Overcoming The Shame Of Your Everyday Addictions

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. And today we have a guest, Kris Janson. She is a USA Today bestselling author and results coach in performance and mindset. Her award-winning books include Grace Yourself: How to Show Up for the Sober Life You Want and Living All In: How to Show Up for the Life You Want. We have a really interesting conversation about sabotage and habits and addictions. You know, 20% of Americans are either addicted or have been addicted to something. And often when we think about addiction and recovery, we think about chemicals. We think about drugs. We think about medications and things like that, but there's plenty of other things that people are addicted to. Sometimes it's love addiction. Sometimes it's— You know, food addiction, there's codependency is kind of a type of addiction. And so today we talk about the ways that we sometimes sabotage ourselves in our addictions, the shame that gets created as a result and how to work our way out of it. But first, as always, my win and my fail. My win this week is that a client asked me to pray for her and it was really the best gift. You guys, I truly have the best job in the world. As a therapist, I'm traditionally trained. I was not trained in seminary or Bible or biblical therapy. I was traditionally trained as a psychotherapist, and that's how I work. That's how I do my work. I'm open about my faith on this podcast, and although I do not ever insert my faith into my work with my clients unless they want me to, when they want me to, it's just a precious gift. And so my win is that a client asked me to pray for her during our session, and I did, and it was really cool. Okay. So my fail. Oh my goodness. In this modern world, we can fill out important documents in our bed and we can also shop. So shopping, I'm beginning to discover, is a little bit of a problem for me because, you know, my favorite place to shop, Amazon, is right there in my bed. So I'm working on that. Anyway, that's not, not my, um, fail. My daughter's going on a mission trip, which I'm really excited for because she's 12 and she's finally old enough to participate in that. And she's going to be going on a missions trip this summer with my mom. And so I was filling out all the paperwork and I must've been tired. I was in bed filling out paperwork. And so the next morning I wake up and I look at my emails and I see I got a confirmation from the registration and I managed to spell both of our names wrong, my name and my daughter's. So my fail is that I need to stop doing stuff in bed, which is so comfortable. And my answer to that at the moment is I just need to not take my laptop into bed with me and not buy or fill out important paperwork in bed. I'm going to figure out what a bigger lesson is, but I just don't have it today. So anyway, that's my fail. So on to more important things. Listen in to my interview with Kris Jansen. Welcome, Kris. I'm so glad that you were able to join the podcast.

Oh, thank you, Dr. Zoe. I'm so glad to be here. So good to talk to you.

You know, I love your topic and I love the book Grace Yourself. I haven't read it. I love the title. I should say I will be reading it. Um, but the title Grace Yourself is just such a welcoming title. It just really just gives yourself permission. Can you, can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you came to this book? I know you have another book you wrote before that, but can you tell about, about your journey and addiction sabotage?

