Hello everybody and thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Work Mom Says Don't Be an Idiot. As I remind you every episode, I am here to help young professionals learn to play the emotional contact sport of business, so they experience less drama and more success. Today's topic is really of interest to me because we're going to talk about sobriety. This one's near and dear to me because when I was younger, I came from some serious trauma. I was taught from a very early age that alcohol is an incredible anesthetic. And it is. Unfortunately, a lot of us go to college and get pulled into this culture of partying. It's so fun until it's not, and I personally have been sober for several years and really don't preach to other people. But, there are some things to think about if you notice that alcohol is the least bit of a problem for you. So our guest today is Chrissie Zaviar, and Chrissie got my attention on Linkedin because she had shared some really vulnerable things about her experience with sobriety and what it has done for her, how she got there, and what it's done for her. She agreed to join us today. Chrissie, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do and why you're committed to sobriety and sharing your story so openly. 01:53.33 Chrissie Zavicar Absolutely,. It's always a loaded question when you're asked to introduce yourself. It's like which direction do I go? Um I will start by saying I am a working mom, so I have that in common with you. I have three kids. They're 9, 10, and 7, and my 9 year old is getting close to my height which is a little crazy. So yeah, she's like a real person which is very interesting. My kids are girl, boy, and girl. So I Love being a mother. I am a very passionate individual, a very deep individual. Um, and for me um I've always been really focused on my career and worked in sports for a time. I worked for the Detroit Lions for 10 years which was really fun. I almost consider that my college because my college was a craze of trauma. I worked for the lions for a bit. I'm a writer first, I do social media digital marketing, and now I work for a company called team 84 as their chief marketing communications officer. I've also had my own business for about 6 years specializing in Linkedin Consulting. For me, sharing my message of sobriety was really about going deeper into what I am here to do because I was constantly sharing about Linkedin and trying to be funny and all that kind of stuff. I am quite funny. I really love sharing other people's stories and that's really my sweet spot. What I believe I'm here on this earth to do is to help people share their stories. I started getting met with people telling me well, you're not doing yourself any justice, and I realized that I was really kind of skimming the surface in terms of myself. I really dug in as far as what it is that I'm here to do. What is my personal story? I realized that the one component that trickles down into everything for me was sobriety. Everything that I've done that's worthy of sharing comes back to that and it's kind of this umbrella piece. Sobriety isn't just about abstaining from a substance. It's also about living with presence and being present in yourself and with your own body. So that was what I wanted to step out and share because my experience was that so many are living probably as I was which was almost in a bit of a haze. So I really look kind of for those functional people, who maybe don't realize just how far from themselves they are and maybe don't recognize you know what alcohol is doing in their lives. Anyway, that's my story. lorijovest I think my experience has been that for a lot of people. Our culture really normalizes it, so a lot of people reach for a drink when they're stressed. “Oh I feel stressed give me this cocktail I'll feel relaxed I'll feel better I'll feel happier”. It's so normal I mean to the point where, I forget what grocery store commercial I saw recently, and the mom is you know, stocking up on groceries and ha Ha Busy mom on the way out Grabs a big bottle of wine because that's what our world thinks is normal. I know there's a lot of people out there working to make that happen, and this sober culture has really risen up to where people are talking about it because the whole thing is yes, it's quote unquote coping with stress. But in reality it's numbing out from whatever's causing the stress. So instead of sitting there saying why am I stressed, what's going on, why am I having such a hard time and processing that, let's just make it go away temporarily. I try to even tell my kids that their feelings are not arbitrary. They're real. They live in you and you have to let them go in order to free yourself from them. If you just stuff them down, they just fester and they create a state where your body is feeling the repercussions of not processing emotion or stress processing or whatever it is that's leading to it. So when we drink, all that's doing is pouring gasoline on a fire. It's just making it that much worse or it's just avoiding whatever it is that you're trying to get away from. 04:22.28 lorijovest Oh yeah, yeah I think the toxic positivity days are over. I think that really contributed, you know, like everybody be happy. Don't worry. Be happy. It's like I can be happy if I have a drink in my hand because I'm freaking out right now at the office. 