It can be hard to discern fear from intuition at first, especially in early sobriety.
Add to it that a lot of us have been gaslight throughout our lives which often creates a sort of "self gaslighting" phenomenon.
So if we are "used to" not believing in ourselves, not trusting ourselves and not validating ourselves, because the people or culture around us in a way nurtured this in us, we can be vulnerable to self gaslighting.
Self gaslighting can stop now!
Inside this episode, I'll share how I went from self gaslighting and not trusting myself to trusting my intuition full stop in early sobriety.
Trusting your intuition becomes a superpower!
Okay, let's dive in...
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are many reasons why we might be gaslighting ourselves. It might be because we were gaslit a lot, so we learned to betray ourselves because other people were telling us our reality, our perspective, our the way that we see and experience the world is wrong. Plus the thing is that when we drink alcohol, we are literally damaging our interoception, our ability to feel what's happening inside of our body, including our intuition, right? And that rebuilds in sobriety. Like we work at building our intuition and sobriety, things like being in nature, not drinking. We don't really have to do much for it to come back, right? Like our body is and heals on its own. Hello, courageous bestie. I'm Kirsten Johnson and welcome to the sobriety Bestie podcast, where we adventure together through emotional sobriety, unapologetically expressing yourself and building a purpose driven business because the world needs your wisdom. Each step you take opens up infinite possibilities because your transformations, not just for you, it's a beacon of light for those you're called to serve. So get on comfy, repeat your mantra, this is courage and take that next alliance step into creating the business and life of your dreams. I'll be your guide. Hello, courageous bestie. Today we're talking about self gaslighting and learning to trust your intuition. For so many of us, this is where we find ourselves in early sobriety or some face of our sobriety is, how can I stop gaslighting myself? How can I stop doubting myself, not trusting myself, going with other people's ideas or betraying what I feel inside, knowing my intuition or there's something in me that tells me it's this way, but I am not believing myself. I am telling myself why it's not true. Now there are many reasons why we might be gaslighting ourselves. It might be because we were gaslit a lot. So we learned to betray ourselves because other people were telling us our reality, our perspective are the way that we see and experience the world is wrong, or maybe they were completely distributed manipulative. And so we have become used to for whatever reason, gaslighting ourselves of not trusting our intuition in our body. Plus the thing is that when we drink alcohol, we are literally damaging our interoception, our ability to feel what's happening inside of our body, including our intuition, right? And that rebuilds in sobriety. It's not to be worried that, oh my gosh, it's damaged, right? It's no, it's like we work at building our intuition in sobriety, things like being in nature, not drinking. We don't really have to do much for it to come back, right? Like our body is it heals on its own. We don't have to activate the healing starts to happen, right? But I know that for me, like meditation and journaling has really helped me get more in touch with my intuition in sobriety. And so I wanted to talk about this because so many people in early sobriety have asked me, is it fear? Is it intuition? How do I discern? How do I know what I feel? So if you find yourself questioning your judgment, your decisions, your feelings, maybe dismissing your feelings as invalid or thinking that maybe what you know to be true or think to be true or what your gut is saying is inaccurate. That's the self betrayal. That's the self rejection. That is the self gas lighting. We're going to be talking about here today. And when I think about recovery from alcohol addiction, like at first, yeah, at first, I really was recovering from alcohol. Alcohol did a hot number on my body and my mind, right? And my emotions and all of it. But after a period of time, like being in recovery for me wasn't about recovering from alcohol. It was like recovering my intuition, recovering my connection with myself. And so building that connection with myself, and it's not overnight, it's a practice, right? So practice feeling your intuition and taking that action and seeing what happens, have an experiment, see what goes on. And so I want to read you a message I got that inspired this episode. So she writes, I guess my question is, how did you know to have your implants taken out? I'm so bad at trusting my gut instinct. And it often gets me in so much trouble down the road. I wish I trusted myself more. Do you have any advice on this or any previous videos about the process? I feel crazy and is preventing me from making the choice to do what I want to do and get the IUD removed. So I have a lot to unpack from this email. And I wanted to say right here, when I read this, and there was more texts before that's not that I'm not going to, this I'm really relevant to this podcast. But so as I was reading through what she wrote me, it was obvious what she wanted, what made sense to her even this line right here. I feel crazy. And it's preventing me from making the choice to do what I want to do. And get the IUD removed. What I want to do