What are triggers? They are little sensitive spots within our mental, emotional and energetic bodies that when touched sting. They are sensitive spots that can take us by surprise. We don’t always know why they are there and we don’t always know how to heal them. They were created at one point in time on our journey when we felt hurt by a person’s words, actions or a situation. The event(s) that created the wound might not have been apparent to those around us but within ourselves this event buried a hole deep enough to create a sensitive spot that can easily be awoken when touched again by a similar situation. When working with clients I can sometimes feel where these sensitive spots are stored within the physical body, within what we call cellular memory. These are places where energy doesn’t flow freely, where negative memories create a sort of energetic vacuum rather than a beaming ray of light.
We all have triggers that were created throughout our journey here on earth. These triggers work like gifts in the sense that they point us directly to the places within us that need to be nurtured, loved and healed. They become like vacuums because they wish to attract and pull to them (us) similar situations so that they can be finally seen and loved. When we are triggered by what someone says or does it is our wisest response to honour them, for they allow us to see within ourselves what is raw, what has not been seen, parts of ourselves that desire so deeply to be loved. The key with triggers is to know yours on an intimate level so that when a person comes along and inadvertently or purposely touches a wound you can separate them from your response to the situation.
Allowing ourselves to turn inwards to attend to our wounds requires a mature level of awareness, this act of sovereignty and self-responisibilty infuses compassion and empowerment into our every interaction. Often times when we are triggered, the other person doing the triggering has no idea that they have said or done something that deeply touches a wound within us. When we seize the opportunity to step back and not respond on the spur of the moment we are taking great big leaps towards self-knowledge and deep self-love. We’ll often be triggered the most by those we feel closest to and this is because we often allow our guard down in the safety and comfort of those we love and trust. When our guard comes down, our wounds are more accessible and a greater opportunity for healing is present.
Our first reaction to being triggered is usually to raise the finger and start looking for an outside culprit to push our pain onto, usually the person who said something that touched a wound within us. This is such a natural reaction. We are all in fact one great big organism and so we can easily look to address things on the outside and this seems to make much sense in the instant. The problem with this method is that when we learn to control outside circumstances to protect our internal wounds we are left on the hook to constantly be on guard of other’s behaviour. The wounds within never quite heal completely, we simply learn to protect them with greater complexities.
This doesn’t mean that we should put up with other’s projections even though they feel uncomfortable, we can easily establish healthy boundaries with those around us. What we want to make sure not to do is to push others away because they trigger us, in the name of self preservation, just so we don’t have to address our wounds.
Triggers can be something as seemingly insignificant as the way a person looks at you. A simple glance cam set off a signal within you that makes you feel shame, heartache, guilt, anger or random insecurities. There might have been someone at school or at home growing up that would look at you in certain way that made you feel constricted and less than. This negative feeling of inadequacy has never been addressed by you and so it’s an unhealed wound that can easily be reopened by someone or a situation that does something similar to trigger that memory. Often triggers can be provoked through opinions and simple phrases that we feel are judgments made upon us. Judgments that would not normally bother us if we did not have a wound within that shares this same belief about ourselves.
For example if you had a teacher that made you out to be a fool in front of the class, berating you and calling you stupid, your trigger might be something as simple as someone challenging your beliefs or ideas in front of others. A simple innocent inquiry could reawaken the memory of being purposefully put down in front of others and reopen a wound that has been sitting within unhealed for the last 20 years. You suddenly respond with anger, blinded by your pain and blind to the need to separate what was said from what you are feeling within. If we can’t make this distinction then we are not able to identify our triggers and properly address them for healing.
Another example can be cellular pain from physical trauma. Personally I get triggered when people touch my face or neck because I have experienced physical trauma in these areas during my lifetime. Even when my children touch my face I can often times feel a surge of emotion come to the surface and become short tempered when they don’t respond to my request to not be touched there.
Ideally we wish to respond to each situation with a certain amount of detachment from feelings. We wish for a balance of heart and mind to dance through each response we produce to outside stimuli. When a tidal wave of negative emotions are produced we are no longer responding from a harmonious and objective space. We are in an emotional dance between our past pain and current reawakening of that pain. We feel extra sensitive and are no longer in the present, we are being held captive to the past.
Here are some things we can do to take responsibility for our triggers and heal them:
Know your triggers and be proactive…
When your physical or emotional body responds before your mind, the pain was present before the conversation or event took place. This could also be an intuitive hit so prompt your brain to find out why your body reacted and your emotions got triggered, if there’s a memory associated to it, it will likely appear when you ask.
Do you respond with great emotion to similar situations? This is a signal that you have an unhealed memory that is triggered by a specific theme. Gather as much information as you can on what the theme is, key words, phrases and actions are, so you can better be aware and prepared the next time you get triggered. This sacred self-knowledge lifts us out of conflict with the world and into a state of self-empowerment and inner peace.
If you know some of your triggers share them with those you love so they can help protect you as you work to heal them.
When strong emotion arises, don’t be afraid to take a moment away from the situation that triggered you in order to be present with what has arose within you. The key is to sitting with the pain or the memory without trying to solve it, fix it or change it. All it needs is loving attention to begin to heal.
Being proactive about our triggers doesn’t just involve getting to know them but by taking responsibility for them most importantly. We don’t want them to overrun our lives and our relationships. We can write about them, release tension from them and breath into them during physical exercise, create a character out of them and create poems or paintings about them. We can ask loved ones to help us release negative cellular memory by infusing new positive cellular memory into specific areas of our bodies, example having a loved one gently kiss a place that has been previously scared or agree to limit the use of certain key words or phrases that might touch the wound unnecessarily as you are attempting to heal it.
We can use affirmations to infuse our mental and emotional wounds with new truths. All depending what you trigger is you can design an affirmation to bring new light into the wound and reprogram the brain. If for example your trigger is people laughing at you, you might create an affirmation that says, “When others laugh at me I feel the joy in their sense of humour”. Or if you get triggered by someone who questions your choices, you could create an affirmation that says, “When others question my choices I feel honoured that they wish to see my inner workings”. There are so many ways to design affirmations but essentially the words that feel good are the ones to use.
Allowing ourselves moments to travel back in time and view the events that created the triggers can be very healing if we are prepared. Teal Swan put a nice video together on this process. We can enter memories and change the outcome of them by using our imagination. This actually begins to re-hardwire our neural pathways. I have also had much success at healing triggers with the help of a hypnosis. Some of you in Montreal might know Albert Bejshak Bissada. I’ve had much success at working through childhood memories with him that created a chain of triggers in my present experience that I was able to become more aware of and slowly heal.
We all wish to live in the NOW and living in the now requires us to know where we come from and where our energy is snagged into the past, where we are fragmented from wholeness, where we are unnecessarily suffering and controlled by the whim of other’s actions. I wish you all much awareness of your triggers and how they come into play in your everyday life. How your reactions to people and the world are sometimes due to internal protective mechanisms. I wish us all happier, healthier relationships minus the blame, minus the uncomfortable feelings and minus the pain. Know when your protection has placed you in a position that makes it difficult for you to heal or when your lack of self-awareness has created the bases for projecting all your wounds onto others. You can do this, stay calm and introspect!
One Love,
J