laptops, it's it's Netflix, it's all of those dopamine supporting structures. So nutrition really, really matters and this is a core part of the foundation of when I work with people, when I'm, you know people who have been alcoholics, for I'm talking, you know, 30, 40 plus years and no one's ever spoken to them about the power of nutrition and why it's important. So, as a culture, we are really malnourished and we're really starving, but our bellies are full, and what I mean by that is, you know, primarily, we have so much food around us, and what I use by food I don't mean species appropriate food either around us, and what I use by food I don't mean species appropriate food either, because we're a species and we need to eat in an accordance that what's going to serve our gut, brain access, and the biggest thing is understanding that alcohol link with food and nutrition and sugar and hitting that dopamine response, but also hitting your serotonin markers, which are also in your gut. It's a huge thing to understand but very, very important. So I'm going to go through um a part of really allowing you to understand the internal sorry, internal and external environment around nutrition.
Speaker 2:Everything we eat and drink holds messages and I'm not sure if anyone's ever heard of our mitochondria before, but our mitochondria are our little energetic power batteries that we have in our body and if you think about a mitochondria like a battery that you'd put in a you know, a kid's toy, whatever you feed that mitochondria is how you then operate in the world and your energy transference. So your gut brain access also is linked to your mitochondria. So every single thing that you absorb in your body visually, auditory, what you put in your mouth, what you smell it all is linked to how we feed our mitochondria. So what we eat and drink, as I said earlier, we are either hindering or we're helping create serotonin and dopamine production, which is also really crucial for emotional regulation, and that's one of the two key neurotransmitters that is made in our gut. So over 95% is made in our gut, which, again, that's why that gut-brain axis bi-directional relationship is really important.
Speaker 2:And it's not uncommon that when we have an attachment to alcohol, we also have an attachment to sugar and then we remove, something like that, but then we have the craving. Yeah, yeah, been there, done that and it really is understanding the psychological component, but also the biological and the physiological component. It's all relative, but again, with the craving, when we go around them, we're just delaying them. We've got to go through them and when we go through them, there's a lot of power in them. And it's the same thing with our emotions. If we learn to go through our emotions, they hold so much information and they are extremely powerful. That also allows you to come into emotional regulation, which is just crucial. The reason for that is so that then you don't get triggered by your external environment, by people, places or things. So it's like you're going out for dinner and you're choosing to have mineral water. People can get triggered immediately in this dysregulation because again, we're scanning the environment, worrying about what are people going to say? Okay, you get to live in your body, you get to understand how important your mental and metabolic health is.
Speaker 2:Now, what nutrition is the most powerful for me and and the work that I do. It's nutritional ketogenic protocol, so anyone's probably heard of a ketogenic diet. I also use a low carb protocol, but I also use a carnivore protocol as well. It really depends on the human being that I'm working with, uh, and their certain situation. The reason why I use those, though, is because we're moving the fuel away from being glucose driven, which, again, alcohol is.
Speaker 2:Once we drink alcohol, it creates sugar response. It creates glucose in the body. Same with junk food. Even carbohydrates they all create a sugar glucose response, which then what that means is our blood sugar goes up like this. It will come down, and then, the minute that you like well, it's coming down, your body will send you a signal to say, hey, I need more. Then you'll be hunting and seeking more sugar. Again alcohol same bucket. It'll just be like that, up and down, all day, and you'll be starving. So it's that malnourishment.
Speaker 2:The reason why I move into a ketogenic style is because of the ketones. So ketones are very, very, very powerful for emotional regulation and also for the brain and the metabolic health structure of our body. So when you remove carbohydrates, you'll get them very, very low. Your body then starts to create ketones in the blood, which is a whole new fuel. What that fuel does, though, it's literally like, if I get you to think about your brain, instead of being sluggish, it's like a thousand light bulbs going off in your brain, and what happens is then your access between your brain and your gut then starts to operate in a whole different way. You don't end up sluggish, you end up blood sugar is stable all day, your cravings stop, which is amazing. And secondly, when you operate on a fuel like that, that also shows you the transference of the value structures of what food does, and again, it elevates your mitochondria to a level that you would never have experienced before. They actually use. I'm not sure if anyone knows this, but they've used ketogenic diets for epilepsy since the 1920s, because the reason is, with treatment resistant epilepsy they never really understood what the misfiring was in the brain, but then they ended up finding out that a high fat, ketogenic way of eating actually stopped epilepsy. So it's been around for a long, long time. And also to high fat ketogenic diets, especially with things like schizophrenia, bipolar anxiety and depression amazing reversals. So it's very powerful way of eating now feeding your mitochondria.
