When You’re Worried About Your Drinking with Gigi Langer, PhD
episode #277
You are not alone if you are worried about your drinking. I spent two years trying to make alcohol work because I was worried about my drinking, but most of all, I was worried about what life would be like without alcohol.
I know that worry around drinking in midlife is a much-needed topic, and that is why I invited our Gigi Langer to the podcast.
Gigi used to be a prisoner of her worries and used alcohol, romance, and professional accomplishments to soothe her frayed nerves.
Gigi holds a Ph.D. in Psychological Studies in Education and an MA in Psychology, both from Stanford University, and she is an author talking about the book 50 Ways to Worry Less Now: Reject Negative Thinking to Find Peace, Clarity, and Connection.
When we get honest and start a recovery process, what we discover, deep down inside, is this beautiful true self, this open-hearted being. That is really who we are, but we have covered it up with all the shame and all the bad behavior. Gigi Langer
In this episode, you’ll hear:
Gigi’s story about how her marriage and marijuana and alcohol use led her to AA and recovery in 1987
A description of what worry is, why we experience worry, and where worry comes from
Details of Gigi’s book, 50 Ways to Worry Less
Lots of love and supportive ways to help you worry less about your drinking, and get support if you’re worried about a loved one’s drinking
I appreciate the kind message Gigi leaves with you, so make sure you stay until the end of the episode.
Resources Mentioned:
50 Ways to Worry Less Now: Reject Negative Thinking to Find Peace, Clarity, and Connection
Is It Love Or Addiction by Brenda Schaeffer
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Find Gigi here:
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[00:00:00] Lori Massicot: Hi Gigi.
[00:00:01] Lori Massicot: . Thank you so much for being here on two 50 and beyond. It is an honor to have you. Like I was telling you before we started recording, I've never had an episode where we talk about worry I reached out to you because you wrote the book, You wrote on 50 Ways to Worry Less Now. Now. And this is such a fantastic book and I just thank you for writing it. Because I have been a lifelong worrier and it's gotten a little bit better since I stopped drinking 10 years ago. But I've been a lifelong worrier and I know that there are so many of our listeners today out there, and they're worriers too. And so I wanna start with worry. What is it? Okay.
[00:00:44] Gigi Langer: Well first, Lori, thanks so much for having me here. And hello to everyone who's listening and, I'm sure that what we say here will be helpful to anyone who's wondering about the role of alcohol in their lives or their loved one's lives. So, the [00:01:00] best message is there is a way out, but in terms of worry, I have to say that if we equate it with anxiety, right?
[00:01:10] Gigi Langer: So I'm worried about what's gonna happen in the future that I don't wanna have happen. So that's projecting into the future, living in the wreckage of our future, some people say. And then of course, regretting the past. Going back, if I had done this, if I had said that, maybe that would be different. And of course, these are all manifestations of magical thinking, which is I can control the future.
[00:01:36] Gigi Langer: And I can control the past or how I feel about it. If we get a little more honest than just externalizing it, we realize that we're worrying because we're trying to make ourselves feel better by the fantasy of being able to fix it. If I worry enough, I'll be able to fix it. I'll know what to do. And it, it's really hard in midlife because.[00:02:00]
[00:02:00] Gigi Langer: A lot of our things in our schooling, in our work, it's been, if you do X, Y, and Z, you get the A in school. There was a very predictable formula. And same with work. Quite often if I work extra hours of, I will get the promotion and then we get into relationships and there is no formula.
[00:02:26] Gigi Langer: We, we get hurt. They get hurt. We wish they'd be different, I heard one presenter. Refer to this worrying as we're setting up unenforceable rules. If my husband would just quit drinking or overworking or whatever, then everything would be fine. If I could quit, blah, blah, blah, blah, overeating, whatever it is, then everything would be fine.
[00:02:54] Gigi Langer: And that's just not the way it works in the [00:03:00] interpersonal emotional world. It's a much more complicated thing. Fortunately, there is a formula for. Finding a way to live with the unpredictability of life. In a serene, comfortable way, it probably will require some changes and some support from other people, but it's entirely possible we don't have to be a victim of our worry and our old, old patterns of, I had this hyper vigilance going on because I grew up in a family that.
[00:03:41] Gigi Langer: My father was drinking. My mother was very worried about it all the time. I was the youngest of four, so I kind of learned that script of I'm an island, I have to take care of myself. I have, I can control how I feel. And that the world is not a safe place because there they [00:04:00] are throwing things across the room, you
[00:04:01] Gigi Langer: know?
[00:04:02] Gigi Langer: So we learn these defensive strategies that carry into our adulthood that suddenly stop working. And quite often, thirties, forties, fifties, somewhere in there, the old ways of handling life stop working in a mysterious way, and it's very frustrating. So many of us turn to drink. Many of us turn to unhealthy romantic relationships, food, overwork, gambling, anything to get rid of that awful feeling that my attempts that had always worked, I thought, are not working now.
