Welcome to the Self Mastery Podcast. I am your host, Maria Fuentez, and on the show we will talk about all things the self. I believe that it all starts and ends with you, and every one of us has the ability to create the life we've always wanted. I'm here to help you expand your mind, conquer your limiting beliefs, and guide you to ultimate self-love and magnetizing confidence you've come to the right place.
If you're ready to take full ownership of your life and find your true, authentic, Welcome to your weekly dose of transformation. Hey guys, welcome to this week's episode. I am unfortunately back in my closet because there was this really loud. I've noxious, what chipping machine that just would not go away today and I've already. Sat down to do this twice and the machine would stop and then just go again and it drove. Me nuts. So I'm back in the closet because it does sound really nice in here.
And actually it's kind of cozy. I'm kind of embracing the fact that I recorded my closet because. It's such an intimate moment talking to you guys and just getting very vulnerable. So maybe being in the closet, isn't the worst thing that could be happening to me. Um, so we're just gonna roll with it today. am super excited about this episode, especially because I just started a challenge. Alcohol detox challenge.
I had originally thought that it should be like a 60 day challenge, but then I realized that we all have our own individual journeys. And everyone should just choose how long they want to detox for. And I want this to be a mind, body, soul detox. So come join, do it for a week, two weeks, a month, two months, three months, however long you want to do it for. I'm personally gonna probably do it for. Over 60 days. I am getting ready.
To go to ceremony with Iowasca and I'm going to go to a spiritual retreat here in a couple of weeks. Actually by the time that this podcast airs would probably be like soon would probably be just happening actually. So that's exciting. And I'm nervous, but I'm also really excited to, for the first time in my life, say that I'm completely undefended on anything. I have. I've cut off all, exciting things in life. I stopped drinking coffee the first of the month.
Sorry, I shouldn't say I stopped drinking coffee. I cut off. I stopped depending on, on coffee. So I've had coffee since I just don't have it every morning anymore. I don't feel dependent on it. I went through the motions and the pain and the beginning of the year. And now I don't feel like I needed any more to be able to function. As a normal human being. And I, I'm going to give up alcohol here again.
I've done it before for like 11 months and it really changed my relationship with alcohol, which I'll get into that later on, when I start talking about numbing darn numbing behaviors. But yeah, I've given up everything. I'm not in a relationship. So I'm basically given up sex to. I'm giving up everything and I'm going into this Iowasca ceremony. As clean and cleansed. Possibly go. So I'm so excited for that. So come join us for the challenge. It's on my Facebook.
I'll link everything on the episode notes. So you guys can see it. And like I said, there's no pressure. I just want this group that I'm creating on Facebook. To be a place where you can just come and be around other like-minded people, people that might just struggle with alcohol depend on alcohol, have just not a very healthy relationship with alcohol or just want a good cleanse. Our bodies deserve a good cleanse from alcohol. It's literally poisoned that we put in our bodies.
to just feel a little good sometimes. So it's definitely worth. If there's something you've thought about is definitely worth coming and just checking out, like I said, there's no pressure, there's no standard or anything. So that's going to lead me straight into what this episode is going to be about. And this episode. It's going to be about how we numb ourselves and why we use things to numb ourselves. And a little bit about my journey and my numbing mechanisms, especially with alcohol.
Cause I ha that was a very heavy one for me. So I believe that we numb ourselves to avoid feeling the pain that we feel emotionally. And what I mean by that is when we have an uncomfortable emotion, whether it's anger, sadness. Whatever it is. That's happening within your body. Or you're stressed out, right? Anything that we consider as not positive when we consider negative. That's all there to teach us something. But sometimes when we feel these emotions, we don't know how to process them.
So instead we look for ulterior things to kind of make us feel good to numb it, to just. Help us not feel that initial feeling and what ends up happening is because we don't feel that initial feeling. We don't let it run through our, our nervous system. We end up numbing it with other things. And what happens is that later that just becomes a bigger problem. Because ignoring the first emotions only gonna cause more things later on. And we don't realize them later on. Right.
Because they don't come out the same way because we were stressed earlier. Doesn't mean that we're going to be stressed again later, and we're going to recognize that that's where it came from. No. If we don't. Process that first emotion, what ends up happening is that we become very eager, like easily triggered. We become very short-tempered. We become easily angered we're driving a. We have road rage. We are short temper with our children, with our family members, with those closest to us.
And the list goes on and on. So we do, instead of wanting to feel all these emotions is that we start numbing ourselves and we numb ourselves with different things, right. For some people like me, it was alcohol. I would love to just drink, to not feel and eventually became a dependency where I just needed it to be, do anything in life. I needed an, it sounds terrible, but it was the truth. I needed to just be social. I needed it to just like have fun. I needed to feel happy.
