This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without judgment,

pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Alright, so hi, it's Annie Grace. I'm coming with a readers question. The question is how do I deal with the fear of being exposed as an alcoholic and the need to remain private or anonymous?

I feel that not being open will halt my ability to find freedom while hiding in the need to be private.

I think one of the most important things that you could actually do in this question is to, first of all, I think there's two things.

Number one is I think you can honor the desire to be private. I think that the belief that being private is going to halt something on some level of healing for you is a really interesting one and it's one worth digging into.

But it is a belief. It's your belief. You've made it up. It's not true necessarily. But if it's true for you because you believe it, then it's going to have ramifications.

So what we believe creates how we feel, creates what we do. And so if you believe that you being private, you honoring your need for privacy is going to halt your experience or how quickly you're going to find freedom, then that's really looking, worth looking at that belief specifically.

Why is it that you believe being private is going to halt your experience? And maybe you can dig into other things like, okay, well, I believe that I need other people to hold me accountable.

And if that's true, I think that there's lots of different ways that you can do that while still remain private.

And one of the things that you can do is just create a Facebook account or we have a great community at this nakedmindcommunity.com that's off Facebook completely where you can just sign up under a new email address and a new name and really engage with people and get accountability, get support, get peer support.

So I don't think sometimes we have these beliefs and these beliefs are the things that are actually trying to keep us from changing. And they're not really true.

So I don't think that there's any harm to remaining completely private. And I think there's lots of super creative ways you can do that from creating a different Facebook account, from just keeping things, you know, in the privacy of your own home.

If you do any of this nakedmind programs, like the alcohol experiment, which is always free at alcoholexperiment.com, all the time, those things are just an email address. So just get a new email account, log in there.

And lots of people create really fun pseudonyms for themselves, like working on my wine habit or whatever, just something fun. And that makes you smile when you log in.

And then it's completely private and completely anonymous. And you get all the support and accountability you need. So I'd look at that belief for yourself.

The second thing that I would really look into is why you feel like you need to be called an alcoholic. And I think in your question you say, how do I deal with the fear of being exposed and as an alcoholic?

Why do you think you're an alcoholic? And does that word empower you to feel good to make the change you need or does it disempower you?

And for some people, that answer is totally different. For some people, they're totally empowered by the word alcoholic because they say, knowing that I'm on alcoholic means that I know that I can ever drink again and safety.

That is super good for me. That empowers me. For other people, the idea of having to be called an alcoholic is terrifying and actually keeps them from leaning into change because they're so afraid of the label.

And so examine how that makes you feel. Again, that's just a belief that you have that you're an alcoholic. In fact, it's not medically or scientifically true. If you want some like real scientific identification of your drinking habits, you can go to just Google, alcohol use disorder, the 11 criteria questions and go through those 11 questions. And you will get a response if you have mild, immediate, mild, moderate or severe alcohol use disorder.

And then based on that, you can say, okay, this is where I'm at. And this is the honest reality of it. But the truth is, according to those 11 questions, most people who drink have alcohol use disorder, at least mild alcohol use disorder.

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