Triggers - Flashes of Emotion or Opportunities for Insight?

Human interactions can sometimes be so difficult.  We sometimes beat ourselves up after certain interactions thinking, “Why didn’t I say this or say that or why did I say anything at all!”  You need to understand something about us humans.  Environmental psychology and, well, the stuff we just come in here with leaves us with trigger points.  These are those little internal flash points we people do or say that one thing or many things in just that special way that pushes our buttons.  It is so easy to look back in hindsight when calm and un-triggered and see clearly what someone said or did wasn’t about us at all.

But wow those triggers, huh?!  If you realize that the thing that gets your goat is a trigger and you learn to own your triggers, the impact starts to lessen a bit.  Sometimes it is good enough to get to the point where you recognize you have been triggered and then in those moments following, just breathe forgiving yourself for being triggered.  It is okay to be triggered, its okay to find you’ve got goats for someone to get.  What’s not okay is living in denial and blaming everyone else for your triggers.  Here is a very harsh reality, triggers are not the fault of the person pushing your buttons.  There, I said it.  It’s the truth and I know all too well how much it hurts.  There is a part of us that becomes so angry that we’ve been triggered at all and we just want to blame someone, something…anything for the terrible toxic energy that seems to be the instant result.  But, that only damages our relationships and makes it harder for us to establish new ones.

So, what do we do with these triggers?  How do we make them go away?  More harsh news, I don’t know that everyone can make them go away.  Sometimes I think the best we can hope for is understanding and maybe even some compassion.  If someone makes a joke at your expense trying to aggrandize themselves while terribly minimizing you or your efforts and you have a trigger point around this, terrible things can begin to happen in your mind in a split second.  If you do not learn to recognize this anger, or this toxic emotion being generated by you seemingly as a result of someone else’s words or actions, this trigger point can really be damaging for you.  But, if over time you can learn to see the trend of the types of things that trigger you and you begin to understand this is about fear that you hold and that the interaction truly only serves to give you a chance to understand the trigger point is there, you will have made great strides towards recovery. 

There are wounds we all carry and you can spend a life time trying to figure out why something is there and maybe some of us should – maybe through therapy.  But, sometimes we just have to understand, accept ourselves, wounds – trigger points – and all and just learn to take a breath, disengage and get peaceful again.  Whether someone meant to trigger you or not isn’t really the point at all.  The point is you recognizing you have a trigger point.  Living with them isn’t so hard if you can understand that they exist and you don’t have to beat yourself or others up because you became triggered.  You really don’t. 

This is a whole new way of living with love and understanding towards yourself first and then others in a more healthy way.  Revenge is a message.  Anger is a message.  Sadness is a message.  What is that message?  Simply put, it is that there is a wound.  No matter how it got there, there is a wound and wounds need care and healing time not thrashing, bashing, avenging and threatening yourself or  others.  In a calm and cooler mind, you can acknowledge that you’ve been triggered, get some space for yourself to recover from the moment and then just be with the trigger.  Looking deeply and fearlessly within, you can do this.  It doesn’t mean you did something wrong or that something is wrong with you.  We all have our triggers and their levels of severity vary.  But, the realization of our own body’s messaging system through emotion and energy can truly be your saving grace.  We don’t need to internalize our anger.  We just need to understand that its there for whatever reason and give it space in non-action (other than awareness) for the intensity of a moment to shift.  That is damn hard!  But there are positive actions you can take.  If there are people who continually trigger you, do your best to spend less time with them – get some counseling to help you deal with your own emotions about what these people do that triggers you or even go the no contact route if need be.  Every person deserves the right to set boundaries to protect themselves  but we must always remember to also protect ourselves from our own negative thoughts.

There are so many tools available that can help us learn to be with emotion rather than running from, stuffing, projecting or transferring our emotion onto others psychologically.  Some of this stuff happens so quickly we don’t even know its happening consciously.  But we can learn to become consciously aware by listening to our emotion, knowing emotion isn’t always fact but it is a message.  Clearly and rationally and also, very safely exploring is paramount. 