I needed it to feel every, any sort of way, but we also do it with the say shopping. We do it with sex. A lot of people were addicted to porn. A lot of people are addicted to. Alcohol drugs. Eating lot of people are addicted to eating because it's constant. It's like a dopamine hit. It's an instant gratification versus just feeling the emotion. Well, what happens is we do all these things. We use all these numbing agents and those numbing agents eventually just make us feel worse.
So they make us feel good in the moment. Then they make us feel worse. How many times I know it's happened to me. Do you have a drink or one too many drinks because you were stressed out, you were angry, you were frustrated and then. The next morning, you're like, oh my God, why did I drink so much? Why did I do that to myself? Or you over eight? One too many donuts, one too many. Whatever your poison is that you choose, and then you feel really crappy about yourself later.
But we all learn to face that first emotion that comes up for us. We would be so much better off. And. After doing. You know, a few months of hypnotherapy. What I learned is that we don't actually want to look deep down inside because they're subconscious. That's where we store all the crap from her childhood, all the trauma, little trauma, big trauma. And I'll go into what big trauma little trauma is here in a second. But that's where we store. All of our crap is in our subconscious.
But we don't live in our subconscious daily. That's just kind of, that's the one that's like steering the boat. Consciously, we just think, oh, it's, it's this person that made me angry. It's this thing that is frustrating me is this thing. That's the problem. But subconsciously it comes from a deeper rooted. Trauma that we have and we haven't faced and we haven't even acknowledged some of us don't even know it's there. I remember when I did hypnotherapy.
We went so deep into my past and I had already. I had blocked off so many things from my childhood and so many things that had happened to me. I didn't remember half of it until he took me into that hypnosis state, talking to my subconscious. And remembering. And that was like, that was one of the best experiences of my life, even though it didn't feel like that at the moment, because it took me back. So it was, it made me relive all those things, but it didn't feel good.
But it made me realize that I had been living and letting my subconscious steer, the boat per se, instead of actually taking control of my life and being like, okay, this happened to me, but I don't have to be a victim of these things that happen to me anymore. So, let me go back to what little trauma in big trauma is, how he explained it to me is like big trauma is like being kidnapped, being raped.
You know, your parents abandoning you like you having to be raised by strangers, things that are very traumatic to something, to somebody that could happen. You know, Out of nowhere. A little trauma can be as simple as having abandonment issues. Your parents not being there for you emotionally. having your home be taken from you. Having some sort of sexual assault, but even though it wasn't rape little trauma can be anything.
For some people, a little trauma can even be like, you know, you got up in the classroom to speak and all the kids made fun of you because they thought they, you sounded funny. Now you have trauma based on that's one scenario of the happiness. In your childhood, that happened as you grew. And we don't pinpoint, we don't realize that that has so much to do with how we behave as adults later.
And that's the main reason I believe that we don't process emotions is because we don't want to really look deep down inside. We don't want to acknowledge where does this come from? When I feel triggered. This isn't me. This isn't my pure self. I wasn't born with these triggers. Where did they come from? Because these triggers are natural. They're normal. I am. I'm here to heal them. I don't want to judge them, but where did they come from?
Let me get curious., instead we just stay surface level with ourselves. I'll give you an analogy. This came to me the other day and I thought that this was pretty good. It's like we're off ice skating on a frozen lake. And the lake itself is very deep and profound. But we're all terrified what can be under this ice. So we just stay on the surface. We played safe. We skate on top. Only when we know that there's a thick layer of ice, keeping us safe.
When we feel the foundation, the moment we feel the foundation's a little shaky, maybe the ice is cracking. The ice is getting a little thin. We freak out and we want to escape it. We want to run away from this lake. And that's when we start using all these numbing agents. Right. Because we feel unsafe within ourselves. We don't want, we don't want to know what's down there. We don't want to know what's. What's in that our deaths in our darkness, because we all have darkness.
We all have light and darkness. And while we don't play around in that darkness, when we don't figure out why that darkness exists. We get lost in it. We don't even realize it because it happened so slowly. And so one day it all just comes crashing down on us. So. Staying safe on that frozen lake is never going to get you through to being your best self, your, how to master your life. That's not going to get you to these points where you don't feel like a victim of your life anymore.
You're going to always need these numbing agents. To help you cope with life to help you. You know, live life. And in a way, society has made it so normal for us. To do these things, right? Netflix is on demand all the time. There's always shows. There's always movies. Everyone's Binge watching TV is another way to numb yourself. People don't want to feel what they actually are feeling. They don't want to acknowledge things. So they go binge-watch and just zombie out on something.
