Pulling the Trigger on Your Triggers

Written by Katie Cavenagh, previously published on Medium.com

No one can make you feel a certain way, but they most certainly can trigger you.

We’ve been hearing this a lot lately, that you, and only you, are responsible for how you feel. And it’s absolutely true — there’s no way someone else can make the chemical concoction of your emotions inside of your body for you and release it at just the right time. Only you have the power to do that. 

When someone triggers us, we often blame them. Perhaps we’ve been conditioned to put responsibility outside of ourselves, blaming the world, other people, the wretched state of our miserable lives for our unhappiness or bitterness, or whatever. It’s never our fault — we’re the victims to society, our social class, our genetics, our government, our health, our money (or the lack thereof), and a slew of other things that keep us feeling down and out, uninspired, and disempowered.

All the while, we neglect to be honest with ourselves and reflect how our actions, words, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings have been perpetuating this pain-cycle, feeding the energy of these triggers so they become unconscious autopilot reactions, at the ready to explode, should someone trip the wire.

What really happens when you get “triggered”

We’ve all been there. Rush hour traffic. You’re running late for something. You’re already flustered and stressed that the traffic is Just. Not. Moving! Then some jack-ass comes speeding alongside the breakdown lane, and cuts in front of you just before they run out of road. Like REALLY?! Your immediate reaction? A floating finger and some creative, obscure obscenities perhaps? A seething anger dripping from your roaring jowls like a beast ready to rip apart its freshly found prey? Another massive layer of heavy energy added to your already shitastic day? 

Y'all feel me on this one?

So, if you’re like me and notice as you read this your blood starts boiling, that’s a sign you’ve got some energy that you can tap into and help set free. This is something that triggers you. There could be multiple various reasons why it’s there and how it came about, but the important thing is that you’re consciously aware of it. Awareness, after all, is the key to freedom. 

Simply noticing what is happening in your body gives you a lot of information. First, you become aware of what situation triggers you. In this scenario, it’s the person that cuts you off. Now, it’s not that person themselves, it’s their action. Why did they cut you off? If you think they think they’re better than everyone and don’t have to sit in traffic like the rest of us lowly humans, where else in your life did something like that happen and made you feel angry?

What we’re really looking for are connections throughout our life. Should you choose to explore your triggers, you can usually come to the point when it was created if you’re willing to dig deep enough and feel safe enough to do so, either alone or with a trusted person of your choice. When that point is found, you can go back into the situation, incorporate some healing, and release any energy trapped in that experience that’s been causing it to cycle around again and again.

Secondly, this is not just a mindset change, this also occurs on a physiological level. It’s our body, not our mind, that stores all these experiences. Anything that’s happened in our lives — all words, thoughts, feelings, actions, encounters — all become imprinted in our energy field, embedded and encoded into our cells and structure. This is how habits like brushing your teeth don’t require much effort to remember how to do, and the same is true when calling back up an emotion when someone says or does something to trigger the memory.

Here’s what I mean — every time you get triggered and consumed by the intensity of the energy, you are feeding it. It only gets stronger every time you think of it and get caught up in the feeling. So when you ruminate all day long about your crappy commute this morning, you are telling your subconscious to anchor in this feeling even deeper into your body so you can keep it around, weighing you down, allowing you to be the victim, and to have it ready to do it’s tap dance when the spotlight hits. You condition yourself and forget you have a choice.

Don’t program yourself with low vibrations. They give you cells instructions to veer off course, resulting in dis-ease and a feeling of imbalance, decreased energy, brain fog, physical pain, and other health-related obstacles. 

How to heal your triggers

When someone says or does something that ignites the spark, know that you, and only you are responsible for what happens next. You always have a choice, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Often that connection between the memory and the feeling is so strong, and so deeply ingrained, it may seem impossible to heal or change, but it is when you’re willing to believe something can be different, even if you don’t know what. 

Everything becomes a part of us, and if left unattended becomes an unconscious pattern. These patterns are what tend to “hold us back” or are the underlying self-sabotage so many of us experience. They can also manifest as physical pain, disease or illness.

When we address our triggers we acknowledge a part of ourselves we may be avoiding, rejecting, denying, judging, or unaware of. These parts of ourselves just want to be validated. Think of them like an unhappy baby. They just want to be seen and heard, loved and held. It’s easy enough to do that if you’re open to it. Care for yourself as you would a child. So often we think love comes from the outside, but True Love is cultivated from within.