Yes, of course. So I, I work as a life coach. I have a master's in counseling psychology. And when coaching, when I graduated from my master's program, coaching was not a thing. It was like a A football coach, a basketball coach. So when I heard about coaching, I got very excited. Um, to me it's about what works, not what hasn't worked in the past. And that's really more my wheelhouse than, than the therapy, um, world was. Not that I don't think that's very important. I refer clients to therapy often. It's just that I was really excited about this coaching. So I went back to school, got a coaching credential. Mm-hmm. And so my, what I do is work with people where they are right now and from there to where they want to go. And I wrote a first book that had all my favorite coaching tools in it, Living All In: How to Show Up for the Life You Want. And that just, it was a tool for my clients. It just became helpful to work with people when I had a tool to refer to. And one of the chapters is about patterns and habits, addictions. And I thought it deserved a whole book. So I wrote this book, Grace Yourself: How to Show Up for the Sober Life You Want, um, about that. And really, in order to present these tools that I wanted to present, I thought, you know, I, I do need to, I'm going to go ahead and tell my own story of sobriety. Yeah. I've been, I entered recovery in 2007, alcohol addiction, and Um, I had just never shared the story publicly and a lot of friends and family, I realized when I said this book was coming out, I realized they really, they knew I didn't drink alcohol. I have such a supportive recovery community and that I really hadn't shared that story with some people very close to me, even not because I was ashamed, just because I had my recovery community. So, you know, now that it's out there, it's, it's been, well, it wasn't fun at first. Now it's turning to fun, right? It's vulnerable and embarrassing at first. Now we're over that, but now it's just been really fun to connect with people because the whole message is we're not alone. We need community. It doesn't matter if it's alcohol like it was with me. It's, um, whatever is keeping you stuck, whatever has a stronghold on your life. Let's, let's get together. Let's get it out of the dark. Let's talk about it. I want people to know they're not alone. It's not scary to take a step forward. And so hopefully this book is, well, I already know it is giving people permission to do that. So I shared my story and in a way that people could take the tools in it and apply it to whatever has them stuck. So they, it doesn't, you don't need to be in an active addiction. You don't need to be, um, struggling with alcohol to benefit from the book. And it really addresses some common themes that I got hung up on, like perfectionism, rigid thinking, approval junkiness, I call it in the book. Um, con— control was a big thing for me. Um, and that has to do with, with why I titled it the way I did. So yeah, that, that is why I wrote it.

I love that. You know, obviously I, I don't have a podcast about addiction and recovery. My podcast is about relationships and also the relationship you have with yourself. But, you know, 20% of Americans either are, have been addicted, right? Had some addiction issues. Um, and some of those are not all substances. And so I know that there is, you know, a, a portion, a good portion of my audience who may have been struggling with substance abuse or other types of addiction, like love addiction. And, you know, there's so many, so many different types of things we can be addicted to that we sabotage ourselves, um, in the process of the addiction and sometimes in the process of running from it or even in the healing process. So what's been your experience, um, when it comes to Sabotage. What do

you— Well, I, and I, I do tell people I am a life coach and I, you know, shared my, that I have a master's in counseling psychology, but I want to start by saying I'm not an addiction expert. I'm not a sobriety coach. I'm an expert at my own story. I'm an expert at serving the person I once was, which is what I'm doing with this book. And I was a perfectionist. I was a perfectionistic child. I was a rigid thinker. I was always bracing myself, like. More willpower, more discipline, and that's great. And I, you know, of course we do need willpower and discipline in a lot of areas in our life. I got very confused though. I entered recovery and got sober when I was 37. I'm 55 now. And so back then I was really confused because nowadays we have mocktails. People are alcohol-free for health reasons. It's not stigmatic. Back then. And I didn't know, no one in my family drank alcohol even. They were not, I didn't know anyone who identified as an alcoholic or had been in recovery. So I really believed that I was a monster because I couldn't moderate alcohol like the next person.

Yeah.

And that was just carried over from being a, uh, that way as a child. And my parents didn't do it. They were, they're very, I came from a very loving, accepting, unconditional In their loved family. So it wasn't that, it was just my personality and, um, this rigid thinking. I think there's a difference between a high achiever and a perfectionist. I think a high achiever or someone high growth will do what it takes to get the goal. I work with high achievers. They are my clients. So we tweak the strategy to get— a perfectionist or someone who's prone to self-sabotage will crumple up the paper and toss it in the trash and say, the goal, forget it. That wasn't the right goal. That's a sign. No, you know, they, they, if it's not perfect, it's trash. And so that's where we can get in and say, no, we don't need to ditch the outcome. We're just going to tweak the strategy. It doesn't have to be perfect. And we look at the rules we have for getting where we want to go. And we, we navigate those. So for me, as I, I was very familiar with self-sabotaging. It started with eating disorders and then it went to, as a young, young Mm-hmm. And then it, um, when I was old enough to discover alcohol in high school, it, it switched to that. And so, you know, I, the, the book is, the tools in the book will let someone know they're not alone and also give us practical tools for how to navigate that self-sabotage. Because what, for me, it was confusing because I looked on the outside like someone that had it together. And I felt together in those other areas. I was a good mom. Um, uh, I had a healthy marriage. I was, you know, PTA president. I was doing these things that I was functioning and feeling good about those things. It's just when it came to this one thing that had me stuck, the, the not being able to moderate alcohol, that I villainized myself. And when I got in recovery and realized there's other people like me, It wasn't shameful. Uh, it's just, it's, I wasn't the problem. Alcohol's the problem. And there was a solution to it. I was able to recover. And the whole, my whole belief from I'm a monster shifted to I'm deserving of recovery. And so that's really like in a, in a long nutshell, that's the theme of the book. And what I, what I hope for people when they finish reading this is that they will know their worth and their value no matter what. We're worthy if we're in an active addiction and we're worthy if we're not.

