As I traverse this winding, spiral staircase of healing to become MORE of my True Self, I realize that when I get triggered – meaning the way I react to ALL the things that worry, annoy or outrage me…and ALL the stories I create to justify my position… that they are, in fact, direct routes guiding me to where I need more inner healing….
When you’re triggered you might notice that your initial focus and blame goes toward the source of the trigger. As I’ll explain in a sec, this is a typical human reaction.
The opportunity to learn more about yourself and to heal from your triggers, is to – yes – allow your feelings to be experienced, but instead of reacting or attaching to them…
.. to INSTEAD shift your focus inward TOWARD yourself to understand WHAT in YOU is in resistance or opposition to the trigger and WHY. 🧐
I’ve noticed there are 3 levels to this experience of being triggered that may help you move through the healing process and lift you up and out of the misery and stuck-ness of feeling triggered – especially if it happens often.
Reflecting on my last few years of intuitive healing training, it’s helpful to frame the human level of consciousness using these inherent aspects that we all hold:
- Childlike – Most of us (including myself) are not fully healed. So it’s normal in today’s world to initially react to something that triggers you from a childhood/wounded perspective. This default response mirrors your unhealed “trauma” or any experience from childhood where you didn’t feel safe, loved, seen, heard, valued or accepted. The trigger opposes your perceived sense of “safety” or what you deem “right and wrong” and you react at a primal/survival level.
- In this response, you tend to self-protect by putting judgement or blame on the person or circumstance that triggered you.
- You feel right and righteous. The other person or situation is clearly wrong and bad.
- You will tend to assert and enforce your position and/or avoid the trigger to ensure you remain safe and “right”.
- Masculine – This is where I tend to go next (and where I used to stay to be honest). My mind always seeks to understand, so it will spend quite a bit of time analyzing where the trigger comes from based on the other person or situation. “What’s going on with them?”
- This response is usually externally focused – attempting to assess, diagnose or categorize the “other”.
- The mental/masculine aspects of our consciousness will find a way to either compartmentalize, resolve/fix the conflict. and maybe even forgive or “let it go” based on our mental assessment.
- This response may subdue and neutralize the negative energy around the trigger and make things better, but it usually doesn’t resolve the “ROOT CAUSE”.
- This means that the trigger will likely reoccur from the same or different source again (until it’s fully understood and healed at a deeper consciousness level).
- Side note: This is an area where common life coaching tools (like the “Thought Model”) tend to “mentally bypass” the emotional root causes inherent in tougher inner conflicts and deeply rooted coping behaviors. Although effective in many cases, I’ve found that directing one to simply “change your thoughts!”often disregards the actual feelings, emotions, traumas, deep wounds and adaptive beliefs and behaviors learned and developed since childhood. In other words, that mental level of coaching can be a fine surface level fix – but it may not actually get to the real root – which can even serve to “gaslight” someone who is struggling emotionally, physically, mentally or spiritually.
- Feminine – This is the path back to the heart. When we can notice the trigger and turn inward, we’re REALLY starting to get to the REAL root, take responsibility and master our inner healing work. But this isn’t easy. It requires that you lean into and FEEL the pain that created this defensive position. It also requires that you NOT intellectualize your emotions or theirs.
- Asking yourself: What am I feeling? WHY am I feeling this way? WHERE in my body do I feel this?
- Next allow the answers to sink FAR beyond the surface of what the other person has done (or what the triggering situation initially felt like) in order to connect your knee-jerk emotional reactions and feelings to whatever is DEEPLY IN YOU that feels threatened, insecure, offended, unsafe, rejected, unheard, unseen, disrespected or unloved.
- Ask yourself: Where did this first come up for me? Where did I first feel this way? What is the lie, or limiting belief I’ve created? How have I learned to cope and adapt to this lack, loss, uncertainty, adversity or trauma?
- If you can, get into. a very relaxed state and go on an intuitive journey back to those events to really see and feel what happened and how you interpreted and adapted to those experiences.
- By FEELING the wounds within, (tears are usually involved and even necessary), you can start to understand HOW you’ve adapted to your pain..how you’ve hidden under masks and created defenses, distractions, compensations, self-abuse, stress and pressure….
- It’s from that self aware, self loving and open place that you can begin to process and eventually shift out of the wounds – releasing that pain – that stored energy out of your body and your consciousness.
And eventually you’ll find that what triggered you, no longer does.
This is healing. This is freedom. This is needed NOW.
But it’s f&cking HARD WORK…
It’s SOOO much easier to blame and judge and to be right and to create stories….
It’s also quite easy and addictive to rationalize, deny and suppress your pain and your own healing by dismissing it and jumping to the “letting go” and “moving on” part.
It’s SOOO much harder to look in the mirror. It’s even harder to look in the mirror with love and compassion. And it’s absolutely terrifying to allow and feel that deeply buried pain.
But the rewards are SOOOO worth the work. Trust me – but moreso, trust yourself and that still small voice that knows this to be true.
xo,
Ev
P.S. If you find yourself feeling triggered and stuck in the initial reactive Childlike level, that’s OK and in fact, it’s a good thing – because if you deny those reactions and either get stuck on the mental analysis level or try to skip over to the “letting go” healed part without feeling and understanding the root of it, that’s called suppression and suppression only postpones your healing. ✨
