Healing Through Talking to Your Mat: Managing Relapse Triggers

Is it just me, beautiful fellow yogis, or does the current state of the world make anyone else feel a stronger-than-usual urge to relapse?

It’s safe to say I am feeling decidedly more anxious of late. Fortunately, years of talking to my mat have taught me that that’s exactly when I am most likely to give in to impulsivity. Such as “having just one drink to take the edge off.” Yeah, bad idea.

Recognizing the risk of relapse is the first mindful step when things start fraying at the seams. The second is understanding the nature of your impulsive, emotional signals well enough to understand how they can hijack your reason and what you can do to bring them back into balance with your wise mind. The third and final step is taking that action.

As we often say at OIS Yoga, we are not doctors or scientists but partners on a healing journey. Here’s the 3-step approach I have used to avoid relapsing the past several years despite multiple highly stressful experiences and losses. I hope it will help you on your healing journey.

Step One: Building Awareness of Your Relapse Triggers

Your mat is the perfect place for building awareness of your triggers. If you’re wired like me (I’m female and autistic), it may even be a more conducive space than your therapist’s couch, although the two practices — therapy and yoga — can also complement each other perfectly.

Why? Those of us with extremely holistic and somatic ways of perceiving and interacting with the world are so highly in sync with the micro-expressions and subtle posture changes of others that we can undermine our own healing by trying, both consciously and unconsciously, to please and mirror our therapists. Our therapist might shift position for no other reason than to pass gas, but we misinterpret their discomfiture as an unspoken cue that we are “doing therapy wrong.” As such, we desperately try to “fix” our presentation. We readjust our masks instead of digging into the real work our souls need to do.

However, on your mat, you can close your eyes. You don’t have to — nor should you — focus on anything but the present moment and your perceptions within it.

How liberating! Outside distractions removed, you’re now free to listen to that still, small voice from within. You can reflect on the following questions and let your soul answer honestly, with no fear of outside judgment over your answers to these questions from the work of Janina Fisher [1] (whose books I highly recommend):

• What am I feeling right now? Identify and label your feelings beyond “good and bad.” This step can be surprisingly difficult. Or maybe it’s just me. I didn’t know I was autistic until age 52, but lacking the words to define my lived experience didn’t prevent alexithymia or the anhedonia that followed repeated traumatic experiences with no time for processing or loving companion to support me. Learning it was safe to feel my feelings let alone label them as an adult was hard. Be gentle with yourself.
• Where am I feeling it in my body? Tune into your somatic sensations. Is your heart pounding? Do you feel weak and sweaty or impossibly heavy? Are you tense all over or in specific regions?
• Does this feeling remind me of anything specific from the past? It’s okay if you can’t pinpoint one specific event, although you might.
• What is this part of me trying to do? Is your initial reaction fight, flight, freeze or fawn? A desire to drink or use substances is often a manifestation of the flight response [2], a way to numb as a form of escape.

Step Two: Understanding the Neurobiology of Emotion

The first step is learning to identify your triggers. The second is proving to yourself that you have the strength to sit with difficult emotions without dying or giving into the temptation to use.

Yes, you do, I promise you.

Why? According to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor of Harvard University, your body goes through a spontaneous chemical process when you react to something in your environment. That’s beyond your control. 

However, what happens after that initial 90 seconds [3] remains at least somewhat in your control. The thoughts and actions you take immediately following that initial 90 seconds go far in determining whether you remain stuck in an negative emotional loop.

That’s huge news for those of us prone to relapse. How many times have you followed a stressful experience with a fleeting thought of, “Man, I could really use a drink right now?” Understanding the neurobiology of emotion and its impact on your thought processes can help you snap back with more gusto in your, “No, I couldn’t; drinking would worsen my anxiety [4] levels,” in your reframe.

Recognizing your triggers builds your awareness of the emotions and bodily sensations that lead to “stinkin’ thinkin” like “one won’t be that bad.” You notice the emotion or the bodily sensation or the thought pattern because you have trained yourself to pay attention to these signals. 

The second step occurs when you recognize, “Uh-oh, danger, Will Robinson, danger.” Secure in the knowledge that this fleeting temptation will pass in 90 short seconds, you breathe your way through it as you reframe those thoughts.

Sometimes, though, you need a little bit more. That’s when it’s time to choose a healthy coping mechanism.

Step Three: The Power of Healthy Distraction

If breathing and cognitive reframing in the moment were enough, therapists’ couches and yoga studios alike might cease to exist. Sometimes, though, those intrusive thoughts keep coming. When that happens, you need to immerse yourself in an alternative activity to avoid giving into temptation. 

Think of this as a breather for your brain, like stretching and taking rest after a tough workout. The goal is to give those neurochemicals a change to come into better balance so you can get in your wise mind and think more clearly. You’re giving your brain time to recover from whatever is straining it.

