Hi, my name is Sarah, and I’m a recovering people pleaser.

Seeing as I’m a Sobriety Coach, you were probably expecting a different end to that sentence. But now that I’ve got 5 years of sobriety under my belt, I know what the root causes of my unhealthy grey area drinking patterns were - lack of confidence.

As a 40 something, I come from a generation of women who were mostly taught by society that being assertive was bossy, having a voice was precocious, and asserting our boundaries was rude. Essentially if we weren’t people pleasers, we were brats. I'm not blaming our up-bringers, but society’s outdated patriarchal ideals. Sound familiar?

As a result, I lacked confidence in my own voice, so I drank to activate it. Drinking gave me a very false sense of confidence, turning me from a timid people pleaser to a “confident” woman with opinions. But were those drunken opinions really mine? And how much of that confidence did I repeatedly steal from the me of tomorrow?

Since giving up drinking, I have gained a strong sense of self, and I have become a very boundaried person - which is a very good thing. I was numbing all of that out before. The people pleasing tendencies that I thought I could get rid of with drinking, have dissolved now that I’m sober, and I am now the most confident I have been in my whole adult life. There’s no going back to the booze now!

The most surprising part of giving up drinking was my rise in confidence. If you want a piece of that, get in touch for some coaching. Going alcohol free changed my life!