Speaker 2:My protocol and what I have seen with my clients that have now no alcohol at all and and I'll just share a little recent story with you too a gentleman. Now he's eight months alcohol free. That's the first time in his life. Uh, he's 60 and he went on very. You know, it was like what is this ketogenic thing, what do I do? Um, but I've just, you know, it was like what is this ketogenic thing, what do I do? But I was just like, you know, let's go easy into it. And then when he realized, when he became fat, adapted to power, that that held, he's like now I get it, now I understand what you're talking about. I'm like, yeah, so to really maintain cravings. Now again, when I say cravings, I'm going to kind of talk about a few different things. So we've got head cravings, heart cravings and actual physiological cravings. To get rid of the physiological cravings, but also to then that helps, the brain cravings.
Speaker 2:90% of your day is really to be concentrated on a really powerful bioavailable protein sources. Now, that's, animal-based protein sources are bioavailable. They are the most powerful because they will actually keep you a lot more satiated. They also maintain healthy blood sugar during the day, which also helps you stay emotionally regulated. The other thing is this really high fat quality, sorry quality fat sources. So no seed oils, so no vegetables, because there's no oil in vegetables. So things like safflower vegetable oil, anything that basically comes from a plant, highly, highly inflammatory to the body. The things that aren't inflammatory to the body are things like coconut oil, unrefined coconut oil, organic ghee If you're lactose intolerant, obviously coconut oil, butter, really good quality olive oil, because they don't become inflammatory into the body, and also, too, seed oils and vegetable oils. You know again, there's no oil in a carrot. No one's ever squeezed oil out of a carrot. It's from a rapeseed plant, which is highly toxic.
Speaker 2:The other part of feeding your mitochondria is circadian health, and I'm not sure if anyone knows the power of that, especially when it comes to getting out in the sun. Your mitochondria loves it and it actually also stops sugar cravings, because blue light really actually dysregulates our metabolic health and especially if we've got type 2 diabetes or we're leaning into that, it actually dysregulates the sugar. So sunrise, sunset, hugely powerful. Also trying to stop blue light from computers. If you're in front of computer all day, these glasses I have on they're blue light blockers then also, too, we change them at nighttime into a different color bring down, because, primarily, if you think about us as a species, we're not meant to be in this access of dopamine, of this blue light, all day, every day. So that also helps your body regulate and also stops you from craving sugar. It's really quite interesting what happens.
Speaker 2:Sleep, sleep is the one of the most critical things I would say at the top of my tree. Um, because what happens is if we don't sleep properly, we get high cortisol. And then when we get high cortisol, when we wake up who's you know? We've all had a really bad sleepless night, right. And the next day we wake up and all we want is coffee or sugar or carbs, right, it's just like the cake and the muffin. Or just even, you know, when we get home and we want to relax, and then we reach for the wine or whatever, what happens is, every single time we do that we're conditioning ourselves. So as soon as you get home, if you let out a sigh and you're like I'm stressed, I haven't had enough sleep, every single time you walk in the door you're going to get that same pattern of behavior and then that gets stuck. So really important when you understand your emotional regulation in your body and where your mind travels to.
Speaker 2:Um, the other really important thing, too, is supplementation. A lot of people do need extra support, so, for example, with glutathione. Glutathione and thionine is one of the two most critical antioxidants that actually are stripped from the body when we use alcohol or even junk food. So we definitely need to understand the power of those things and also just supporting the body and the brain and the mind and the nervous system. So your nervous system is also really, really crucial.
