Dallas Bragg explains how anger, despair, and fear drive people to substance use. His three-step strategy: recognize the emotion, observe it from a distance, then choose how to respond. This mental shift keeps you aligned with your values instead of acting on impulse.
If you want to get in control of your teeny relapses, then listen to this entire video. When you feel negative emotions like anger, despair, hate, fear, etc., you can choose to feel them or allow them to feel you. Here's what I mean. Often the reason we have turned to the substance is to help us avoid the negative emotions, but when we can't get high to numb them, we allow those emotions to hijack us, overwhelm us, and that disrupts our ability to think, make decisions, behave in alignment with our values, etc. The emotion takes over, feeling us. The alternative is to observe the emotion and decide how you will process it, to choose how to feel it. You are then mindfully and deliberately feeling the emotion from a third-person point of view. That puts you in the power position and allows you to control the narrative.