[00:04:40] Lori Massicot: Did they ever work?
[00:04:44] Gigi Langer: Well, when I was in my family and I got good grades, I got recognition and I felt love. Okay? When I was in my first, with my first boyfriends, I pretended to be who they wanted to be. [00:05:00] They loved me back and those were short-term relationships, not real deep. Then when I carried the pattern of getting good grades into grad school, where I was among these very smart people and it wasn't easy to get the a and I failed my first exam, that was a big crash and burn.
[00:05:24] Gigi Langer: My formula was not working. Same with relationships. The first marriage crash and burn the second marriage crash and burn the third marriage. Finally seeing it about to crash and burn and deciding. I think I need to see a professional. I.
[00:05:43] Lori Massicot: Yeah. That makes. So much sense what you just said and the trying to predict the future, trying to control the outcome of anything. I feel like that just hit home with me because that is, I spent a lot of time and I still spend a lot [00:06:00] of time like, well, what if this happens? What if it doesn't happen? I'm, I'm, I'm. Figuring out my past. I'm, I'm not so much there anymore, but it's definitely about the future and I think, I heard you say the word midlife No. Is because we're getting older and this worry starts to amp up. Is it because of menopause? Are we more prone to worry and anxiety? That's what I've heard. Yes.
[00:06:24] Gigi Langer: Could be.
[00:06:25] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:06:25] Gigi Langer: Could be that. The formula isn't working anymore and relationships are crashing and job stress is killing us, and we're noticing our dysfunctional patterns. We've been trying to do things about our weight or worrying about our children, and again and again, it doesn't work. It just gets worse.
[00:06:44] Lori Massicot: It just gets worse. Is there any benefit to worrying
[00:06:48] Lori Massicot: I,
[00:06:49] Gigi Langer: Well, if there's a real danger, of course,
[00:06:53] Gigi Langer: If it's a real physical danger. Then of course, it's worth thinking [00:07:00] about and learning how to protect ourselves if there's a potential for violence in the home. Once we start setting boundaries and realizing that we've been playing nice for too long. I just had a conversation with one of the women I sponsor this morning about exactly this, and she didn't.
[00:07:18] Gigi Langer: See she played along at which she had it in her family, and then she's in recovery. She's been in recovery for a long time. She's in therapy and it took her, four or five years of clearing. I. And then she got into this relationship. It was supposedly perfect. And then she started seeing the writing on the wall.
[00:07:40] Gigi Langer: It's not physically abusive, but a lot of verbal, a lot of control, a lot of power plays. And since I'm talking about this and I'm thinking about it, there's a book, book that I found really helpful and it's by Brenda Schafer, and it's called Is It Love or Is It Addiction? [00:08:00] And one of the things that was eye-opening for me because I was married to a man.
[00:08:05] Gigi Langer: Who used to use pouting as a power play, if he didn't like how I was acting or if I was being assertive and it nailed it, that book just listed all the power plays that quite often men, sometimes women use to control their partner. So, that was a really helpful book.
[00:08:24] Lori Massicot: Oh, thank you for suggesting that. I'm gonna have that of course, in the episode's description so you can go and check it out. Let's talk about, well, I have one question about worry because this is what I wanna wanna find out is worry. Does it come from. Are genetics? Does it come from our types of personality? Where is it coming from? Because I know people in my life who just don't worry at all, and they never have.
[00:08:53] Gigi Langer: Yeah, good question. I think we are hardwired as quote, [00:09:00] basically animals in our primitive brain to look for threat. And some people learn how to deal with a threat better, the perceived threat better than others than, so our system doesn't really distinguish that well between an emo what is.
[00:09:18] Gigi Langer: Fed to our brains as an emotional threat versus a physical threat. We, we quite often react to the emotional messiness around us as if we're being physically threatened in the primitive brain. the, I think there are. There's another resource that I found really helpful and you asked, are some people more prone to worry than others?
[00:09:44] Gigi Langer: And I would call this two classes of people. One people who grew up in dysfunctional families where for any reason it could be a disabled child in the family. That sucks up all the energy of the [00:10:00] parents, and therefore you feel on the outside. And not lovable. It could be the typical, alcoholism, drug addiction, divorce, all kinds of things that cause the base, emotional base of a person to feel unsteady.
[00:10:16] Gigi Langer: I don't know if I'm loved, I don't know how to get love. That creates a lot of propensity for worry. Now those things can be healed and one of my favorite sayings is we are not. To blame for our past, but we are responsible for healing it.
[00:10:35] Gigi Langer: Love that phrase. It really helped me. So the highly sensitive person there is a book by Eileen Aaron, a RON.