Right, right. That makes so much sense. You know, part of what I heard in your, in your self-talk of I'm a monster is shame, right?

Yes.

Possibly even what I call complex shame. And I, I'm actually a high achiever. I'm not a perfectionist. Um, but I still have historically self-sabotage, even as a high achiever, not a perfectionist. I don't, I don't sabotage through perfectionism. I use other things, I guess. I'm trying to think of exactly what that would be, but maybe through overproduction, um, busyness, I don't know. But all of those kind of go together. But one of the things that I see the thread through that is that shame, right? There must be something wrong with me. And what I'm hearing is that When you were able to let go of that shame, you were able to stop self-sabotaging.

Exactly. When I went to a recovery meeting scared to death because I didn't know anyone in recovery, after I had hit what was my bottom, my pain threshold, I went and a woman in the group said, it's not your fault. You have a condition. It's like an allergy and you never have to have another drink again. And this shame I'd been carrying for years. It was 24 years that I'd been trying to figure this out and moderate alcohol and figure out why I couldn't drink like the rest of the people around me drinking socially. In that moment, that shame flew off my shoulders, like just, and that's when recovery started for me. And, you know, I want the listener to know that doesn't happen that way for everybody. We all have a different story and some people don't even hear you'd never get, have to have another drink again. They hear you don't. get to have another drink again, and that's good too. I just was exhausted of trying to figure it out. So what I heard is you never have to. And so we all come in where we come in and we all, we're all so different. Right. So yeah, the shame was heavy and that has, that was the biggest pivot in my life when it went away. And it really hasn't come back. If it comes back for a second, I notice it. And then it's, it's, it really doesn't, you know, shame or I'm a bad person or guilt being I did something wrong might be more of a barometer, but the shame, I'm a bad person. I just don't have it anymore. And that's saying a lot because as a young woman, I was riddled with it.

That's huge, actually, especially that someone telling you it's not your fault that this is what's going on. Um, I mean, that would be in my definition, simple shame. Now, simple shame can be debilitating, right? It is alleviated by vulnerability and external. And when you receive external compassion, when you are vulnerable and it's simple shame, it does just disappear. And that's beautiful. Complex shame, a little different. Doesn't work that way. Um, but that, you know, but people are carrying both kinds sometimes. Sometimes.

Mm-hmm.

Sometimes both. And so it's important to know that if you do have a simple shame, it can feel very deep and dark. But if you're able to take the step to be vulnerable, to talk about the thing for which you are ashamed, um, and you experience that compassion, it really can disappear just like you said, almost in an instant.

Yes. Beautifully said.

So what are the steps that you take somebody through and grace yourself?

