Dealing with Relapse: Finding Healthy Ways to Relax

For me personally, I will do something like smell a candle, draw, or play with a sensory object. Turn on some calming music, put on comfy clothes, and just focus on a sense.

I use play-doh to make animals or snacks. Animals mostly when I’m starting to spiral, because it takes much more care to attach the limbs or get the anatomy right which distracts me from what I was thinking about. And by the end, I’ve either got a cute little dinosaur or Lion! I bought 4 colors of 98¢ play-doh. Initially, I just kinda mushed it up in my hands, stretched, rolled, etc… don’t do that, for me it just made it way worse

As an alternative to nicotine, I found vapeing 0mg to help a lot, the forced slow breathing of the vape helps calm me down and give me something to do with my hands

I don’t recommend this either but nicotine helped me soooo much. That and talking to others in the same situation/who’d been in the same situation.

i don’t recommend doing this, but nicotine was a MASSIVE help in my quitting SH. it gives me a very similar rush.

No one is perfect, and we all slip up from time to time. It's a struggle. I personally like anything like a bath or some instrumental music, cooking... anything that helps me with my self care while being explicitly enjoyable. You know?