[00:10:44] Gigi Langer: I found it really helpful. It has a little quiz and it also tells you how to help if one of your children is a highly sensitive person. So highly sensitive people are more affected. By emotional messiness strong lights, [00:11:00] loud noises, et cetera, et cetera. And it doesn't mean that we'll never learn how, it just means we need more strategies to help calm ourselves down and ease ourselves through.
[00:11:12] Gigi Langer: So the highly sensitive person and the person growing up in a, a dysfunctional home, I think are more prone to worry.
[00:11:20] Lori Massicot: Yeah,
[00:11:20] Lori Massicot: that makes sense. I can relate to some of that for sure. anD we're gonna talk about not eliminating worry 'cause I feel Like I had said, my worry and the way that I look at things now has gotten a lot better over the years. But more managing it. 'cause I feel like whenever I tell myself, well, stop worrying, and I heard that from my mom, Lori, Michelle, you worry too much. And I hear her voice still, and I just think, I cannot just say, stop worrying. I just, I need ways to work through it.
[00:11:50] Gigi Langer: Exactly.
[00:11:52] Lori Massicot: I started drinking at 14. And I quit drinking at 45.
[00:11:58] Gigi Langer: Wow. Good for you.[00:12:00]
[00:12:00] Lori Massicot: I worried about my drinking for a couple of years when I got that first hit that there was more to my drinking than what I had thought.
[00:12:07] Lori Massicot: And being a party girl and everybody drinks and that's what we do. And so I started questioning and doing all the research and I worried and worried and worried, and I finally ended up quitting. And I wanna hear, I wanna hear from you and your story, if you wanna share with us when you started drinking and, and what your relationship with alcohol was and, and how it ended.
[00:12:29] Gigi Langer: Sure. Well, a lot of people think that, if you're quote an alcoholic. Or a person who has a drinking problem that you're, you've been drinking all your life. You started in your teens, you had your first drink, you couldn't stop, you blacked out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. End up on the curb, with no clothes, no food and really quite a few women that I know, including myself.
[00:12:52] Gigi Langer: Only started having a problem with it in the mid to late forties. And and then it [00:13:00] continued, through the fifties until we wake up and decide maybe there's something wrong. In my case, the first divorce was, really disappointing and, I won't go into the personal reasons for, for his safety.
[00:13:20] Gigi Langer: But it just, the picket fence and the two children and the happy marriage forever, it was over and I, I. Suddenly found marijuana and that really took away the emotional pain. I wasn't drinking a lot. I always got horrible hangovers. Then I got into the second marriage with a man who was much older and we actually had it kind of on paper marriage because he got to travel to these international places and it was better if he was married.
[00:13:52] Gigi Langer: So it was kind of a contract marriage, you
[00:13:54] Lori Massicot: Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:55] Gigi Langer: at any time. But the places we went, I, I found drugs [00:14:00] and. Alcohol, mostly drug, marijuana, wherever we were. And I would, take dos to have little small jobs and so on. But basically that whole time it was me pretending that everything was perfect.
[00:14:16] Gigi Langer: I'd fall in love. Then for three or four years, I could just pretend like everything was perfect and be happy. And unfortunately, none of the men I married were abusive or nasty. buT then I'd get kind of bored and leave. So that's what I did in that marriage. By then, I was using marijuana more because I was figuring what's wrong.
[00:14:36] Gigi Langer: With this picture, why, why am I fooling around?
[00:14:40] Lori Massicot: Mm-Hmm.
[00:14:41] Gigi Langer: Then at the end of grad school, I met the perfect one, right? And there had been a couple of other, like two year living with relationships where I did the same pattern. I'm, I'm perfectly happy, I'm so in love, everything's perfect, ignored, all the red flags and so on.
[00:14:57] Gigi Langer: So, I'm. 35, [00:15:00] 36. I'm finishing grad school. I've got this PhD in one hand and I've, fallen in love and get married right away, just like all the other relationships. And within nine months of marrying my third husband and moving to Michigan, I. He was traveling and I started going out to bars and picking up strangers and getting marijuana and going to home with them and sleeping with them.
[00:15:30] Gigi Langer: And I did this for about a year and I, of course, the shame was just horrible. I, I didn't drink really much otherwise. And eventually, after I did that pattern when my husband was in town and called and lied to him and he didn't find out, I went to a psychologist and I said, what is wrong with this picture?
[00:15:56] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Gigi Langer: doing this behavior and I've got this, [00:16:00] my career was looking great. And the therapist said, you're in the early stages of alcoholism. And if you wanna know if you really have a problem, try having two drinks and stopping. So I did that experiment for six months and I found that sometimes I'd have two drinks.
