07/30/2020
This was going to be a post celebrating a friend moving through his trigger.
I had some beautiful lines about how instead of resisting or judging his triggers, he was simply with them, asked himself what he needed, and got supported.
About halfway through writing it, though, the Muse decided to gift me a trigger of my own.
It’s a pretty reliable source for me: money stuff.
I am so weird about money sometimes. The content of this particular trigger is pretty irrelevant. I sprang into action, partnered with Tyla around it, and got it handled.
I then sat back down to keep writing this post.
I felt the thinnest edges of it then: tightness in my chest and throat, heart pumping fast, little sensation elsewhere, my mind running a thousand miles a minute.
I was triggered.
And here, I had a choice: How do I want to respond to this trigger?
One of my automatics is to power through with what I’m working on, resisting my experience, diligently suffering. Proud and superior and wearing thin, I become a time bomb waiting to go off.
Another possibility: retreat into my mind. Distract myself with a game or with social media or my favorite news sources and analyses. Maybe a podcast would be good...
Anything to avoid feeling what I’m feeling.
Thank God for my friend’s example.
I stood back up and started moving my body. Stretching, dropping down the the floor, letting a sound come out.
I got some seltzer (our household’s chronic addiction), and went up to the roof. I felt the wind on my face and simply listened to the gentle sounds of a quarantined Brooklyn below.
More and more I’m seeing my triggers as a treasure map 🗺 instead of as a problem 🚨. They are showing a path to honoring my nervous system, my body, my emotions.
Letting go of the judgement around my triggers has opened up being able to generate results in my life and have a powerful experience while doing so.
And on that day, connecting with a brave friend willing to model accepting his trigger was my lifeline to doing the same.