What else does society do? They make sure drinking is an every single place that we can possibly go to. I remember when I stopped drinking for those 11 months. I couldn't even go to a baby shower without there being alcohol, alcohol was everywhere. And I realized then that society has programmed us to want us have these escapes to want to have these like pleasure items because it makes everyone feel good.
But then it also has a big downer later because when you binge watch TV, when you scroll on Instagram for hours, when you go drink alcohol, when you do drugs, there's a big downer that comes from that. Even if you're not noticing them, noticing it all the time, it's there. There's a big downer that comes from them and then society and pharmaceuticals and all these other things. They benefit from us staying in this darkness, in this. Not awake, not aware state.
I want you to get curious with yourself. I want you to ask yourself, where am I numbing pain, where emotions coming up and triggering me. That I choose to go numb them or escape from them. And then recognize that initial emotion. Go back to that initial emotion. What is it there to teach you? Because that's all it is. It's that emotion's there to teach you that triggers there to teach you that initial anger, that initial sadness is all there to teach you.
And the moment you actually let it run through you and flow through your body. Is the moment that your life starts to change and you're, you're less reactive. You're less triggered. I'll give you a little background on myself. I used to be so angry and easily triggered. I cannot even tell you how easily. It was to get me mad. I blamed it on like being Latina and being, you know, whatever. But no, it was all my trauma, all my triggers that made me so reactive to life.
There wasn't a person or a thing that could happen that I wouldn't just go from zero to 60. If somebody disrespected me, somebody yelled at me. If somebody said something rude, I would be rude right back. I would do this right back. I was ungrounded in myself. I was, I let life just kind of. Pendulum swing me everywhere. If you know, somebody was nice to me, I'd be nice. If somebody was mean, I would be mean I wasn't grounded in myself. I wasn't true to who I was because I had no idea who I was.
I hadn't done any of the work yet. So I realized that being this reactive and this trigger and was only affecting me, it was only going to hurt me in the end. So how can I get out of that? How can I get to a place where I don't need all these extra things? To feel better about myself. I don't need to go and be angry because at the end of the day, when I would go get angry or I would get, I would yell or I would do any of these things. I didn't feel good about myself. I didn't feel happy.
It didn't bring me any more satisfaction. So instead, what I would do was, you know, the initial feeling of anger was there. Then I reacted to the anger. I reacted to the person's way of being with me. And then I would go numb myself with alcohol. Alcohol became my go-to. And it happens so subtly because I started bartending when I was 21 and you know, drinking and it just became natural and normal. I'm stressed out. I'm going to drink. I had a long day. I'm going to drink. I'm happy.
I'm going to drink. I'm going to go out with my friends. I'm going to drink. I'm mad at my husband. I'm going to drink. It became a natural way of life for me. And to one day I realized I had a dependency on it and I decided to completely cut it off. And I'm just sharing the story doesn't mean that you have to cut off something that you enjoy dumbing yourself with right now. Just acknowledge it, figure out why you do it and why that's your go-to.
And so for some people, it is for me, I'm an extremist sometimes and hammer recovering extremists, actually, but I knew I needed to cut out alcohol cold Turkey. In order for me to process. With living without it again. So, what I did was I was like, okay, I'm going to do it for a month. I'm going to do it for then a month became like less, I'm going to do it for two months. At the time my partner was in on it with me, which that helps having somebody near you that supports you and helps you.
That was part of the reason why I wanted to start this group was I had that support system at home. And that makes such a big difference. So I want the Facebook group to be that for you. If you're looking at, you know, just change this and. And try something different and try to just detox from alcohol, because it really is just so toxic to our bodies. So go on there and you'll find a community and I hope it keeps growing. So, sorry. I, I go all over the place sometimes, but coming back to it.
I had somebody that was supportive. So that was easier for me to do, but the, I remember the first couple months were really hard. I didn't realize how much I needed it. I almost felt like. A little, like, like a crack. I know it sounds terrible, but I felt like I needed it so bad. I was so used to just having a glass of wine almost every night and a glass of wine became a bottle of wine.
And there was times where I was with my ex-husband that I would drink to oblivion when we were in a fight, like I would drink to like completely fell nothing just so that I can sleep or do whatever. But then after a couple months, I would say that the most incredible things started to happen. My body was like, oh my gosh, thank you. I needed this. I started sleeping like an absolute baby.
