One Year No Beer Podcast Episode 111 – Jessica Seeley Jennings
Do you ever get hung up on perfection, black and white thinking, and the feeling that you must choose between all and nothing? That’s the kind of thing that today’s guest deals with on a regular basis. Listen in to Jessica Seeley Jennings to find out about her work with wellpower and accepting yourself.
Jessica is the wife of Jeff Jennings, of Relationship Remastery. You can hear his interview in an earlier episode. In today’s episode of One Year No Beer, Jessica discusses some of the things that she’s learned in over 20 years of working with mental health disorders, eating disorders, and couples therapy. She’s also a certified alcohol and drug rehab counselor.
“I think we as human beings get stuck in polarizing opposites. We feel we have to be perfect and push and push ourselves to unrealistic extremes.”
Jessica talks about the common all or nothing attitudes that she hears about in counseling and therapeutic settings. She discusses how people can let go of that way of thinking and find a balance that’s healthier and more sustainable.
Jessica also talks about communication and its importance. Chris, Kristine, and Jessica all agree that loneliness is a common problem, especially for people in certain stages of the OYNB process who have difficulty making connections with others. Jessica explains why people in our society have difficulty with connection and what they can do about it.
Listen in to the episode to hear what Jessica has to say about the power of wellpower vs. willpower, and why it can be important to accept what is and learn to reach for your goals in a different way. Jessica gives examples of her work and what people can do to help themselves when they’re struggling, as well as sharing how listeners can reach her.
LINKS & RESOURCES
OYNB LINKS
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JESSICA SEELEY JENNINGS
Email: [email protected]
Episode Transcript
Science, exercise, nutrition, health, energy, passion, One Year No Beer. This is the One Year No Beer podcast where you'll find all the latest tips, tricks, and hacks for a way to live better.
Chris: Welcome to another episode of the OYNB podcast. I'm your host, Chris Laping, and I of course am joined by my very talented cohost and love of my life, Kristine. Say hello.
Kristine: Hello. You know what?
Chris: What?
Kristine: I think it's pretty special that we live together, obviously, we work together, we're doing this podcast together, and I'm still the love of your life.
Chris: It is special and I consider myself very lucky. For all of you listeners, you may already know this, but we're planning to bring you two types of conversations through the OYNB podcast. This includes alcohol free sessions, and this is where we will hear inspirational journeys from folks that have successfully changed their relationship with alcohol. As well as sessions with subject matter experts who will share their wisdom on a specific topic in order to help us live life better.
Today's guest falls in the category of a subject matter expert, Jessica Seeley Jennings. Jessica is a certified professional counselor with over 20 years of experience working with mental health disorders, eating disorders, and couple's therapy. In addition, she's a certified alcohol and drug counselor.
Kristine: If you listen to episode 103 of this podcast—
Chris: One of my favorites.
Kristine: Remastering relationships with Jeff Jennings and are thinking is it a coincidence that Jessica has the same last name? Nope. Jeff and Jessica are actually a husband and wife power couple. They recently confounded Relationship Remastery and helped couples transform their marriage or love relationship using unique integration of neuroscience, attachment research, and positive psychology.
Chris: Power couple indeed. Both have shown up in the Mastermind communities to offer bits of advice and today, during our time with Jessica. She's going to help us work through some very common questions and challenges that people have when they're taking a break from alcohol.
An important note about today's show before we get started, which is if we use the word addiction today we are not making any assumption that any of you listening is an addict. We recognized that there's a spectrum of experiences to consider. But I think in the course of the conversation today, we're going to talk about some really important things and I don't want us to skip those conversations because they have the word addict or addiction in them.
Kristine: For sure.
Chris: Okay. Let's get to it, shall we?
Kristine: Let's do this.
Chris: Welcome to the show, Jessica Seeley Jennings.
Jessica: Thank you. It's so great to be here with both of you today.
