Why does the wine start calling at 5pm—even when you promised yourself this morning you wouldn't drink tonight? In this episode, Colleen breaks down exactly what's happening in your nervous system when willpower fails, why high achievers are stuck in chronic stress mode, and how the shame spiral is actually making you drink more. Plus, three body-based tools you can use tonight to complete your stress cycle and finally give your body what it's actually asking for.

• Your desire to drink at night isn't weakness. It's your nervous system asking for relief the only way it knows how.

• Your body doesn't speak English—she speaks energy, movement, rhythm, breath, and sensation.

• The habit that needs to break isn't how much you drink. It's the belief that you have to stay in constant motion.

• Expanding capacity isn't about doing less. It's about teaching your body how to hold more without living in survival mode.

• When you learn to give your body what it actually needs, the drink becomes optional—not because you're white-knuckling, but because you're not desperate anymore.

1. Shaking/Swaying — All animals shake off stress. Release the energy that got stuck in your muscles.

2. The Voo Exercise — Deep breath in, then "vooooo" until all the air is out. Stimulates your vagus nerve.

3. Bilateral Stimulation — Left-right rhythmic movement (walking, tapping shoulders, tapping thighs) tells your nervous system you're not frozen.

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

In this episode, Colleen unpacks one of the most misunderstood truths in emotional sobriety: drinking isn't a character issue — it's a nervous system response to chronic stress, shame, and unmet needs.

Drawing from The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté, she explains why so many of us learned to survive in environments that never felt safe — and how culture, economics, and generational trauma quietly wire our bodies to seek relief wherever we can find it.

This episode explores why healing often makes the urge to numb louder at first, how shame removes our sense of choice, and why compassion isn't a feeling you wait for — it's a perspective you practice. Colleen reframes healing not as fixing what's broken, but as recovering the parts of yourself that adapted to survive.

This is a conversation about why the drink was never the point — and how emotional sobriety begins when you understand what the behavior has been protecting you from.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Why drinking is often about relief, not desire

• How chronic stress and insecurity train the nervous system to numb

• Why shame keeps you reactive instead of choiceful

• The difference between fixing yourself and retrieving yourself

• Why compassion works better than willpower

• How healing becomes possible when responsibility feels empowering, not punitive

This episode is a reminder that the behavior makes sense — and that understanding it is what gives you your power back.

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

This is a follow-up to last week's episode about a client whose New Year's resolution to "drink less" was already failing two days in. I talked about how emotional overwhelm leads to a "functional freeze," and why this is more than a habit, it's a survival strategy.

On the coaching call, we uncovered exactly why she's needed a survival strategy. Like many women who experience a decrease in libido due to hormone changes, she's spent the last decade having obligatory sex with her husband. Because a good wife takes care of her man, right? But also having to put up with his temper tantrums and passive aggressive behavior when she doesn't put out has left her with a mountain of frustration and resentment that until now, she didn't have the tools to process.

This episode is about the emotional straightjacket so many women find themselves in. How having sex to keep the peace forces you to disconnect from not just your sexual energy, but your life force energy. Which is why it makes complete sense that you'd rather drink alone than be intimate with the man you love.

In this episode, I cover:

→ The functional freeze: when you're going through the motions but feel dead inside

→ How obligatory sex shuts down desire for everything—not just sex

→ Why you need to stop participating in the hostage negotiation over your vagina

→ How the cultural programming that says women are responsible for men's sexual needs is destroying your marriage

→It's not menopause that's disabling your libido

→ The only way to rekindle desire is to give yourself what you want (especially when what you want is to be left alone)

→ Why the relationship you need to focus on repairing is NOT with your partner, but with yourself

This episode is for you if:

• You'd rather drink alone than have sex with your partner

• You've lost passion for things you used to love

• You feel like you're just going through the motions

• You've been "going along to get along" for so long you don't know who you are

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

In this episode, Colleen breaks down one of the most misunderstood moments in personal growth: the space between feeling pressure to decide and actually being ready to decide.

Drawing from her own experience with sobriety, divorce, and rebuilding her life from the ground up, she explains why urgency is almost never a sign of clarity — and why the nervous system's state matters more than the decision itself. Through the lens of emotional sobriety, Colleen introduces a simple but powerful framework for discerning truth from fear by tuning into the body's signals instead of the mind's panic.

