You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 13.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.

Hello everybody, welcome back. How are you doing? How is your day treating you?

It is a lovely, lovely day in San Francisco. We have Blue Sky here which makes me really happy.

And I'm also really happy today because this podcast talks about an exercise that was one of the very first exercises that I did that completely changed how I thought about my drinking.

And so I'm really excited to share that with you today.

You know, whenever I start working with a new client, they usually start by telling me why they want to take a break from drinking.

And it can sound something like this. Maybe they don't like waking up in the morning, feeling groggy or having a headache or feeling a little nauseous.

And they want to be more productive in their evenings, but they find that after a couple of drinks, they end up just sitting on the couch and watching TV.

And so before they know it, that little bit of precious free time that they had in the evening is gone.

They might hate how drinking too much and eating too much seems to go hand in hand.

And they know that they have fallen into this pattern of pouring themselves a glass of wine.

And then they start snacking. And then they pour more wine. And then they have more snacks. And they hate the cycle that they're in.

Feeling like they're overdoing it, not just with drinking, but also with eating.

Or they might tell me that they feel uncomfortable with something that feels like too much desire.

They have too much desire in their body to drink. And because of that desire, they find themselves drinking more than they want to.

And then the next day, they beat themselves up for having had too much.

And then on top of it worrying about what they did or what they said, or just anxious that they don't have a crystal clear picture of everything that happened, not to mention don't understand why their desire is so big.

So no matter what they tell me is their reason for wanting to take a break, and you may have your own that don't fit into any of these categories.

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