🎙 Episode 16 — The Lies We Tell Ourselves

In this episode of Tripping Over Myself, I explore the strange connection between addiction, anxiety, and the way we talk to ourselves.

I look at how the mind can act like its own form of artificial intelligence — answering whatever questions we feed it — and how, inside alcoholism and anxiety, those answers can quietly turn into fiction we start living by.

We talk about:

• ​ How addiction trains the mind to protect itself with lies
• ​ Why anxiety keeps us stuck in worst-case thinking
• ​ The danger of using imagination as escape instead of truth
• ​ And how our own thoughts can become an echo chamber

This episode isn’t about technology.

It’s about the questions we ask ourselves — and the answers we choose to believe.

👉 Visit my website at trippingovermyself.com

Sometimes the mind doesn’t want truth — it wants confirmation. In tonight’s short bonus, I share how the questions we ask ourselves can keep us anxious, stuck, and believing things that were never true. Full episode on Wednesday.

Before alcohol… before gambling… before any of the obvious addictions… there was something deeper driving it all.

The need to be noticed.

In this episode, I talk about how chasing attention, approval, and a sense of belonging led me into a life filled with drinking, gambling, and smoking — three addictions all tied to one belief: that I wasn’t enough as I was.

From owning racehorses to chasing wins that never came, I was building a version of myself I thought people would accept… while slowly losing everything that actually mattered.

This isn’t just a story about addiction.

It’s about identity.

It’s about the quiet ways we try to earn our place in the world.

And what it costs when we believe we have to.

If you’ve ever felt like you had to become someone else just to be seen… this one’s for you.

Before alcohol… there was something else driving me.

The need to be seen.

This Sunday bonus is a short preview of this week’s episode — where that need led me, and what it nearly cost me.

Friendship isn’t always what it looks like on the surface. Sometimes we build friendships around the wrong things — the wrong comfort, the wrong habits, the wrong kind of silence. In this episode, I talk about the friendship I formed with addiction, how it became my escape, my constant, and eventually the thing that nearly took my life.

I share the moment everything changed: the coma, the machines, and the four months in a hospital bed that forced me to face the truth I’d been avoiding. This episode is about denial, courage, and the kind of wake‑up call you don’t forget. Sobriety isn’t handed to you — it’s something you choose, again and again.

If you’ve ever held onto something that was destroying you because it felt familiar, this one might land close to home.

What happens when the thing hurting you feels like the only thing there for you?

In this short bonus, I share a moment that changed how I saw addiction — not as an enemy, but as something that once felt like a friend. This Wednesday’s episode tells the full story.

In this episode, I explore the kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone, but from the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we deserve. During the stillness of recovery, I began to see that loneliness wasn’t my home — it was the place I’d been hiding.

This episode looks at how loneliness shows up in addiction, in silence, in pressure, and in the moments when we feel unseen. And it’s about what happens when we finally sit with ourselves long enough for wisdom to rise.

A reminder for anyone listening: you’re not broken. You’re human. And connection begins within.

A short Sunday night reminder that loneliness isn’t always about who’s around you — sometimes it’s the story your mind keeps repeating. Take a breath tonight. Episode 14 arrives on Wednesday.