Triggers are an Invitation

Jan 19, 2023

Before I embarked on this journey of stepping up, I had no idea just how much my emotional life was held hostage. What do I mean by this? I was held hostage by aspects of myself which were ready to be seen – remember the Hall of Mirrors?  – but which I myself really did not want to. If those issues came up, in whatever context, I turned into either a rage monster or I simply ran away from the situation.

That’s one thing I can say that the modern victim culture has really done – it’s made trigger awareness mainstream. Have you ever known anyone who tells an entire group of people that specific topics are “off limits” because the person speaking finds those topics “triggering?” Many people use that word to refer to anything they find upsetting, but true triggers are topics or situations which has me exploding like a cannon going off. For comparison, what today are all collectively referred to as “triggers” used to be more commonly called “buttons”. For example: Someone’s pushed your buttons.

Once I started to develop a little bit of an Observer Self, that’s when I started to realize that I was being held hostage to these emotional states rather than being in control of my own life. Once they were kicked off, they played themselves out no matter how much my rational mind wanted not to react the way that I was. It was like I had been programmed to respond with this knee-jerk reaction in an effort to ensure that topic was never actually approached. What I eventually figured out is that this made my world smaller, because swaths of a topic could not be discussed or explored.

Fortunately, once I really waded into the Hall of Mirrors and began seeing just how much of my life was being guided and controlled by my ego-self’s need to avoid these particular uncomfortable emotions, well, I began to see how much and how easily I was also being manipulated. By who? Commercials, friends, family, communities, myself. If your first thought was “Well I know I’m not being manipulated”, I would suggest taking a closer look. Denial is one of the two main hallmarks of projection, as mentioned in the Hall of Mirrors. The second? Immediate and explosive emotionality in response, aka triggers. Combined, these two things are about as big of a giant red flag that the subconscious is waving around desperately trying to get our conscious attention. Why? Because that piece of us is finally ready to come home.

I recommend starting with triggers that aren’t your own. What does that mean? Sometimes, the things which cause us explosive emotional upset are not the result of direct experience. The story I’m using using to illustrate this lesson learned is just such a situation. I’ll share how I figured out that it wasn’t actually MY issue, and with this realization it was a lot easier to start working on taking the sting out of it. If you do have some personal triggers that you aren’t ready face, starting with the ones you’ve inherited or been programmed for would be a good starting point. When you’re ready to tackle the personal ones, not only with you have some practice to draw on but you’ll be able to gauge if you need to bring some additional help. This short piece is hardly a treatise on all the potential treatments, it’s just an example of how one person approached things for themself.

The Story

While I have a fair number of hot button topics that I have waded through by now, I’ll pick one of the biggest and also earliest manifesting ones which ultimately was also the first one that I dismantled. Bear in mind, very often triggers or hot button topis are multilayered. As I’ve said before, personal issues do not resolve: they evolve. I thought I knew what was going on in this particular example, but as I peeled away the top I found something unexpected under that, then under that, and then under that. This type of emotional intelligence is hard work (courageous ones link), and it’s not fun, but being able to discuss something reasonably when just a few years ago that would have literally been impossible is so freeing in so many ways!!! With each hot button topic dismantled, my world expanded each time. As PMH Atwater says in her book “A Manual for Developing Humans“, we can only perceive that which we are prepared to see. If a trigger is present, it means we aren’t ego-level prepared to see something about ourselves or our thought process and yet our subconscious – aka higher self or soul self – is more than ready for this issue to be integrated.

For this example, I’ve chosen the trigger that was tripped by just about any topic related to organized religion. At about 12 or 13, it kicked into high gear and I would go on rants against The Church. The language I was using never struck me as odd until many years later, and that’s a clue that you can start using when you begin facing your own triggers and hot buttons. What words are you using? Especially in the heat of the moment when clear thinking is literally not possible, the words coming out will be the biggest doorway into understanding what’s going on that can be used when you are calm enough to actually begin working on things.

By the time I was in my 20s, my rabid rejection of anything organized religion was very well established but it was also something I was aware of and eventually puzzled by. The first question that I asked myself was “what happened to me to develop this trigger?” and I have to say … nothing. I personally never went through anything with regard to religion that could in any way be considered traumatic. The more I wracked my brain trying to figure it out, the more I realized that I was emotionally responding to something which wasn’t mine. If any of you are Empaths, perhaps you’ll recognize that not all of the emotions we feel belong to us. I’ve cried at funerals for people I didn’t know well because the emotion in the air was so heavy that one person could not carry it all, so I helped express and purge the sorrow enough to make it manageable for the people who had to face their loss. That’s what Empath’s do.