and get the IUD removed. So she knows what she wants to do. She knows what her intuition is. And haven't we all been here? Haven't we all had strong signals from our body and we know with the right choices, but we're second-guessing ourselves, we're gaslighting ourselves, we're not used to trusting ourselves. Our mind is giving us reasons why it doesn't make sense to trust our gut. That's where I was at in early sobriety. I had this therapist in early sobriety who had me write down in a piece of paper, trust your gut no matter what that's where God lives. And I put it up in my bathroom, so I read it every day, trust your gut no matter what that's where God lives. So whatever you think about the God, right, it doesn't matter. It's like there is a wisdom in our gut there. There's more neurons. There is more neurons in our gut than in our brain. There's a whole intelligence in our gut, right? We've got that microbiome up in there too. There's a lot going on in our guts. There is information. There is wisdom. There is a deeper truth that we can get in touch with inside of our gut. It is okay to trust ourselves. It is okay to trust yourself. I really hope that the journey you're on in sobriety is learning how to trust yourself more and to take those actions and to see how it unfolds. And if you feel this is the right way to my encouragement as a courageous bestie is to take that action and to see what happens, trust yourself. If you feel like it's the step to take, then it's the step to take, right? And yeah, so what she's saying here is, so I guess it was in 2022. I had breast implants for 15 years and I got them removed a couple of years ago. And so something that she's asking how did I know to get this thing in my body removed because she's obviously has an IUD. And there's something in her body that she feels doesn't really shouldn't be there. She wants to get it removed. But obviously getting an IUD removed, I've never had an IUD. I don't know what that process is like, but you got to go to a doctor's office, right? And then you might be vulnerable to pregnancy or whatever. It's not just so simple. There are things to consider here. But if the gut, for me, this is how I live my life now. I'm not saying I'm doing it right. I'm just saying this is what I do up in here. And this is my encouragement is to trust yourself. And when my gut tells me something, I obey. I do what my gut says. That's my practice. That's my journey. That's what I do in sobriety. That's what I have been doing. That's what I've been doing since the beginning. It's created an entirely different life than I thought I was going to have. I didn't think I was ever going to break through my fear of public speaking. I didn't think I'd be like up in the jungle making a podcast for you. There's so many things that are like beyond what I ever thought would be my life because I just kept trusting my intuition. I just kept doing, I'd feel inspired to do something or be like this way or go this way or this is a no, this is a yes. And so I think fundamentally the way that I see our bodies is that they're like pendulums. And so some of us are more sensitive than others. That's true. There's a spectrum of sensitivity, right? We have different nervous systems. They've been through different things. We have different genes, whatever, right? We're different. I feel like we all have all the things, but some of us are better at some of the things than others. Like I'm never going to be a great basketball player, but I can probably play basketball. And so when it comes to like sensitivity and our nervous systems and trusting our intuition and feeling our intuitive hits and our intuitive stuff, like we all have that ability. Some of us are just naturally better at that or naturally it's easier for us. And then we can also work at it, especially when we get sober and our interreception, our ability to feel what's happening inside of our body starts to become stronger and our intuition becomes louder and we can hear it more. That's part of the process and it's part of thawing out in sobriety. It's actually literally our brain and our nervous system rebuilding and re-growing in sobriety. And so how do we know what to do? I think a way, like I just say that question out loud and like an answer comes to my head. I think like what she could do if she wants to do on her own because I really think it's most empowering if we can do this on her own. If you have an empathetic friend, ask the empathetic friend, but rereading what you write, speak it into your phone and listen back to the recording, write it down and then reread it back. It's obvious what we want to do when we put it out. The fact that she says it's making me, preventing me from making the choice to do what I want to do and get the IUD removed, she knows what she wants to do. She's mind-fucking herself. I've mind-fucked myself so much and I still do actually not as much as before, but we know what to do. And so how did I know to get my breast implants removed? I had been having different kind of ailments over the years, right? And I didn't really put the pieces together, the different things. I had like a gallbladder thing. I had it this, I had it that, whatever. I had different symptoms over the years. And when I somehow I ended up in this Facebook group at the end of 2020, it was December 2020, and I was in this breast implant illness Facebook group. And I was reading all the symptoms of breast implant illness. And I was like, "Holy shit." And these women were saying these things that have been true about my health. It