[00:16:20] Gigi Langer: I. I would stop, and other times I'd have two drinks, and then three drinks and four drinks, and close the bar and go home with a stranger.
[00:16:30] Gigi Langer: So I did the experiment for myself. That controlled drinking was not possible for me because I couldn't predict if I had one drink, whether I would have 10 or two. And if I did have more, I would do really dangerous, scary things.
[00:16:48] Gigi Langer: So that became my wake up call and for some reason I was willing to go to a 12 step meeting because in 1987, that was the only game in town [00:17:00] really
[00:17:00] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:17:01] Gigi Langer: with alcoholism. I. I I immediately related to the people there. You mean you, when you drink, you do crazy things too. And when you tried to stop, you couldn't, and you, you know, made this vow at home, it would never happen again.
[00:17:17] Gigi Langer: And then it did. So that's how I got into recovery.
[00:17:21] Lori Massicot: Wow. Congratulations. In
[00:17:23] Lori Massicot: 1987.
[00:17:25] Gigi Langer: Yes,
[00:17:26] Lori Massicot: That's fantastic. Congratulations. I'm so happy for you, honestly.
[00:17:33] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Gigi Langer: too. It became a way of life that had the solutions to all my other problems. Not that I didn't need more therapy, but all the overachieving, all the stress about achieving at work, all the dysfunction in relationships. That third husband, I actually went to therapy with him. Tried to work things out, stayed sober.
[00:17:57] Gigi Langer: All the other ones I just said, oh, I'm [00:18:00] not in love with you anymore. Bye. And
[00:18:02] Lori Massicot: Mm-Hmm.
[00:18:03] Gigi Langer: this one, I'm in recovery. I did it in the most healthy way I could and after a year we did decide to divorce, and then a year after that I met my husband, whom I'm now married to, my fourth husband, Peter, and we've been married for 30 some years, 33, 34.
[00:18:21] Gigi Langer: And it's up. With the therapy and recovery and healing, all those old patterns, I am extremely happily married and I'm grateful for that.
[00:18:33] Lori Massicot: Wow. Congratulations on that as well. Peter stuck. That's a good one.
[00:18:39] Lori Massicot: Oh, congratulations. Thank you so much for sharing that too. That's, I know that's not easy to share, and I wanna talk next about your book that you your first book, this is what we're here to talk about, 50 ways to Worry Less Now. I wanna ask you though something when your therapist had given you challenge, see if you can drink [00:19:00] at least, not get past the two drinks, right? Were you focused on Let's see. Proving to yourself that I don't have a problem, so I'm going to do the two drinks. Was that a thought for you?
[00:19:17] Gigi Langer: Well, I was still in therapy. I think I was, I don't know. I was willing to take his advice, which was a miracle in the first
[00:19:28] Gigi Langer: I, I think everyone needs to recognize that this isn't purely an intellectual thing. There's something else from the heart, from the universe, wherever it is that that brings, brings us moments where we're willing to do what it takes to heal and, and that was one of those moments.
[00:19:50] Lori Massicot: Yeah. I like that. Were you concerned about your drinking at that point? Were you worrying about it?
[00:19:59] Gigi Langer: Well, yeah, I [00:20:00] mean, I, I would never do that behavior of going to a barn, picking up a stranger and going home with him if I were sober.
[00:20:07] Gigi Langer: I had, I had to look at the facts
[00:20:09] Gigi Langer: Ugly
[00:20:10] Gigi Langer: and scary.
[00:20:11] Lori Massicot: and the thing too with me, I was worried about what was going to happen after I stopped drinking. I think that was the focus of my worry.
[00:20:20] Gigi Langer: I think I was in so much emotional pain. I just wanted the emotional pain to stop
[00:20:25] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:20:26] Gigi Langer: if there was something that would help that I was willing to do it.
[00:20:30] Lori Massicot: Yeah. There are people out there listening right now. Our listeners are tuning into this and we do spend a lot of time worrying about our drinking. Of course, like I said in the beginning, worried about our loved ones, drinking, worried about our loved ones, worrying about our drinking. And then also there is that, that piece of worrying about what's gonna happen. After I quit drinking, if
[00:20:53] Lori Massicot: that's it, if that's it for me. 'cause I really tried to make alcohol work so I didn't have to do that hard stuff.[00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Gigi Langer: Good point, good point. If you, you don't go online and there's an app called Speakers Now. They're mostly speakers from 12 step programs, but you can hear people talk about how they got sober. What it was like getting sober, what their life has been like since. And that is a place to get a lot of hope because it is the great unknown.
[00:21:27] Gigi Langer: Am I ever gonna have fun again? Will I be creative again? Will I enjoy sex?
[00:21:32] Lori Massicot: Mm-Hmm.