Why did I come to the realization that I was responding to something that wasn’t really mine? Well, after figuring out that nothing in my personal life was relevant, I turned to my family. I asked my mom, my dad, and my maternal grandmother. What they divulged was literally generations of pain, prejudice, and abuse on both sides of the family – all justified by various religions. I was completely unaware of any of this, but they carried that pain – and being the good empath, I picked it up and was working through it by first (very loudly) expressing that pain and anger. I will definitely say that once I consciously recognized what was actually going on, those emotional reactions calmed down dramatically and the knee-jerk reaction started to fade. As a result of my work, I could actually begin to see some of the positives in religion that I literally was unable to before. Do understand now a bit more what I mean about these type of issues holding us hostage and making our world smaller?

In this example, the one aspect which confused me the most was the insistence on calling all organized religions “The Church”. That’s very medieval language, and my family history isn’t THAT long! Eventually, a few past-life regressions dug up the last bits of the issues that remained which allowed for the issue to be laid to rest and let go. It’s like the subconscious was able to breath again, thinking “finally! It’s been recognized and seen. I don’t have to make such a big deal of it anymore”.

As a test for myself, I attended religious services at a nearby church recently. While some of the ideas I’m not a fan of, I could listen and see both the positives and negatives without being swept away by internally driven emotional reactions. I realized at the end of that service, walking away wishing everyone well and still in my emotional equilibrium, that I was free. The trigger had been transmuted into genuine healing.

The Point

Healing does not happen by rehashing the past and looking to keep it alive by blaming others and demanding vengeance. That’s the opposite of healing. In medical terms, there are 3 options available when dealing with a wound —

1. leave it alone and hope for the best;
2. pick at the wound until you’re guaranteed an infection;
3. or we can reopen the wound to flush it out so that it can heal cleanly.

Triggers can be formed when a wound is left alone and ignored – which is what happened in my family’s case. By raging the way that I was, I was just picking at it and making it worse over time. It wasn’t until I started to understand what was really going on that I could flush the wound clean under the light of understanding and compassion, and that begins the true healing process of letting it go.

Triggers are an invitation from our subconscious mind or higher self because we truly do have the strength to face what those triggers are trying to show us. Running from them, or using them to emotionally blackmail those around us, is not something that people looking to express their highest potential will intentionally do. I know exactly how hard, scary, and potentially destabilizing it can be to face these triggers and hot buttons. Don’t rush it – it took me about 15 years worth of chipping away at it to fully get through mine – all the layers of it. Owning it was a huge one, and that meant recognizing situations where I was likely to be triggered and managing them while I worked on it. Avoiding them so I didn’t have to work on them, that’s not useful and does not serve me in the long run.

Can you think of any cultural situations that we are undergoing right now which might fit this triggered scenario? I can think of at least 4 major ones, and in all cases we are collectively choosing to pick and pick and pick. I’m doing what I can to face my version of these triggers so I can flush the poison clean out of my system, and start the healing process. We are each like cells in a body – you get healthy from the cells up. The more we individually have the courage to face these, recognize the real issues, work through them, and let them go then the better off our world overall will be. That’s how we make the world a better place! The fewer of us there feeding triggers, the easier it will be of others to breath and begin the process themselves. Just like a good empath works like a pressure release valve, bleeding out the most powerful emotions so that the others who truly own them can do the work they need to. I would rather heal all the wounds that I can, so that we can all keep stepping up towards humanity’s wondrous potential.

TL:DR

Triggers are the subconscious mind’s attempt to get us to face wounds that are ready to be healed, while the conscious mind wants to keep avoiding them. Running from or using them to abusively control others allows them to fester and become poison.

About the Image

Soda Lake, California is a small alkali lake in the San Luis Obispo County. I visited this when it was at the end of the typical drought cycle, so it was very low. The mud is impressive! First off, the mud is covered with a crystalized salt layer which you have to crunch through. Secondly, the mud is such a fine particulate material, it’s like silk. Stepping into it, you immediately sink up to at least your ankle – at that’s right on the edge. Trying to get out usually results in the loss of shoes. I chose this image because this is a marvelous analogy for this topic.

Audio

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and more. Like what you hear? Share it and leave a review. It means a lot and I’d really appreciate your support!!

Video

Video is also available through the YouTube Channel. The background during the speaking portion is a close-up of my 75 gallon freshwater planted tank at feeding time, so it’s relaxing and still fun to watch.