How do I say no to my triggers?

People say it often, but it is often a lot harder to avoid common triggers of your addiction when going through your everyday life. If you are not careful, you can find yourself in situations where you feel powerless to stop yourself from engaging in activities that you could put you at risk of falling right back into the same habits you worked so hard to avoid. One of the best ways to avoid old triggers is to stay busy and active with other healthy, stimulating activities and hobbies that encourage you to keep your mind focused on something else, and effectively occupy your time. Unfortunately, humans tend to fall back into the same habits when they are bored, lonely, and/or unoccupied. Keeping yourself busy is a great way to prevent this from happening. Another wonderful way to avoid triggers is to avoid stress as best you can. Similar to boredom, stress can lead people to do irrational things out of frustration. By avoiding high stress situations, you ensure that there will never be a time where you feel so tense and uptight that you do something you might regret. In some extreme cases, stress itself can turn into its own trigger! Mitigating stress every chance you get is very important. Practicing yoga or meditation are great ways to reduce stress levels and ensure you don’t accidentally trigger an action you  want to avoid. You should also try to avoid triggers by leveraging family, friends, and trusted colleagues to help you. Whether you just need people to talk to about how you are feeling, want to discuss something specific, or just want their help making the right decisions,family members, loved ones, and good friends are a few of a very small subset of people who will make do their absolute best to oblige you. These individuals will likely always want to make sure you are happy, and, as such, will probably have no problem dealing with a minor inconvenience or two if it means you will one step closer to sobriety! Finally, avoid your triggers by learning all you can about them and figuring out why they may make you behave the way you do. If you can find the correlation between a trigger and your behavior, you may find that it is possible to eliminate the trigger altogether. Many triggers have direct ties to negative memories or thoughts of your past. The more you know about them, the easier it will be to reconcile them, if need be!