Um, right off the bat, what we just said, knowing your worth. And then I go through an exercise. Um, I call it belief equals truth plus story. So we're looking at the narratives that we attach to the facts in our life. So we have a fact in our life, like I used myself as an example, which is I was addicted to alcohol. That's a fact. And then the story I attached to that fact was I'm a monster. So the stories we attach to the facts. Become our beliefs. And the belief was, I'm a monster because I can't stop drinking. So, um, I have an exercise in the book to walk people through how to, um, to, to ditch that narrative they've been attaching to the fact in their life. And any fact, it doesn't have to be a pattern they're trying to break. And, and Reminding them, look, it took a long time to form that old story, that old narrative, maybe years, maybe a lifetime. So be patient. Like, let's act as if for a while we're going to get— I'm big on getting things on paper so it gets into our nervous system. Let's write the new story only using the facts, not this other stuff we made up to attach to the facts, but let's write a better story to attach to those facts. And then practice that. And so I do that. I always start in coaching and in both books by asking, you know, having people sit with what do you want? What is it that we want and why do we want it? And then defining what they wanna be sober from, right? It doesn't have to be alcohol. Maybe it's a, a, a way of thinking or something they wanna be for free from, whatever it is that is not moving them in the direction they want to go. And maybe, and, and then saying, you know, let's not be hard on ourselves because it, you may have picked that up. We're not, we don't set out to get an addiction. I couldn't, I didn't go, hey, I want to be addicted to alcohol, but these things creep up over time. And what may have worked for survival, even in a season, might not be working anymore. And so we look at that and then work on taking the shame off of that.

Often those behaviors that we become addicted to or substances They definitely serve us in the moment.

Oh yes. I'm

going to be really honest and we need to understand ourselves enough to understand how is this serving me, right? How has it been? And how is it no longer? How is it maybe sabotaging me when before it did serve me in some way?

That's exactly right. And I am big on leverage too. If somebody has decided what they want is to get a certain X, Y, or Z out of their life. I want people to be, and I, and I walk them through it in the book, but I want people to be honest with themselves that there will be a little bit of pain associated with that, right? If we're going to add something in, maybe it's an exercise routine or omit something, for me, alcohol, then let's be honest that there will be some pain. It will be hard. So we want to choose our hard, like let's weigh the pain of Keeping it versus the pain of letting it go and, and be nice to ourselves. Yes, we, we adapted this thing because it helped in some way. We, we were just, we're doing our best. It just might not be serving us anymore.

Right. That makes sense.

I have an exercise in there for navigating perfectionism and the self-sabotage, which is what are the rules we set? for getting the goal we want. Like if, if what I want is, is A, what has to happen to get that? And, and then looking, is that rule I set within my control?

Ooh, that's good.

Right? Like, you know, if the rule I set, if, if I want to, I was talking to someone at the holidays and their thing was hosting People for a party

that they want

to host

for a party.

Yeah, it was, I was someone we were talking about entertaining at the holidays and how do you not have perfectionism around that? So I'm just going to use this as a very simple example because we do this in ways that aren't simple.

Right.

Um, and that really get us stuck in addictions and things. But the, so say someone says, I want to host a dinner party and I want it And I say, well, what, or I wanted to host a successful dinner party. And then I say, well, define successful. How will you know that it's successful? And maybe they say, well, everybody needs to laugh and have fun. The food needs to taste great. Well, then we walk through and go, okay, how many of those things are within your control? Right? You, you can't control if people laugh and have fun. And so then we, we just take the goal down to what we act is realistic and we have control over. And, but we do this, it's so simple and so subconscious that we do it, or I used to do it, right? These rules, people have to like me, people have to, you know, whatever they are. When we get those rules out on paper, it's a light bulb moment because we go, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I had set so many rules that really have nothing to do with me. These rules have to do with other people. And so, um, we look at that and I explain in the book why I call it Grace Yourself, which is as a controlling young woman who was always bracing herself and trying to do these things on my own. I did not because I'm a person of faith. And so when I am using the word grace, I'm speaking about my God's grace on me, which is unmerited favor. And that I do not get to control that. So as a young woman, I didn't understand grace because I thought, I'll tell you what I'm worth. Right. I'll do like, I'll tell you if I deserve it or not. And in a sense, it's playing God.

Right. Right.

