My guest this week on the Alcohol Free Life podcast is Suzy Reading, author of How to be Selfish, and when chartered psychologist Suzy talks about being selfish, she’s not talking about becoming mean or uncaring. She’s talking about something far more radical: learning to receive.
For years, Suzy thought she had self-care figured out. As a personal trainer, yoga teacher, and psychologist, she’d built her career around empowering people with self-care tools. She knew how to nurture herself while taking care of everyone else. But when perimenopause hit, everything changed
“I realized that life lesson I learned becoming a mom and losing my dad was much bigger than self-care,” Suzy explains. “It was actually a lesson in self-advocacy. I’d become quite skilled at taking care of myself and nurturing myself, but I was still being the good girl taking care of everyone else. When perimenopause hit, I realized it was time for me to start to receive. I needed to live like I matter too.”
The Missing Piece of the Puzzle
There’s a subtle but crucial difference between self-care and self-advocacy. Self-care is deciding to rest, run a bath, or take time for yourself. Self-advocacy is something deeper, it’s showing up honestly in relationships, voicing your feelings and needs, and leaning on others.
I mentioned to Suzy that when I ran my one day Selfcare in Sobriety retreats women would show up (often fibbing to their partners saying they were going to a spa day) and I’d ask them : ‘What do you want?’ The answer was always around something they wanted for others…’My mum to get well,….my kid to get into a school’…But rarely for themselves. In many cases they hadn’t considered their own wants or needs in years.
“A lot of women and men don’t feel like it’s okay to show up honestly in relationship, to voice feelings, to voice needs, and to lean on others,” Suzy says. “I learnt the hard way that I need it for my health. But I don’t just need it for my health, I actually need it for the health and wellbeing of my relationships.”
The problem? We can get really fed up that we’re not getting the support we need and feel quite resentful, but we haven’t made it clear what we need. People aren’t mind readers.
Reconnecting With Yourself First
So how do we start advocating for ourselves? Suzy says half the battle is reconnecting with ourselves in the first place.
“We are distracted and disconnected left and center by what that person needs, by that beeping gadget, by this pinging notification. How seldom do we actually allow ourselves to tune inwards?” she asks. “For so many people, we are so focused on the needs of others, we don’t even know what we need. We feel a bit lost.”
This is where Suzy’s seven-step practice comes in. But before we can practice any self-care or self-advocacy, we need to address something fundamental: our self-talk.
The Soundtrack of Your Life
Step one isn’t what most people expect. It’s not about bubble baths or meditation, it’s about getting your mind on side.
Suzy makes a crucial distinction between thoughts and self-talk. “Thoughts come to us. We don’t choose them. However, we do control our self-talk,” she explains. “The first thought that comes to you, you haven’t chosen, it’s just something that’s come out of thin air. What you then say to yourself in response to that thought? That is your self-talk.”
This distinction is liberating. You might have catastrophic, toxic first thoughts, but that’s just what the brain does. The key is not investing your identity in those thoughts. You get to choose who you are through your self-talk.
I shared that as a Hay House author, some years ago I was speaking at an event with Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson, and they were discussing Mirror Work, (which lets face it most of us don’t find easy) but Cheryl was saying that most women look in the mirror daily and say TERRIBLE things to themselves, if they said those words out loud, they’d be had for abuse, especially if a child was in the room. The reality is we can be quite mean to ourselves, and negative, punitive, judgmental and critical self-talk is a form of self-harm.
“We need to learn how to speak to ourselves with dignity and respect,” Suzy insists. “We would never say those things to anyone else. Your self-talk is like the soundtrack of life, it’s so ever present.”
The Face Hug: A Circuit Breaker
When you catch yourself spiraling into negative self-talk, Suzy offers a simple somatic practice called the face hug:
1. Rub your hands gently together to create warmth
2. Very tenderly cradle your chin in your hands
3. Notice the lovely sense of containment and how nice it feels to be held
4. Take a couple of relaxed breaths
“With this gesture, we are saying to ourselves that we are deserving of kindness, that same compassion that we extend and generously give to everyone else,” Suzy explains. “It’s not a transgression of our values to allow that to be turned inwards. It’s actually a more authentic, complete expression of our values.”
The magic? It’s impossible to trash talk yourself while you’re doing it.
If you can’t break out into a face hug in public, try the hand-on-heart gesture instead.
Transforming Worry Into Love
For those who struggle with worry, Suzy offers a beautiful reframe. Worry speaks to the fact that you have a giant heart, you care so much. Instead of wallowing in worry, turn it into a well-wish or intention.
“A worried thought comes to you, you don’t choose it, but instead of just wallowing in this worry, we can say: I really don’t want that to happen. What do I want? And I wish for that to happen. I send that person my best wishes,” she suggests. “Instead of being in the quagmire of worry, we can bathe in that beautiful reservoir of love and care.”
Winter Wisdom
As we head into the darker months, Suzy’s book Self-Care for Winter offers crucial guidance. Rather than dreading winter, she encourages us to validate what’s challenging while also broadening our perspective to savor the joys unique to this season.
Her three key tips for winter:
1. Hibernate, don’t stagnate – Honour the impulse to turn inwards, but alternate cocooning with exposure to daylight and movement
2. Comfort yourself wisely – Broaden what you think of as comfort beyond food and drink. Think loving touch, weighted blankets, layered lighting (keep those fairy lights up until April!), and scent (I’d add make it natural aromatherapy style scent)
3. Retreat, don’t isolate – Your social energy might look different in winter, but make sure you’re still connecting with people in ways that work for you
“We need more sleep in winter. When you look at how plants and animals respond to environmental cues, why do we human beings expect ourselves to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed all year round?” Suzy asks.
The Power of “No”
Perhaps the most powerful shift we can make is understanding that having limits is not unkind, it’s human.
“No is a complete sentence,” is one of my favourite sayings, (download my free pdf workbook) and Suzy reminds us. “Human needs are not a nice to have. These are our human needs. These are our feelings. This is what it means to be human.”
Many of us have spent our entire lives filling everyone else’s cups. Why isn’t it okay to allow someone else to fill ours too?
“I’m not saying be stingy and stop caring for others,” Suzy clarifies. “I am saying keep filling your cup, keep tending to others, but let’s allow others to also top us up. They need that. They want to feel valued, needed, and trusted. We’re actually doing them a disservice by saying no.”
I have interviewed Dr David Hamilton many times and as he points out in his book Why Kindness is Good for you, Science shows that the person giving actually gets more from acts of kindness than the person receiving. By refusing help, we’re denying others that gift.
The Path Forward
Suzy’s new book How to Be Selfish challenges everything we’ve been taught about selfishness and selflessness. It explores the cultural underpinnings—gender conditioning, how we rear children, modern messaging about resilience and gratitude that make us feel guilty for focusing on ourselves.
These concepts can be fantastic in the right moments, but in the wrong moments, they silence people and make them feel guilty for struggling.
The second part of the book offers the seven-step practice for building self-advocacy skills, so we can have difficult conversations, be more transparent, and finally receive.
If you’ve quit the booze recently, you’re probably only just becoming aware of the need to set boundaries, and to put some self care in place. It’s essential. You cannot fill from an empty cup, and you’ve spent your entire life filling everyone else’s.
It’s time to learn how to be selfish. Listen to the full episode Alcohol Free Life podcast
Suzy Redding is a chartered psychologist, personal trainer, and yoga teacher. Her new book How to Be Selfish is available now. Janey Lee Grace is a best selling author, host of the Alcohol Free Life podcast, founder of The Sober Club, 1-1 Coach and Sober Coach Trainer