[00:21:33] Gigi Langer: questions and when you listen to people talk about. I mean, ideally you could go to a meeting, but if you're not willing to do that, just listening to other people's stories helped me realize that this is not a dead end.
[00:21:48] Gigi Langer: It's a dead end to emotional pain and grossing myself out, and it's the beginning of a life where I could feel more comfortable in my own skin, have healthy [00:22:00] relationships, have less job stress, et cetera.
[00:22:04] Lori Massicot: Yeah, I like the way you shifted that around and these folks that are listening are listening to you share your story, and they're getting a lot of encouragement and hope and inspiration. So again. Thank you, Gigi. What year? Did 50 ways to Worry Less. Now come out.
[00:22:22] Gigi Langer: It was published in 2018. I had the first draft in 2014. I had. Writing a book is a very complicated process. You can't just write it and put it on Amazon. If you want people to review it well and lead other readers to it, you have to hire editors. And not just for the grammar, but like, does it hang together?
[00:22:46] Gigi Langer: Does it make sense? Is there too much of this? Not enough of that. So anyway, I then rewrote it for four years. I had another book. I had had a contract to write for educators in the middle of it, but, and then [00:23:00] I started writing it at the first draft in maybe 2011. I had a lot of journal entries and.
[00:23:10] Gigi Langer: I was gonna write a memoir. I had retired in 2007. I had done some consulting and then because I had these, the husband with all the international assignments and other adventurous things that went on in my life, I thought I'll write a memoir, and Peter, my wonderful husband now said well, I hear you on the phone talking to people, you sponsor and you're saying such helpful ideas.
[00:23:34] Gigi Langer: Why don't you put those in a book? And that's when the, the book was born. The, the first title was Whispered Lies because a theme throughout it is that these old patterns are always whispering to us quite often. Lies. You can't be loved unless you get straight A's. You have to be first at work [00:24:00] or you'll never keep your job.
[00:24:02] Gigi Langer: I'm not lovable. All kinds of lies that are internalized that we tell ourselves, and quite often we're not even aware of them. So the whole book is like, worry comes from whispered lies, people, negative thinking, beating up on ourselves. And so that was the first title and then I realized that people had to re see that it was about worry.
[00:24:27] Gigi Langer: Um. The, the 50 ways came because I structured the book. I tried to boil down the 12 steps of 12 step. That are used in all the programs for alcoholism and codependency and so on into four main ideas and their honesty. I won't go through each one in detail,
[00:24:51] Gigi Langer: but a key point I wanna make is that honesty is the number one dishonesty.
[00:24:59] Gigi Langer: Is the number [00:25:00] one symptom of unhappiness dishonesty manifests as it's their fault, not mine. Or there's something so wrong with me. I don't even wanna know about it. So it's like denial that I have a problem, but it's also, I don't wanna look at it. I don't wanna touch it. And as long as we're using drugs, alcohol, sex.
[00:25:26] Gigi Langer: Et cetera, et cetera, to cover up our inherent desire to heal and to cover up our being in touch with all our emotional discomfort that we can't get honest about it. We're gonna cover up our feelings so we don't have to deal with them. Then chances of having a happy life go, go drastically down. Right?
[00:25:51] Gigi Langer: So I made honesty the first one.
[00:25:53] Gigi Langer: Anyway, there's, there's four others and they're kind of parallel to a 12 step program. Realizing that [00:26:00] my intellect and my self will is not gonna get me where I wanna go. Visualizing I. The future. I want being a happy person who can handle stress and worry and not have to drink over my problems.
[00:26:13] Gigi Langer: And using, regularly using practices that will help get me unglued from the ceiling, that will lower my emotional pain and discomfort and so on. So I, the way there, I got 50, I had four big sheets of paper on the wall, and then I thought, well, what. What tool do I use that really helps me get honest when I would just as soon stuff down my feelings, and so I put those tools in there. Some of the tools are a little complicated but I had to put them in. So I couldn't like teach a person how to do it right now. But Byron Kt
[00:26:53]
[00:26:53] Gigi Langer: K-A-T-I-E. I
[00:26:56] Gigi Langer: You can put it in the show notes, but she has a technique called Is It [00:27:00] True,
[00:27:00] Lori Massicot: Yeah,
[00:27:01] Gigi Langer: which is really a way to get ourselves to look at the lies we tell ourselves.
[00:27:07] Gigi Langer: And so that went, in the honesty chapter. So there's a bunch of techniques in there, but before each technique is the situation I was in that. Caused me so much emotional pain. So, for example, I had hurt my back in my first year of sobriety and when I went to meetings, I had to lie on the floor 'cause I couldn't sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes.
[00:27:35] Gigi Langer: And. Because I was around healthy people who were growing, who had faced chronic pain before. And because of this mysterious force of serendipity or whatever we wanna call it, this woman suggested to me the woman, the, the Buddhist nun whose name is escaping me, but she. [00:28:00] Oh, what is her? Anyway, we can put it in the show
[00:28:03] Gigi Langer: notes, but, and, and it'll come to me.
