Knowing your Triggers

January 17th.

Today I really wanted a drink. The work day started off stressful due to verbal deadlines and bad time management on my part. I had to prepare for a meeting for the top dogs and report on where we stand with recruiting. I quickly realized I should’ve given myself more time. I show up to the meeting late. Unprepared. Needless to say my boss was not happy. I had my prior temp help me print out all the resumes, with feedback forms from their interviews to jog memory. I exported a spreadsheet of the candidates names, location, who they met with, etc. I was scrambling and this wasn’t like me. I felt like I suck at my job.

After that failed meeting, more hiccups came up. “Where are we with this?” and “Why wasn’t this done?”. I’ve been reading Michelle Obama’s book and a phrase keeps coming to mind when these questions are raised, “Not good enough.” 

Typically, whenever I had negative thoughts like this or a bad day, I would bury my emotions with alcohol and forget. Now I can’t. The entire day I was “sassy”.  Just really pissed off at everything work related.

I get it. Everyone has bad days. Though, I just got a bonus and a raise, I still have the thoughts of “I suck at my job. And if I suck at this, what else am I supposed to do.” I went to school to be an accountant and did that for five years, then recruiting for a year, and now I'm in human resources.

I went for a walk to the post office to mail out W-2s. The cold breeze and fresh air helped. Though, I left work feeling defeated.

When I got home I explained to my boyfriend, Perry, what happened and he listened. I realize now throughout the night I lashed out at him. I apologized and tried to think of healthy ways to de-stress. I decided to bake and organize the kitchen.

We recently ordered these pull out organizational draws for the cabinets, which help a great deal. I also went through the spices and consolidated duplicates. The kitchen looked better and I felt better. 

The purpose is to find healthy ways to relieve stress and think about what triggers you to want to drink. I’m still figuring out my triggers but this was definitely one of them. Looking back now I would do exactly that: Come home from a stressful day from school or work and have a glass of wine to “relax” and unwind. However, one glass turned into two, which turned into drinking the whole bottle.

Now I try to work out (run, climb, yoga) read, stretch, watch TV, organize, clean, write, or doodle.

What triggered you to drink? What do you do now instead?

#soberinmy20s #triggers #stress #stressful #work #emotions #destress #unwind #healthy #health #relax #people #places #things #events #activities #times #dates