What Triggers You Can Heal You

Do you find yourself intensely emotionally or physically reacting to what other people say or do? If so, you've just been triggered.

Triggers are anything that remind us of previous trauma. It signals old wounds inside of us that need to be healed. Physical responses to triggers may be in the form of hyperventilating panic attacks, freezing up, physically attacking someone or running away from someone (fight or flight) responses. Emotional responses may be in the form of intense anxiety, rage, or weeping spells. They are not limited to these responses alone, of course. We all have our own unique ways of dealing with pain.

What we usually do, though, is to see, blame and deal with the other person's words or actions as the threat, which can then quickly cause conflicts to escalate without resolving any issue. What we might try doing, for a change, is to promptly do deep breathing and become Still when we feel triggered, and see it as an opportunity for healing old wounds.

Then we can ask ourselves these starter questions to explore what's causing us to react so intensely: What do I believe to be true behind this situation?

What similar memories from my past does this situation activate in me?

I had a younger, newly married friend recently come to me for comfort, as she told me how a seemingly simple thing of asking her husband to answer a couples self-help app with her caused a blowup instead.

The question they had come to in the app was if they felt comfortable sharing their deeper selves with each other. She answered "neutral", he answered "disagree", and that instantly triggered her. She promptly froze, turned away, and refused to answer any more app questions. Her reaction triggered him, too, and confused him, so he lashed out in anger, and she lashed out back, and it quickly spiraled into a heated argument! When she came to me feeling bad about it, I just noted how their different answers to the app question must have threatened a deep belief she has inside about how couplehood and marriage should be, huh. After a few seconds of reflection, she admitted yes, because she always believed that a strong marriage is where both husband and wife are almost always in agreement, and anything deviating from this is a major threat.

Then, I asked her if her feelings in this situation activated certain old, familiar feelings and memories for her, too, and I just waited for her answer. As I gave her space to just talk about it, she shared how her parents divorced when when she was just around 9 years old. One day, she found her father talking to someone on the phone and saying, "I love you" and when she asked her father who he was talking to, he said it was just a friend and friends say I love you to each other. She knew, deep within her 9-year-old body, that he was lying through his teeth, and she was very mad at him, but what she did instead was to just nod at her father and walk away. Then, she had a moment of Insight! She realized how every time her husband just differs from her opinions in any way or says or does things that do not sit well with her, she'd instantly think that either he's lying, or their marriage is shakily going down, so she'd punish him for it by either angrily attacking and accusing him, or freezing up and ignoring him, rejecting him first before he could reject her.

From her sharing, we both learned how she transferred her anger at her dad for lying to her to her husband. On a deeper level, her childhood pain at her parents' divorce led her child's mind to conclude and believe that marriage should always be where the couple almost always agree with each other, or else. Then, she ruefully added, too, how her husbands' quick anger at her turning away from him must be a reflection of his own old wounds about his mother's approval or rejection.

I also suggested to her that maybe, she needs to rediscover, acknowledge and befriend her 9-year-old self again, who must have felt betrayed and abandoned at that time when she did not honor her inner intuition about her father's lying. She can try listening to her innerself more by checking in with her heart always, and sitting with herself when she's triggered. She said she will and asked me how I know all this. I said I've been there, done that, and I've learned to welcome my triggering times as opportunities for further healing. I am reminded of this now as I write this on this weekend before the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Gemini this November 30. Eclipses are intense energetic times of bringing to the surface what's long been kept hidden, and can be powerfully triggering times for most people who still have a lot of old wounds and trauma to heal. Please remember this #DiosaWays tip when you find yourself triggered next time. May you heal in all ways.

#DiosaWays #DivineFeminineLiving #TheDiosaLife #LunarEclipse #triggers #oldwounds #trauma #healing

(image by Puwadon Sangngern, Pexels)