We are animals, not machines
When did we start learning to ignore our essential human needs?
Join my free self-care for sobriety workshop
Next week I’m running a free workshop online on Tuesday 11 March at 10am UK time. Through gentle reflections, you'll connect to what self-care really means for you. Wherever you are on your sober journey, this is for you. It will be a chance to pause and connect to yourself.
There will be opportunities to share together, but you are also very welcome to join with your camera off and you can change your Zoom name. This session will not be recorded to protect confidentiality and create a space where people feel comfortable to share. Register now to secure your spot.
Listen to the Unravelling podcast
I’m SO delighted to share with you this conversation I had with my wonderful friend
on her podcast Unravelling. A very apt name because breaking free from alcohol is all about unravelling beliefs and values that aren’t aligned with who we truly are. I LOVE talking about sobriety and addiction through the lens of compassion and sobriety. I hope you enjoy this conversation and would love to know what you think. You can listen to the podcast here.What does self-care really mean?
Self-care is not selfish. It is not a ‘nice to have’ and it doesn’t mean a spa weekend or a bubble bath. It doesn’t involve buying anything. It is essential to quitting drinking, long-term sobriety and emotional wellbeing.
Self-care means taking care of yourself. It’s that simple and that hard.
Simple: because when we pause and take a few moments to ask our body what it needs, the answer will very often rise up naturally. Hard: because so many of us were raised to believe we had to ignore and override our needs in order to meet the needs of others. Hard: because in capitalist culture, we are expected to be constantly productive at high speed. Our very sense of worth is tied to it. Even the phrase: ‘you’re a machine!’ is a said with wide-eyed awe and admiration.
But we are not machines. We are humans. We are animals. As Mary Oliver says in her poem Wild Geese: ‘You only have to let the soft animal of your body/ love what it loves.’
Why have we come to believe that taking care of ourselves is optional?
We are social animals, and we need connection with others. Yet we are facing a loneliness epidemic across the globe. The hyper-individualism associated with Western culture has seen community support fall away at all stages of the human experience. We have to weather huge life events like grief and parenthood alone with very few people to hold us. Appearing to be self-reliant and not to have emotional needs is often seen as a badge of honour.
Capitalism demands that even our physical needs are to be overridden at the service of constant productivity. People boast of how little sleep they need, go into the office when they’re sick, drink meal replacement drinks so they don’t have to stop work to eat lunch and try to ‘keep going’ at all costs with caffeine and sugar.
Alcohol is the perfect drug to prop up this system. Alcohol overrides so many of our bodies basic needs. It stops you feeling tired and yet ruins your sleep. It suppresses our appetite so we forget to eat. It appears to quench our thirst while dehydrating us.
At the end of a long day of being ‘on’, full of stress, we’re desperate to relax. Of course we are! And we want to relax now. It’s 8pm. There’s a few hours before we go to bed and have to wake up and do it all again. We just want a break. And there is the prevalent belief in our culture that alcohol = relaxation in a bottle.
Alcohol seems to relax us because it sedates us; it numbs us out. It suppresses our central nervous system. It slows down our ability to think. And as our bodies try to get back into balance and process the poison we’ve ingested, we feel terrible. Stress hormones are released. We sleep fitfully the second half of the night. We feel terrible the next day. On to more caffeine, sugar and ultra-processed food to get through another day. The evening comes and we have a drink to take the edge of feeling so awful: a feeling that was in part created by alcohol in the first place.
We think alcohol is meeting our needs. But it is actually suppressing our needs temporarily.
You are the expert on yourself
Our needs are different in each moment and situation. And only you can know how best to take care of yourself.
In next week’s free self-care workshop I will share a bit about why self-care is so important for sobriety. And I will invite you to reflect on what human beings need to feely truly well. For example, we’ll consider the importance of community and connection to nature. But mostly I will be guiding you to reflect on what matters to you, what your needs are, and how you would like to meet them.
I am not the expert. Not by any means. I sometimes struggle with self-care myself, especially around relaxation. I am so grateful for this work because it reminds me to slow down, get still, and notice what I need. It reminds me of the gentle power of curiosity and compassion.
You have such wisdom within you, truly. I’d love you to join us next Tuesday in this gentle exploration of what self-care means for you. Register your place now.
PS - if you can’t make the workshop but would like to know about upcoming ones, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter on my website. I am planning to run regular free workshops in future, and will try and accommodate different timezones. If you sign-up, you’ll also receive a free self-compassion guide.
If you’re new here - welcome. I’m so grateful to you for reading my words. I’m Ellie: a sober coach, mentor, mother and writer. I’ve been sober since December 2019 and am grateful every day for the gifts of living alcohol-free. In A Little Fantastic Sober Life I share personal stories, supportive practices and information about alcohol to support you on your sobriety journey.
If you would like support on your own journey with 1:1 sober coaching you can find out more on my website.
Awesome post. I sometimes have to explain myself when I say ‘self-care’, because it has morphed both linguistically and economically into spa days and hairdos.
I mean: nutrition, sleep, safety, connection, purpose, belonging, presence, etc. I mean Maslow et al. I mean meeting the fundamentals, and many of them don’t cost a penny, at least not above the day in, day out cost of plain being alive. Solid points, Ellie, thank you.