Our TRAINING:
There really is no better time to talk about Triggering than the holiday season because you’ll interact with your family at some point. THAT triggers most
people. (Me included. I am scoring a “B” so far and CRAZILY proud of that.)
These 4 Questions Show You What Your Triggers Can Teach You:
1) What Triggers Me?
2) How Strong is My Reaction?
3) What Am I Afraid (Expect) Will Happen if
This Condition Doesn’t Change?
4) Where Have I Made My Happiness Dependent Upon This Condition I Cannot Control?
Action Question: How Can I Choose to Be Happy With or Without This Condition?
Use the training for your life. Pick the last thing that pretzeled you and use it to
work through today.
1) What Triggers Me?
These first two questions are the easiest ones. What put you on tilt? Your kids always sleeping through their alarms?
Your mate never taking out the garbage? Talking to an insurance company on the phone?
So what “takes you there”?
It is SOO easy for us to identify the “bad actors” in the play and point out their poor performance that we forget WE WROTE THE SCRIPT!
I have a family member that is now on permanent trigger. This person is TOUCHY all the time. Hair trigger temper, always defending. What triggers them is almost everything.
2) How Strong is My Reaction?
Most of the time the “strength” of your reaction is not as connected to the “offense” as it is to where YOU are right now.
I want you to especially notice where you “lose your shit” over tiny things.
Think of your emotions having an immune system. We all know that if we get really sick, even after you “heal”, your immune system is still weak and susceptible to other attacks easily.
You have an emotional immune system and when you
trigger it repeatedly it begins to act just like your body’s immune system when overstimulated, it breaks down. It doesn’t work properly.
When your emotional immune system breaks down you are what I called “sunburned.” I’m black and have never had a sunburn but all my friends have! I learned early as a child that a playful slap on your friend’s arm is no big deal UNLESS THEY HAVE A
SUNBURN. Then my playful tap is seen as a murderous attack.
Get it? When you are emotionally sunburned you OVER REACT to things. You have what we call a “hair trigger” and the tiniest things set you off.
This is HUGE information for you.
Assess your emotional immune system right now. Just ask yourself, on a scale of 1-10 where am I, when 10 is awesome emotional health and 1 is barely coping. Whatever number first came to mind is it. Don’t wiggle.
My personal and normal emotional immune system rating is very high, but it’s 3 points lower
right now from extended exposure to emotional stressors and trigger opportunities (also called “visiting family”). I went home to a mess. It’s not my mess but it IMPACTED ME HUGELY.
It will recover but I need additional self-care to speed that recovery JUST LIKE WITH YOUR BODY. I let myself stay up late to watch a movie that made me happy and then wake up at 11 a.m. to get
more rest. I will tread carefully in exposing myself to people who would “stretch me” because what that would be no big deal a week ago, will now “feel” worse than it actually is.
3) What Am I Afraid (Expect) Will Happen if This
Condition Doesn’t Change?
Let yourself give the knee-jerk & obvious answer first and then drill down with, “But why does THAT upset me?” It does not matter WHAT answer you start with, if you keep asking why THAT upsets you or concerns you, you’ll reach your REAL FEAR.
You want to know
what your REAL FEAR is here.
Anger signals FEAR. In my learnings, I have come across many great teachers that tell us “If you are angry, you are always wrong”. It took me a LONG time to get to my own personal understanding of this truth, that I state like this:
“If
I am angry, it is because I am afraid someone else has the power to MAKE me unhappy”.
By spiritual law, that can NEVER be true. The avatars just left out this next
bit! Here is Tanya’s take:
You are afraid the person will cause a certain “condition”. You cannot imagine being happy IF the condition happens, because you depend on external events working to be happy. So, you must STOP ANYONE from causing “it” or you CANNOT remain happy.
Your
triggering is governed by the state of your emotional immune system PLUS the depth of your fear.
You can now see how triggers give you rich information on where you really are. Triggers are Teachers.
4) Where Have I Made My Happiness Dependent Upon This Condition I Cannot Control?
Your top of the mind fear may be getting behind on bills, failing a colleague, disappointing your family. The REAL FEAR triggering you is almost
always some variation of “I am not good enough”, “I’m not loved or wanted” or “I can’t make things better.”
If the “thing” happens, then it proves your fears are true. This terrifies you. You must disconnect this association.
Divorce Example
I have clients on the edge of a divorce. It doesn’t matter who you are, you have firsthand experience with how awful that can be from your own or witnessing other’s divorces.
Let’s use their extreme example of Marriage on Edge of Divorce for our
Trigger.
What Triggers Me? My mate doesn’t trust, support or understand me so our marriage feels like a sham and I’m lying to myself about what I want, what I deserve and what the future looks like if I stay.
How Strong Is My Reaction? 1-10 where 10 is no sleep, crying, emotional exhaustion and physical effects. Average trigger
response is a 7 with bursts of 9 & 10. My emotional immune system is beat up from years of this without being able to recover.
What Am I Afraid (Expect) Will Happen if He Doesn’t Change? A divorce. Another failed marriage. My kids’ lives uprooted. Money thrown away on lawyers. Me feeling and looking like a failure to myself, my family and my friends.
Translation? I am not enough. I am not loved and won’t be loved and I can’t fix my life.
Where Have I Made My Happiness DEPENDENT On This Marriage Working (Outcome), Which I Cannot Control? Look at the REAL FEARS. You can see how you’ve equated DIVORCE with everything you are most afraid of. If you “accept” the divorce or heaven forbid, WANT a Divorce, your ego says you have
to accept all the other scary pieces are TRUE too.
You have then made it impossible to be happy if the condition of “marriage failure” occurs.
I teach that divorce is an opportunity to start over and actually DO whatever personal work it you
avoided the first time around, so you line up better results for your future and own the results of your present.
Action Question: How Can I Choose to Be Happy With or Without This Marriage Working?
You do the work of breaking the inappropriate association that was
forged without your agreement. First, bring it to light. Write it down and then do all you can to create, believe, think and only speak the opposite of it.
I am an International Teacher and Coach with clients all over the globe and I still have crazy family. My ego used to tell me I was a FAILURE if my family failed. I was NOT good enough to help others if I
couldn’t help my own mother or a cousin.
I had to dig out my REAL FEAR that was triggering me when I was involved with my family, so I could disconnect MY self-worth from THEIR CHOICES.
The better I get at addressing my REAL FEAR and destroying that false connection, the stronger my
emotional immune system gets. The measure of my success is in how infrequently I trigger now and how much more is required to trigger me.
Our U.S. election? Zero trigger. Not apathy, just no fear.
If you do this work, you’ll thank me. I love you and I want for you what I have for
me.
