Why Sensitive People Struggle to Control Their Drinking
That tired, end-of-working-day feeling.
Do you ever get that feeling at the end of the day where you just need to flop onto the sofa and switch off with a big glass of wine, because you've spent the whole day being everything for everyone else but as always, you’ve run out of energy for yourself?
If that's familiar, then this article will help you to understand some of the reasons why sensitive people can find it hard to manage their drinking, so that you can better understand your own drinking habits. I will also share one thing to try so that you can shift from autopilot drinking to intentional drinking.
Whether you'd call yourself an empath, a spiritual person, a creative, or highly sensitive, the common thread tends to be the same: you absorb far more from your environment than people who aren't sensitive, and so you notice the beauty of what's around you, and also any negative undercurrents as well. That's a beautiful way to move through the world, and it can also be overwhelming and draining, because you're not only managing your own feelings, but everyone else's too.
Over time, your nervous system can end up on high alert for extended periods, and that tends to lead to overwhelm, burnout, and a pull toward unhealthy habits that offer relief. And drinking more than you'd like is one of the most common.
Why alcohol is so good at making you feel better, temporarily
Alcohol is one of the easiest and quickest ways to slow down the nervous system, because it's a nervous system depressant. It slows down your whole brain, including the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that's usually busy scanning your environment for danger and sending a signal to activate fight or flight when it finds something. Alcohol also boosts GABA, which calms the brain and lowers anxiety, and it lowers the effect of glutamate, which normally excites the brain. When this happens, things that felt anxiety-inducing a moment ago, that conversation with a friend, or a comment from someone at work, suddenly feel a lot less of a problem.
The trouble is that this downshift isn't natural. It's being synthetically created by the alcohol, and so you're effectively borrowing calm from tomorrow's nervous system reserves. When alcohol clears your system overnight, your brain doesn't simply return to baseline, it tends to overshoot in the other direction, so you wake up more depleted, foggier, and often more anxious and on edge than you were before you started drinking. And then, because you feel worse, you might reach for another drink to feel better again, and the cycle continues.
Why your sensitivity might be creating the problem
It might not just be tiredness that's making you reach for alcohol. For a lot of sensitive people, it's also the exhaustion of masking all day, reining in your big feelings, whether they're positive or negative, or that undercurrent of anxiety from replaying a conversation in your mind. It might be resentment because you said yes again when you meant no, or it could be because you’re trying to regulate everyone else's feelings without even realising that you're doing it.
There's research behind this too. Sensitive people often score higher on things like anxiety and emotional intensity, and lower on what's called distress tolerance, which is essentially the ability to sit with an uncomfortable feeling without needing to make it stop straight away. That gap – feeling more, and not yet having a reliable way to bring yourself back down, is often exactly where alcohol steps in.
It could also be that you're simply not fulfilled. There's not enough joy or creativity, or not enough space in your life to be your expressive, spiritual self. You may have drifted into a place that isn't aligned with what you actually want for yourself, and alcohol becomes the easy way out, the easy pleasure.
These things add up, and if you're not aware they're happening, there's less chance you're able to self-regulate in a healthy way.
Bringing awareness and intention to your drinking
Before you try white-knuckling your way through it and quitting through sheer force, I invite you to bring awareness to your motivation for drinking. What are you trying to soothe? What isn't feeling aligned for you right now? What does your body need that you haven't been giving it? Often the answer is simple, but perhaps you just weren’t aware.
It's worth saying that you may need more than awareness alone to help you stop, since alcohol is genuinely one of the more addictive substances available and very few of us are immune to that. But awareness is the first step, and it’s more powerful than you might think.
So if any of this has landed, try something small this week. In the moment, just before you reach for a drink, notice what you're actually needing, and name it to yourself. I need to relax. I need to brighten my mood. I need to feel loved. It could be anything.
All you need to do is notice. That's it. Noticing is where change naturally becomes possible, and the more you practise it, the better you'll get. That's exactly why I run The Breathing Space, my free weekly meditation group. So if you'd like a way to build that capacity to downshift without needing alcohol to do it for you, you'd be very welcome to join us there.
You're not broken, and you're not weak. You've just been carrying more than one person should be carrying alone, and there is a way through that doesn't involve numbing yourself to get there. I know. I’ve been there.
Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash
