People often say they drink alcohol to calm their anxiety. As we start to understand that alcohol actually contributes to our anxiety, we have to start learning healthy ways to cope with it. It’s not easy. In this episode, we talk with Travis, Antje, and Zoe about how we deal with anxiety in recovery, and we all walk away with some valuable new ideas. We hope you do, too.

Some of the concepts we cover include:

• How to stop ruminating
• The power in identifying anxiety
• Learning to name feelings
• Using creativity to cope and to explore feelings
• Signs of childhood anxiety
• Skin picking
• Tools for dealing with anxiety
• Recognizing what doesn’t work
• Self care as crisis prevention
• Medication assisted treatment

Travis mentions grounding exercises often used for anxiety. You can find more info here.

Julie mentions the I Am Sober app. You can learn more about the app on their website.

Antje and Julie talk about how much the book Alcohol Explained by William Porter helped them understand the connection between anxiety and alcohol.

Meet Our Guests:

Antje first discovered drinking as a way to “fix” her eating disorder. She thought that drinking was more acceptable than binging and purging all of her meals. When drinking grew more and more out of control, she reluctantly considered sobriety in January of 2022. Soon after, she found connection and support in an online sober community. She is so glad to that she took that first, scary step and gave sobriety a chance.

Get in touch:

Visit our website for tons of free resources including

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About your hosts:

Julie Miller is the founder of No Alcohol Needed, a recovery community supporting women in all stages of recovery from newly sober to recreating the life that's been waiting for them. She is a certified Recovery Coach Professional and has been coaching since 2023. Visit her website at noalcoholneeded.net

Steve Knapp is a men's mental health advocate. He's the co-host of the Forged in Silence podcast and he is passionate about helping men develop the emotional intelligence and resiliency to create meaningful, connected lives.