Taking the Trauma out of Your Triggers.
You know the feeling all too well. It could be a person, it could be a noise or a smell. Perhaps it’s a song that you played for someone who meant a lot to you, or a movie you watched together far too many times.
It might even be a ridiculous television program that your kids watched that sends you into a rage, where suddenly beheading a purple dinosaur seems like the most natural and sensible thing in the world. :)
Whatever it is, it sets off an emotion in you that you just have a hard time controlling.
The intensity of your reaction could be mild, or it could be severe. You could find yourself recoiling away from the situation, or engaging with it, bringing with you harsh words, and unkind thoughts.
However it moves you, the truth is that an external stimulus has activated something in you that changes your emotional state, and you probably don’t know why.
So today, were going to go a little deeper, and see if we can help take some of the trauma out of your triggers.
It starts by asking yourself what is the most obvious emotion you are feeling. Is it fear, anger or sadness, or maybe love, joy or surprise? That can take some time, because sometimes it’s a mixture, and sometimes it’s so powerfully one by itself.
But eventually you’ll be able to reach a point where you can identify the major component, which begins your journey into the next level.
Figuring out what is really going on.
Because if it’s fear, it’s probably because one of your six human needs is being threatened. Maybe the trigger makes you feel powerless (loss of certainty) or that you are going to lose a significant relationship in your life (loss of connection).
Maybe something is going to happen that could make you lose your social standing in the eyes of people you care about, (which would be a loss of both connection and significance/value).
Any of those can also create the other of the covering emotions – which is anger.
Once you’ve identified what’s really going on, it’s time to ask yourself why you are holding onto that emotion, and usually it’s because of one of two things. Either it justifies you (increases your sense of significance) or it reassures you (increases your sense of certainty). And once you clearly see why you’re holding onto it, the next step is usually the hardest thing to do.
To begin the act of letting go.
Because the further you go into your journey, you’ll soon come to realize that most of the emotions we hold onto are those that we really never needed in the first place, but we adopted them to cover up pain, and the result of trauma and loss.
The anger that we feel can be lessened as we find the truth of ourselves in the silent reaches of our hearts. The fear that we feel can be reduced as we learn to look through the threat and understand the infinite capacity of our mind and our souls.
And eventually, the things that trigger us can be changed into that which rarely bothers us at all.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings