Committing to Sobriety: Managing Triggers
As we’re working to stay sober, perhaps one of our greatest challenges lies in managing our triggers, the difficult emotions that can create the urge to use our drug of choice. In recovery, we discover firsthand the importance of managing triggers in order to prevent ourselves from relapsing. With time, we learn lifesaving tools to withstand our triggers and addictive urges better and to keep ourselves sober more easily.
Once we’ve fully committed to our recovery, often after having a rock bottom experience, sobriety becomes our most important focus. We know that if we don’t maintain our sobriety, everything else in our lives is likely to suffer. Managing triggers and urges, therefore, is a critical part of addiction recovery.
If you’re in need of help for substance use, reach out to a professional treatment center such as Athens Area Commencement Center.
We experience all kinds of triggers that can be mental, emotional, physical, or a combination thereof. Triggers can include a memory or flashback, an emotional response to something, or the physical sensation of a craving.
Understanding Triggers and Addictive Urges: Managing Triggers
Here is an example of how a trigger might work when we’re struggling with addiction. In response to a thought we have, for example, our minds flash back to a painful time in our lives. We have created such strong associations between that time period and using our drug of choice, and have such a strong attachment to that substance, that we feel an overwhelming emotional response in that moment. We might then feel an overpowering physical craving for that drug of choice, and an almost uncontrollable urge to use it, because of having been mentally and emotionally triggered.
Some of our triggers might feel small in the moment but make us feel sad, worried, frustrated, or angry. Perhaps a trigger causes us to lose our composure and our sense of calm. We find ourselves wanting to pick up our drug of choice as a way to cope. For years that was how we comforted ourselves – how we self-medicated when struggling with difficult emotions.
Being in recovery means we’re now healing from those things without numbing our feelings of anger, grief, and sadness. Many of us recovering from addiction are also living with other mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, often referred to as co-occurring disorders. When we’re still actively healing, triggers can be even more frequent and debilitating.
Managing Triggers in the Moment and Over Time
Successfully recovering from addiction means finding effective ways of managing triggers and addictive urges whenever they come up for us. Over time, learning to withstand triggers more easily can keep us from relapsing.
If we’re feeling desperate to drink or use, what can we do instead in that moment? What are some ways of managing triggers in order to keep ourselves from using?
Creating Inner Peace: Managing Triggers
Find the things that bring you a sense of calm and inner peace, that help you cope with triggering emotions. Create a deeper connection with yourself.
All of these suggestions can be effective both in the moment when we’re triggered and wanting to use, and over time as part of our healing routines. Holistic wellness practices can help make us more resilient in the face of triggers and other forms of stress.
Using Energy Healing for Managing Triggers
Energy healing practices like yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, and EFT Tapping (Emotional Freedom Techniques) can be powerful tools for managing triggers. Healing energetic imbalances, especially common with addiction and trauma, can help us create even more stability and peace in our lives. In time, we can find ourselves becoming less and less triggered by the things that once destabilized us.
Holistic Tools for Managing Triggers
Getting exercise and spending time in nature can also be incredibly beneficial, calming, and cathartic. Journaling everything we’re thinking and feeling when we feel triggered is another extremely effective self-care tool. Some find connecting to a higher power, through prayer, meditation, or quiet reflection, most helpful in managing triggers.
Gratitude Practice for Managing Triggers
A powerful tool in managing triggers, especially when feeling panicked or consumed by cravings, is making a mental list of things we’re grateful for. Let your gratitude offer you comfort and hope in that moment. The things and people we’re grateful for are often the reasons we chose sobriety in the first place. Cultivating gratitude can offer much-needed relief and comfort, whenever a trigger hits, and when dealing with stress and anxiety. Practicing gratitude regularly can lift our spirits and can be a simple but powerful way of reducing our stress. We can let our gratitude practice serve as a powerful reminder of our commitment to our sobriety.
Letting the Urge Pass for Managing Triggers
Sometimes, getting through an addictive urge can be as simple as waiting it out, breathing, and staying focused on our goal of staying sober. Eventually, the urge will pass.
Empowering Ourselves for Managing Triggers
With time and practice, these tools can help us rebuild the clarity, inner fortitude, and determination we need to prevent ourselves from relapsing.
At Athens Area Commencement Center, we can help you develop your own personal collection of tools and practices to manage triggers and prevent relapse.
Affirm to yourself that you have the power to withstand any triggers. We’ve come to believe that we can’t control ourselves when it comes to our drug of choice. We feel overpowered by it and powerless over it. Remind yourself that you do have a choice. Encourage yourself to summon even more hope and strength, where once you might have felt hopeless and powerless.
Congratulate yourself for every trigger you withstand and every urge you get through! Every time we stay sober by managing triggers, we’re empowering ourselves and strengthening our commitment to our recovery.
Triggers can be so overwhelming that they feel impossible to withstand. It is possible, though, to learn how to manage our triggers and the addictive urges to use. You’re not alone in doing this critically important recovery work. Surrounding ourselves with support is one of the best things we can do for our sobriety, whether with a recovery support group, a professional treatment center, a therapist, a sponsor – or all of the above. Leaning on other people for support, and calling someone when we feel vulnerable, can help us stay sober. At Athens Area Commencement Center, we offer a supportive community along with the expert guidance of a professional team of addiction recovery specialists. Call us today at (706) 546-7355.