You'll hear how stress, overwhelm, and safety each create completely different "radio stations" in your nervous system — and why decisions made from red- or yellow-light states tend to repeat old patterns, even when they look logical on paper. Colleen also shares how learning to separate identity truth from situational escape changed everything in her own relationships.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Why urgency is a feeling, not a fact — and why most decisions can wait

• The three nervous system states (green, yellow, red) and how they distort decision-making

• How to tell the difference between truth and a stress-based escape plan

• Why the only thing you can truly "know" is who you are — not what you should do

• How fear, guilt, and shame keep you choosing the familiar instead of the aligned

• Why there is no "right" decision — only decisions you learn from

• What actually changes when you trust yourself to handle whatever comes next

This episode is a reminder that clarity doesn't come from forcing answers — it comes from safety, self-trust, and the willingness to sit still long enough to hear yourself.

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

Are you worried about "failing" at your resolution to drink less this year? Before you beat yourself up after your next slip, I need you to understand something: this isn't a willpower problem. It's not a discipline problem. Because this is far more than a habit problem.

It's a survival strategy.

In this episode, I'm responding to a message from a client who found herself on the couch with wine and chips after a fight with her husband—even though she swore that she was done with all that. I'm breaking down the difference between a habit and a survival strategy, why your nervous system reaches for food and alcohol when you're overwhelmed, and what it actually takes to change this pattern for good.

In this episode, I cover:

→ The difference between a habit and a survival strategy (and why it matters)

→ Why negative goals ("drink less") don't work and what to focus on instead

→ How I was stuck in this pattern for two decades—and what finally changed

→ Why humans default to victimhood and how empowerment must be learned

This episode is for you if:

• You've worried about "failing" to keep your New Year's resolution

• You find yourself in the same pothole every night

• You're exhausted from fighting a battle you keep losing

• You think you know what you should and don't understand why you can't get yourself to do it

• You're ready to stop surviving and start thriving

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

🪩 HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! 💃 In this episode, Colleen pulls back the curtain on what overwhelm actually looks like from the inside — not as a failure, not as burnout drama, but as a nervous system hitting its limit after years of living in survival mode.

What began as growth, ambition, and "doing what needed to be done" quietly turned into a chronic stress response that her body could no longer sustain. Colleen shares how stress doesn't disappear just because it's fueled by passion or positive goals, why rest alone didn't bring her back online, and how ignoring the need to complete the stress response kept her cycling between overdrive and collapse.

She walks through the moment she realized overwhelm wasn't something to push through… it was an invitation. An invitation to slow down, restructure her life and business, challenge long-held beliefs about success, and create enough space for her nervous system to actually recover. What followed wasn't stagnation — it was clarity, momentum, and a deep sense of having reached her next level.

This episode is for anyone who feels capable, driven, and committed… but secretly exhausted. And for anyone wondering if it's possible to work less reactively, feel more powerful, and still move forward in meaningful ways.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Why stress isn't a mindset problem — it's a physiological state • How positive growth can still keep you trapped in survival mode • The difference between resting and actually completing the stress response • Signs you've crossed from stress into overwhelm — before your body shuts you down • Why overwhelm is an invitation, not a failure • How creating space restores clarity, creativity, and capacity • What it really means to reach your "next level" without burning everything down

This is a reminder that healing overwhelm doesn't require doing less forever — it requires doing things differently. And when you listen to your body instead of fighting it, breakthroughs happen faster than you think.

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

You know what you need to do. So why can't you get yourself to do it?

Because you've been waiting for motivation to show up—like it's some mysterious force that either finds you or it doesn't. But motivation isn't magic. It's dopamine. And dopamine follows rules.

In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly how dopamine works in your brain, why your current approach to drinking less is actually making it harder, and how to reverse-engineer your goals so that the actions you need to take feel rewarding instead of punishing.

This isn't about willpower. It's about becoming someone who genuinely wants to do the things that lead to drinking less—because you've trained your brain to find them pleasurable.

