When Your Body Says No: A Bottom-Up Guide to Dry January
By Jen Bennethum
This January, instead of white-knuckling through another month of restriction, what if we approached alcohol reduction as an opportunity to befriend our nervous systems? From a bottom-up trauma therapy perspective, our relationship with alcohol often reflects our body's attempt to regulate itself in a dysregulating world. Rather than judging these patterns, we can get curious about what our nervous system is trying to tell us. The wellness industry loves to frame Dry January as a detox or reset, but for those of us who understand trauma, we know it's rarely that simple. When alcohol has been serving as nervous system regulation, suddenly removing it without understanding what it was medicating can leave us feeling more dysregulated than before. This approach isn't about proving you can go 31 days without a drink - it's about building a compassionate relationship with the parts of you that have been trying to survive.
"Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness." - Dr. Peter Levine
Understanding Alcohol as Nervous System Medicine
Many of us discovered alcohol as an unconscious form of self-medication long before we understood trauma or nervous system regulation. Alcohol can temporarily widen our window of tolerance, soften hypervigilance, or provide numbness when feelings become overwhelming. When we recognize drinking patterns as adaptive responses rather than moral failures, we create space for genuine healing. Your body has been trying to help you survive - now we can explore what it might need to truly thrive. For some, alcohol became a friend during social anxiety, magically dissolving the walls that kept connection at bay. For others, it offered blessed numbness after days of managing other people's emotions or navigating hostile work environments. Some found it quieted the constant inner critic or softened the edges of memories that felt too sharp to hold. From a polyvagal perspective, alcohol can artificially shift us between nervous system states - pulling us up from dorsal vagal shutdown or down from sympathetic overdrive. Understanding which state you're trying to escape or access through drinking becomes the first step in finding other pathways there.
Mapping Your Drinking Patterns Through Body Awareness
Before changing any behavior, we need to understand what purpose it serves. Notice when the urge to drink arises in your body. Does your chest tighten after stressful workdays? Do your shoulders climb toward your ears during family gatherings? Does your stomach clench when you're alone with your thoughts? These somatic cues often appear before the conscious thought "I need a drink." By tracking these body signals, we begin to decode what our nervous system is seeking - connection, safety, relief, or simply a pause from constant alertness. Keep a body map journal for a week, noting where you feel sensation before drinking. You might discover that the 5pm wine isn't about the wine at all - it's about the transition from "on" to "off," from performance to authenticity. The weekend drinks might not be about celebration but about finally letting your guard down after a week of hypervigilance. Some people notice their drinking increases when they feel disconnected from their bodies - alcohol becomes a way to feel something, anything, when dissociation has numbed them out. Others find it's the opposite - they drink to escape feeling too much, when their bodies are flooded with sensation and emotion that feels overwhelming without support.
Building a Somatic Toolkit
Bottom-up healing means offering your nervous system alternatives that work at the body level. Cold water on your wrists can interrupt mounting anxiety. Gentle bilateral stimulation - crossing your arms and alternately tapping your shoulders - can soothe activation. Humming or singing activates your vagus nerve, naturally down-regulating your system. These aren't distractions from difficult feelings; they're invitations for your body to process emotions at a pace it can handle. The goal isn't to never feel dysregulated, but to expand your repertoire of responses. Consider creating a "regulation menu" organized by what you're trying to shift. Need to come up from shutdown? Try cold exposure, vigorous movement, or energizing breathwork. Need to come down from anxiety? Explore weighted blankets, legs-up-the-wall pose, or extended exhales. The key is experimenting when you're regulated so these tools are accessible when you're not. Some folks find that replacing the ritual matters as much as the substance - brewing elaborate herbal teas, mixing mocktails with bitters, or creating new evening routines that signal transition. Others need more intensive co-regulation - scheduling calls with safe people during typical drinking times or joining online support groups that understand trauma. Remember: if these tools feel like they're "not working," it might mean your nervous system needs professional support to expand its capacity first.
Honoring the Grief
Reducing alcohol use when it's been a reliable companion can bring unexpected grief. You might mourn the ease of social connection alcohol provided, the reliable numbness after hard days, or simply the ritual of unwinding. This grief is valid and important. Let yourself feel the loss of this coping mechanism while staying curious about what might emerge in the space it leaves behind. Sometimes what we're really grieving is the version of ourselves who needed to numb in the first place. There's often a secondary grief too - for all the years we didn't know there were other options, for the relationships that were built on drinking together, for the identity we constructed around being "fun" or "social" that felt dependent on alcohol. You might grieve the simplicity of having one reliable solution to multiple problems. Some people discover anger beneath the grief - anger at a world that made numbing feel necessary, at systems that profit from our disconnection, at the lack of accessible mental health support that might have offered alternatives sooner. Let this anger be fuel for change rather than shame for past choices. Creating rituals to honor what alcohol gave you can help integrate this grief - write a letter thanking it for helping you survive, create art about your relationship with it, or share your story with others who understand.
Creating Safety Without Substances
As you experiment with drinking less, focus on creating felt safety in your body. This might mean setting firmer boundaries, leaving events earlier, or saying no to obligations that consistently dysregulate you. It might mean finally addressing the relationship patterns or work stress that drive you to drink. Bottom-up change happens when we make our daily lives more nervous system friendly, not when we simply remove our coping mechanisms and hope for the best. Start by auditing your life for chronic stressors - the meeting that always activates you, the family member who consistently crosses boundaries, the evening news that floods you with helplessness. You can't eliminate all stress, but you can buffer it with supportive practices. Build in transition rituals between work and home. Create sensory comfort in your living space. Establish morning routines that resource your nervous system before the day's demands begin. Sometimes creating safety means having hard conversations - telling friends you're changing your relationship with alcohol, asking for support from partners, or being honest about what you need in social situations. It might mean discovering that some relationships were built entirely on drinking together and grieving those too. Remember that safety isn't just the absence of threat - it's the presence of connection, predictability, and agency.
Moving Forward
Approaching Dry January through a trauma-informed lens transforms it from a test of willpower into an experiment in self-compassion. You're not "giving up" alcohol - you're giving your nervous system a chance to show you what else it needs. Some days, honoring your body might mean having that glass of wine. Other days, it might mean choosing the cold shower, the walk outside, or the early bedtime instead. Progress isn't measured in perfect abstinence but in growing attunement to your body's wisdom.
As you explore this gentler path, remember: every moment of awareness is a victory, every choice to pause is revolutionary, and every act of self-compassion rewrites old patterns. Your body has kept you alive this long - now you're learning to help it truly live. Please feel free to reach out to us at Integrate Therapy and Wellness Collective with any questions of if you would like us to walk with you on your journey to wholeness!