Speaker 2:Um, I've just put a little note here especially if anyone is on any kind of medication mainly, say, ssris or any kind of anti-psychotic um, a lot of gps. Don't let people know this, but when you are on those kind of even metformin statins, anything in that kind of arena, when we take them, they actually will deplete a lot of nutrients out of our body which a lot of people don't know. So what will happen is, over a period of, you know, a long period of time, if you're on a certain medication, you will deplete magnesium, b1, b2, folate, a lot of really, really important nutrients, and what will happen is you'll actually end up creating other side effects which most people won't know. If GPs aren't trained in this they're not, then they'll just give you another pill to treat those. But a lot of the time it's because we've been depleted of the nutrients, from medication but also to the foods that we eat.
Speaker 2:So my life's foundational values and this is what I live by every single day. So my own experience, you know I grew up in an environment where I had an alcoholic mother. My uncle was, you know, he overdosed on drugs. So I've had a very dysregulated environment and you know my own journey through going out and you externalizing my worth in alcohol as I was younger and as a teenager, and even as late as when I was 28, I knew something was wrong, but it wasn't until I actually went through my own training and my own, you know, journey that I realized what I was operating from was my patterning and my programming, but also had a really, really disconnected self-image and it was really conflicted. So what had happened was being very negative about my mind and my body. I would choose alcohol and, you know, drugs as well at that time to numb that void.
Speaker 2:Fast forward 20 years, fast forward 20 years. This is now what I live by and you know I no longer have any attachments to junk food. I also had a disordered eating background as well, so you know that's all disappeared. Alcohol now, to me, doesn't even register on my radar because the value in myself is much, much higher and that's also what I teach other people. So basically not in any particular order here, but all of us, I truly believe, have this super human person inside of us. That's always been there.
Speaker 2:But what happens is we have to make the invisible visible and that's where we need to go into the unfamiliar to start creating new patterns. But this is what I live by every single day, and that sleep, sun, movement, stillness, which creates emotional regulation. Nutrients know where they come from the water that you drink. I do not drink tap water spiritual grounding, both mentally and you know I get out, I put my feet in the dirt Internal and external purpose. So, first and foremost, your value must come from your internal purpose of who you are for you, not who you are for everyone else. So even if I asked everyone now, like, think about the question, if I asked you, who are you, even if I asked everyone now, like, think about the question, if I asked you, who are you, what would you say? You'd say I'm a mum, or I'm this or I'm that. Yeah, it's pretty quick, but no, I want to know who you are for you, right, and that's where that foundation starts the relationship with yourself.
Speaker 2:Respect, love like honour, commitment, make promises to yourself Because we always make promises to other people but we break them a lot with ourselves, which is something I no longer do and really, the company we keep. This is really, really important to have people around you that really respect your choices and your journey. And I always say to people if you go out and people challenge you or question you, that has something to do with them, that has nothing to do with you. So one of the biggest things that I really want people to you know with this next page and this next slide is really important the difference between obligation and commitment is that the obligation comes from outside of yourself and commitments come from within. Reduce your obligations, strengthen your commitment and the relationship with yourself, both mentally and metabolically, and never, ever negotiate your mental and metabolic health with anything or anyone else. Thank you, and this is me here. If you want to follow me, I will hand back over to you now. Hold on, I'll stop sharing.
Speaker 1:Natalie, can I um just say a huge thank you. There are just so many um light bulb moments for me, as there always is when I'm talking to you, and lots of goosebumps, and just you have so much to give and to teach. I think you're a genius, thank you. I would love to open it up to anybody here that might have a question that they've got to. They may want to ask.
Speaker 3:Hi, hi, natalie, thank you so much. That was really, really interesting. I just had a couple of quick questions. I noted down. You said I never say I should or I shouldn't. What do you say instead? What do you replace that with, especially for people who are constantly saying they should do things? I shouldn't.
Speaker 2:What we get to do is I get to choose. I get to choose right now. And the other thing is we only ever have right now. So that's a really a redirection of the mind. So a lot of the time, as I said, we live 90% in the unconscious realm, which is the same thing over and over and over, and being redirected back to the present moment is your most powerful choice. So by saying I get to choose right now, you'll find that when you do that, your mind will be blank and it has no reference point because your mind will scan. So when you say I should, it'll scan for every single thought-filling image that you've had in the past and you'll be overwhelmed and inundated with everything.
