Ep. 1- From Surviving to Thriving
EPISODE 1.- Overcoming Life's Challenges and Embracing Happiness
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After facing a series of devastating life events, including my father's multiple sclerosis, my mother's terminal cancer, and my house burning down in a California wildfire, I discovered the tools and support needed to not only survive but to thrive. Welcome to Hard Times No More, where I share my personal journey and the process I used to transform my challenges, offering insights on how you can do the same in your own life.
In this heartfelt episode, I discuss my experiences with anxiety, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the power of a supportive community. Learn how being present for my feelings and working through them allowed me to find happiness and peace of mind. If you're tired of struggling with boundaries, people-pleasing, and relationship problems, join me as we say goodbye to hard times for good and embrace a life full of healthy, meaningful relationships.
The Healthy Relationship Toolkit is no longer available but you can find more helpful practices by signing up for Stepping Off The Chaos Roller Coaster: 3 Simple Steps For Anxiety Relief:
https://mrs-hard.com/stepping-off-the-chaos-roller-coaster
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Hi, i'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, and this is Hard Times No More, a podcast for people who are tired of struggling with boundaries, people pleasing and relationship problems. I have overcome some hard times. Within three years, i stopped drinking, my mom died of cancer and my house burnt down in a California wildfire, and those are just the highlights. I have a lot of reasons to be miserable, but I'm not. The truth is, life was more challenging before these events happened. If you are tired of waiting for your circumstances to change to find happiness and peace of mind, you are in the right place. Join me as I share the tools I use and love to transform challenges into assets and interview others about their relationship journeys. Together, let's learn how to have a happy life full of healthy, meaningful relationships and say goodbye to hard times for good. Hey everyone, i'm so excited to have you here and so excited to start this podcast. If you don't know me, my name is Alessandra Tolome hard, also known as Mrs Hard. Thanks to my husband, mary, and him, i got that last name. I'm a wellness coach and massage therapist. I've experienced a lot of transformation in the past like seven years And what totally lights me up is sharing the tools I've learned and my experiences with others so they can transform their greatest challenges into assets. So that's why I started this podcast and that's why I started the coaching work I do. Through the years, i've learned many methods that have helped me through some of my biggest challenges and created space not only to survive but also thrive. For a long time, i ran from life's challenges. I used people, places and things to avoid my feelings, because I could not stand to be me and my feelings and my life felt so overwhelming. I didn't even know where to start. I didn't have the tools to work through these issues and I also didn't have hope that life could be better. I thought change was impossible and I felt doomed to live a very hard and difficult life. This was also a self-fulfilling prophecy, because even when things were going well, i was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Let me share a little bit about my background with you. So I grew up with a father who's had multiple sclerosis. My whole life, my well-being and happiness was completely tied to his well-being for many years. If you've ever had a family member with a debilitating disease, you know it's not just the family member that needs support, it's the whole family. I did not know this. I didn't have access to the right kind of tools or help for a long time, and I struggled with severe anxiety. I used alcohol, toxic relationships, work, you name it to check out, because I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin. I was also attracted to people who carried a lot of pain because I felt like they understood me. So, needless to say, my life was very chaotic In 2015,.
My mother, who was my rock, unexpectedly was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal lung cancer on her 60th birthday. I really wanted to be there for her, but the exact opposite happened. I completely spiraled. I couldn't show it for her. I can show it for work, i can show it for anything in life. Because I was debilitated by my anxiety. My drinking had gotten out of control, to put it lightly, and I decided to see a grief in life coach. She said something to me that changed my life. I was honest with this coach and I had a history of not being honest with my counselors or therapists because I didn't want anyone to really know what was going on with me.
I was ashamed of what was happening in my life. My relationships were a mess and I was blacking out every time I drank, which was every day, and I couldn't be honest with them or myself. So when I saw Angela shout out to her, something was different. I could trust her immediately and I told her the truth about my parents. My dad wasn't doing well, he was living in a nursing home and I didn't know how long my mom was going to live. She was on an experimental form of chemo and the doctors didn't know if she had weeks or months. I was also honest about my drinking, because it was so bad. And Angela said what if one of these times you are in a blackout, one of your parents goes into the hospital for the last time and you never get to say goodbye? That shook my world in the way that I absolutely needed it to.
I had this whim of inspiration. I don't know if you've ever felt this whim before. Like you knew you needed to make a change and the discomfort you were feeling was worse than the fear of the unknown. And you decided to take that leap and make a change. That's the whim I felt and I ran with it. I stopped drinking, i started going to a 12 step group and I learned tools to manage my anxiety and to transform my hardships that were happening and I no longer felt deep shame, regret and self pity. I started to be present for my feelings and work through them. I began to experience a shift in my impulses and behavior. I found a supportive community and I listened to the other people in this community who shared their raw, authentic experiences and the tools they used to move through those experiences with grace.
When my mother died in 2016, I had a community to support me through that process and I also had tools to lean on to cope in a healthy way. And then, a year later I kid you not my house burnt down in a California wildfire and once again, i leaned on this community and I leaned on the tools to go through the process of these feelings and this experience that I was having, instead of running away. And what happened was I didn't just survive these experiences. I started to thrive because of them And I was able to see the gifts that were coming from being present for these feelings in working through them.