04:54.68 lorijovest I mean it really I think a lot of a lot more people you talk about the social sober culture I do see a lot more people in my feed that I know personally that are just saying hey I'm None sober and I feel a lot better if you guys want support call me, let's do this together and it's more common and it's a lot less. Um. 05:32.62 lorijovest People are chastising each other less.. It's becoming more normalized than it was say ten years ago um totally different ten years ago when you went with a group and you didn't drink. They're like giving you a side eye and you know asking why not? Let's talk about your online group. What helped you when once you made the decision that yeah I probably should lighten up on this Chrissie. What helped you actually get sober? How did you find that resource? So for me, I'm very stubborn, and I'm not going to do anything unless I want to do it. So for me once it was time to quit, I was done and not everybody can say that. I guess for me really the relapsing and all that really happened before and in my own world. I don't want to tell anybody I was struggling because if I told anybody I was struggling someone might try to hold me accountable, and I was not going to go down that path. 07:18.20 Chrissie Zavicar So for me, it was like oh yeah, I'm going to quit it. People will talk about the negotiations you make with yourself like oh yeah, I'm just going to have one, I'll have one tonight, I'm going to cut down and just have one you know three days a week or whatever. That never works because “1 drink in you Chrissie” is not going to rationally make a decision. I went around that circle for years and years. So for me when it was time to quit, I quit once, had a two week hiatus, tried it again, and realized this is so not worth it, and then quit for good. That group was really just deep into personal development. Laura Mcowan, who I talked about earlier as a person who shared her sobriety that was really really impactful for me, was one of the leaders of that group. The other is named meadow devor, and she actually just published a book about some of the tools that she helped us through which is basically just really looking at shame. She calls it the worthy project which was really impactful for me. It’s basically the idea of how worthy you think you are of money, of a home, what’s good for you and there's just all these different ways she dug into it that helped me see how much shame I was carrying and you know for me that drinking was about avoiding my own feelings about myself. 10:44.24 lorijovest I Think that's really really common though when you talk to people who consider themselves alcoholics, who don't drink, are in AA or any of those programs that shame and that devaluing of self is so hard for us to get our arms around. I think that we would rather avoid it than try to dig in and figure it out because it's hard to figure out when you have those deep feelings of shame and trauma. It's a lot of work to get yourself back into a healthy space to feel those emotions, right? Feel them you dig in to figure out them. To me it was always about like the limiting beliefs that you created based on what happened to you that really don't apply anymore that you can dig in and get rid of, and a lot of that shame is always a useless emotion that is somehow imposed on us as children usually. 12:02.60 Chrissie Zavicar Um, yeah, and I mean the thing is too is that you know alcohol is a drug and addictive substance and as much as people and I actually think that the term. Alcoholic and I understand why some people use the term alcoholic but I actually think that does a lot of people a disservice because it's a great excuse for people to be able to say “well I'm not an alcoholic. I don't look like the guy on the street with a paper bag who's stumbling around and doesn't have a home to go to. That's an alcoholic. I'm not an alcoholic.” Well there's a huge spectrum of problematic drinking that doesn't necessarily have to be labeled alcoholic, and when I talk about my own drinking I say I was addicted to alcohol. I don't say I was a quote unquote alcoholic because it helps a lot of people justify their drinking. Oh I'm not an alcoholic I'm fine I'm just like everybody else. Well it's a substance that's addictive. The more you use it, the more you become reliant on it just like anything. 1 of the big resources for me right after I decided to get sober when I was exploring it, I started listening to the book Drinking a Love Story. Have you ever read that, Lori? I did it via Audiobook but I devoured it. When she talked about the clinical stages of drinking and how she got the questionnaire and went through the different things, I really recognized in myself that I was in the later middle stage and if I kept going it was inevitable that I would end up at a certain stage. No matter how long it took me I would get there eventually and I think that's the thing people don't realize is that you're using an addictive substance and the more you use it, the more your body gets used to it, so you need more and you don't need to be quote unquote born and alcoholic to develop a drinking problem. You can develop a drinking problem just by continually drinking. 