Kristine: We are so excited to have you on the show, but since we're a couple, we do feel like we're going to be analyzed throughout this entire conversation. Is that what's going to be happening? Will we get a scorecard?
Jessica: Yes, I will be analyzing you. Not at all, no.
Chris: You can send the report card for our relationship to [email protected]
Jessica: I plan on it and it's going to be super fun. I love it. It's going to be a great time. I'm really looking forward to talking with both of you about these subjects today. They're very much at the center of my process and my practice.
Chris: Jessica, I'd like to start this chat by asking your thoughts on some common phrases we hear in the One Year No Beer community. We hear things like I have an addictive personality, or I have to be all in or not at all. I'll say, especially with my work in Mastermind, what I've seen is that this is not just isolated to drinking alcohol. It could be food, and it can be an all or nothing thing when people are setting goals around fitness and exercise. When you hear this, what does it mean?
Jessica: That's a great question and it's so common. I work with people every day in a therapeutic process and counseling, and I hear all or nothing thinking. It's common in addictive behaviors. It's common in eating disorders. It's common in perfectionism. I think we as human beings get stuck in polarizing opposites. We feel we have to be perfect and push and push ourselves to unrealistic extremes.
What tends to happen is we feel hopeless. We feel exhausted and we often give up in despair. The pendulum then just continues to swing us from one extreme to another. I'll tell you this, it is not fun and is not sustainable. What I encourage people to do is work on catching all or nothing, black or white thinking, and move to what we call both and thinking which is a transcendent balance.
I encourage people to put their right hand on one side of their body, their left hand on the other, palm up, and then I encourage them to put their hand in the center together and draw them to the chest. What I encourage people to do is to feel the power instead of the all or nothing, that we're moving towards a both and. It unlocks the potential for sustained change because it is grounded in two very important elements. It's grounded in truth and love.
It's not just sentimental. It's actually proven in science to be the best way to unlock change and Dr. Marsha Linehan in dialectical behavior therapy, which sounds really fancy.
Chris: It is. It sounds very fancy.
Jessica: That's what I'm trained in because that's what works best in addiction and eating disorders. It also works brilliantly in perfectionism and any other extreme exercise addiction or any other addiction we find ourselves in or in just compulsive behaviors.
Dialectic has two meanings. First, it means whole, and second, it's encompassing two opposing things that don't seem to fit together. When they come together, they unlock a transcendent truth.
An example of this would be I have to be perfect to be loved, and if I'm not perfect, I can't be loved. That right there is an all or nothing thought. What we tend to do is unconsciously dig in and try our best to be perfect. Have the perfect body, have the perfect eating, have a perfect life. Whatever we might be pushing towards imperfectionism or an eating disorder.
The problem then is we recognize our imperfections and are striving, and it’s discouraging. Then, as I spoke of earlier, we pendulum swing to the extreme of being really hard on ourselves.
What I do is I break it down for people and say when this is really overwhelming and you have a million thoughts in your head, pick one all or nothing thought, catch it, challenge it, and change it. It takes time, but it's unbelievably powerful. As we begin to catch one thought, even just […], one extreme all or nothing thought we're going to catch.
I'm going to give you guys an example because I love examples and I'm a really practical therapist. I like to give people homework, not because I'm cruel but because I want them to do the work outside the session, to truly grow and change.
Chris: We don't like homework, but we definitely like examples.
Jessica: I'm going to give you both. For those of you who don't like homework, don't do this at home, but the example might be helpful even just for the moment. To catch something, to catch it would be a thought that often many of us have, which I'm not good enough. That's a simple thought—I'm not good enough. The challenge would be something like I accept myself as I am and allow for growth and change.
It's this love and truth. It's the truth that I'm loved today just as I am, but I have to grow and change. The change would be radical acceptance makes way for love and the possibility for change. The ideas, as we catch it, we're going to keep challenging it, and then over time, we're going to continue to tell ourselves the truth and it will change. That's the power that we have.
