Ep 137: The Beliefs Driving Your Drinking | Rethinking Alcohol |

What if your drinking habits aren’t really about alcohol at all, but about the quiet, powerful beliefs sitting beneath the surface? In this solo episode, Anna Donaghey dives into the “Pyramid of Belief”, a simple framework that explains how deeply-rooted feelings of “not enough” shape much of our behaviour, including drinking.

Using lived experience and insights from Dave Gray’s "Liminal Thinking," Anna breaks down how our early experiences, the culture we grow up in, and the swirl of online comparison, all reinforce beliefs like “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m not interesting enough,” and “I’m not enough, full stop.” She explores why alcohol so often becomes the go-to answer for the emotional discomfort those beliefs trigger and guides listeners through the first, vital steps to uncovering what they’re really thirsty for.

Highlights:

00:00 Welcome & intro

00:40 The "not enough" beliefs we rarely examine

01:13 Why this episode isn’t (really) about alcohol at first

02:14 What is the Pyramid of Belief

05:04 How our minds filter reality

05:57 How a single shame-triggering moment forms a core belief

09:03 Why you’re not flawed and how “not enough” beliefs got there

10:30 Anna Donaghey’s own formative “not smart enough” moment

13:39 The modern "comparison machine"