In this episode, I cover:

→ The two reasons dopamine fires—and how to use both to your advantage

→ The difference between intrinsic motivation (sustainable) and shame-based motivation (not)

→ Why overwhelm is the primary obstacle to change—and what it's really telling you

→ How to break one "habit" into the hundred smaller habits it actually contains

→ The delay don't deny strategy—and why it backfires if you're doing it wrong

→ Six specific examples of thoughts and behaviors that leverage dopamine around drinking

→ Why the goal isn't to drink less—it's to enjoy the upstream actions that cause you to drink less

→ How to use your body as a bullshit detector for your own thinking

→ The compound interest of small changes and how momentum builds over time

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

In this episode, Colleen breaks down a moment almost every woman in this work has experienced: when your body makes a decision before your conscious mind even knows what happened. A glass of wine ordered on autopilot. No craving. No plan. Just habit taking the wheel.

Using a real travel story, she explains why this isn't a moral failure, a hidden self-saboteur, or proof you "can't be trusted." It's a nervous system under pressure doing exactly what it was trained to do. When overwhelm rises and capacity drops, habits step in to conserve energy — fast.

She'll walk you through how dopamine wires behavior, why old reward pathways stay available even after years of awareness, and how hindsight is where real learning happens. Instead of shame, she shows you how to process these moments with curiosity, translate impulsive behavior into emotional data, and use it as a signal for what you actually need: relief, space, safety, freedom.

This episode reframes "slips" as feedback — not failure — and teaches you how to respond in a way that builds trust with yourself instead of breaking it.

• Why habits take over when you're overwhelmed — even without conscious desire • How dopamine pins powerful emotional memories and reactivates them under stress • Why impulse doesn't mean weakness — it means capacity was exceeded • The difference between wanting a drink and wanting relief • How to process behavior after the fact so your nervous system can actually learn • Why shame reinforces old patterns — and curiosity dissolves them • How emotional sobriety turns hindsight into forward momentum

This is a reminder that growth doesn't happen by avoiding mistakes — it happens by knowing how to metabolize them.

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

Transcript

If you've been stuck in a job that's slowly draining you—and using wine to cope with the Sunday scaries—this episode is your permission slip to start thinking about what's next.

Career coach Michelle Schafer has been through two major career reinventions herself, and she's spent the last decade helping people figure out what they actually want and build a plan to get there. But here's what makes this conversation different: we get into the real stuff. The limiting beliefs that keep you playing small. The shame that makes you hide your job loss from your own family. And the tactical, right-now advice on how to use AI to actually get hired—without getting screened out by the same technology.

This episode is for you if:

• You're languishing in a job that's draining you but feel too stuck to move

• You've been numbing the career dissatisfaction with wine and wondering if there's another way

• You're curious about using AI in your job search but don't know where to start

• You've been applying to jobs and hearing nothing back

• You need a kick in the ass to stop overthinking and start taking action

Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleschafercoaching/

Free offer #1: A free chapter from Michelle's book - sign up here: https://mschafercoaching.ca/cultivatingcareergrowth/

Free offer #2: Download the reflection tool Career Focus Framework here: https://mschafercoaching.ca/gain-clarity-and-confidence-in-your-job-search/

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

Transcript

Why do we buy gifts we can't afford for people who don't need them and over-schedule ourselves to the point where we only have the energy to drink and complain about how stressed we are?

This episode is dedicated to your inner rebel—the part of you that wants to pour a drink, flip the bird, and Thelma-and-Louise yourself out of the insanity. Because she's not the problem. She's the part of you that knows something is wrong.

I'm also sharing how I've completely reinvented Christmas in my own family over the last 10+ years—no gifts, no stress, no obligation—and what I'm doing this year to create connection and joy.

🔑 Key Takeaways

→ The "waiting room" social experiment that reveals our true nature

→ Why the real culprit is your inner rule follower who can't tolerate going against the group

→ The evolution of my family's approach to Christmas gifts (and why my kids love it)

→ How to accept a gift without feeling obligated to reciprocate

→ How to audit your schedule, budget, and obligations—and have the courage to opt out

This episode is for you if:

• You're stressed and overwhelmed because "tis the season"

• You're on track to wake up broke and hungover in January

• You've been numbing your way through the holidays instead of enjoying them

• You're ready to stop following rules that weren't designed for your happiness

• Your inner rebel deserves more than another drink

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

Transcript