Loving, incorporating, and assimilating the aspects of ourselves we may not want to see (aka doing some shadow work) helps reveal to us a way to understand ourselves on a deeper level. This assists in our healing in that it rejoins us back with ourselves. We start to feel whole and complete, as we are. We become stronger in our own unique vibration, and realize the true capacity of the power we possess.

Healing from these intense triggers simply requires a willingness to be present and completely feel what needs to be felt. You’ll never know how much time it will take, but eventually, when you stay with it to the end, that peace and freedom you feel, will be permanent.

Here’s the trick to healing your triggers: notice what’s happening in your physical body when you get triggered. You can do this in the moment if you can catch it, or you can recall a painful memory you want to heal. The key is to be present with how you feel in your body. Locate where it is and what the sensations feel like. Keep your attention on it, and follow it if it moves. Simply notice what you notice, and then notice what’s different.

When you’re willing to sit with the discomfort or big feelings, you allow that energy to release itself. Your focused attention is what sets it free, as your acknowledgement and recognition of it being a part of you incorporates it as wisdom, and the intensity of the emotions begin to dissolve.

Healing brings you to neutrality. You have the space to choose a different response because you are aware there are other possibilities available. Instead of the knee-jerk reaction of the bird and some swear words in our previous example, perhaps you can insert my favorite response: wow, that person must have really horrible explosive diarrhea to be driving so wildly. I’ll bet they need a toilet STAT! Here kind sir, or ma’am, you can cut me in line, you seem to be in a hurry. 

I love this because it’s hilarious to me, and by all means, create your own. I like to be able to chuckle to myself to break up any lower energies that might try to sneak in. I’m not saying I don’t still get angry at terrible drivers, because I totally still do, but I am aware of it, give myself permission to be pissed for a moment, take a deep breath and remind myself I don’t have control of this, and choose to let it go. The act of doing so will eventually dissolve that pattern. 

What happens when you apply this technique

Anytime you feel the bubbles rising, you can do this. Go right into it to break up the intensity and clear your body and energy field so you can think clearly (literally your mind stops working because all the energy is focused on fight or flight, draining the blood away from your brain, which is why you sometimes can’t even remember what happened, or freeze like a deer in headlights). 

This technique works after the fact as well. It also works on unknown or unconscious things too — for example, if a certain word triggers you (money and love are the winners of this category), you don’t need to know why, but if you lean into the feeling you get when thinking about it, you can heal that pattern and perhaps something more.

When I use this with my clients I tell them to start to notice what’s different. When the old energy is removed, there’s space for something else to start filling in. So, by releasing this energy around a trigger, what else was being affected by it that now also has changed? What else was tied into that pattern or belief system? Remember, when you change, everything around you changes too.

Quite often “random” parts of life start to change. We don’t realize how interconnected everything is. When we free up this old, unhelpful energy, many other timelines become clear as well. We would never notice this because they are so deeply hidden in our subconscious. But in doing this work, we create space for whatever else needs to be acknowledged and released, known and unknown, seen and unseen. I don’t know how it works, but I know it does. I fully trust in it because I do this every day.

I love using this method to heal, often instantly, because honestly, I’m sick of carrying around my shit, feeling unhappy and unsatisfied with my life and all that. I decided a while back that I wanted to experience joy everyday, and this technique has helped me get there.

I am not only a happier, healthier person, I am much more balanced, creative, compassionate, and empowered. I’ve noticed I respond differently to many situations that used to cause me to fly off the handle, and my ability to stay neutral in many situations apparently is a coveted trait. 

Don’t get me wrong, this did not happen overnight — this is years of being willing to do the dirty work and face my biggest fears, darkest secrets, and scariest memories. I did it because I wanted something different. Something had to change. Once you make that decision, it becomes easier to be willing to do the work. 

There really is a light at the end of the tunnel, beckoning you to it, because that’s where the freedom is. It’s YOU. That light is you on the other side of all this trapped energy. Awareness is the key, and neutrality is the goal. And if someone like me can do this, you can too.

Written by Katie Cavenagh, Energy Alignment Specialist & Wordsmith. Find more at FeelYourLight.com/blog and https://katiecavenagh.medium.com/