Episode 109: Soberful with Veronica Valli

Feb 23

Author and life coach Veronica Valli has been alcohol-free for 21 years! Coming from a traditional 12-step recovery background, her new book Soberful helps you uncover a fulfilling life that’s free from alcohol. In today’s episode, Veronica shares her journey to sobriety, along with the five key pillars of unlocking sustainable sobriety: movement, connection, balance, process and growth. By taking inventory of your life, relationships, and cyclical patterns of behavior, deep healing, joy, and transformation can be found.

Karolina’s new book Euphoric: Ditch Alcohol and Gain a Happier, More Confident You has been on bookshelves for over a month now! Buy the book, share the book, and tell your friends. And be sure to leave a review on Amazon so others can find it. We so appreciate you helping everyone have access to this knowledge and opportunity!

The journey of sobriety beyond abstinence

Starting at the age of 14, Veronica began living in an adult world, dressing up and going to bars and pubs while using alcohol as a means of feeling comfortable in her own skin. She drank and partied through her teens, often incorporating drugs into the mix. At eighteen, Veronica experienced terrifying drug-induced psychosis, resulting in crippling anxiety, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation.

What people saw on the outside was very different from what was happening on the inside.

Veronica kept her anxiety and depression hidden and used drinking to cope. She attended college and got a degree in women's studies, bought a home, was engaged, traveling, and constantly striving to check all the boxes, hoping she could gain happiness. She had never had a DUI or been fired from a job. Life looked good on paper.

Can you relate to this feeling of looking outside of yourself for peace and joy, when it ultimately needs to come from within?

While living in Florida, Veronica signed up for an addictions counseling course in pursuit of becoming a therapist. The result was a slow awakening that ultimately led to her recovery journey. She could finally see how alcohol was her way of coping with fear and emotions.

Veronica’s sobriety came through the 12-step program. With limited resources and desperate to overcome her mental struggles, she made the most of the program, found a sponsor, and trusted their wisdom. But the journey doesn’t end once you stop drinking.

As Veronica moved into sober living, she realized there was even deeper work to do. She took inventory of her life, her relationships, and her cyclical patterns of behavior and found deep healing and transformation.

Maybe you’re alcohol-free, seeking personal growth, or shifting out of an unsupportive habit. Whatever it is for you, a key part of any transformation is self-reflection. Veronica describes it as “revealing ourselves to ourselves.” Taking the time to reflect and do this important work will help you heal childhood wounds, cultivate true and intimate relationships, and live your best life!

Internal transformation and the 5 Pillars of Sobriety

Veronica eventually returned to the UK and became a psychotherapist working with private clients and in rehab facilities. It’s so inspiring to hear her story of transformation. Now 21 years alcohol-free and a successful life coach, she just recently released her book, Soberful.

I love how Veronica explains the importance of personal growth work:

“We live in two worlds: the external world and the internal world. We get lost in the external world - the checklist, how much you weigh, what you look like, what other people think of you, how much you earn, how big your car is. And we think if we check all of these boxes, we'll be happy and satisfied and safe. Now, we have to exist in this external world, but our home is the internal world. And that's our inner self; how we feel about ourselves.”

Throughout her book, Veronica shares that a key piece to living a soberful life is boundaries. By setting boundaries, you are able to create clarity in what you need, what you are able and willing to do (or not!), and cultivate true, meaningful relationships.

She further digs into the five pillars of sobriety, which are explored in so much more detail inside her book:

Movement - This is the importance of being physically well AND being conscious of what we move towards and what we move away from.
Connection - This can be broken into intimacy, friendship, and wider community.
Balance - When we are off balance, we feel uncomfortable in our own skin, and if we feel uncomfortable in our own skin for too long, our brains will look for an anesthetic.
Process - This is about understanding how our past shows up in our present and looking at our childhood. How were we shaped? How were our belief systems formed, particularly the limiting ones? When we focus on process, this is when we reveal ourselves to ourselves.
Growth - We are always being called to grow. Growth is about honoring the call to evolve and developing the skills to navigate around the ego and the resistance that will come hand in hand with that work.

How the times have changed

In today’s world of intoxicating Instagram posts, likes, news feeds, and social media rabbit holes, people are very public about their alcohol-free journey now more than ever before. This is completely contrary to Veronica’s experience many years ago, when feminism told women that drinking like the men made them equal and free. It gives her so much hope to see people vulnerably sharing the ups and downs of their recovery and choosing sobriety through it all.

By sharing your own journey transparently and in the moment, you’ll powerfully inspire others of what’s possible in the thick of their own struggles.

The fact that people are choosing to be alcohol-free, not because it is an addiction and destructive, but simply because it doesn’t bring joy or contentment into their lives is a profound shift from a few decades ago.

Not only are there so many unique paths to recovery, there are also people simply choosing to live an alcohol-free lifestyle. This is beautiful because it brings visibility to something that is often stigmatized by shame.

Not drinking is not only something to NOT be ashamed of, it’s something to be proud of!

“The five pillars of sobriety are movement, connection, balance, process, and growth. And it's not about we can't spend our days staying away from a drink one day at a time - that's just exhausting. What we need to do is like every human being, do some personal development, and then the drinking problem and everything else then just gets taken care of.” Veronica Valli

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Learn more about Veronica through her Website and be sure to follow her on Instagram.

Soberful, Veronica’s new book is also available now.

Karolina’s book is available in hardcover, Kindle, and as an audiobook. Be sure to get your copy of Euphoric: Ditch Alcohol and Gain a Happier, More Confident You today and leave your review.

Follow @euphoric.af on Instagram

And as always, rate, review, and subscribe so we can continue spreading our message far and wide.