16:45.64 lorijovest No yeah, just by succumbing to the marketing. Oh my gosh as a non drinker, I find it so interesting how they develop new products that follow along on consumer trends. 17:20.62 lorijovest Like thus we like fizzy water. Well now we have fizzy water with alcohol in it. You know it doesn't matter what it is if we're drinking it and we like it. It's pop culture. They'll find a way to put alcohol in it to sell it. You know? Um, so you have a Samuel L Jackson article that you mentioned when we were talking in preparation for this podcast today. Tell me about that story. 17:36.18 Chrissie Zavicar I thought that was interesting and I love finding stories from celebrities that are now sharing about their sobriety, especially ones that have the street cred that they can say that they're sober like eminem is sober, Elton John you know these people who have really embraced sobriety, and I think that gives it a new face which is great. I was reading this article because I actually had come across a quote and it led me to the article. He was talking about his sobriety journey, and he had gotten to a point because essentially he was just a hot mess and his wife was like you're a hot mess. He ended up stopping the drinking but what I found fascinating was the things that he talked about that went through his mind. I know from talking to so many other people who drink that everyone who's thinking about quitting goes through their mind: How is my life going to be when I don't have alcohol? How boring is it going to be? What am I going to do and am I going to be as good at life? So he actually talked about how I'm afraid my life wouldn't be as exciting. I didn't think I'd be as good of an actor. He quit drinking, quit doing drugs and he got better at acting and his life got more enriched. That happened to me as well. I knew that if I continued drinking, I would not reach my potential as an entrepreneur, as a business owner. My productivity was crap. My focus was bad and I knew in the back of my mind if I don't stop this I'm never going to be as good as I can be. So I thought that was just really fascinating to hear him talk about that as well and then when he did come out the other side realizing, hey you know what? I'm actually better at my craft and having gone through adversity has added to my ability to act different characters because I now have life experience having gone through it. Not that I think you should develop a drinking problem, just so you have life experience. Um, but it does it gives you. It gives you something to pull from. 22:19.74 you mentioned earlier How much pressure you thought. You know that you see is put on people to drink. 26:02.82 Chrissie Zavicar I didn't drink until I decided I was going to and then I Just Thank the Lord above that nothing horrible happened to me and I didn't end up dead because the situations I put myself in especially in college were horrible. The pressure to drink I mean adults do it all the time and I think that especially in work functions and I think the thing that I think is interesting having now taken a step back and not drinking anymore being on the other side because like I was that person that was trying to pressure other people to drink and I completely fully admit it 100%. I was like why aren't you drinking and it wasn't about them. It was about me like hey I don't want to be the one you know and you don't think this through it's not like you. 27:55.58 Chrissie Zavicar You consciously have this thought process. It's a subconscious thing you realize but you don't want to be the only one. Do you not remember when you'd go to an event or you go to a get together even if it was a small get together and someone would pull out alcohol and you'd be like oh thank God Oh thank God. 28:34.00 Chrissie Zavicar Yeah, or you're out to dinner and someone else orders a drink and you're like yes I don't have to be that person and someone else took it off me and I can just join them with everybody else. I've found that anybody that pressures anyone else to drink, they do not have a healthy relationship with alcohol period. So if someone is concerned about your drinking, they have a problem. So always think about that. In that book um Drinking A Love Story where she says that if you look at what is responsible drinking or what are you supposed to drink and it's like just one. If your answer is what's the point, you shouldn't be drinking like period and and that's ah and that would probably be a hard thing for people to really think through because it is if you're drinking for the high. There's an issue with that. 31:04.88 Chrissie Zavicar Like you're not supposed to drink for the high. That's the point which kind of goes against what we all consider the point. But if you look in other cultures too, that's not why they drink like people that have alcohol everywhere or wine everywhere. They don't drink to get drunk. They just drink because they like it. 32:08.46 lorijovest Yeah, but not to get silly and stupid like ah like some of us would. So moving on now. Sobriety for young Professionals I'm just going to throw this out there. 