Over a year and a half without...

But I want to so badly. Lately things have just been really stressful for me. But I'm hiding it well, which I suppose is a bad thing. But I don't think people really understand. My dad kind of does, he's a MA LMFT, or the other way around. I can't remember. But he doesn't exactly get how urges can suddenly occur. When I get triggers and I'm alone, or let's say with my boyfriend and want to sneak to the bathroom to do something. What do I do to get rid of those feelings? Or how do I cope with it? Any good coping mechanisms out there for this?

Hi daffodil, welcome to PC. You learned that you had to hide your feelings?

Hi Daffodil! Try to remember that you're beautiful and you don't deserve the pain you'd be inflicting on yourself. Try an variety of breathing exercises that you can find in many helpful sections here on PC or just by googling breathing exercises for anxiety or stress. They can help for urges too!

I find that some mindfulness practices, like writing with your left hand, or drinking a full glass of water, breathing and focusing on how the water feels running down your throat can help you focus on being HERE instead of with your urges.

I don't know if you've heard of the Butterfly Project, but that's a really good thing to try out too.

I struggle a lot myself, and I have found many excellent places for support with these things. The biggest thing is to distract yourself, remind yourself what you're fighting for, remember to keep fighting, and remember that you want to practice self-love instead of self-hate.

If you write down all of your negative feelings on a piece of paper, you can rip it up or burn it. Or you can write down all of the god things that make you smile and forget about urges, and read that whenever you get more urges. You can fold this up and keep it in your wallet or in your pocket for a quick emergency reminder!

I've also started keeping a 'happiness jar', as I call it. For things that make me particularly smile, I write down what happened, what was good in my day, and I fold up that piece of paper and I put it in the jar. My goal is to fill it until the same time next year (Halloween is when I started it!), then dump it out and read all of the good things that have happened.

I also plan to crack this open when I feel urges to remind myself that I'm fighting the urges so that I can keep having guilt-free days.

You have gone a year and a half without, and that is AMAZING! You're doing a fantastic job. I hear again and again 'relapse is part of recovery', so IF that happens just try to start out fresh and see if you can break your record.

I think you should be very proud of yourself for doing well this far, and I hope some of the suggestions work out for you.

So happy for you! I have been "clean" 7 yrs, and I still get urges to sneak off and hurt when life gets super stressful and overwhelming. I know that that may be a little discouraging, but know that it does get easier to not do it as time goes by. I think I personally tend to idealize it as something that only caused relief, rather than something that caused me pain as well, and not only me but those around me. I know you have the strength to keep going!