In cognitive neuroscience, we’re finding that we don't have to stay stuck in all or nothing thinking. We can actually change our brain's neurochemistry and build new neural pathways to create this process of change, and it becomes easier and easier over time as we choose each day to catch challenges and change these all or nothing thoughts that are plaguing us so much.
Chris: What fascinates me when you're walking through that, Jessica, is it is so common when I'm working with people in Mastermind to hear them describe a lot of compassion, grace, and love for other people. If somebody else walks up to them and says, I'm not enough. I've been working out and I'm just not getting the results I want to get, and I'm fat. They say all these negative things about themselves, usually, people will step in and help that other person.
But for whatever reason, when it comes to ourselves, we are just so hard on ourselves. We're so critical. We don't show the same compassion. I think that leads to some of this all or none thinking.
Jessica: I agree, completely. The reason we do that is oftentimes our inner critic—which is very low and alive—hasn't given the role to try to protect us against any further rejection or criticism. We feel the need to criticize ourselves more harshly than we would anyone else. I find this every single day in therapy. When we can unlock our power to be compassionate to ourselves, we can create an environment that is one of truth and love instead of criticism, contempt, and rejection. That changes everything.
Kristine: That's great. Great advice. The word willpower comes up all the time when we are not maybe as disciplined as we think we should have been. Oh, that person just lacks willpower. I lack willpower. But outside of this conversation, Jessica, I've heard you use the term, wellpower. On top of it, there's this very scientific term, which I'm going to try to say correctly—neuroplasticity.
I would love for you to explain to the listeners what you believe wellpower is versus willpower. And then talk about neuroplasticity and the importance it has on basically our journey for changing into the person we want to be and taking on healthy habits.
Jessica: Absolutely. This is so powerful. Wellpower is so different from willpower. Willpower is about overcoming with this sheer determination and not really understanding the mountain we're climbing. Wellpower is a surrender to the best way to overcome, the best way to scale the mountain. We still have to scale it, but we're doing it differently. Wellpower is about working with your strengths and also validating your struggle to make the journey more possible, more enjoyable, and guess what—more sustainable.
Wellpower is this very thing that's hard for us to wrap our minds around this neuroplasticity, this ability for our brains to literally create new dendrites, new neurons, and new thought patterns. What that does is just like when we learn to ride a bike or learn to drive a stick shift. I'll tell you this truth. When I learned to drive a stick shift, I had to turn the music off. I would freak out when I was on a hill. It was an awful experience and I thought to myself, I will never again be able to drive with music on. I'll never again be able to think of anything other than shifting.
Guess what? I was wrong. My body took on this neuroplasticity and created muscle memory to the point that I didn't have to think about it anymore. I'm a really good driving stick because I did it for so long. Even though I haven't done it in years, I know I could get back in the car and drive a stick.
The same thing happens with new thought patterns, with new behavior patterns. At first, it is really hard, but when we are working with our bodies and our minds and doing the best thing, we become accustomed to it in a way that our bodies begin to work with us and take over. When we have had poor habits or patterns that have been somewhat addictive, it is definitely an uphill climb, but that's where we're going to apply wellpower.
For example—I love examples—let's say we're stuck in eating too many sweets at night because we've been drinking a lot. We decide we don't want to drink anymore and all of a sudden, at night, our brain starts to create or we start to feel a little bit like, oh, I want some comfort, I want something sugary. We're used to that, and it's very difficult to replace that behavior and some would say it's impossible. I do willpower for a while, I tell myself, no, you can't have that, and then I cave.
In therapy and in the process of understanding the way we work, we want to work with ourselves. I encourage people to understand the function of their behavior. In other words, a deeper understanding of why you're doing what you're doing will help you unveil what you truly need. When you get what you truly need, it's a lot easier to say no to that ice cream.
For example, if that ice cream is really representing sugar to your brain because right now you're trying to detox off of the alcohol that definitely breaks down into sugar into our bodies. We recognize that is going to take some time. We may want to go ahead and replace it with something like a bowl of strawberries. We may want to have something we can look forward to that's comforting to us at night that also speaks comfort and support like a cup of hot tea.
