In this episode of Rewired Sober, Kate explores one of the most misunderstood parts of sobriety: liminal spaces — the in-between seasons where the old way no longer fits, but the new way hasn’t fully formed yet.

These are the moments when you know you made the right choice…

but your nervous system still craves the relief of certainty.

Using both neuroscience and lived experience, Kate unpacks why the brain prefers the “devil we know” — familiar patterns, predictable outcomes, even familiar pain — over the uncertainty that comes with real change.

This episode also includes a live teaching pulled directly from Kate’s Rewired Sober group, where she speaks candidly about:

1. wanting to want sobriety
2. why early sobriety can feel strangely effortful
3. and why feeling unsettled doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong

If you’ve ever thought “Why does this still feel weird?” — this conversation will land.

1. You’re outgrowing alcohol but don’t feel fully at home without it yet
2. You find yourself wanting answers instead of wanting to sit in the unknown
3. You feel frustrated that sobriety still requires intention
4. You’re in a transition season and questioning whether you’re “behind”

1. What liminal spaces are and why they’re unavoidable in sobriety
2. Why the nervous system values predictability over freedom
3. How familiar habits create a false sense of safety
4. The urge to rush certainty — and why it’s a stress response
5. Why repetition, regulation, and time are what actually rewire the brain
6. How staying in the middle is not weakness, but integration

Transformation doesn’t happen in the decision.

It happens in the middle.

You don’t rush liminal spaces. You listen in them.

They are where your nervous system learns how to live in truth — without anesthesia.

If sobriety feels right and unfamiliar at the same time, this episode will help you understand why — and remind you that this phase isn’t something to escape. It’s something to move through.

About Rewired Sober:

Rewired Sober is a science- and soul-based recovery space for women who are ready to understand their brain, trust themselves, and build a sober life that actually fits.

Learn more about Kate’s group coaching, courses, and resources at the links in the show notes.

Rewired Sober Group Coaching Space Is Now Open: Start anytime and get 3 months of guidance designed for women in sobriety. You’ll get instant access to the full program, plus weekly live coaching sessions to help you rewire your brain, heal old patterns, and stay consistent. Enroll...

In this episode of Rewired Sober™, we’re going straight for the jugular: pop culture, body image, drunkorexia, and the weaponized shame that’s kept women small, hungry, distracted, and drinking for decades.

I break down how Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl exposes the pressure cooker women have lived in for the last 20 years — the beauty standards, the public scrutiny, the Kardashian-era body illusions, the return of heroin-chic, the Jessica Simpson mom-jean debacle — and how all of it shaped not just how women see themselves… but how women cope.

Then I bring in Caroline Knapp’s Appetites and her concept of “the real hungers” — the soul-level needs women are taught to starve. Not food. Not jeans sizes. But belonging, rest, connection, desire, meaning, permission to take up space. We talk about what happens when those needs get rerouted into dieting, perfectionism, and eventually, drinking.

We get honest about drunkorexia — the collision between diet culture and drinking culture — and why it’s not a quirky college fad, but a symptom of patriarchy’s oldest trick: keep women underfed, self-conscious, tipsy, ashamed, and too exhausted to revolt.

We cover:

• How pop culture trained women to hate their bodies
• Why women’s binge drinking nearly doubled in the last two decades
• How shame becomes internalized and fuels the drinking loop
• Why wine culture and diet culture are sisters
• The neuroscience behind hungry brains + alcohol
• How patriarchy profits when women are distracted by self-maintenance
• And why sobriety is, at its core, a feminist act of resistance

If you’ve ever felt like you had to be thin, quiet, good, small, or “fine”… this episode will hit you right in the truth.

Rewired Sober Group Coaching Space Is Now Open: Start anytime and get 3 months of guidance designed for women in sobriety. You’ll get instant access to the full program, plus weekly live coaching sessions to help you rewire your brain, heal old patterns, and stay consistent. Enroll here: https://kate-vitela.mykajabi.com/rewired-sober-coaching-program

Connect with Kate @rewiredsober on all social media platforms:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rewiredsober/

#fuckheroinchic blog post

https://thesobercurator.com/fuckheroinchic-a-flashback-to-1997/

In this unfiltered, real-as-hell episode, Kate sits down —makeup-free and bra-free, with her messy podcast editing skills — to talk about something she sees in nearly every woman she coaches:

The Overachiever Wound.

If you grew up being compared, dismissed, or made to feel less-than… your nervous system learned that safety comes from performance.

So you overachieved, excelled, got the degrees, the gold stars, the promotions, the “good girl” identity — all because your body believed: “If I achieve, I’m safe. If I slow down, I’m exposed.”

Kate breaks down why high-achieving women struggle to rest, why the goalpost keeps moving, and why no amount of success ever feels like enough. Spoiler: it’s not because you’re broken — it’s because your brain is still protecting a younger version of you.

Inside this episode:

• The exact childhood moment most women learn to prove their worth
• Why your brain ties safety to doing
• The feminist and generational conditioning behind female overachievement
• Why rest feels terrifying for women who have been performing their whole lives
• What you are really avoiding by staying busy
• The neuroscience of "being seen" by other women
• How to start unwinding the proving pattern without burning down your life

This episode is messy, vulnerable, unfiltered… and exactly the medicine so many women need.

If you’re tired of hustling for your existence — this one’s for you.

Rewired Sober Group Coaching Space Is Now Open: Start anytime and get 3 months of guidance designed for women in sobriety. You’ll get instant access to the full program, plus weekly live coaching sessions to help you rewire your brain, heal old patterns, and stay consistent. Enroll here: https://kate-vitela.mykajabi.com/rewired-sober-coaching-program

Connect with Kate @rewiredsober on all social media platforms:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rewiredsober/