32:42.78 lorijovest What do you think a young professional might need to look for besides all the things we've talked about that would indicate that maybe they wanted to just look a little into giving it up. 32:37.52 Chrissie Zavicar Um, I don't even know that I would say looking into giving it up as much as if you find yourself at an event, a professional event, and number 1 if you're being pressured to drink and you genuinely don't want to, look at where you're working. Get yourself out of the situation. If you're at a work function and you can't stop yourself from drinking, look inward. Because really when you think about it when you're in your twenties, Lord help us all when we're in our twenties, but you know we're just trying to figure out. We're just trying to figure out life in our 20 s and um, the last thing you need is to be drinking alcohol around your employer or your senior colleagues like if you want to put yourself in a position for success. 34:31.36 Chrissie Zavicar Honestly too like don't drink and watch all of them act crazy and then you got dirt on him but not that we're condoning blackmail but but it is like and if you can't stop yourself if you can't stop yourself from drinking at the holiday party or whatever because you just can't stop yourself then that's a reason to look inward and ask yourself. “Why do I feel like I have to drink? Are you trying to get over your nerves? Are you trying to make sure that you fit in all those different things that are worth exploring because the last thing you want to do is be I know god just thinking about professional experiences and drinking and being 20 and god help me. 36:14.56 lorijovest Ah, yeah, tough times, tough times. So the thing that I find really interesting is a lot of times we are especially when you're younger in your career and you're just starting out. You've got a lot of pressure to do it right, to speak up, to get over your imposter syndrome, to be a shining star, rise above, you know, succeed, perform. If you're suffering at all from the stress of that or trauma that's hanging around which it does, there are ways that you can heal and cope with that stress that are much more healthy than alcohol. I like to encourage people to. I put a calendar item in my calendar every day that just pops up as “self care?” lorijovest Because taking care of yourself helps prevent you from getting to that point where you're just freaking out, stressing out. Chrissie when we talked, you had a lot of really interesting ideas of things that you do to help you heal that helped you cope that helped you get your emotional house in order, so that the sobriety thing isn't as difficult. Can you talk a little bit about those? 38:25.40 Chrissie Zavicar Yes, and I'll say too that sobriety was really the beginning and I was in counseling like cbt cognitive behavioral therapy for a good decade before I got sober actually just past five years like last week 39:30.72 lorijovest Nice, nice. 39:02.24 Chrissie Zavicar Like a few days ago and um, so for years I was in regular quote unquote regular counseling and I made progress in it but to me I didn't really start showing up with myself until I was till I took the alcohol away. And once I did that , I call early sobriety pms on steroids. Because it I mean it's like if someone moved something and you're sobbing and then you're angry. That's the funny thing, you wouldn't call me a clinical alcoholic. But oh my body was used to having that substance and it did not deal well with all of a sudden not having it. So you're inundated with these first of all these physiological emotions and then you're dealing with the emotions you were covering up with the alcohol. 40:49.74 Chrissie Zavicar So for me journaling was really really big. I've always been a journaler since I was probably in the fifth grade. I have journals dating back to elementary school. It's like a time capsule. But for me I'm a writer so I write feelings down. I started yoga when I got sober which was wonderful, and that actually helps with integrating body and mind together. It's a really good way to do that because a lot of times when we're trying to numb, we're disconnecting from our body because you know our mind. You can't always trust your mind, your mind goes on a bunch of different tangents. It goes in these different places where you get anxiety. You can do all these different things. Your body doesn't lie and there's times that your body knows things well before your brain does. 42:25.42 Chrissie Zavicar So you know, pay attention to your body, listen to your body. That's a big part of somatic therapy which I got into somatic therapy after getting sober a couple of years ago. I wanted someone that did work that wasn't cognitive behavioral therapy. I was like I can do that to myself at this point. I'm so. familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy and if you research actual trauma, talk therapy does not help real trauma. Because trauma is or you know what I have read and there's a book. I mentioned to you called “the body keeps the score.” 