What’s the gift and wisdom in triggers and how to use them as opportunities for growth?

Triggers are shortcuts to more inner peace, love and joy. There’s wisdom in them–they show you where you’re suppressing your greatness, empowerment and creativity, and withholding self-love.

Have you been doing inner work for a while, only to find that you are triggered more rather than less? You’ve spent months doing the work, deepening your level of self-awareness, whether in therapy, meditation, breathwork–and somehow you are as broken as ever, if not more now. That in itself is another trigger and so is the fact that you are getting triggered at all. All of this awareness, and you’re still doing it wrong and failing at the self-improvement journey.

Feeling triggered more is a sign of progress not failure

The self-judgemental thoughts about your perceived failures are coming from the critical voice in your head. That critical voice is the voice behind your Wounded Inner Child parts (ego). These parts originate in childhood by virtue of traumatic childhood events that cause us to feel rejected, unloved, unsafe, guilty, ashamed, undeserving, less/than, responsible for parents’ happiness, etc.

The Wounded Inner Child parts always see themselves as flawed, lacking, unsafe, broken and disconnected–and they are on a mission to improve themselves in order to protect us from pain. They do that by taking the steering wheel of our lives, but they are as skilled at driving as the four-year old child that they were when they formed. Hence all the havoc.

This is the gift of what triggers you–it points to a Wounded Inner Child (ego) that’s running your life, and affords you the opportunity to take adult control back.

What’s the wisdom and gift in triggers? 

You aren’t getting more triggered because you’re more broken, but because you’re more honest with yourself and conscious of the perceived limitations of your wounded inner child parts (ego). It is common that you feel more triggered after an extended period of inner work. One reason for that is that you are more attuned, conscious of and connected to your experience. When we’re in pain, we often engage in avoidance behaviours in order to numb or distract ourselves from the pain. Through self-work, you begin to face rather than run away from yourself. On the back of that, you become more present with, aware of and sensitive to your own experience.

The closer to freedom you get, the more the ego fights for the survival of its limitations. The other reason is that the more you free yourself from the conditioning and dysfunctional patterns of your wounded inner child parts, the more these parts (ego) panic. In response, they start throwing bigger and bigger obstacles to keep you within the confines of what’s familiar.

The ego would rather suffer than be wrong. Its fear of being wrong prevents it from challenging the limiting beliefs about itself, other people and the world. These are the beliefs that are keeping it a prisoner to itself.

The ego always optimises for familiarity–and hence it’d rather keep you in the known patterns of depression, stuckness, unhappiness, unworthiness and self-sabotage than challenge its perceptions, because these patterns are what feels safe and familiar to it. It’s very invested in proving to itself how it’s right about its perceived inadequacies, limitations and beliefs that don’t serve it!

What is the opportunity in triggers?

Triggers are opportunities to find more peace, joy, love and freedom and break free from repeating patterns of self-sabotage by liberating the wounded inner child from running your life.

Anything that triggers, stresses, upsets or offends you, anything that creates conflict, fear and guilt within you, anything that evokes a defensive or offensive reaction, makes you feel rejected, less than, insignificant, not good enough or ashamed points to a wounded inner child part (ego) that’s running your life.

What these wounded inner child parts feel triggered by shows you where you’re withholding love from yourself. If you can’t be with someone’s messiness, you’re fighting yourself over yours. If you can’t be with their judgemental, pedantic, whiney, weak or lazy parts, you are shaming and blaming and berating yourself for yours.

What you reject in others is what you don’t love in yourself. And the quickest way to give yourself that love is by feeling–not avoiding–the uncomfortable feeling that the trigger evokes in you.

If you’re triggered by blame–feel the blame. If you feel rejected–feel the rejection. If you feel sad, feel your sadness. Feel your helplessness. If you feel less than–feel the loneliness of the separation from yourself and other people this creates. If you feel you’re constantly doing something wrong or worse being someone wrong–feel the shame, the blame, the guilt of that.

The opportunity in triggers is to connect with your inherent wholeness by accepting and welcoming the aspects of yourself that you are disconnected from.

On the other side of this is inner peace, love, joy, more creativity and self-expression, deeper and more connecting relationships.