Samir GardnerThe Effortless Method · Coach

How to deal with the fear of a relapse

29 Aug 2025 · 0 min

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In this brief dialogue, Speaker B advises Speaker A (and the audience) on handling the anxiety that one might revert to a previously abandoned behavior or habit. The core advice is to examine the underlying reason for the fear: if the fear exists, it signals that the former behavior held some meaning, but the act of quitting indicates a recognition that it was not ultimately fulfilling. By likening the transition to graduating from high school—once the necessary lessons are learned, there is no need to return—the speakers reassure that moving beyond a phase is natural and that fearing a relapse is unnecessary once the new, better path is embraced.

What would you say to people that say, oh, I fear that I might come back to it?
Figure out why do you have that fear. It's easier to say, but basically what I'm saying is that if you take something out of your life and you're afraid that you come back to it, it means it was meaningful to you. It means you identified something better. And this is a lot of people that says that before quitting, before actually quitting, you know, like right now, me and you, we quit. Do you ever think, what's the what if I go back to it? Of course not. No, because it's— you just, you went over it. You, you passed that phase and you saw that, like, actually I will never go back to it because I, like, I didn't like it. And you realize you didn't like it, you know, like you're done with that phase. You find something better, you know. You do— do you ever think like, oh, should I go back to high school?
You know, like, no, you finish high school, you know. You knew what you needed to know. You saw what you needed to see. It's over. Don't, don't fear this.
About it like, why do you think that? What do you fear?