You intend not to drink, but you keep slipping up.
Your brain wants to offer you lots of unhelpful thoughts:
You’ll never be able to do this.
You’re weak-willed.
What’s the matter with you?
Hear me now, believe me later:
You will be able to do this.
This has nothing to do with weak or strong.
Nothing is the matter with you. Brains are wired to learn habits. You can unlearn a drinking habit.
The skill you need to make the change – allowing urges to go unanswered – is already present in your life in ways you may not even realize.
Maybe you don’t yell at your kids even when you are frustrated.
Maybe you choose to sleep on the decision to buy an expensive pair of shoes you don’t need and then decide the next day not to buy them.
Maybe you are stuck on a project at work and want to check Instagram, but don’t because you know you’ll lose focus.
These are examples of you not reacting to the urges of your lower brain. You can borrow this skillset and apply it to your drinking as well.
What does it feel like to not drink when you want to? Restless. That’s all. It’s uncomfortable, and you can handle it. You do it every day in hundreds of different ways. Give yourself credit.
Even if you can only identify little seedlings of this ability in your life, notice it, celebrate it. What you focus on, you grow.