[00:28:05] Gigi Langer: But she had a a CD and she has a book when any, when everything falls apart,
[00:28:13] Lori Massicot: Yes.
[00:28:14] Gigi Langer: called Pema Children Is the
[00:28:16] Gigi Langer: Finally Got it. Yay. So she I read her, someone recommended it to me and when I read it and it said, having compassion for ourselves. When we're having hard times, oh my God, what a revolutionary concept.
[00:28:29] Gigi Langer: I had been beating myself up because I wasn't handling the pain better
[00:28:34] Gigi Langer: And because I couldn't I couldn't function and because so much of my self-esteem was hanging on being a high functioning person, and here I was with a wrecked back and I couldn't keep up my image, all the negativity was just showering down on me.
[00:28:52] Gigi Langer: And so this self-compassion is now a big concept and a very [00:29:00] useful technique when we're having hard times. And the cutest thing I saw was on Facebook where it said, try talking to yourself like you do your favorite dog or cat. Oh, look at that cute tummy. Oh, I love you. You hurt yourself.
[00:29:16] Gigi Langer: You're fine. You're good.
[00:29:18] Lori Massicot: It's such a helpful tool. It really is. And it's never too late to learn that and to practice
[00:29:23] Lori Massicot: it and to
[00:29:24] Lori Massicot: actually do it. 'cause it is so helpful.
[00:29:27] Gigi Langer: exactly. Kristen
[00:29:30] Gigi Langer: Neff
[00:29:30] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:29:32] Gigi Langer: she's, she's really good. Her book, Self-Compassion,
[00:29:35] Lori Massicot: Dr. Neff?
[00:29:36] Gigi Langer: She has free guided meditations. Guided meditations is another technique in the book. Just it's like self-hypnosis with someone else's voice telling you how to think,
[00:29:49] Gigi Langer: And that restructures the networks and the neurons. So what happened is those 50 tools fall into roughly three [00:30:00] categories.
[00:30:01] Gigi Langer: Some are spiritual, just saying the serenity prayer over and over again.
[00:30:05] Gigi Langer: AnD some are they're more energetic. Okay? So they, they shift the energy. Reiki is an obvious, example. But I would say meditation is partly energetic also. And then there are cognitive strategies. So there is evidence that when we change our thinking and practice changing our thinking by saying affirmations and self-loving talk, that it reprograms.
[00:30:39] Gigi Langer: The neural pathways in our brain so that it doesn't generate as much negativity. Those strategies are very powerful too. So there's just so many things that can help us when we're worried and upset. And the book, one thing I love about the book, and I'll just add this, is [00:31:00] because I'm a teacher and a. A teacher of teachers, I don't just mention the strategy, I give you a little set of directions about how to actually use the strategy so that you don't say, oh, it really helped her, but how the heck do you do it,
[00:31:18] Lori Massicot: you sure do. You give it all, there's a lot of work that went into this book, I can tell. And knowing the length of time that it took you, congratulations on that. Going back to that honesty part, That is the hardest part. Like you had said, we may know that we have a problem. Let's talk about drinking. We may know that we had a problem with drinking. We may have known this for decades, but we're not ready to look at it yet. We wanna avoid it.
[00:31:44] Lori Massicot: DO you believe in timing on this? Is there a time when we are able to just say, okay, now I'm ready to look at it?
[00:31:51] Gigi Langer: think for me it took a therapist,
[00:31:55] Gigi Langer: one person that I could be a hundred percent honest with.
[00:31:58] Gigi Langer: Whether it's a friend [00:32:00] who you know is in recovery or somehow working toward improve, improving her life or his life we just need someone that we can first be honest with even before we're willing to take any other steps.
[00:32:17] Gigi Langer: There's a saying in 12 step rooms related to alcohol, that there are four things that will get you into recovery.
[00:32:26] Gigi Langer: Your liver or some health thing, you gotta stop drinking your lover. Your family is going nuts and telling you you gotta stop drinking.
[00:32:34] Gigi Langer: Right. Your lover, your liver, your, let's see your liver, your lover. There are two others that I'm not remembering rum right now. One of 'em is the legal system. Oh, your lawyer? Yeah, your lawyer. Because you've got. Legal issues, right? You're drunk driving whatever. Liver lover lawyer. And [00:33:00] there's one
[00:33:00] Lori Massicot: It's gotta be
[00:33:01] Lori Massicot: an L word.
[00:33:02] Gigi Langer: yeah, it is an L word.