43:36.38 Chrissie Zavicar And it was the book recommended to me by Laura Mccollan. She said read that first. It talks about this individual that wrote it. He started working with Vietnam veterans and then he ended up working with a lot of individuals that had experienced all different kinds of traumas as technology got better. They did brain scans while they were reading these people accounts of their own traumatic experiences and there were horrible experiences and then they mapped the brain. The most basic example is the war veteran who's back home on the fourth of July and when the fireworks go off they believe they're in combat. That's the most basic example, but this book talks about that happening with everyone. These studies say that when you're triggered your brain believes you're actually back in that situation. So if you've ever been in that situation which I'm sure every single one of us has where you're like why am I reacting so strongly to this little thing and more than likely it's because you're relating your body your mind is relating that little thing to something much bigger in your life. Your brain is acting like you're back there like I'm faced with this threat again. So like I was bullied as a kid right? So then I would get these triggers of bullying in the workplace. Actually, people probably have experienced that. And I'm acting like these people are trying to take me down and they just said something on an adult level that was extremely innocent but you sit there and go oh that's why I'm acting like a child. 47:32.28 lorijovest And you are all of a sudden eight years old right? You go back to that time with your emotional response so fascinating. 47:26.26 Chrissie Zavicar Which it's very embarrassing. It's really not a fun experience. But the whole thing is the way to get through that is to connect body and mind so instead of when you have that trigger you're taken to this immediate brain response, you can start connecting with your body and recognizing it's okay I'm safe. 48:05.76 Chrissie Zavicar Um, not back in that other place and yoga is a good way to do that. Somatic Therapy is a good way to do that. I did a lot of inner child work and that continues to be very beneficial for me. I read a book called “the journey from abandonment to healing” and it talks about talking to your little. You're big and you're little. As a Journaler that was really helpful for me because I could actually Journal dialogue between each of these and for me personally it was helpful because it helped me separate this childlike behavior I was engaging in that was really humiliating to me. It also helped me realize that I was humiliated by that behavior. It was actually self-rejection. Um, I read this really profound quote in a different book. Um, that was called healing developmental trauma and it basically said. “You really come to a head when you recognize that you're doing to yourself what everyone else has been doing to you your entire life.” So by sitting there saying right? but it's like if you are ah ashamed by your own behavior. What you're really doing is rejecting a part of yourself that's calling for something so a part of you somewhere is in need of something and it might not be someone else's responsibility to accommodate that. It might be your own. But the more you try to push that away I can tell you from experience the louder it gets. So if you're sitting there going “Oh my gosh I hate when I get really upset because this person at work keeps talking down to me” or “I believe they're talking down to me. There's a huge None you believe somebody's talking down to you. And in reality they might not be but you're hearing it that way. you're reacting and responding it's on you to help yourself learn how to process that you know you are in an unhealthy situation. You need to remove yourself from or are you internalizing something a way that is because of your previous experience in Life. You're taking it a certain way. And I'll tell you that the biggest growth I've had since I quit drinking was in the workplace and it was Awful. It was awful having to do that in front of other people. 53:20.70 lorijovest Yeah, well yeah, well one of the reasons we do this is because I do think that we teach people how to do jobs but we don't teach them how to manage the emotional challenges that come with work because if you work with the same people every day, you're going to run into that person that triggers you with something you know or you're going to trigger something else and they're going to act out and you don't want to come back at them with your child and before you know what you got something really silly going on. So it's really interesting how employers don't train on emotion management or emotional health. 