There are some replacements that we can do that actually help our body find balance. Once our physical body and our brain begin to find balance with our sugar cravings and we understand that it's really comfort we're longing for not a bowl of ice cream. We can start soothing with the five senses. We can start doing other things that actually create a better, more balanced physical experience.
What that's going to do over time is we're just going to physically feel better and that's what sustains change. I'll tell you this, you want what's best for you, so do I, we just don't always know how to get there. Again, what do you do?
You recognize any routine you want to change, any regular routine has some kind of function to it or we wouldn't do it over and over again. We recognize it and then we replace it with a meaningful ritual that's literally best for us, that literally is something better. Instead of numbing with overeating, we might surrender to a caring act of kindness for ourselves, which might be a hot bath, a nutritional snack, or a call with a friend that might meet our emotional needs.
Then what we're going to do is recognize routines. We replace them with meaningful rituals. We're going to repair our body, mind, and spirit over time with habits that actually create better, sustainable patterns of life. We know it takes about 21 days to build a dendrite. It takes about three times that, so about 63-66 days to actually create this rising up, this natural tendency to do those things on our own. Just like you give yourself time to learn to drive a stick shift.
Kristine: Jessica, wait, say those numbers again for our listeners because I can't tell you how many times we see people in the challengers’ group that are beating themselves up after seven days because they have not gotten to a place that they think they should be. Will you just repeat those numbers again?
Jessica: Absolutely. Twenty-one days, and that's why your traditional programs when you look at things, why is it 21 days? Well, that's what neuroscience is telling us. It's 21 days. But the most recent research is saying we need three times that. Dr. Caroline Leaf reveals that about 63 days is what's necessary for these dendrites to actually stand up, rise up, and hold that space on their own so that we don't have to keep repeating it now.
It doesn't mean we don't continue good habits, we do, but there's a sense of it rising up in us to do it in an easier manner. Again, after 63 days, I'm going to be able to drive a stick shift, no problem. After 21 days, it's there, but I'm still going to have to practice it so that it's sustained over long periods of time.
Remember, keep practicing. It's about progress, not perfection. When we go back to that, as we talked about, if we go back to all or nothing thinking we're going to get super discouraged. But if we celebrate our progress, we find that what is best for us begins to emerge and we're clear about what that is, this is better for me. I feel better. I know I may not look any different now or I haven't gotten to that part in the process, but I know this is best for me, and that's another sustainable part of change. It's going to get easier, and if I remain in my old habits, it's actually going to get harder over time. So choose your hard.
I choose the hard guys that get easier over time. Let me tell you, that's the hard I'm choosing because it's going to be better for me in the end and it's going to get easier.
Kristine: Well, I love that. Again, it's wellpower, not willpower. Again, we need to give ourselves time. For my nightly reading last night, there was a sentence that said forget about practice makes perfect because that's not realistic. Instead, practice makes it permanent. I think that just summarizes exactly what you just taught us so I love that.
Jessica: I'm going to take that from you because I am because I say practice makes progress, but I agree with you that it makes progress for the sake of permanence so that we can do these things that, again, are best for us inside and out. It's so powerful and you'll never regret it because it’ll make life better.
Chris: In that advice, what I heard you talking about was the importance of self-reflection and discovering why we behave the way we do. What I've noticed with myself is that I lose a lot when it comes to doing that in the moment. Let me give you an example. We buy this big container of cashews and we have these in our pantry.
Kristine: This is where couples therapy comes in.
Chris: Totally. I find myself walking into the pantry and mindlessly noshing on those cashews. There are times wherein the moment I'll catch myself and like literally, Chris, what are you doing here? You're not really hungry. But then there are other times where I don't catch myself and I move past it, and then maybe a day or two later I'll think—probably when I have a stomach ache—jeez, why have I been eating so many cashews?