I started literally my, my body was just like resting all the years of like, No good sleep, you know, waking up, being dehydrated. My body decided to really love me again. My skin started feeling better and flawless. I started just to feel like myself again, I started feeling more clearheaded. I started having less brain fog. I used to get a lot of brain fog and I, I didn't know what it was, to be honest with you. And I realized that it was the alcohol, it was me drinking so much.
It was me needing to go numb with this agent that like helps me feel good for a minute, but then made me really feel a lot worse. And then, then the most amazing thing happened after a few months I started losing weight. Like it was nobody's business. I used to eat healthy-ish and I would work out a lot. And. But drinking alone had so many calories. And then I guess I would eat worse when I would drink too.
So I lost, I want to say like over, I don't know, 12, 13, 14 pounds just off, not drinking and eating healthy because I didn't feel a need, you know, I'm not drinking wine until 10 o'clock at night. I don't feel the need to like. Go have some crackers and cheese and whatever else I decided to go snack on. So it was really amazing. And then my workouts got better. My, the way I recovered from my workouts got better. I started building more muscle. My body was just so happy with me.
And that gave me confidence in like, okay. This is good. I don't need drinking, I love indulging and a glass of wine, or a couple of glasses of wine. Now, a champagne. I love that after I was able to breaks through that dependency, I didn't even go a whole year without it because I didn't, I didn't need that anymore. I was like, I know where I stand with this, really with my relationship with alcohol now. I don't need to go a whole year without it.
I'm going to have a glass of wine and I'm going to prove to myself over and over again. I talk about it on my social media. I talk about it here, showing up for yourself, making promises to yourself and not breaking them. That's how I decided to bring alcohol back into my life, but just monitoring it because it could become a problem. I know how much my body kind of like wants that escapism. The need to escape was always there for me, I think sometimes.
So I am very conscious of like, not over drinking, not drinking too many days in a row or not drinking. You know, so often. So it's always something in the back of my mind that I try to check. Because I don't want anything that I can just easily go to when I don't want to feel an emotion. No, I want to feel them all. And I honestly do not drink. This is one big thing then I recommend that you guys do too. If you, if you want to stop using something as a way of numbing. Is don't go do it.
Let's say that for you. It's eating, let's say that it's food for you, right? You're not going to give up all junk food. You're not going to give up the donuts that you love to eat. Let's say when I say donuts, because I love donuts, but you're not going to give up the donuts that you wanted to give up. You know, that you'd want to give up numbing yourself with. But every once in a while, you're going to have donuts, right? You're going to indulge in donuts. You're going to enjoy it.
You're going to have a donut. I recommend that you don't. Go have a donut when you're feeling stressed or angry or any emotion that doesn't feel positive. Because where you're going to start. Training your subconscious again is oh yeah, we don't feel good. We don't want to having a good emotion. Let's go make ourselves feel good. Let's go have that instant dopamine hit. Let's go. Let's go numb ourselves.
So don't do it in places and times that you need it, that your body feels like it needs something to feel better, feel better in your own ways. Feel better in healthier ways and have the donut. When you're feeling happy. Have your doughnut as a treat after you worked out. That's how I have alcohol now is how I have wine. I go have wine when I go out to a nice dinner. When I got to drink with my girlfriends, or if I. Want a glass of wine at home?
I make sure I have no more than two when I'm drinking at home by myself. Like. Make yourself like little guidelines and rules because If not your subconscious is just going to run with it. And then next thing you know, you're numbing again with the same thing. They've always numbed with. And now they've already shared a little bit. Oh a tip. I was going to get into all my tips, but I like to get ahead of myself. Apparently since I don't really have guidelines.
When I come and talk to you guys, I, I sit down and I know what I want to say. So he just bear with me if I'm all over the place. So a couple of tips, that was one of them. Let's go back to the beginning. When I said emotions are the reasons that we want to not miss, because we don't know what to do with these emotions. Right. We don't know how to process them. We feel them in our bodies and we don't know what to do with them.
And not a lot of people have access to hypnotherapy like I did, or the money to do it, or the time to do it. So some of the things that I learned during hypnotherapy is really sitting with that first emotion. And there are things that I think we can remember from our past. And then there's times where I feel like for a lot of humans, especially the older we get. We do start putting two and two together. Oh, maybe I do this because I saw my mother do this, or I saw my father do this.
Uh, or maybe I feel this way because I never got this love from my mom, or I never got understood this way. So maybe this is why I react to this poorly, or maybe this is why I need to feel the need to escape or numb. You know, we, we start connecting dots. So I would suggest that the moment you feel triggered, you feel that. Crazy fiery, like. You know, it's that crazy emotion that you feel sometimes that you can't even control and that's, that's like your, your emotions bubbling up within you.
