This bonus workbook complements Tuesday’s post on how to manage triggers when you’re feeling angry. It has easy-to-use exercise and optional deeper dive exercises for those that want to take a look at self-doubt and obstacles.

Anger is one of those emotions that can hit like a freight train. It can barrel towards you fast and overwhelmingly. For those in addiction recovery—and for the people who love them—anger can be more than just a bad mood. It can be a trigger, a dangerous pull toward old coping mechanisms that promise relief but come with a cost.

What do you do when anger flares up? How do you keep it from dragging you down a path you’ve worked so hard to leave behind? That’s what we’re talking about today: real, practical ways to manage anger and its triggers, whether you're in recovery or supporting someone who is.

This may be a hard pill to swallow…no one can make us feel anything.

Ever had someone ignore your kindness when you held the door open for them, and suddenly, your blood pressure is through the roof? Or maybe your boss gave you that “Are you serious?” look during a meeting, and you spent the rest of the day convinced you’re one typo away from unemployment.

We’ve all been there, convinced that other people’s actions made us mad, sad, or just plain bananas. But, and This may be a hard pill to swallow…no one can make us feel anything. Not even that jerk who didn’t say, “Thank you.” (Yeah, I know. I don’t like it either.)

Sometimes, our feelings need a timeout.

Recovery is like a rollercoaster—it has its ups and downs and unexpected twists that can leave you feeling dizzy. But one thing that can help you stay grounded is doing an emotional check-in.

It’s super easy to forget how you're actually feeling until your emotions are like adding Mentos to a bottle of Coke; they explode. That’s where an emotional check-in comes in—it’s like hitting “pause” on life to see what’s really going on inside without judgment (and without throwing your hands up and screaming at the sky).

Think of it as a quick pit stop for your feelings, designed to keep you on track in your recovery journey. Here’s a simple guide to get you started.

Some of you may not know this, but I don’t just help people struggling with addiction; I also help their loved ones because I understand this side of the equation too. The questions I get asked the most are, “How will I know if my loved one has recovered?” Followed by, “Should I Stay?” <—More on that question next week.

These are challenging for me to answer. Not because I don’t know the signs of a healthy recovery, but because people generally don’t like to hear, “Well, we’re never ‘recovered,’ we’re always going to be in recovery and a work in progress.” People are a bit more optimistic when I explain that with a good, healthy recovery that is worked every single day, we can stay clean and emotionally sober.

Have you heard of emotional sobriety? If not, you're not alone. Many people in recovery in recovery and healing, present company included, don't hear about it until they're well into their recovery.

What is emotional sobriety?

Emotional sobriety is the ability to feel all our emotions: the good and the bad, and then process the feelings. We learn to move through, lean into, and, most of all, not ignore them.

We want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem! When we ignore what our brain and body tell us, we contribute to our problems.

When we're emotionally sober, we have balance in our life. A great saying about emotional sobriety is, "My definition of balance is being able to obsess equally in all areas of my life." Funny but also quite accurate.