The Power of the Pause: Mastering Your Emotional Triggers

The Power of the Pause: Mastering Your Emotional Triggers

What secrets to maintaining sobriety can be uncovered once the substances are gone but the feelings are still raging? In this solo Naturally High episode, Jeanne Foot turns the spotlight on what she calls “the next frontier in long-term recovery” – emotional sobriety.

Speaking directly to people in recovery as well as anyone who feels emotionally hijacked, Jeanne defines emotional sobriety as “the ability to take a moment between stimulus and response and choose how we want to respond.” She contrasts simple abstinence with true recovery, pointing out how easy it is to become the “dry drunk” who’s sober but miserable, reactive and stuck in old patterns.

Jeanne breaks down why triggers feel so instant, linking them to arrested emotional development and old conditioning. She explains how the brain hunts for the same dopamine hit through new compulsions, whether that’s food, work, gaming or relationships, and why swapping one addiction for another is so common. A big highlight is her simple but powerful P3 protocol: pause, process, proceed.

“The pause is where your power lives,” she repeats, guiding you to scan your body, name what you’re feeling with compassion, and then choose one small aligned action instead of going straight to autopilot. It’s practical, fast and designed to work in real life when your heart is pounding and you’re about to say or do the thing you’ll regret.

Jeanne weaves in tools like the Serenity Prayer, acceptance of reality (“do not fight with reality”), and the idea that every rep is “a vote for the person you’re becoming.” Rather than treating relapse or big feelings as proof you’re broken, she frames them as pointers to the next layer of work.

If you’re tired of reacting, swapping addictions or living on emotional autopilot, this episode might be the nudge to ask yourself: where can you start building that tiny but life-changing pause?