all made sense. A lot of them had gallbladder problems. I had been to the hospital because of my gallbladder before. And so all these different things that I just never really put it all together, it's all black and white here. It just made sense. And it's not that my mind said, "I fit these symptoms. Therefore, I am this thing." It wasn't that. That did happen. What happened was, my signal for yes in my body, my intuition said, "This is fucking it." And how do I know that? Look, I think it might be different for all of us. This is how it is for me. I get the chills. I get the goosebumps. My whole body is flooded with this with the goosebumps as my Australians with friends would say, "The goosees." So I'm having the goosebumps. I know in my body that this is it. I didn't decide with my mind. My body told me. My intuition told me I had a visceral gut feeling that this is what is going on with my health. I had a couple of things going on with my health at that moment. But I knew in my body, in my bones, in my gut, I knew that I needed to get the implants out. They were negatively affecting my health and that I was never going to get over my health journey unless I got them out. That this was an important part of my healing journey at that time. And maybe you're like me. Sometimes we know things, but we don't do them right away, right? We know them and it takes a while to digest it and just take the action. And so I knew that I needed to get them out. That was December 2020. And I got them out November 2021. You'll also remember that there was a global pandemic at the time. And I did my quarantine or my pandemic life was in Indonesia. I was on Bali. And so I wasn't actually able to leave the country. Like the airport was closed. The island was closed. If I had come back to America to get them out, I wouldn't have been able to go back to Bali. I didn't want to leave Bali. And so I did wait a little while I waited like 10 or 11 months, whatever it was. I found a doctor that I felt comfortable with. And you know what? I had zero fear during that surgery. It surprised me because I had another surgery earlier in sobriety for my wrist and elbow. And I had tremendous amount of fear, tremendous amount of anxiety. I was so terrified and petrified, like to die in surgery or whatever. I don't know. I just also, that was when I was like two, three years sober. I was just so anxious in general back then. But this surgery, I had zero fear. I felt totally confident that I was making the right decision. I picked the right doctor. I was in the right place. It was the right time. Everything just felt right and aligned. And the reason why it felt right and aligned is because my gut told me go this way. It usually, that's the way it works for me in my experience. Now, I don't know if I would have had that strong of a gut feeling earlier in sobriety because it does build back. The longer that we stay sober, our gut instincts are going to become stronger. Because of our interoception, our ability to sense and be aware of what's happening inside of our body. That gets better the longer we don't drink alcohol because alcohol damages our interoception. Alcohol damages our ability to feel what's happening inside of our body. And we can also work on our interoception. That's a lot of the meditation stuff is working on our interoception. So if I'm closing my eyes and focusing on my breath, that's a meditation. But if I am focusing on the sensations inside of my body, I usually call this like mindful embodiment when I'm being mindful of what's happening inside of my body. Where are the sensations? What are they doing? How big are they? And I practice paying attention to these sensations inside of my body. I am working on my building my interoception. I'm working on becoming better at feeling. The bonus here is that as we become better feelers, we actually feel better. So if you want to feel good, if you want to feel better, become a better feeler. Being a better feeler is working your interoceptive muscles, being aware of the feelings that are arising inside of your body. And we do that by closing our eyes. I do that by closing my eyes. The invitation for you is to close your eyes and just notice what you feel inside your body. Where are the sensations? What are the sensations doing? What do you notice inside your body? Now right now we're just hanging out together so you likely aren't very activated, right? But if you are activated, if you're activated in any sort of emotion, guilt, doubt, shame, fear, anger, whatever, the invitation is to become curious about what you feel inside your body. This is you can consider this emotional sobriety, emotional mastery or not being a slave to your emotions or evolving into your next evolution or learning how to feel better so that you actually do feel better and processing your past because our past is comes up in the moment, right? We don't have to dig through our past to heal it. Our past is revealed in the moment when we get triggered in the moment, we dive our attention down into the sensations inside of our body. That is us working on our healing journey. It's us working on our next evolution and becoming new, more evolved people who are burdened by the past anymore so we can be filled with more joy, love and I don't know a lightheartedness. All of the good things, plus we become more in touch with our intuition. And for me that is like the guiding principle of my life, right? And everyone's gonna have like they're different, how they want to do life, what their values are. You have your own values that