[00:33:05] Gigi Langer: Maybe it's just the three. Liver lawyer lover. I think that's just the three. But anyway, the point is, I guess the other one I would say is what happened to me, I was just so uncomfortable. I kept trying to, stop and it wouldn't work and. And you're ultimately grossing yourself out with your behavior.
[00:33:25] Gigi Langer: That's the bottom line. That's why you gotta be honest with someone.
[00:33:29] Lori Massicot: We gotta be honest with ourselves. But if we can't get to that point, just telling somebody else, somebody, a close, trusted friend or therapist, counselor, just saying those words out loud, I feel, and I can feel it. Literally eases up on so much of the worry and so much of the suppressing and keeping it all to ourselves.
[00:33:49] Lori Massicot: And there is a lot of shame involved in it. I know that for a fact.
[00:33:53] Lori Massicot: And once we let that go and, and remind ourselves we're human and other people struggle with this as well, we're [00:34:00] not the only ones, we can be honest about it. And that is definitely the first step to changing our relationship with
[00:34:07] Lori Massicot: alcohol. Yeah.
[00:34:08] Gigi Langer: yes. Can I add one thing about shame?
[00:34:12] Lori Massicot: Yes, please.
[00:34:12] Gigi Langer: One reason I didn't wanna go into therapy or quit drinking was I had a very deep. Unconscious belief that the reason I was crashing and burning and I didn't feel loved in my family, et cetera, et cetera, was that deep down inside I was a really bad person. And that was a horrible feeling. And what I've learned is that when we get honest and start a recovery process, what we discover is that deep down inside is this beautiful.
[00:34:49] Gigi Langer: True self, this open-hearted being. That is really who we are, but we had covered it up with all the shame and all [00:35:00] the bad behavior and so on. So I don't want people to be afraid to go down in there with therapy or recovery, because you will find. A golden treasure of your true self, who can stand up for herself in relationships, be assertive at work, and never have to feel awful about yourself again.
[00:35:23] Lori Massicot: That's beautiful. Those were some really nice, kind words. I Thank you for sharing that 'cause we all need to hear that. We all need to be reminded. Of things and remind ourselves that it's, it's okay to change, it's okay to talk to somebody about it. It's okay to get back to who we truly are and what we want out of life, especially at this stage of life. You've given us some great tools. Of course. I'm gonna have your book linked in the show notes so you can go and purchase this book and start reading it and taking action with the 50 ways. What about someone who is [00:36:00] worried about their loved ones drinking or addiction? What can, what can we do?
[00:36:09] Gigi Langer: It's kind of, not funny, funny, but ironic, funny that. tWo years into writing my book, my husband, whom I had met in 12 step programs whom I'd never seen drink, started drinking again.
[00:36:21] Lori Massicot: Wow.
[00:36:22] Gigi Langer: So that became chapter six in my book as we worked it through with this fabulous program called Al Anan.
[00:36:30] Gigi Langer: And Al-Anon uses the same 12 steps, but the people in there are dealing either with the effects of alcoholism on their lives.
[00:36:39] Gigi Langer: Maybe from way in the past or their current situation living with or loving a person who's abusing alcohol or drugs. So many people think Al-Anon is only for people who are living with an alcoholic or have an alcoholic child, but it's really anyone who's living with the effects of [00:37:00] alcoholism.
[00:37:00] Gigi Langer: Alcoholism. That is the program I use to help me get through. My crazy, terrified thinking about my husband and and those steps, I did the steps. I mean, it, it takes work. But the support that we get from other people who have been through the same thing and come out the other side. And are either happy in their marriages or able to set limits with their children and not be as worried.
[00:37:34] Gigi Langer: thOse are the benefits of working the 12 steps. I think seeing a therapist is a really helpful first step if you don't wanna walk into a meeting. But there is help and I sit with people at a wonderful meeting. I love an Al-Anon meeting, and I see them well in many cases, the children or the husbands or, or their own healing from their own, alcoholic [00:38:00] family and its effects on them. The, the miracles we see are, are just amazing. So, and a lot of people call Al-Anon the back door because people start going to Al-Anon. It feels a little less scary than walking into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And then it becomes a backdoor because they get really honest and Al-Anon and then they say, Hmm, maybe I'm the one with a drinking problem.
[00:38:26] Lori Massicot: Oh
[00:38:27] Lori Massicot: wow.
[00:38:27] Gigi Langer: up going. So that's a pretty safe place to start. Um, and, and by the way, if a person has a, a, a church that they're very comfortable in or know people, there is a 12 step program that is embedded in churches, and it's called Celebrate Recovery. And that is a very effective program.
[00:38:54] Gigi Langer: I'm working with a woman who's in that program now, and I'm her sponsor and they [00:39:00] use the same 12 steps, but it's for any kind of life challenge that people are dealing with. So that would be another source of, of help.