My question to you is, is there something that we can do? Is there an easy tactic that we can employ that helps us at the moment catch ourselves when we are doing these things?
Jessica: Yes, I think that's a great […] is what do we do? I think we seek to understand, again, there I am searching for this, what does it represent to you? Again, I like depth therapy because I want to know what this means. What does it mean to me? Maybe for some people, it means I need more substantial fat in my diet, that's fine, or I'm eating this because I'm bored. Okay, what do you need to challenge you right now? Because if we have compassion for ourselves—because a lot of people who struggle with overeating have had very upsetting traumatic things happen to them.
If we start with compassion and inquiry, understanding—just to seek understanding for yourself and say, why would you be bored right now, what's that about for you? Instead of judging, instead of being harsh and cruel, instead of calling names or saying, why don't you have any self-control? Remind yourself, okay, this is not about willpower. What would be the best thing for me? What would be the wellpower in it? What it is is to have compassion.
Seek understanding and find comfort in that place of your need because we all have needs. We need to eat. Food is fuel for our bodies, and if we're ever using it for anything other than that—comfort or to ease boredom or things like that, it's going to backfire on us. We're going to get a stomach ache or we're going to, over time, to feel well. That's what we want to just seek our best by replacing it with something more meaningful, something best for us.
I love this idea of the three things: recognize, replace, and you will repair. That's the beauty of this is just call it to mind. Maybe you put a little sticky note on your cashews with a smiley face to say you are important today, take care of yourself because that's different than I always encourage adding something, not taking it away when you're talking about changing your food habits. Add something.
If you're bored, add a meaningful ritual to your day that is exciting and challenging to you. If you're hungry, eat more in the morning. Eat more substantial foods because some people struggle with restriction. That's why they go in and they end up not realizing they may be low on certain vitamins, minerals, or fats in their diet, and that's okay to supplement. It's okay to find balance with that.
I'd say recognizing it and then, again, that positive replacement that says I don't have to take something away. I can add something to my life that's meaningful and that's, again, not about numbing through excessive eating. It's about surrendering to care for your body in the way you need it most.
Chris: I'm going to go with I just need more fat.
Kristine: We'll have to schedule our couples therapy. I have a suspicion of what's happening with the cashews, but let's move on, shall we? Next question.
Chris: Enough about the cashews.
Jessica: Cashews are delightful though. I do love some cashew. Moving right along.
Chris: Jessica, with the work you've done with the Mastermind course, you know that we reflect and evaluate six streams of positivity. These are basically core keystone habits that have a big halo effect on our life. When we do these things magically—as some people have said—other areas of their life improves.
One of those six streams of positivity that we have people evaluate themselves on is connection. I'm always surprised at how low people score themselves in the area of connection, especially because in the OYNB community, we've all taken a risk to step out there and meet new people and to lean on a community for support.
I naturally would think that we would all give ourselves some credit for wanting to connect, but there does appear to be a trend. Most people are communicating—at this point in the process of their alcohol free journey—that they are not doing well in connection. Based on your professional experience, does that surprise you to hear that?
Jessica: It does not. It does not surprise me at all, and I'll share with you why. The connection is a deep human longing and we are discovering—as we learn more about biology and our makeup—that we are built to bond. We are built to connect and to live in deep communities.
Part of the issue is we have a chronic epidemic of loneliness in our culture because we have been trained and taught—collectively and individually—to be very individualistic. This longing for deep relationships is still there, but the avenues are not always there.
We often then create in our minds a better understanding, to the best of our ability, as to why is this happening for me? Why am I not feeling connected? Often, we come up with a very negative assumption that I'm just not good at relationships, I'm broken, or I can't connect somehow. But I believe we can. I believe that we are made for it.
That would be my number one encouragement is to, again, catch any negative thoughts you have about your ability to connect and remind yourself, no, I am a human being made for deep connection. It's very interesting to me. For any skeptics out there, the Harvard Longitudinal Study on Happiness found this. They were not looking for any specific thing related to happiness, but they found the number one thing responsible for long-term health, physical health, and emotional happiness was the quality of a relationship.
