A while ago, I shared that I was off on an adventure by journalling for 30 days. I'm happy to say that more than a few people did come along for the ride too, and not just Mum!

I spent the month unpacking all sorts of things. I've learned a lot about myself and while some things I won't share; other notes I made, I can happily translate into Radiant Chaos.

It certainly was an adventure. It is the longest I've spent wandering through my thoughts, feeling all the feels in too long. I thought on and wrote about things I'd not considered for years.

I found space in my head by clearing the clutter, which is all I wanted to do. I also found space to write up most of #YourLifeInInk, which while the series is still ongoing, I am not beating myself up for taking my time in writing it.

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Today I want to unpack 'Wellness Intentions'. But before I get there, I need to take you on a biology detour.

One of the things I love about working a sobriety practice is that you learn that using, (or abusing if you prefer that terminology), runs a wide gamut. From doom-scrolling on your phone, to alcohol, to vaping - the list of vices to distract yourself from life is endless.

What I need you to understand, particularly if you're sniffy about people who drink too much; to bring it back to me, it started innocuously. Wine o'clock was a way of marking a line in the sand between work / personal time. It was a tool I used that provided relief, like a slipping into a warm bath. But if any behaviour becomes destructive, to you or to people you care about, you need to address it.

Our brains are frantically working to keep us safe. We evolved by learning patterns as we didn't have time to learn new things every time. We relied on our brains to help remember the berries that made us poorly, or what chased us. The brain has a network of neurons that holds information to cut down on processing time. Called the Reticular Activating System or RAS, it is the conduit between the conscious and subconscious parts of the brain.

Working almost like a reflex action, the RAS is an evolutionary model and is still active today. As an example, if you are looking to buy a specific car, you see them all the time. The RAS notices the cars because you've told it you're interested in them by looking at the specifications online. Along with the RAS, the Limbic System all mammals evolved with listens to the shortcuts our body sends from all senses, again to keep us safe.

Recognising a threat response and responding to it with fight-flight-freeze, the two amygdala that receive these messages from the limbic system; are buried deep in our brains, almost down by the brain stem. These two areas are how we perceive and process emotions, memory and decision-making. They each have independent memory systems, but work together to store, encode, and interpret emotions. To add to their wonder, the amygdala cannot be classified as a structural, nor a functional unit. They are more a cluster of neurons - just hanging out.

When a threat is over, other mammals quickly go back normal baseline behaviours. Alas, us humans with our big ol' evolved brains run on a slightly different operating system. While our evolutionary programming and our cerebral cortex work together, they can also contradict each other. Our brains no longer hunt, gather and make art in our familial groups. We are under the pump at work; driving in traffic where speed limits are apparently optional; people are angry at their servers because their high-maintenance coffee took a nanosecond too long to be put in their hands; we are also bombarded by information constantly and...

In short...

As these signals accumulate through the day, it means that the fight-flight-freeze messages in humans have gone a bit skewiff (technical term). Our brains are no longer sure of what is a real or a perceived threat, and consequently take a long time to calm down, if we can at all.

Have you noticed politician's rhetoric and the way they make people feel unsafe promotes and provokes fight-flight-freeze responses?

As humans, we feel always uncomfortable making any change, we don't feel safe until we know what we're doing. This comes back to those real and perceived threats and the lower brain evolution which runs spatial memory, navigation etc. but in direct contradiction with higher-consciousness actions. We know what we need to do, but our brain is working against us. Any learned behaviour at its base level is a neural pathway short-cut that our brains run, because it is easier and saves energy. Changing anything takes time, effort and a steady stream of rewarding yourself to reinforce the behaviour to make it stick.

Whether you like this or not; taking the edge off is still chemically a reward. The longer you do anything; the more resilience your brain builds to those chemicals, therefore you need more to get the same relief. Remember the amygdala? If you drink to excess, it is damaged and reduces the brain's plasticity, which makes it difficult for neurons to make connections to other neurons. It is also impacted by anxiety, traumatic events, the steady stream of cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies doesn't help it either.

When people say, "Well, why can't you just not drink?" they do not understand that by numbing a part of your life, you taught your brain you could function across the rest of it. It's not enough to just go cold-turkey. The problem with a perceived threat is still there, waiting in the wings for its cue. When life gets hard, your neural pathways will tell you, "Hi! This pattern worked. Why don't you use it again?"

Here's the kicker, even while that destructive behaviour expands from the outside to the middle of your life, your brain is still thinking that it is keeping you safe, because it is running a program that worked.

You very rarely can stop any addictive behaviour without support. Unpacking the layers of learned behaviour, while your coping mechanism has been taken away from, you takes huge amounts of effort. As you work your sobriety, you quickly realise the only way out is through. You have to address what you've been avoiding, while at the same time as (re)building a life you don't want to escape from.

As I hope I've shown, we are literally fighting evolutionary triggers to make a change as simple as getting out for a walk or to the gym regularly. Imagine knowing you need to stop doing something; but you are in chemical withdrawal and your brain is trying to work without the feel-good reward chemicals it produced when the chemical was released into your blood stream? All the while the brain is trying to repair itself, building new neuro pathways and you're trying to keep going in your day-to-day life?

It's hard y'all.

Living with ADHD means I need down time to self-regulate. I need more rest than I thought, and my husband's nickname for me was 'Five Toed Sloth'. There is difference in resting and overwhelm; when I'm in overwhelm, I basically power down and sleep for hours. One of the easiest ways to self-regulate for any neurospicy person? Trawling through your phone. Which if I don't put boundaries in place leads to dysregulation through too much input.

It's hard y'all.

One day at a time is often scoffed at, "How hard can it be?" I choose not to drink today. I celebrate that I didn't drink yesterday. But I have to decide not to drink again tomorrow. I also have to set my life up so that I don't want to.

Which brings me back, with a handbrake turn, to taking steps daily to build a life you want to live. The small stuff you do, day-in-day-out adds up to a lot, so make time to do the things you enjoy day-in-day-out.

If you set up wellness intentions to support your behavioural changes, you can see what throws you off course. As you work them out, you will feel when something is out of alignment with how you want to live.

I intend to walk around Lake Wendouree each week. When I go, I take a photo in the same spot, with my back to the Olympic Rings. One of these photos is in the header of this email.

I intend to drink at least 2 bottles of fizzy water a day, but I also drink gallons of tea, kombucha and really enjoy my coffee of a morning.

I intend to eat well - for me. I know what that looks like, as I worked with a nutritional physiologist to work it out. Every so often though, I will have a bowl of ice cream. Because ice cream is better than a bottle of wine.

I intend to read at least 52 books this year.

Life happens one day at a time for all of us, each day I wake up and say 'Thanks!' Each night, I reflect on what I did well, what I could do better. My wellness intentions are guardrails to keep me on track.

One of the reasons AA works, is because the people guiding you on your journey have been there, done it and will not put up with any BS. When people fail? It's because they do not do the work and do not do their work. Taking a complete moral inventory, Step 4 is where people decide it is too difficult. Owning your mistakes is not easy.

However if you go to a meeting, share and listen, you realise you are not on your own. You borrow from other people's experiences, leaning on their wisdom, while you shore up yours. People reach down and help you, because someone did that for them.

That is what Radiant Chaos is for, to help you realise you are not your own. I'm walking with you, sharing the things that work for me. A huge realisation after a month of journalling, is that I have now set intentions. When you live with intention, the alignment to who you want to be is easier.

Let me know what your intentions are,
Mads x

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