Tripping Over Myself the podcast

Episode 26 – When Admitting You Have a Problem Becomes the Problem Sometimes the hardest part of recovery isn’t asking for help. It’s admitting to yourself that you need it. In this week’s 3-Minute Sticky Note, I talk about the quiet conversation we have with ourselves before anyone else knows something is wrong. Whether it’s alcohol, anxiety, or another struggle, real change often begins with one...

We spend so much of our lives filling every quiet moment with another thought, another worry, or another story. But what if the most valuable space in your mind is the one you never build on? In today’s Sunday Sticky Note, I share why not every thought deserves your attention—and why leaving a few vacant lots between your ears might be where peace begins.

For years I envied calm people. I thought they had something I was missing. In this episode, I talk about the trap of comparing our inside to someone else’s outside, and how real peace isn’t borrowed from other people—it’s discovered within ourselves. That would be enough to make me click.

Welcome to Sunday’s Short Sticky Note. Each Sunday, I’ll share a short message pulled from my experiences with addiction, anxiety, recovery, and life. These aren’t long episodes or deep dives—just a few minutes of reflection and a simple idea to carry into the week ahead. One thought. One lesson. One sticky note. Take care of yourself, enjoy your week, and I’ll talk to you soon.

We all carry different versions of ourselves — the anxious one, the guilty one, the angry one, the calm one. The thoughts you binge on decide which version shows up. This episode is about noticing the mental loops we feed and choosing which version of ourselves gets the microphone.

For years, I believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me because of my anxiety. I avoided people, made excuses, and hardened myself against the very things I wanted most — connection, friendship, and life itself. In this episode, I share how fearful thinking kept me stuck and the realization that helped me see that I wasn’t broken after all. If you’ve ever wondered, “What’s wrong with...

Perspective: Walking Into the Uncomfortable Loss has a way of stripping away the noise and leaving only the truth of what actually matters. I recently lost a dear friend—someone who believed in me long before the books or this podcast existed. Her passing shifted my perspective in a hurry. It reminded me that we can’t control who listens or who understands us; we can only control the act of showin...

Before your week starts, a reminder for anyone who has spent too much time fighting themselves. For years, I thought staying silent, avoiding people, and handling everything on my own was the safest way to live. Looking back, I realize anxiety slowly became part of my identity—not because it was who I was, but because it was how I learned to survive. In this short Sunday bonus episode, I share a m...

The Spotlight Effect: Why Nobody Actually Cares (And Why That’s Good News) Do you ever feel like the world is a giant jury and you’re the one on trial? In this episode, Gerard dives into the "invisible committee" we all carry in our heads. From the paralyzing fear that stopping to re-tie a shoelace while jogging will become "headline news," to the panic of an emergency bathroom break in the bushes...

A short Sunday bonus from one of the earliest episodes of the podcast about anxiety, overthinking, and mistaking silence for healing. Sometimes alcohol wasn’t about getting drunk — it was about trying to find relief from the noise inside my own mind.

We only get to live today once. There’s no fast‑forward button on life, and there’s no rewind either. In this episode, I talk about what happens when we keep replaying painful moments, rolling them around until they turn into anxiety. I share how I used to let alcohol do my thinking for me, and what it took to finally reclaim my own thoughts. Bitterness, jealousy, resentment — those are thoughts w...

A short reflection from the very beginning of this story. I was thirteen when I first discovered what silence felt like — and I mistook it for peace. Looking back now, I can see how anxiety and alcohol were already shaping each other long before I understood either of them. Take care of yourself.

Most of the time, you don’t realize you’re helping people while you’re doing it. You’re just trying to stay sober, show up, and do the next right thing. It’s only when you look back that you start to see the impact you’ve had. In this short episode, I talk about the quiet ways we give back without even knowing it — through responsibility, integrity, and the small choices that make life better for...

A reminder that the quiet things you do every day might be helping someone more than you realize.

Stop Solving Fiction We spend half our lives trying to solve problems that don’t actually exist. In this episode, I open up about how my anxiety began—not with reality, but with the "fiction" I created about myself and the world. I talk about the trap of replaying "harmless" thoughts until they become unsolvable problems, and how we can stop feeding the internal scripts that drain our energy. If y...

A short moment of calm before the week begins. Take a breath, let the noise settle, and start fresh.

🎙 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...

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 win...

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...

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 unse...

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.

Before you listen to the rest of this podcast, I wanted to share a bit about who I am and why I do this. This isn’t built on theory or something I studied — it’s built on lived experience with anxiety, addiction, and everything that comes with it. I’m not here because I’ve figured everything out. I’m here because I haven’t. And this podcast is just me sharing what I’ve learned along the way — in t...