It does not surprise me at all that we are all in a quest to connect, that we all want to feel seen, known, and loved in our relationships. Oftentimes, the quality of our relationships struggles because of societal as well as internal struggles.
When we are on that quest and we struggle perhaps on and off throughout life to feel connected or to have someone emotionally there for us, it's understandable we would suffer in this way. That we would find chronic patterns of disconnection rather than connection. One of the reasons for this is because we need connections so much, we know it in our very being, that it is responsible for health and happiness—we fear it when it is not there.
What that does is it automatically throws us into what we call in attachment theory, our fear brain. Our fear brain is something you guys have all heard of. It's our fight or flight, and we think it's only there if we get scared or someone's trying to steal our purse. That is actually there when we fear disconnection because neuroscience is our friend, and it's revealed that emotional disconnection lights up the same part of our brain as physical pain.
We fear it because it's physically painful for us to be rejected by others. That's where when we have our first experiences of rejection, it's usually in childhood, it's from the family of origin or it's from friend groups. We make a story around that. We seek to understand it, and we generally blame ourselves.
Therefore, in our adult experiences of disconnection, our fear brain kicks in. We become highly anxious, and we fight or we flee. They also understand we also sometimes freeze. Freeze, fight, or fleet—those are our choices.
Now that we understand it, we can begin to stop that process, and we can begin to share with those we love the most. You know what, I'm feeling disconnected right now. Or we can stop and say, oh, I'm feeling this gut-wrenching feeling of pain and disconnection and I don't want to feel that way. Instead of believing the lie, we're not made for connection. Remind yourself that every human being is made for connection, and we just have a fear when we are disconnected.
Kristine: I love what you're saying and my brain is just buzzing with so many things to respond with.
Jessica: So many things, it is.
Kristine: What I wish so much is that we, as a human race, could be more vulnerable in saying that stuff. Instead what happens is again people either fight, flee, or freeze instead of just saying, you know what, I feel really lonely right now. Will you hang out with me right now?
Just even saying those words so many times, so many people would show up and say, yeah, let's do it. Let's play a game, let's get on Zoom, or whatever. But because those words aren't said and we react differently, it then spirals into all these unhealthy habits.
Chris: Well, can I jump in there too? What I would say is just going back to some of the basics. For me to be able to say to you, hey, I need you right now, I need your help, I need your support, I have to have vulnerable trust with you. The basic blocking and tackling around vulnerable trust and how you achieve it is just time.
Kristine: Yeah, it's just chicken or the egg.
Chris: It's making sure you spend time with somebody. The fact of the matter is—and this is why I think it's so important to us with our connections to take a break from alcohol because often our time with each other is clouded when we're drinking.
Jessica: Absolutely.
Chris: The reality of it is let's say we're enjoying a few cocktails, that's our nightly routine, and we spend an hour and a half doing that. What would happen if that hour and a half were actually focused on something different?
Kristine: Yeah, and again, we're learning now and I'm sure, Jessica, you have many thoughts or opinions around this. We talk about it a lot in this house because you used to always hear about these interventions when someone did have an addiction problem. The best way is to have an intervention and then basically tell them, hey, I'm not going to put up with this anymore. You go away if you can't change. But now what we're learning is the opposite of addiction is connection.
Jessica: Yes, absolutely. We didn't get into the addiction because we couldn't connect. We numbed from the times that we felt we were incapable of that.
Again, a deep connection is so necessary. We're seeking to avoid future pain by numbing through substances because we think, oh, it's so painful to be rejected. This way I can be with friends and still feel powerful because I'm drunk. That's not the best way to connect because it is numbing us. It is completely numbing us out.