You already know that my favorite activity is to practice yoga — a restorative session is heavenly for both my body and spirit even when my joints ache. Here are some other healthy distracting activities that may or may not work for you. Some of these are grounding, some are indulgent, others are just random tips meant to distract you from intrusive, unwanted thoughts of using until your brain chemistry rebalances itself. Take them or leave them as you need them, or share some of your favorites in the comments!

1. Read. Just don’t doom scroll — dive into a special interest instead if you’re autistic like me or just grab a book you love. 
2. Pop a big tub of popcorn and put on a favorite movie
3. Open to a random recipe book page and get cooking
4. Got houseplants? Make a clipping for a friend
5. Do a jigsaw puzzle
6. Play computer solitaire
7. Study a random language on a language learning app
8. Grab a hairbrush, crank Youube and have an impromptu karaoke session
9. Get moving. I’m pretty sure no one has ever felt guilty about hitting the gym instead of the bar.
10. Make a book of funny memes and add to it (humorous only)
11. Color an adult coloring book
12. Mindfully savor that piece of chocolate. A little sugar and endorphin boost [5] is better than using.
13. Look up a random skill you’d like to learn on YouTube
14. Special interest? True crime? Cryptids? Historical fashion? Fall down a Wiki hole.
15. Draw, sketch, or paint.
16. No artistic talent? Create a mandala, which anyone can do. Carl Jung reportedly really dug these, too, at least according to a YouTube video or two I’ve heard in the past.
17. Play a memory game. Look at a busy scene for 10 seconds, then close your eyes and list all of the items you saw (this works best if you look at an unfamiliar scene, like a city street, not your familiar desktop).
18. Cuddle with your pet. I miss and love you forever, Squeeks and Poe.
19. Play with ice. Putting it on your pressure points can create quite a distracting sensation. How does it feel when you let it melt in your hands?
20. Do an unwanted chore. One less thing on your to-do list eases stress.
21. Work. There are scores of online and offline gigs now and then, and while they don’t pay enough to live on, you can often pick up a few extra bucks on the side. Of course, you might want to really wow the boss at your regular 9–5, too.
22. Tune into a yoga nidra meditation. Come back to your body and experience deep rest and relaxation that alters brain waves.

Avoiding Relapse Through the Healing Power of Talking to Your Mat

The world is a scary place these days, and you aren’t alone if you feel less secure and more anxious than usual. If uncertainty increases your temptation to use, the above method may help you avoid relapse.

I’ve successfully used this three-step formula to avoid relapse through the deaths of several loved ones, unexpected career changes, and recovery from deep trauma over the past few years. I can’t promise that it will work for everyone, but I hope it brings you some solace. With love and hope for healing always. ~ J.

References

[1] Fisher, Janina. Books. Retrieved February 17, 2026, from: https://janinafisher.com/books/

[2] Empower Health Group. “About Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn: How Trauma Shapes Our Reactions.” White Oak Recovery Center. Nd. Retrieved February 17, 2026, from: https://www.whiteoakrecovery.com/addiction-blog/fight-flight-freeze-or-fawn/#

[3] “The 90-Second Cycle of an Emotion.” Parent & Family Wellness Center. November 19, 2021. Retrieved February 17, 2026, from: https://parentfamilywellness.com/blog/2021/11/19/the-90-second-cycle-of-an-emotion

[4] Henry Ford Health Staff. “Hangxiety: The Link Between Anxiety and Alcohol.” Henry Ford Health. December 10, 2025. Retrieved February 17, 2026, from: https://www.henryford.com/blog/2025/12/hangxiety-link-between-anxiety-alcohol

[5] Linda. “Why Does Chocolate Make Us Happy? The Science Behind Your Favourite Mood Booster.” January 19, 2026. Retrieved February 2026, from: https://www.henryford.com/blog/2025/12/hangxiety-link-between-anxiety-alcohol

• **A note about references. I don’t adhere to any official style guide, instead combining elements of MLA, APA and Chicago. My goal is to include as much relative information as possible to help you locate the original sources for any science-based information in my posts, so that you can fall down a delightful Wiki hole and fact-check me to your heart’s content. One of my real-life roles is fact-checking — I love it. I invite readers to do so on me because what matters to me, nearly more than anything (except love) is the truth. In short, if I err, I want you to call me on my mistakes, please. That is how we learn and grow together (just please include sources and don’t just say “you’re a bloody idiot,” because my reactive response to that tends to be “well, so are you, mate,” and that sort of unnecessary combativeness has never solved a single problem, as literally the entire world’s history shows). Links without a reference number in brackets [] are either links to my other content or fun links of interest (like “how to draw a mandala,” etc.).