Triggers and Why They are Our Best Teachers
Family holidays are always wonderful and at the same time often stressful.
One thing that can help you get through the any family gathering is to bring awareness to you triggers. Triggers are these moments where we become emotionally charged. They can be positive, lifting us up and motivating us, or they can be negative, clouding our vision and at worse causing us to fall into a depressive state.
You can usually tell when you are being triggered, but you may not be aware of it until the moment has passed. Different triggers will cause different reactions depending on what your ego thinks will keep you safe in that situation. Your ego relies on past experiences and not logic, which is why we often react the same way over and over and have a hard time breaking out of this conditioning even when we recognise it is not the best way to handle a situation.
Until you become aware of your triggers you will continue to react to these situations based on your childhood conditioning. This can look like many different things and is often referred to by the 4 F’s
· Fight - Rage and aggression, emotional overreaction
· Flight – Back track, apologise, get away as soon as possible
· Freeze - Closing yourself off or shutting down
· Fawn - Quick to please or agree to the other persons demands
So what is really going on, and how can we learn from these uncomfortable moments?
In the early 1900s a Carl Jung theorised that we are all born whole and as we develop the ego, the sense of I or the part of our mind that judges everything around us, splits our characteristics and traits into two parts, the persona and the shadow. The persona is comprised of all the characteristics and traits that are perceived as good and that will benefit us, this is who we think we need to be in order to survive. Everything our ego thinks is bad or detrimental to our survival is tucked away into our unconscious or shadow.
The characteristics and traits you keep locked away in your shadow are a part of you and you need them to feel whole. One way that you can become aware of them is through observing your triggers. You project these shadow elements onto other people as a way to witness them in a detached way. It is a way for your ego to remind you how scary these traits are and that you better not act like that.
What to do when Triggered
The first thing to do when you are being triggered is to start taking deep breaths, this can help keep you calm and prevent you from going into the flight, fight, freeze or fawn mode. When you are in a safe space and are no longer feeling threatened by the trigger, ask yourself what was so triggering about the person or event? Really try to get past the judgement of them just being stupid/bad/lazy, etc. The negative characteristics that come up are what is in your shadow and are trying to get your attention so they can be integrated.
For example if you are triggered by an angry person, then anger is in your shadow and it wants to come out so that you can have access to it. Often anger is seen as a negative or bad emotion, but anger lets us know when a boundary has been crossed. Like fire it can protect us, but if it gets out of control it will burn us. Now you are not trying to become an angry person, you are just dropping the fear of being perceived as an angry person. Through examination and self reflection you can look back at times in your life when you suppressed your anger and how that kept you limited, maybe even caused you to suffer. By looking at anger as necessary, not good or bad, you can start to integrate this part into your daily life and allow yourself to feel and express anger when it is appropriate.
Why do we want to understand our triggers?
Triggers are elements from your shadow trying to get your attention. Until you bring this part of yourself into consciousness it will keep showing up in your life. Once it is integrated, this shadow piece will no longer need to be projected onto others and your ego will feel less threatened. This means that you will be less reactive in situation where someone could be perceived as expressing this shadow trait. When you are judging someone based on ego fears you are very reactive and are not able to stay curious.
Often in conversations people get reactive or offended and jump to conclusions, the ego does this to keep you safe but it is also limiting. If you are able to stay curious and ask questions to get more information you might find you that you missed judged the situation. You may find out that the other person is not angry, that is just how they talk, maybe they think they are being funny, or maybe they think you don’t like them and are going into fight mode.
We quickly judge others to try and keep ourselves safe, but it often causes a lot of problems. We end up living in a world made up in our mind and it looks nothing like reality. Brining awareness to our triggers and integrating our shadow will alter your inner world, which in turn will alter your external world.
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…”
― Hermes Trismegistus
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Nikki Bose is a Jungian Life Coach who specializes in guiding people through their dark night of the soul.
You can find her on instagram @soulrestorationcoach or on her website Soulrestorationcoach.ca