Online Alcoholism & Addiction Counselling

Have you become dependent on alcohol to give you self confidence? Many of our clients say they have no self confidence left because of their drinking. Sometimes they feel so guilty about their behaviour, towards their families for the pain they’ve caused them, for instance.

Eventually you might lose your belief in your own abilities or worth. If you can’t socialize comfortably when you’re sober, if you don’t think you’re entertaining / clever / open enough without having a drink first, then your confidence obviously needs to recover.

When you try to cut down on your drinking, one of the things people often have difficulty with is their lack of confidence in themselves. To rebuild that self esteem again takes time. When you feel good about who you are, then you’re more confident. You need to observe yourself - notice when you are judging yourself negatively or blaming yourself for mistakes you think you’ve made.

Part of this comes down to forgiveness. We all make mistakes, we’re human after all. But forgiving yourself for pain you’ve caused loved ones can be particularly difficult. Very often we are far more forgiving of others than we are of ourselves. Mistakes or failures are just incidents, or certain things you are still learning, try not to see them as evidence of a defective personality - there’s no doubt still plenty of things that make you a valuable person.

The process of rebuilding your self confidence also requires recognizing your ability to deal with difficult feelings or difficult situations without alcohol - you don’t fall apart, it’s just difficult that’s all. If you don’t believe you can cope with life without being drunk, then you won’t.

And believing in yourself is what self confidence is all about.

Everyone seems to drink alcohol in our culture. Many seem to drink to excess on occasion. But how much drinking is too much?

Many of our clients say - why can’t I be like other people? They seem to be able to drink without getting drunk all the time.

Regular drinking is not necessarily a problem - in Mediterranean cultures families will usually have wine with dinner on most days. But they just have a glass or two. Few people in those countries see any problem with drinking like that.

The truth is, it varies from person to person - there’s no absolute level of alcohol consumption at which you have a problem.

Most people know if they’re drinking too much

… even before other people tell them. Basically if the negative consequences are more than the positive ones. But there are many signs to look out for -

• if you’re looking forward to a drink more than the other things in your life,
• if you’re often feeling depressed or guilty - like you need to hide how much you’re drinking from others, or even having a ’secret’ drink when you can get away with it,
• if you’ve ever noticed a pile of your empties and thought ‘wow, that’s getting big’,
• if the following day, you can’t concentrate on what you need to, because you ‘just can’t face it today’ - (you’re too hungover),
• if you’re finding it difficult to look people in the eye, because you think they might be judging you,
• if you’re buying a bottle during the day, do you buy lots of groceries with it to hide the fact that you’re buying alcohol before lunchtime?
• but one of the surest signs is this - if you’re hungover, and you start thinking ‘just one drink will take this hangover away’, then you’ve definitely got a problem.

What signs have you noticed that you’re drinking too much?