54:10.40 Chrissie Zavicar Yeah, 100% yeah and it actually fascinates me too and it's something I'm passionate about and I want to get into eventually is the idea that you don't become a different person just because you walk into your office. You're still carrying all your past baggage of all of these things. 54:49.14 Chrissie Zavicar But there's this expectation to just leave it on the porch, leave it on the doorstep, and it doesn't work that way. So either helping people understand how to cope or helping each other how to engage you know I don't know what the answer is I truly don't but I do know that I personally experienced an extremely difficult time period where I had to kind of get through some personal stuff in front of other people which is humiliating absolutely humiliating. We've covered a whole lot here and Chrissie. We always ask if you have any crazy work stories. You want to share because so many of us have really bizarre things that happen at work. Got any? This isn't really crazy I guess it's just kind of an entertaining story and I was and it's very general but I was telling somebody about this the other day. It made me laugh. So. When you work in the NFL, when you work for a team. You have to be a certain breed right? If you're a female you really got to be a guy's girl. and for me the way I grew up, I was kind of the son my dad never had and so for me I have a foul mouth. Actually, part of my issue with work that I was talking about that I had to get over was learning how to be more professional because I was so used to working in an environment with professional athletes and coaches that we swear whenever you want, you say whatever you want. So what always made me laugh was you know we're around this all the time I mean it is what it is there. You know. 01:01:42.88 lorijovest Oh yeah, yep. 01:01:35.96 Chrissie Zavicar Swearing or cursing. Whatever it's a professional sport and I would always laugh when I would be at practice and just randomly just out of nowhere a coach would be on the sideline. He'd be yelling and then he'd swear at someone and then he'd turn around and go “sorry about that Chrissie’ I'm like you know really really, you just picked right now? you picked this second to decide that you're so sorry for cursing this one time that you did out of the 0 that you did today. It just would always make me laugh. Oh yeah, it always mean like but yeah I traveled with the team I have some great great memories, hilarious stories just about just being a part of a team and you know honestly like I said being with that team in a lot of senses was like my college so it was a lot of fun. Yeah I'm like I'm a good photo bomber too. Chrissie Zavicar So Calvin Johnson ah he just was inducted into the hall of fame last year and he broke a record he broke the all time wide receiving yards record and I was the social media person and I had an all access pass. So I made sure that I was always there to capture photos and video. well the quote unquote real media got really mad at me really quickly because I would always put myself on the other side so that I would get the picture. so I have all of these pictures and actually when I do talks and I introduce myself and talk about how you used to work with the alliance, I have this slide of like 6 different photo bomb pictures of me. It's like where's Chrissie and I'm in the background of all these pictures with my phone like taking all these pictures and it's hilarious. So I'm like the world's best photo bomber. everybody I'm sure loathed me. 01:05:21.92 Chrissie Zavicar It was awful. But yeah, yep, that's me. 01:05:59.60 lorijovest Aka a the world's best photo Bomber Chrissie Zavicar. So thank you so much for joining us today. I really really appreciate it. Um, where can people find you and your work Chrissie. 01:05:50.20 Chrissie Zavicar Um, you can find me on Linkedin at http://linkedin.com/in/chrissiezavicar and they can look for the spelling here. Um, we will be launching my new website soon called http://stackbrands.com which is what my current business elink consulting is actually. Evolving into stack brands which is a partnership between me and my business partner Herman Moore he actually played for the lions as well. Not when I was there but he did play for the lions for 10 years. He was a fantastic wide receiver. Yep so we have our business. 01:07:16.98 lorijovest Amazing congratulations. 01:06:55.98 Chrissie Zavicar Thank you so my business is evolving from just being Linkedin to really being a branding and marketing agency but still doing a lot of Linkedin so anybody that wants to know all about Linkedin come find me. That's it for today guys. Thank you so much for joining us. I always like to close by inviting you to visit our website at work mom says dot com we have an intake form. Please contact me, let me know what you want to hear about what you'd like us to cover, what guest you'd like us to have, if you think you'd make a good guest and have some great stories to tell. We'd love to hear from you. And that's it. We'll see on the next episode. Thanks guys.