01/11/2024
Love this From Sonika Tinker of Loveworks Solutions:
I found this great piece on Triggers. We don't know the original author, but thanks! I added a paragraph to it… 🙂
TRIGGERS ARE NOT TRUTH⚡️
No matter how compelling the story you hold around what is happening.
About what they did.
Or what they didn't do.
When in a triggered state we have such limited capacity to see truth.
The more triggered we are, the less clarity we have.
Don't believe your thoughts.
Don't believe your feelings.
The looping obsessive fixation that is happening in the triggered moment, is so rarely ever the actual thing that's going on.
Especially when it's with people we otherwise love (or want to love) it's something else... it's a young part having a tantrum because some event is having you remember a way in which you weren't loved and, as such, hurt.
A trigger is a protection from a memory of a threat.
It's not true.
Whatever you think, feel or intuit about them in this moment isn't real.
I have a simple rule when it comes to triggers:
*Never ever make any kind of decision when triggered*
Whatever you think you should do, don't do it... at least not until you are regulated again.
This is not a sign to break up.
Don't send that angry text.
Don't storm into their room and yell.
Don't decide you are moving to another country.
Don't quite your job.
You may want to do some really weird things.
But none of it is rational. None of it is you.
It's all defense and you are hurt right now.
Attend to the hurt.
Breathe some space into your collapsed sense of self.
Ground down, out of your head.
Return everything to your own center.
Wait for the storm to pass.
Allow yourself the patience to gently open once more (and if you don't try and force it, you will open again).
Ask yourself, “How would I be, or what would I do or say right now if I knew I was a good person? If I knew I'd find a way to move forward? If I knew the other loved me and was doing their best?”
The more we do this, the more we stop overreacting to our triggers and instead attend to ourself...
The faster we come back.
The less chaos we create.
The less relationships we break.
The less hurt we cause.
The more we heal.
And then we get to live life as our real selves.
The regulated, beautiful, magnificent unique being that you truly are.