Speaker 2:The minute we say I get to choose right now, your mind has no reference. So that's where your starting point is. Choosing allows you to be far more powerful. But the other thing is, when you get to choose, it's understanding what emotion you're choosing from. So when we say I shouldn't, we're always going to choose from emotion of guilt, shame, whatever you know is familiar. When we say I get to choose, what you're doing is you're putting yourself in the position of saying hey, no, this is my decision. I choose Firstly me, you. I choose me over anything that has held an authority to you.
Speaker 3:Okay, thank you. No, that's really helpful. Held an authority to you. Okay, thank you. No, that's really helpful. And my other quick question was an internal purpose. You said that you have to have an internal purpose. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more? I'm sort of struggling to get my head around that concept.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what does purpose mean to you, like, just tell me what that means to you Like, where does your mind go to?
Speaker 3:It straight away goes externally Like, and even if I think about my internal purpose, it's a purpose for some external gain for myself or others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. So an internal purpose is coming back to saying you know what? What are my relationship, values and purpose within myself? So my purpose within myself is to choose, to choose things that serve me, to choose things that make me honour my commitment with myself, my language with myself. That's your purpose. You being able to say I like, I love, I honour, I commit to myself. That is your internal purpose, because that raises an energetic value. So when you do that, so every single time we say a word, it has an energetic content to it, Whether or not it serves you or not.
Speaker 2:That's the difference between unconscious and conscious. So the other part, if you are reactive, that will tell you that you're unconscious in your patterning and your programming. If you are responsive, that means that you're conscious, but you've got to train yourself to get there. So it's like, really what we've got to do is use a reverse hypnosis. So you know we're waking state of hypnosis, saying the same things over and over and over. But what we then do is, even by changing a language, no, to hold on, I get to choose. You say that over and over and over. That serves you, then that becomes your new pattern. That's a purpose. That's also fulfillment. So fulfillment too, with people will go externally. You've also got to have fulfillment. You've got to fill up your own container, and by filling up your own container you don't negotiate who you are and what you stand for with anything.
Speaker 3:Did that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. That's amazing, thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm really glad you asked that because I had written down here. That's amazing, thank you. I'm really glad you asked that because I had written down here. Please provide some examples of internal value and internal purpose. And I remember, natalie, I interviewed you previously for not drinking today podcast and you asked me exactly those questions and I went external, external every time. Um, it's interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:So when we hear the word relationship, you know every single mind will go externally, as in, you know, partner, children. It never comes back to ourselves and really that's what I said earlier, like that's non-negotiable. You know that. That's where you get your power from, and the other part of that as well. We're so not used to saying yes to ourselves. We're so used to saying yes to the environment when we know it doesn't serve us, which automatically means a no to us, which then we become conditioned in that. So I always say let's flip that around and say hey, let's start saying yes to us. It's uncomfortable because you will be environments that will, you know, respond accordingly to other people's own values. Or you know, again, I always say to people when they say, oh, don't you drink. I'm like no, but I'm still fun. It's crazy, you know, um, but now it doesn't. It's something I hold at such a big value that no one ever questions anymore. It's just like this is who. I am Not up for negotiation with anyone. I say no.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful and it's empowering for others to be around. I think, somebody that's so very solid in that internal value.
Speaker 4:Question about internal value. Can I jump in, bella, please do? Hi, that's so amazing. And just further on about the internal purpose what if your internal purpose, over time, is being eroded or challenged by circumstances that you cannot control and you can't change them, so that you know every day it's chipping away at you and that's what led you or in my case, that's what led me often to want to drink and need to drink, because it was that sense of hopelessness. I guess that the circumstances I found myself in with life whether that's kids, family, whatever money, jobs you just can't change them. So I might have my internal purpose. I know what that is. I'm living by my values, spirituality, core, all that kind of stuff but no one else around me is. So there's that fight or that dissonance. How do you deal with that?
Speaker 2:So what happens is, when you do step into yourself, you create a whole new vibrational shift and what happens is your external environment, people, places, things start to look very different because the lens that you're now looking at the world as is now from within you, outwardly, instead of outwardly, inwardly, right. So if you are in a situation where you're married or you've got other people that are kind of just doing their thing, you've got to understand that we can't change anything externally. The only thing that we can stick by is our own word and our value. Now there has to be a compromise, but you cannot compromise yourself at a level which you then put yourself into a state that's not serving you. So places, jobs, things, again, we can change them.