At that time. Take a few deep breaths of breath. Work has made such a big difference in my life. Taking a few deep breaths. You. You know, like three seconds in, hold it for three seconds, three seconds out. There's a lot of breathing techniques. I am not an expert, but I'll link some YouTube videos that I've listened to on the footnotes of this episode. But breathwork will make such a big difference in your life. Another one is journaling.
I I've talked about it on my Instagram before and all my social media. I used to think journaling was for crazy people. I hate writing. So I never thought that like journaling was something that I would enjoy. But your thoughts, your mind has so many thoughts. A days there's so many things that go on in our brains that laying it out on paper. There's something really therapeutic about that is just being able to just put it on paper and let it go.
Because when you see it sometimes on paper, it's not that heavy. It's not that. It's not that extreme. It doesn't feel as bad as it did in your brain. So laying it out on paper. So journaling doing breath work, sometimes just sitting in quietness, like holding your chest, like putting your hand over your chest and being like, what are you trying to tell me emotion? Like, what is this feeling? I am letting it run through me. What does this feeling? What do you want to tell me?
And just sit with it, like literally sit with that emotion. How many times do we actually sit with our emotions? I don't know that a lot of us do. I don't know that a lot of us have the time or feel like we have the time. It's actually just sit there. With our own emotions and let it run through our bodies instead of feeling reactive or being reactive. Or needing to, you know, be extreme or go numb ourselves with something. Just literally sit there and sit with your emotions.
Another one is tapping, which I'm becoming more proficient and tapping. And it's something that I want to offer that in my one-on-one coaching is EFT, emotional freedom techniques. So I did this with my hypnotherapists as well. And what it is is that we have Meridian points around our bodies. And they're connected to our nervous system. So when we feel emotions is our nervous systems getting activated, right? Our fight or flight gets activated. So we don't know what to do with it.
We feel this overwhelming feeling. So they found that these points in our body, the Meridian points, if tapped helps regulate our nervous systems and there's a rhythm to it, there's a certain way to do it. That helps you process your emotions. If you tap every tap on them in a certain sequency, there's a way that it helps calm your nervous system. So that's something I want to get more proficient in and I think I'm going to make some reels about it, or even come on here and talk about it.
It's just hard to show you or talk about it when I'm not showing you because the Meridian points are there on top of your eyebrow. They're on your cheekbone and they're on your collarbone. The ones that I use usually use. And then right on the side of your hand. You can tap there when you're feeling an emotion and I'll tell you what I do. I I say the emotion that I feel on the side of my hands. Right above my wrist. I tap right there. And as I'm tapping, I'm saying, okay. I feel angry.
I feel angry. Just say the emotion state where you're feeling. But don't judge it. Don't be like I'm angry because, or I should I be angry? Don't judge it. Like, just let it go. Tap it say that, say the emotion that you're feeling. And as you're tapping and you're feeling that emotion and you're like, okay, that's what I feel. Then you're going to go on top of your eyebrows. And you're going to tap up on top of your eyebrows and you're going to say.
I release this emotion and let it flow through me. I release this emotion and let it flow through me. And as you're tapping on top of your eyebrows and saying the same thing. You're tapping on your cheekbone and then you're tapping on your collarbone. so first to recap, you tap on the side of your hand. What emotion it is that you're feeling. And then you tap 1, 2, 3 tab top of your eyebrow and your tap on your cheekbone and your tap on your collarbone. The emotion that you're feeling.
Tap on those points. And then you see, you say out loud, I want to release this emotion. I am ready to release this emotion and just letting that flow through you. Those are my biggest pointers for you guys. And when you feel all these extra heavy emotions and not being worried about looking deep within yourself, because where you're going to find there is not going to be anything too dark. It's not going to be anything crazy. It's going to be parts of you there.
You're just kind of suppressing anyways. So get curious, get into that deep lake, get into that deep. Ocean of who you are. And find everything that's in there because there's going to be beauty that comes out of it, especially if you learned how to really manage your emotions, because we can't control our emotions. Our emotions will come. And go, you can't control those, but you can definitely manage them and you can manage them in a healthy way versus just being reactive to life.
So I will let you guys go with that note is, get curious about yourself. Use some of my tips when you're feeling these heavy emotions. And if you're feeling the need to nom, if you find yourself numbing, Find out what's your poison of choice? What is it that you're numbing with? And then just realize that and make some changes. When we know better, we do better. So understand yourself. Work on those numbing mechanisms. If alcohol is one of those, go join my challenge on Facebook.
And I cannot wait to talk to you guys again. And so next time guys.