are probably a little bit different than mine. Maybe there's some of them are similar, but one of my primary values is about trusting my gut no matter what is living in a line with my intuition, trusting my intuition. I believe that the I believe that wisdom not just from me, like my higher self, my body comes through my intuition. So if I'm like praying or talking to ancestors, I quite frequently talk to my grandmother who's no longer alive. So I think that sometimes the answers come like in the field, like in the world, in the physical world around me, sometimes the answers come through my gut. So sometimes the guidance that I've been praying for asking for seeking whatever comes through gut feelings, hunches, taps, nudges, whatever. And sometimes if I don't listen to those taps nudges or those intuitions in the beginning, things get worse. They get worse. It's the universe like taps you on the shoulder, go this way, honey. And you don't listen and you get punched on the shoulder, you don't listen, then you get tripped, hit your face, slam me, you go, Oh, okay, I got it, I got it. And so I feel like the whether you want to consider like the universe always sending signs or like a higher guidance or God or whatever, however you want to think about it, to me, it's undeniable that there is information inside of our guts and it's for the highest good. And I have come to be completely confident in that I have 100% conviction in that I do not doubt my gut at all. But I chose that as a belief, it was a belief. And so this is what we know about beliefs is that we can choose to believe whatever the fuck we want. And when we choose whatever the fuck we want, and we keep we practice that belief and it becomes a full on embodied belief, it becomes our reality. So if we take our beliefs from other peoples that we're not good enough, we're not lovable, whatever it is, and we those are the beliefs that have been watered over time that we're going to get rid of. The ones that we can't trust ourselves, the ones that have as gaslighting ourselves. So if you want to stop gaslighting ourselves and to trust our intuition, we got to water the right seeds, right? We got to choose the beliefs we want to believe. And we got to start practicing those beliefs and taking action on those beliefs and thinking those beliefs. And so I very deliberately chose that I wanted to trust my gut no matter what. It's on offer. If you don't trust your gut no matter what right now, you can choose to trust your gut no matter what right now. And here's what I did. I wrote down trust your gut no matter what, that's where God lives. And I put it in my bathroom and I read it at least twice a day. It was by my toothbrush. So when I'm brushing my teeth, I'm reading that. So what does that actually do? That is planting a seed in my mind of a belief that I want to believe and I am watering that seed every time that I read that. So I read it in the morning and I go fresh into my day with that belief. I read it at night and I go to sleep with that belief. I am planting in my brain the beliefs that I want to believe. I wanted to believe that I could trust my gut no matter what. And now I trust my gut no matter what my gut has led me to all sorts of things in life. It led me to it led me to getting sober, honestly, it led me to getting sober. But it also led me to starting a business in sobriety. It led me to moving to Bali and led me to doing a TED talk. It led me to doing all the things that I was that were so scary. It felt so scary in the way that I've had courage to do these scary things is because my gut told me blame on the gut, right? You got to blame it on the gut. So yeah, so for me, I don't want to live in self betrayal. I don't want to live in self rejection. That's what kept me drinking. That's what kept me stuck. That's what kept me anxious. So as a sober woman, I'm committed to trusting my intuition, to trusting the wisdom inside, to trusting my gut, no matter what, it's on offer for you. You can start that today. You can write down that as an affirmation and water that water the beliefs that you want to grow. You want them to grow in your mind, right? So whatever we put in our mind, it's going to grow. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, whatever we think about a lot becomes a belief about, whenever we believe about becomes our reality in a lot of ways. So we get to take responsibility for our belief system. We get to pull the weeds that we don't want in them. The beliefs that we don't want is like a little garden of our mind, pull those weeds out, all those beliefs that, you know, that it's not safe to trust yourself, that you don't know what's best for you. All those things know you do know what's best for you. And how do you know? Because your gut told you is because there's a wisdom inside you. That's fully 100% what I believe. And so it's interesting when I was reading her message to me, it was clear by her language, what she believed to be true. But she was gaslighting herself out of it, just as I have done, just as I'm sure you have done, just as I'm sure a lot of us have done. We don't have to live this way anymore. We can trust ourselves. And if you don't know what if it's a yes or a no, write it down, get clear, journal it out, and then go read it with a fresh mind and see if the answer is obvious by reading it. My sponsor, I remember like very early sobriety, like I was two, three months over or something, and she said, if you have to look for evidence that you're right, you already know what it is, you don't have to, like I had a