We’ve all got our triggers and flashpoints and we may not ever be able to stop them.  But we can learn different behavior that better supports us while we learn to accept ourselves wounds and all.  No matter what you’ve been through, you are worth the effort of understanding, awareness, breathing and peace.  But in the end, it’s all about what you want to do and how you choose to live your life.  If you wish to live it blindly being triggered, that’s okay.  If you want to live it with more peace, serenity and support, you may have to learn better coping strategies for those times you become triggered.  We sometimes think this stuff is the end of the world in a heated moment but it doesn’t have to be.

It just doesn’t have to be horrible or result in terrible things said or done in a moment of emotion.  We can learn if we want to, we can become more aware if we want to.  I guess we just have to get to the point that we can’t live with our own toxic emotion.  These are great opportunities to learn from.  We just have to be willing to do the learning.  Just some food for thought today.  Blessings of great awareness, love, healing and understanding to you all.

 

© 2017, Jaie Hart (photo/words)

Walking Buttons

I had a thought this morning and please don't think I'm picking on anyone because I'd have to pick on myself too.  So, the thought is this:  We all walk around with buttons.  What I mean by walking around with buttons is that we all have those wounds deep inside of us that if touched or exposed will trigger us into some kind of painful reaction either via anger, sorrow, sadness or even vengeance.  So, we are the ones who decide to walk around with these buttons and our first reaction when someone pushes one of those buttons is to strike out.  What I can't seem to wrap my head around is that the button pushers are the ones that always seem to be the ones we blame.  We don't seem to have any ability to take responsibility for the fact that we've got buttons that are so readily pushed. 

So, the button pushers are of a wide variety of folks.  They are either in the class of the keenly perceptive and take some sort of twisted pleasure out of pushing your buttons or they are of the class that just happened to push one of your buttons unwittingly.  You can tell them apart immediately by how they respond when you call them to task for pushing your buttons. The ones in the former class will be the ones to deny or to press that brutal honesty is required in life and you just have to deal with it.  The latter class are usually the ones who will say, "Gosh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to....(insert answer here)."  Regardless of which class the button pushers belong to, with this article I mean to suggest something that may seem so revolting and might even make you feel incredulous.  Are you ready?  Here it is:  Own your buttons and stop transferring blame for painful wounds onto others.  I know, it's a jagged bitter pill but stick with me here a moment.  There truly is a method to my madness.

So, when you realize you have buttons that can be pushed such as abandonment issues, self-esteem issues, situational interaction type wounds, emotional abuse, physical abuse or other things that you know you hold as unhealed wounds, you have an incredibly powerful opportunity to prevent the button pushers from ever causing you harm again.  It's so simple, own your buttons and work on healing what underlies them so that no one can trigger you again.  I realize how hard this is and that it will be one very arduous journey to embark upon but realize the power you hold by standing in your own light and owning your wounds.  If you own it and someone calls you on it...you can respond with, "Yeah, so or and????"  If you are in denial of it and someone exposes you, you are going to be triggered into denial, diversion, transference, projection and other ways to protect that wound from being brought out into the light of day.

If you own the button and work on healing it, you won't be subjected to triggering.  Another thing to consider - the role of the button pusher.  So, life is sort of a dream and it is we who build the sets, develop the scripts and engage in the casting calls.  Our souls, knowing we are in pain whether consciously or not, will cast the button pushers into scenes to act out with us for one purpose...to get us to seek out those wounds we carry and heal them.  You can fire one cast member after another for exposing a wound but you see, your soul will only cast another and another and another who will push the same button until you own it and heal it.  Its true, so very true...so painfully true.  So, quit giving the button pushers power.  Take a look at those things that cause you to react, deny, protect and fight back.  Look at those things openly and with courage and determine if you have a button that might need some work to heal.  If you can stand in your own light bravely, you can heal and grow from the experience and then, when your soul casts the last cast member on this topic to try and trigger you, you'll respond instead of reacting and you will have passed the test moving onto ever and ever greater and more meaningful plays and scenes.  Just some food for thought beautiful dreamers. Blessings of love, healing and light.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (photo, random internet find)