So, so when I got in recovery, it was explained to me, look, you're not God. You don't get to decide what you're worth. Grace is unmerited favor. You just accept it. And that was a really big step for me, was to be able to admit powerless, powerlessness over my addiction, which is it, and accept grace that I didn't control earning. And that's why it's called Grace Yourself. And I think, you know, powerlessness is a big concept in recovery, and it's a big part of how people are getting better and accepting grace. And it's just a little bit in today's world, you know, we want to stand in our power and be powerful. And yes, I love that. I, I say that a lot, stand in your power and, you know, let's get our shoulders back and let's have the language and the stance and the physiology of someone who's standing in their power. So when I say admit we're powerless, Over, it's just over this one thing, this one thing that had me ensnared. Like, it doesn't make any sense why I could do all these things, mom, um, you know, all these things and not moderate alcohol. Well, the answer was it's a beast. It's an, it's an addictive substance. It's a beast. Addiction is, is like that. And we are powerless over certain addictions. So when it comes to addiction, Mm-hmm. Um, admitting some powerlessness in that area and accepting grace is going to be big. And so I walk people through that in the book as well. And I ask, because I'm a coach, I ask a lot of questions so people can really, I don't, I don't tell, I'm not giving advice or telling, I'm just tapping into people's curiosity and so they can come up with their answers and do some discovery.

And I like when I talk to my clients, I like to say everybody has a thing. I just call it a thing.

I like that. I call it that a lot too.

Yeah. Everybody has a thing. And when you're able to just recognize that you have some powerlessness over your thing, whatever that is, and you can give yourself grace, just changes the whole trajectory of how you respond to whatever the thing is and how it affects your life and how you allow it to affect your life. And then at the same time, I think there's this dance between accepting the powerlessness and also accepting accountability for how we respond, right? And learning to forgive ourselves because there's always that little part in our brain that's like, well, you don't understand, like I could, or, or we have these messages that we should power through, that we should be strong enough, that we should be able to whatever the thing is. Mm-hmm. Um, and when we're able to kind of accept the powerlessness and at the same time take responsibility and forgive ourselves, that's the grace, right? We're giving ourselves the grace. Yeah. Beautiful.

Absolutely. Yeah. Recovery is a program of action. So we, we, while it might not be our fault, it is our responsibility. And so I love that you said that and, and, you know, the seeing and the, the Defects or whatever you might call them. Sometimes I call them defenses, right? Because like we talked about earlier, we may have adapted this thing, this pattern as a defense or as a, as a way to meet a normal basic human need at a very natural level. Right. It's just that over time it became ritualistic, maybe a ritualistic soother, and it, it Stopped working. It's, it stopped working in the way we intended it to work. And so I want people to, but if we just heap shame on ourselves that that happened and hold ourselves, you know, beat ourselves up about that, it's very difficult to get into action and take responsibility because we're placing all the blame. We, it takes a lot of energy to place all that blame on ourselves. And, you know, it is, it is another form of that self-loathing. It is another form of pride, right? And that what I discussed about playing God, right? All I, I'm not going to accept that grace because I'll tell you, I'm, you know, I'm not worthy of it. So.

Thank you. Thank you for that explanation. This has been a really wonderful conversation about Self-sabotage, grace, shame, recovery. What's one last maybe word of encouragement that you can give a woman who's listening to this podcast and is thinking, oh, I know what my thing is and I'm still kind of drowning in shame about it?

I'd say you're not alone. It's not your fault. And when, and, and there's at least tell at least one person. We live in an online world right now that you can find resources and support group for almost anything that's keeping you stuck. So get it out of the dark. And there are probably millions of other people who have been where you've been.

And thank you so much, Chris. How can people find your book?

Uh, chrisjansencoaching.com is my website. My services and everything people need to know is there. And then the book, Grace Yourself: How to Show Up for the Sober Life You Want. Is available now where books are sold.

Excellent. Well, congratulations, and we wish you the best with your new book baby, and thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you, Dr. Zoe.

Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe to my email list so that you can get some encouragement from me and have a strong week. See you next time. See you next week. Bye.