sponsor once who was looking through her partner's phone to find information. And if you're looking for information, you already know what the answer is. So if you're trying to validate what you know to be true, essentially, by looking for information on the outside, you already know what's true. You already know what the truth is. And so for me, I trust my intuition 100%. And it doesn't mean that my intuition is the truth of the world. I don't have it mean that. It doesn't mean that. It clearly doesn't mean that, right? But for me, my intuition means the truth for me. And so I don't always share my intuition with other people. I might get a hit off somebody right away, like you do too, right? Whether they're going to be somebody that could be close with me, they give someone that I don't, I get a negative vibe from, or they feel unsafe or whatever it is. And so I just trust my intuition no matter what. And that's the journey that I'm on. That's what I've decided that my sobriety life is about trusting my intuition no matter what. And it's like a fun unfolding of the mystery of the universe, right? So you're like living as like, it's a little mystical vibe where I don't always know where it's going to lead me or what's going to go on. But I want to be on that journey. I want to be on the journey of trusting my gut no matter what. I am on the journey of trusting my gut no matter what. And my mind doesn't always agree. And other people's minds don't always agree either. They'll get a lot of feedback from the external world. Almost it's like the more we are gaslighting ourselves, the more we're doubting ourselves, they're not believing our truth or intuition, the more we're going to have that reflected back on the outside. So if I'm doubting something, I'm probably going to be having people around me doubting me too that are mirroring for me when I'm already feeling inside. Because if I'm confident in something, it's zero fucks, right? I'm not really affected by what they're saying if they might not even say it. Because I'm not in a vibe where it would even be it would even make sense for them to say it to me. If you're really confident about what you're doing, people aren't going to be as much up in your face about gaslighting you or doubting you or telling you not to do the things. So it's really a journey of learning how to trust ourselves and to not gaslighting ourselves. I'll also say that it was I was about five years sober when I realized that I was like constantly habitually rejecting myself. It didn't happen overnight in sobriety. It happened over time where I could see that. And when I mean rejecting myself, it wasn't my intuition at that point. I was already listening to my intuition and surrendering to it and obeying it. But it was my emotional experience. I was constantly rejecting how I feel emotions. I was seeking things outside myself to change how I feel. So it was alcohol. Then I got sober. It was still cigarettes for six months and then I stopped smoking and then it was men. And then around two and a half years sober, I realized I was using male attention. So then I stopped doing math and I was eating potato chips. And then I got into spirituality oddly enough. And so I kept finding something to mask my feelings, to make myself feel better and tell I was around five years sober. And that's really when I had the journey of going in and accepting myself, like this radical acceptance journey that I think a lot of us go through like a major emotional shift around five years sober. I think that's probably when our interoception is like fully back our feelings are fully back. And so it's just it can be a fun phase to look forward to if that's what happens with you and your sobriety journey, where you get to totally accept yourself as you are and love yourself at the level of your sensations, allow everything to be in your body as it is to not need to do something that you don't want to do to avoid how you feel that you can be totally empowered at the moment. So you don't have to eat a bunch of ice cream so you change your feelings. You can eat ice cream because you like it so you can be empowered in the world. And that's always a really cool vibe when we're more in touch with our intuition and our feelings so that we can be who we want to be in the world and not be dominated by our internal world or be imprisoned or oppressed by our feelings, we can be liberated from them. And that's what I want most for you. I want for you to be elaborated from all of the internal oppressors, liberated from all of the internal oppressors, liberated from the grip that anxiety has on you, that fear has on you, liberated from guilt and from shame, liberated from like any of the feelings inside that are blocking you from being who you want to be in the world, finding out who you are and why you're here and living that purpose-driven life. That's what I really hope for you is that you can be liberated from all of that bullshit holding you back. And yeah, thank you so much for being here today. You are so courageous, trust your gut, no matter what. Yeah, and I'll see you next time. Bye. Ready to shed anxiety and get off the early sobriety emotional rollercoaster? Wouldn't you rather live aligned with your truth, feel genuinely confident sober and actively pursue your purpose? I can guide the way. Introducing my free mini-course The Secret to feeling comfy, confident and courageous in sober skin. Freedom is waiting for you. Just go to sobrietybesty.com/secret. That's sobrietybesty.com/secret. I'll see you inside the free mini-course.