[00:39:09] Lori Massicot: Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm feeling that there's, a lot of folks out there who are worried about their loved ones drinking or, or whatever it is. And I just feel like for me, when I'm in that place and worried about somebody else, I have to remind myself, I have to take care of myself because I can't fix it. I cannot fix anything.
[00:39:31] Lori Massicot: And that's just a reminder, I think, for all of us. And going back to the beginning of this, when we were talking about that control, trying to control the outcome, trying to control somebody else's outcome, that'll keep you up all night,
[00:39:42] Gigi Langer: Right. Yeah. Now there, there is one technique 'cause I feel I haven't given people a lifeline they could use immediately and that is mindfulness. Meditation now people say, I don't wanna meditate, I can't learn to meditate. I can [00:40:00] never turn my thinking off. bUt there are guided meditations. All over the internet and you just get relaxed and then they, if you're worried about something, you just look up a worry meditation,
[00:40:15] Gigi Langer: And you'll find a guided meditation by someone who just gently leads you into some positive thinking helps you.
[00:40:23] Gigi Langer: It's almost like self-hypnosis. It helps you let go. Relax, if you can take a course in meditation, the great meditation benefit is that we learn how to observe our thoughts. And the best technique I've learned is once I notice that I'm thinking, I ask myself, could I think something differently? Could I think a different thought
[00:40:52] Gigi Langer: and then I'll say the Serenity Prayer, or I'll imagine that some positive scene, a mountain scene or something that [00:41:00] brings me hope and inspiration. Could be a prayer, could be an affirmation, could be a mantra. But the good news is trying to learn to meditate even if you feel like you're failing, because you can't stop your thinking.
[00:41:15] Gigi Langer: The whole point of it is. To see what you are thinking
[00:41:20] Gigi Langer: And then to choose a different thought. So it's almost good if you can't stop thinking, because then you can say, look at that. I'm thinking about that. Look at that. I'm thinking about that. Oh, and this thought is scaring me. I'm gonna change that thought and say something different.
[00:41:39] Gigi Langer: I'm gonna feed something different into my mind.
[00:41:42] Lori Massicot: Yeah, that's a great suggestion.
[00:41:45] Lori Massicot: We gotta bring ourselves to that practice. I am not someone who meditates, but I try, when I'm starting to spin out, to sit down with my journal, to sit down and quiet and to just really focus on those thoughts, challenge them a little bit, and then turn them around.
[00:41:59] Lori Massicot: And [00:42:00] that's just been so helpful for me. And I thank you for sharing that. Gigi, any final words for someone out there who's worried right now? We're starting a new year, by the way. This episode will air in January, Gigi. Starting this new year going into it, anybody who's really worried about their drinking, do you have any final thoughts for the sweet soul?
[00:42:21] Gigi Langer: You do not have to be unhappy or disappointed with yourself the rest of your life. You can
[00:42:28] Gigi Langer: go see somebody and. go to a meeting or, there's so many online meetings that you can go to but do something different. Rather than hiding and feeling miserable, there are millions of people who's lives.
[00:42:47] Gigi Langer: Have been turned around by following a simple, well, simple but not easy, but a, a simple process. And it works. It works for everyone. So the only problem is if you can't get [00:43:00] honest and wanna stay in denial and keep using, then it's gonna be really hard to have a better, happier life. So, gotta bite the bullet.
[00:43:09] Gigi Langer: My favorite AA saying is S-O-B-E-R spells son of a bitch. Everything's real. Because I loved living in the fantasy, and dolling myself out. I hated emotional pain. I hated worry, so I just tried to push it down.
[00:43:25] Lori Massicot: Yeah, that's a great way to leave this episode. Thank you, Gigi. I wanna have you back to share your second book with us. Do you wanna talk a little
[00:43:34] Lori Massicot: bit about that?
[00:43:36] Gigi Langer: Yeah, I, I just had been writing a lot since the first one and so it, this past February I put out a book called Love More Now, and it's about facing life challenges with an open heart. So when you know, health challenges. Not just necessarily alcohol but
[00:43:56] Gigi Langer: life,
[00:43:57] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:43:58] Gigi Langer: disability, [00:44:00] aging da da da da da.
[00:44:01] Gigi Langer: How do we get through those things without becoming bitter and angry and stuck in self-pity? So it's more stories of people and their ways that they got through life challenges. It has some techniques, but it's not like 50 ways.
[00:44:19] Gigi Langer: Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic. I can't wait to read that one, and I'm going to invite you back on the podcast later this year if you will come back. So
[00:44:26] Gigi Langer: thank you. Thank you so
[00:44:27] Gigi Langer: much, Gigi
[00:44:28] Gigi Langer: thank you. I loved every minute of this, Lori.
Hey, there! I’m Lori, the host of the To 50 and Beyond podcast.
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