What we need to do is in a safe community, we can talk through this a little bit more in vulnerability and say, hey, this is what I need to feel safe. That's what we can do with people that we trust to keep building that trust. When we stop numbing, we can start better connecting. I'm saying, we were capable of it all along. We just didn't believe it and we didn't know how to do this. That's why I want you to have compassion for yourself.
No one teaches us how to do these really hard things like being vulnerable, and it's really hard to practice it if we don't have the skills. That's what this can do for all of us. It can give us some basic skills, and the way to verbalize what we need, and the knowledge that as we do, we're more likely to get what we need in the community and that's just empowering.
Kristine: Well, you have shared so many great bits of knowledge with us today. But to maybe wrap up the conversation, for our listeners that are trying to take a break from alcohol—whether it's through a One Year No Beer challenge, on their own, or another program—and they're just struggling to get a good streak of days together of being alcohol free, what advice would you give them in this journey?
Jessica: Absolutely. I would say keep practicing this non judgment that we're talking about, this self-compassion that we're talking about at the core. That as you identify that part of you that is so quick to criticize, do the work of catching, challenging, and changing these thoughts because there's not the criticizer in you that's rising up to hurt you. It's actually a part of you that's rising up to say, I don't know how best to protect you, and this is all I know to do.
We want to be compassionate towards the criticizer as well to say I know you were afraid, but how you're going about this is not working. And then we want to look at the part of us that's being criticized, that part of us that feels vulnerable and hurt by these harsh words that’s like get it together. What's wrong with you? That might be what the criticizer is saying, and the criticizer is saying, I'm hurting, I'm scared. I don't know what else to do. I need support. That's where we can transition into the compassionate observer.
There's a powerful exercise that helps us look at all three of these things in the therapeutic process that I would encourage all of you to become a compassionate observer to these two parts of you to know that the criticizer is there because he or she doesn't know what else to do. Instead, you can recognize the fear that's there and rise up in wisdom and compassion.
Phrases that you can speak over yourself this week to take the next step would be, you are exactly where you need to be to take the next step. To tell yourself that you have everything you need to become who you are intended to be. You don't have to be anyone else.
Applying this compassion to ourselves, eventually, as we can learn to apply it to others as well, then we give permission to show up and be real in our relationships, to be who we are intended to be fully and freely. This will facilitate the deepest connection possible, to accept that we are this beautiful miracle and […]. It's that dialectic to say I've found truth and love by accepting the beauty, the flaws, the strengths, the weaknesses, but this does not disqualify you from love and belonging. It actually just opens up this wellpower to change one step, one day at a time.
Chris: Jessica, this whole session was so awesome. I just want to express our gratitude for all of the work that you and Jeff do with the One Year No Beer community. Kristine and I adore the two of you and have immense respect for all of the work that you have focused yourselves on. It was just wonderful to have you on the show.
I should just say anything that you learned about us as a couple and specifically the things that I'm doing wrong, will you please send it to [email protected]?
Jessica: Well, I am just honored to be with you guys today. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, I do this work with passion because it's something I love, and I am continuing to seek my own change and transformation in my life and those of my clients. I just respect you both so much for just spearheading this and bringing this together because it's just an honor to be here today and be with you both.
Chris: Awesome. Well, Jessica, if anybody wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to contact you?
Jessica: Of course, they can reach out at [email protected], and that's a great way to ask questions. If anybody would be interested in any ongoing coaching or just support, that's a wonderful way to reach out to me.
Chris: Awesome. Thank you. For all of you listening today, if you are currently taking a break from alcohol or maybe you're just thinking about it, I just want to remind you that you can do this. This is what the point of this podcast was today. Everything that you could want or need is inside of you so you can totally do this. You're much stronger than you think, and I hope you keep moving onward and upward in your own journey.
Thank you to all of you for tuning in to another episode of the OYNB podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share it with a friend. As always, I hope that you make it a great day.
Kristine: Bye.
Chris: Bye.
Thanks for listening to the One Year No Beer podcast. For a full list of episodes and to join in the challenge yourself head on over to oneyearnobeer.com.
