How to Deal with Raw Emotions When Taking a Break from Alcohol

By Karolina Rzadkowolska

Taking a break from alcohol is a life-changing experience. It improves your sleep, rebalances your brain chemistry to feel happier, heals your body, gives you more energy, and allows you to practice self-love and growth every single day.

But because alcohol is really good at numbing the brain, it’s also normal to start to feel new emotions coming up, emotions that you might not have felt for a long time. It can feel raw and unnerving, but just know, you’re not alone, and this is very normal.

Alcohol drastically affects the neurochemistry of your brain. It lowers receptivity to dopamine, serotonin, and GABA (neurotransmitters that make you feel happy) and heightens the release of cortisol, adrenaline, and dynorphin (chemicals that make you feel sad and anxious). It takes a while for your brain to rebalance during a break, anywhere from 4-8 weeks.

When you remove the alcohol, all of a sudden…

It’s super normal to feel very intense, raw, and even painful emotions because, in essence, alcohol has been numbing your natural expression of emotions. Alcohol is technically an anesthetic and it suppresses emotions and feelings. We often feel a lot of stress at work, have way too much to do at home, not enough help, and drown in feelings of overwhelm and stress. Drinking numbs all of this but doesn’t actually deal with it. You could live your whole life in this state and carry on in the same cycle, never asking yourself, am I happy with the way I’m living my life? It’s like being on a never-ending hamster wheel and never stopping to ask yourself what changes would make you happy.

Taking a break from alcohol allows you to feel your emotions again. Emotions that are there for you to learn from and make shifts in your life.

The point of life isn’t to only feel happy emotions. It’s to feel all of your emotions, process them in healthy ways, and learn from them by making shifts in your life.

Blocking negative emotions

Blocking negative emotions just suppresses them as they get buried deeper and deeper into your subconscious. We’ve been taught to block our negative emotions since we are children: don’t cry, be strong, don’t get too excited. This is the human condition and learning to handle and overcome your negative emotions is what will give you so much more happiness and joy in general.

How to deal with newfound emotions while taking a break from alcohol

Learning how to process and journal through your emotions is such an important life tool and skill.

One of my favorite books on this topic is called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, by the late Debbie Ford. In this book, Ford deals with some of the most negative, hard, and hurtful emotions we can experience and why we’re experiencing them.

By trying to suppress our most negative emotions, Ford theorizes that we are trying to disavow parts of ourselves that we don’t like. These are our shadow selves and learning to accept this part of ourselves leads to deep healing.

Pushing it away and disowning it leads to shame and pain. But accepting yourself, all parts of you, leads to forgiveness and self-love.

That’s why changing your relationship with alcohol has such a profound effect on your personal growth

You build a solid foundation in your life and take care of your basic needs. You love yourself and know what you want. Your bases are covered. And with this solid foundation, you are now able to become a magical creator in your life and design your destiny. The courage you get from transforming your relationship with alcohol gives you the confidence to go after anything you want! If I can change this area in my life, I can do anything!

Like writing a book, launching a business, or going after the freedom lifestyle you’ve always wanted.

The possibilities in front of you are endless.

If you're ready to affirm your new alcohol-free identity and go after your biggest dreams, let's talk about how VIP coaching can get you there. Book a free discovery session here.