Confident Sober Women

Emotional Regulation: The Missing Piece in Your Recovery Journey

• Shelby • Episode 215

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Feeling Drained Even in Sobriety? Here's Why (And What to Do About It)

You got sober. You did the hard work. So why do you still feel completely emotionally exhausted?

In this powerful episode of Confident Sober Women, host Shelby John dives deep into the silent struggle many sober women face—emotional dysregulation and nervous system burnout. If you're walking through life in a fog of overwhelm or feeling like you’re doing everything “right” but still running on empty, this one’s for you.

Sobriety gets you out of the chaos, but it doesn’t automatically heal trauma or reset your nervous system. That’s the work of emotional sobriety—and it’s what this episode is all about.

💡 Here’s what you’ll learn today:

✅ Why emotional exhaustion in sobriety is not a sign of failure
✅ The difference between sobriety and emotional sobriety
✅ How to regulate your nervous system before trying to “solve” anything
✅ A 3-step roadmap to rebuild your emotional energy from the inside out
✅ Practical tools to ground your body and process emotions without judgment

Shelby also shares the proven healing tools she uses in her practice like EMDR therapy, EMDR intensives, and remote neurofeedback—and how they can support deeper emotional healing, even years into sobriety.

🛠️ Three Steps to Begin Rebuilding Today

  1. Regulate First, Reflect Later – Calm your nervous system before diving into “why.” Use grounding tools like deep nasal breathing, 5-4-3-2-1, or a quick barefoot walk.
  2. Name the Emotion Without Judgment – Practice saying, “Right now, I’m noticing…” to acknowledge and release your feelings safely.
  3. Rebuild from the Root – Go deeper than symptoms. Address unresolved trauma and dysregulation with effective tools like EMDR or neurofeedback.

If you're ready to stop white-knuckling your emotions and start truly healing, this episode offers compassionate insight and doable steps to start feeling better now.

🎧 Don’t forget to hit subscribe and share this episode with a sober sister or any woman you know who’s navigating emotional overwhelm—even if she’s not in recovery.

📍 Want deeper support?
👉 Learn about EMDR Intensives
👉 Explore Remote Neurofeedback Programs

✨ Emotional exhaustion doesn't mean you're not strong. It means your body is asking for deeper care—and you absolutely deserve that.

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Oh, and by the way, if you didn’t know, my remote Neurofeedback Therapy program is up and running. Learn more here!

If you aren't part of the Confident Sober Women Facebook group, it's a great place to be. There are over a thousand other sober women there building lives they don't want to escape from. Come on over and join us.

And if you haven't read my memoir, grab a copy today and maybe a second one for a friend. There is so much hope in recovery, and I shared my story so raw and vulnerable so that others would know they aren't alone and that there is a way to live well, manage relationships, parent your kids, and have a healthy body, all while staying sober. Grab a copy of Recovering in Recovery: The Life-Changing Joy of Sobriety wherever books are sold.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Confident Sober Women podcast. I'm your guide, shelby John. I'm the mother of three, wife to one and sober since July 1st 2002. As sober women, we have something huge in common, and when we share our lives and our stories with each other, we feel that sense of belonging and connection. So we know we are no longer alone. In this podcast, you will hear real life talk about building confidence and transforming your life beyond recovery. So come on, let's talk. Well, hey there, sober ladies. Thank you so much for joining me today for the Confident Sober Women podcast. I am so glad that you're here Today.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk to you about something that I know so many of you are feeling, but maybe you just haven't found the words for it yet Emotional exhaustion. Yes, this can even happen in sobriety. So if you are anything like me, you have experienced this probably on more than one occasion. I know that you got sober, you worked hard, maybe even kind of a long time ago, and it was probably, if you're anything like me, the hardest thing that you've ever done. And yet you still feel completely drained. There's a lot of overwhelm, or maybe even like you're walking around in a fog of emotional heaviness. So if that's you, I want you to know right now you're not doing anything wrong and you're not broken and you're not failing at recovery. What you're experiencing is something I see in so many women that I work with and that I've experienced myself on more than one occasion along the way, and its name is emotional dysregulation. So sobriety gets you out of the chaos, right, but it doesn't automatically reset your nervous system, or it certainly doesn't heal the trauma that got you stuck there. And that's the work of emotional sobriety. You've heard us talk about that term many times if you've been around here for a while, and it's about moving beyond just abstaining from substances to actually rebuilding inner peace, self-trust and clarity, and that's why I always say sobriety is only the beginning. That's right, sobriety is only the beginning. So today I want to talk to you about three simple but super powerful steps that you can take right now to begin rebuilding emotional energy and regulation. So grab a pen or, if you're driving, make sure you download this episode or save it for later, so that you can really pause and take these in. So step number one is regulate first, reflect later.

