Let's chat about triggers !

Let's chat about triggers and their impact on our journey to sobriety. 🌱 A trigger is something that sparks a reaction, like reaching for a drink. 🍷🚫

Here are the four types:

1️⃣ Emotional triggers: These involve feelings that lead us to want a drink. 🥺 Like feeling lonely and using a bottle of wine as an escape. For me, grief was a big emotional trigger. It made me sad, and I used to numb this with drinking.

2️⃣ Environmental triggers: These are places where we would usually have a drink. 🏞 Like the pool, a favourite restaurant, a concert, or even the bar by the office. One of my clients said that her back patio was a trigger - when the sun came out, it equalled porch torch time, and she felt the need to drink. 🌅

3️⃣ Exposure triggers: This is when we're in the presence of alcohol. 🍺🍸Like being offered a drink at a party or stumbling upon the wine aisle at the grocery store.

4️⃣ Temporal triggers: These are linked to specific dates or holidays. 🎉 Like the 4th of July, birthdays, or Christmas. One client told me every Saturday triggered her because she had spent every single drinking for years.

Understanding your triggers is a key step towards breaking free from them. 💪

Looking at this information, we can also understand why this time of year is so tricky because we're dealing with all four, often simultaneously.