How to use triggers as opportunities for growth
What triggers you shows you where you’re withholding love from yourself. There’s wisdom in your triggers–they point to an ego that’s running your life. Use them as opportunities not obstacles to more self-connection, authenticity and love.
All that self-work, and still triggered!
Have you been working on yourself for a while, only to find that you are triggered more rather than less? You’ve spent months doing the work, whether that’s therapy, meditation, breathwork–and somehow you are as broken, if not more after all this time.
And–you’re triggered by the fact that you’re triggered. That’s what’s really getting to you–all of this effort and work, and you’re still doing it wrong, failing at this self-improvement journey!
But what if feeling triggered more easily, more frequently and more deeply was indicative of progress not failure?
What if feeling more upset was a sign that you’re getting closer not farther?
Why you feel more triggered after doing self-work
It is common that you feel more triggered after an extended period of working on yourself. 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 other reason is that the closer you get to letting go of old conditioning and inner child wounds, the more the ego panics. In response, it starts throwing bigger and bigger obstacles to keep you within the confines of the familiar. The ego always optimises for familiarity–and it wants to keep you in depression, stuckness, unhappiness, and old dysfunctional patterns, because that feels safe to it.
Your triggers are opportunities to stop your inherited patterns, conditioning and wounded inner child from running your life.
Triggers point to love you’re withholding from yourself
Anything that triggers, upsets or offends you, anything that creates conflict within you and evokes a defensive reaction, anything that makes you feel rejected, less than, insignificant, not good enough, guilty or ashamed points to an ego that’s running your life.
Triggers show you where you’re withholding love from yourself. If you can’t be with someone’s messiness, you’re rejecting yours. If you can’t be with their judgemental, pedantic, whiney, weak or lazy parts, you are not loving yours.
How to use triggers to find more love, peace and joy
And the way to give yourself that love is by feeling–not avoiding–the uncomfortable feeling that the trigger evokes in you.
If you feel blamed–feel the blame. If you feel rejected–feel the rejection, the sadness, the helplessness. If you feel less than–feel the loneliness of that separation. If you feel you’re constantly doing something wrong–feel the shame of that.
The opportunity in triggers is to restore your inherent wholeness by connecting with the aspects of yourself that you are disconnected from.
On the other side of feeling and being with your difficult feelings are the peace, love and joy you’re looking for.