For example, in 2017, when my house burnt down, i stayed with my boyfriend at the time today, husband's family And I had been afraid of becoming close to them and I wasn't sure if it was apparent. No-transcript had a very dysfunctional family growing up and I felt vulnerable, like his family was, so great they were gonna find out something about me that they wouldn't like and they wouldn't love me or accept me. So I kept people at a distance for this reason And after my house burnt down, i stayed with his family for two weeks at one point and a month at another point. I tried moving in with a roommate but it didn't go well And so I went back to his family's house. Thank God they had me there and they let me stay And I became close with them and I really let my guard down and they became my family during this time. So, looking back my house burning down, my mother passing away a year prior those were very destabilizing events and walking through those feelings, not running from them and using the right tools made these events very stabilizing in the long run, because I could see how I could get through anything and that I wasn't alone and didn't need to be alone through the process. So in these podcast episodes I'm gonna share my experience. Sometimes I'll have another person joining me and I'll ask them about their life and their relationship experiences And then I will share some tools, a process I used to shift my challenges, so you can get a sense of how it's done.
So take a moment to consider who or what you are struggling with. What do you think needs to change to feel more fulfillment in your life? When I first considered this, i had a long list. I was struggling with whomever I was dating, usually because they were addicted to something and I felt like I wasn't a priority in their life, because they would put their addiction ahead of me. I believed if only I could fix them, then my life would be good. I also wasn't willing to look at my own substance use and I focused on other people needing to change for me to feel happy. I was struggling with my father's illness. I thought he was gonna die every year of my life from age 17 to 27. I had a long list of what I felt like needed to change in my life, but in the beginning it was all focused on external people, places and things, not what I needed to change internally. So what shifted?
The desire I had to make a change was greater than my daily discomfort. One thing that I've experienced and seen in other people is that most people don't just wake up one day incredibly uncomfortable in their life situation. It's a gradual process that happens over time through a series of small decisions that are more gratifying in the moment but not positive in the long run and not moving them in the direction that they really want to go. Like it was more uncomfortable for me to drink and spend time around people who drink heavily than to stop drinking and make new friends or change my surroundings. And I'm not saying that everyone should stop drinking. I definitely don't believe that. I just know it was a problem for me And it was super uncomfortable for me to stop that behavior. But my life was so dark when I made that decision. The pain from continuing the behavior was greater than the fear of change, of the unknown that was on the other side And my unhealthy relationships were on some level comfortable because I was familiar with them. I was familiar with those patterns and I felt justified using my father's illness as a scapegoat for my behavior. That was easier at the time than taking responsibility for my actions and trying to bring more positivity to my relationship with him. I had to first become aware of the things I wanted to change and become willing to take that leap to the other side.
Having a coach or someone to support you and help you stay accountable when making big changes is important because your ego doesn't want you to change, no matter how bad your life is or what's going on. Your ego prefers that things stay the same. That is because there's an illusion that things are safer if they're the same, if you can anticipate what's gonna happen. This is usually subconscious. Also, you have physiological pathways in your brain that are familiar, and when you change a habit, your neural pathways also need to shift, and so this rewiring of your brain takes effort, and so it's good to have someone who can keep you accountable, that you can check in with, and, in my experience, the change is worth it. Whenever I step outside my comfort zone, my ego ramps up and tells me you're going to fail, this change isn't such a good idea, or it tries to tell me that you know we're making too big a deal of this, like you don't really need to change it, and that voice can keep me feeling stuck and unfulfilled and in the same pattern instead of moving outside of my comfort zone to where I actually want to go, the life I really want to have. So I challenge you to create some awareness around one thing you want to change in your life, whether it's with a person, a place, a thing or an internal feeling you have. Because when you change one significant thing in your life, it affects the rest of your behavior patterns and has a positive impact on other things that you want to change. And trust me, don't worry about what that looks like in the long run. Just focus on changing one thing.
For example, maybe you struggle with boundaries and you're afraid to say no because you don't want to let other people down, but you say no to one specific event. Or maybe it's a family gathering that you're really dreading. You don't have the energy for it. Your family triggers you and you decide to say no, and then you realize that people get along without you, that it's totally fine that you said no. This can be a little bit of an ego blow, because sometimes we think we're really important and that the show won't go on without us. But it does. But then on the other side, it lets you off the hook and helps you see how you don't have to say yes to everything, that you can check in with yourself first to see where your energy is at and you can create healthy boundaries, and it doesn't have to be that hard. People won't be that upset if you say no. So we're just gonna keep it simple and sweet today and I'm just gonna ask you to check in with yourself about what you might wanna change in your life, create some awareness around that, and we'll continue to discuss topics like this in future episodes.
And if you're really craving some more tools and you want them now, i have a free coaching series available on my website. It's called the Healthy Relationships Toolkit. It's a series where I share a bunch of my favorite tools to help you build a foundation for healthy relationships and end patterns that aren't serving you like people pleasing. You can visit my website at MrsHardcom or look in the show notes. I'll put a link there If you want to connect. You can find me on Instagram at Mrs-Hard underscore times no more, and I'll add that link in the show notes below as well. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. This has been really fun. Next week we'll be talking about the components of the healthy relationship and I'll be sharing my experience with relationship dysfunction. I have a ton of experience with that and the problems I had and what I did to start the remedy process, so I look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks for tuning in MUSIC.