04/07/2023
It’s unsurprising how confrontational it feels to accept that your triggers are your responsibility. But this is an empowering key to emotional freedom.
There’s no real way to measure how “spiritual” one is. But life presents opportunities to exercise your emotional resilience, patience, self-love, and discipline. We can paint and feed an image of who we are spiritually by highlighting deep thoughts and profound reads. But the outcome of spiritual practice can be witnessed by how we respond to the turbulence of life and intense emotions; not by accessories, preaching and decorations.
Humans are like oranges. Whenever squeezed, what’s inside will come out. And triggers are like emotional juicers. This doesn’t account for complex nuances of trauma, PTSD, or other mental health symptoms. But beyond that, triggers are involuntary emotional responses we all face and help us recognize inner conflicts that must be addressed.
As uncomfortable as triggers and intense emotional reactions may feel, they come as little teachers. Welling up in the body, strong emotions like these are handled in a few ways. The ego may defend you. The intellectual mind may reason with and suppress emotion. And the spirit will seek to understand, process, and heal it. Shifting what you do with these emotions requires practicing your perspective.
In sports, you can practice for months, but what matters most is how you show up on the field. Practice and rehearse your emotional responses. Pause before responding in less charged scenarios. Spend more time exploring the gap between impulsive reactions of your mind and body by taking deeper breaths, slowing your thoughts, and creating more awareness. Regularly expand your patience, pause, and peace in other areas until it becomes your default reaction to everything.
So when the time comes, resist any urge to be judgemental towards the older version of yourself who may pay a visit. They spent a lifetime trying to protect you. With conscious awareness, you can experience emotions from the view of the higher self and see the opportunity that triggers present.