Speaker 1:

So when you start to feel that overwhelm or shutdown or you become kind of emotionally reactive. Your nervous system is likely in a stress response, and one of the best things that you can do is to pause and ask yourself really good questions. Ask yourself what is going on with me right now? Or, said a different way, what does my body need right now? What is going on with me? Or things like what does my body need right now? And then I want you to try one of these things.

Speaker 1:

You can place your hand on your chest and start breathing slowly. You want to use your nose for these breaths because there's a smaller space for the breath to come in. That means the breath will be slower and you can exhale very slowly. You can do very simple grounding exercises like the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 exercise. You can also go outside for a five-minute walk, and if you can do it in bare feet, it's even better. So once you ask yourself those questions, begin to think about what you can do right now, so you can place your hand on your chest, breathe in slowly through your nose and slowly exhale. You can do other grounding exercises. You can also try to do a quick walk barefoot if you can.

Speaker 1:

The point of this is to soothe your body first Before you try to solve anything. So often we get into the whys why am I feeling like this? Why is this happening right now? Or I did all the things I was supposed to do I drank my water, I ate my food, I've had a nap. You know we get stuck in that we want to solve it or understand why this is happening. Instead, I want you to really start to soothe your body first and then you can reflect or heal. Beyond that, we can't do that when we're in survival mode.

Speaker 1:

Step number two is to name the emotion, but without any judgment. So emotional sobriety means getting comfortable with naming what you feel, so basically using feeling words. So, even if it's messy or complicated or unexpected, what are the feelings that you are experiencing right now? Could be things like guilt, shame, sadness, grief, anger, confusion, happiness, joy, elation. All of them belong. So try using this kind of script, if you will. You can even jot this down in your notes app so you can refer to it in the moment, so you can say this to yourself Right now, I'm noticing anger. That makes sense, because I just had a difficult conversation with a coworker and I'm feeling safe in this. Another example might be right now I'm noticing that I'm anxious. That makes sense, because my daughter is traveling out of the country and I'm safe to feel it. Naming these emotions helps your brain process and release the emotion, instead of stuffing it down and or like acting out on it. And number three is rebuild from the root. So we're always trying to get to the roots, not just on the surface, and this is where the deeper healing comes in.

Speaker 1:

So for many women, emotional exhaustion and sobriety comes from unresolved trauma and nervous system dysregulation. We've talked a lot about this here. You can check out some previous episodes where I really dive deep, but today I want to exactly focus on the things that I do. So EMDR therapy, emdr intensives and remote neurofeedback those are the specific tools I use in my practice. So EMDR therapy? It stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. It helps you to reprocess stuck trauma and memories that may still be driving emotional responses today, even though they're from way back or even though you don't even remember them. They maybe created some negative beliefs about yourself from your early childhood and now they're stuck. Remote neurofeedback helps to train your brain, using operant conditioning, to regulate itself more effectively over time, even while you're asleep. So even if you've been sober for a while but you still feel like you're stuck emotionally because we all have this and ages and stages bring on different parts of this these options might be your next step, and you can layer them on with all kinds of other things.

Speaker 1:

So I just want to leave you with this final thought Emotional exhaustion doesn't mean that you're not strong. It means that your system, your nervous system, your body, is asking for a deeper level of support, and I want you to know that that support exists and that you deserve it. So if this episode resonates with you, I want you to take one of these steps that I shared today, and if you're ready for a deeper healing, check out the links in the show notes below, or you can just go directly to my website, shelbyjohncom. You can learn more about EMDR intensives and you can also learn more about the remote neurofeedback program. If this makes sense to you as well and you feel like somebody else in your life, even if they're not in sobriety, might resonate or could really use this kind of support, please make sure you share the episode with them. Until next time, make sure you take care of your energy and remember you're doing better than you think.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Confident Sober Women. If you enjoyed this conversation, hit the subscribe button above so you won't miss any upcoming episodes. And hey, if you really loved it, leave me a review. You can learn more about the Sober Freedom Inner Circle membership at wwwshelbyjohncoachingcom. Forward slash inner circle. See you next time.