Speaker 2:But if it's a relationship thing, more so it's more around going okay, well, where is my vibration going to serve me? Versus what can I change and what can't I change and actually accept Acceptance is a big thing. A lot of the time again and it happens all the time with people that I work with, you know they shift into this huge change and then all of a sudden their partners feel insecure or you know, something happens because they're changing. That's all around communication and making sure that they understand why you're doing it for you, because I always say you must put your mental and metabolic health first, because that's the only place that you have to live for the rest of your life. If people don't understand it, it's about explaining it, it's about communicating it, but also to holding yourself at a really high value and your own accountability.
Speaker 4:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:Does anybody else have a question for Natalie?
Speaker 2:Don't be shy.
Speaker 4:I had a practical question. Sorry, if I may go again, go for it. Sorry, just cut me off if anyone else wants to go. Natalie, you mentioned the first zero to seven years being very much formative and crucial. What about eight to 18, like those teenage years? And how did those years affect you know the same sort of things that you talked about in the first seven years.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we've got zero to seven, and then we've got seven to around 12, 13. So the 12, 13 mark is where our analytical, critical part of our mind starts kicking, where, if anyone that's got children, they start to ask questions. And then there's what we also hear about kids going off the rails. What that actually is is what we call unconscious conflict with the value structures that we've been set with. So what happens is, as kids grow up, they go into different environments. You know, different friends, they go to work and we start to hear and see different belief structures and different values in other people's lives.
Speaker 2:Now what will happen is we will then sometimes internalize that and think, well, geez, my family doesn't look like that, so there's something wrong, you know. So if you come from a really dysregulated family or dysfunctional, you know, and most people, we can sit in that realm, you know, we've all had that experience. What happens is it's all about understanding the conscious, unconscious conflict between hold on, if I'm reacting in an environment, is that mine? What does it look like? Because your mind also works in images, so it's a lot of structures of understanding. Your mind works in frames, so thoughts, so images, thoughts, feelings, actions, which then create the outcome. So as kids grow up, they will experience conscious, unconscious conflict with the values from zero to seven and then they start to learn their own.
Speaker 2:However, 95% of people, unless they understand how to change an unconscious pattern consciously, will live in that state pretty much for the rest of their lives and they'll do the same thing over and over and over, even though they say that's not good for me. You may do it for a week and then all of a sudden you'll be back to doing the same thing. It's about a two-week kind of mark where you might wind up through something, something, and then you'll be back to doing the same thing. But then what will happen is then you'll actually make yourself feel like you're the one that's a problem. It's actually not, it's your unconscious, it doesn't have any other information. It'll always go back to default every single time.
Speaker 2:And the other thing too that's really important is when you change your frequency and you're used to being around other people you know, friends, colleagues, you you will start to change. What happens is that ripple effect then is felt, and then a lot of the time, because you change the perception and the view of someone else's lens to you. So it's like you've changed or why don't you do that anymore? It's like, yes, I'm allowed to change, humans are allowed to change, but what happens is because we're moving and making other people feel uncomfortable because of where they've kind of held us down or held us through their own view and their own lens, um, which is uncomfortable, but again, that's not yours to manage, that's just yours to be aware of. And again it's like if you go out and you're saying, hey, I'm not drinking, and someone's like, oh, I just want it, won't hurt, you understand that. That's theirs, not yours. You get to choose you so beautifully said.
Speaker 2:Yeah and choosing is hard, I understand, because again you've got to have the value in it. You've really got to know that why you're choosing you, so that that environment trigger again doesn't become emotionally dysregulated, so you become really emotionally stable and it's just the most amazing, beautiful place to be we all want to be there.
Speaker 1:We all want to be there um any other questions before I just ask one final one um, natalie, just um. I'm getting a sense here that there is just so much um value in really building your self yeah, self-value, and then from that um flows self-esteem, confidence, um, less of that kind of reaching out people, pleasing style aspects, um, and I'm sure there's a lot of various techniques to build up all of that. And then another aspect you said is to try and break that anchor or that tie with that external value, rather than going around it, pushing through it. What are your hot tips there for going through it?
Speaker 2:One of the biggest things too, just as you started talking, a lot of people have never actually learned to use your voice for yourself. So that's one of the biggest things of being able to communicate with yourself and be able to say no to something which is again saying yes to you. So if you've come from an environment where you've been pushed down or your voice has been squashed or you've been made to feel like you know, just sit down and be quiet and don't talk. That's also, too, when you go to step out and do new things. Every single thing in your unconscious is going to pull you back because it's unfamiliar. So it's just stepping into familiar, unfamiliar, gently, like, kind of like the hokey pokey, one leg in, one leg out, just just you know, testing the waters the biggest thing and the best part I can kind of go through to help you really just implement something pretty quickly, really understand the external value where alcohol has held or the authority of it, and what I want you to do is to think about it being very small, like just make it really really small, and what I want you to do is make yourself big and actually have a very big energy so literally your mind will respond to images and energy. So if you again hold that very dear and or heavily anchored, you're always going to be smaller. You're always going to have that on a pedestal. What we have to do is remove it and put you on the pedestal. The way to put you on the pedestal is to firstly understand how important you are to you and what your most crucial value is in the relationship with yourself. And everyone's going to be different, but I'm going to start with things like respect. You know understanding what respect looks like, sounds like and feels like to you. That's your language. That's the way that you speak to yourself. So what I'd love you to do is, when you catch yourself talking awful to yourself or criticizing yourself, or getting into the shoulds, what I'd love you to do is to be able to say no, I no longer do that, we are no longer doing that Now. I get to choose.
Speaker 2:Now, what you choose there and then is the nurture of the emotion that you're trying to avoid. Does that make sense? So I get to choose no, we're no longer doing that, we're not going down that path today. It's today, it's now, not tomorrow, not next week, not in the future, because where your future is planned from is right here, right now, in the now. So whatever happens in the next 24 hours creates the next 48 hours, which creates then wherever we go. But don't ever project yourself out into the future, because your mind will just bring everything with it that it's familiar with. You have now. I get to choose now. Now, when you do that, that brings you back to the present moment, and then the next choice that you make must be structured in right. I respect myself. Right now. What do I get to choose? You may get to choose to go outside. You may get to choose, and you know, go and listen to some music, use your auditory and your touch sensations to bring you into the present moment. Does that make sense? Help, isabella.
Speaker 1:Oh, it really does and it's tying in beautifully. It's just adding a whole nother layer and texture to some of the foundational things we've been talking about. A lot of Jolene Park's work in bringing you back into the present, sort of really connecting that animal brain if you're feeling dysregulated. But you've added context there for building yourself up.
Speaker 2:Really it is. And again, you have to see yourself through your lens, not through the lens of other people, because people's other lenses are their unconscious patterning, their unconscious programming, their lack of self-worth, self-love, whatever it may be, but that's not yours to own. So do not shape, shift yourself away from your values to be seen by someone else, because every single time you do that, you remove your value. Stay where you are, build yourself up, build your values, because the right people will see you. You won't need to move away in order to fit in to an environment.
Speaker 1:So lovely More goosebumps, environment. So lovely, more goosebumps, just so lovely. Thank you, natalie, for gosh taking the time out of your very busy schedule and I know you've been really unwell.
Speaker 2:I don't sound like this. I know I sound like a drag queen.
Speaker 3:You don't.
Speaker 2:Very deep voice right now. I like it, queen, but you don't very deep voice right now.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, um so, from from all of us here, we're just so grateful. I know that um quite a lot of women not here who are going to be able to see this recording and benefit greatly. Um, I will, of course, place all of your details, your Instagram and your website again for everyone to see, and this will, of course, subject to lots of editing Identities Protected be a podcast. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:I also just want to add in for everyone that's here now and anyone that watches it after um, I have a 30 minute um free introductory chat, so if anything is resonated, uh, you want to just jump on and have a chat with me? Book in, just go to um the website and it says let's start here and then we can jump on and have a chat. Thank you, no worries, you're welcome. Thanks, everybody, see you later.
Speaker 1:Bye, everybody off to the out of the zoom room, um, and we'll reconnect with you later on, unless anybody wants to jump on in and say anything now. Thank you, bella, it was great thank you all right, good night everybody.
