Almost everyone gets their buttons pushed on occasion. After all, we live in this world and are a product of cultural conditioning. It’s natural to react when our sense of self gets poked. How I meet that moment is what’s important.
There’s a hierarchy to my emotional triggers. Some I’ve danced with for years and are like an old pair of jeans. They don’t knock me down; I can breathe, take a pause and move forward pretty quickly.
Some are rougher; familiar but dark and deeply embedded in my psyche. Still, after decades of practice I can visit my support toolkit and move past the “fight, flight, freeze” reaction.
Then there’s the blindside. Can’t prepare for it. I don’t know what I don’t know.
But I’m hella ready to go there. After I pick myself up off the pavement.
Making conscious what’s buried in my subconscious is a process. Like the onion analogy, each layer takes me closer to my true self; one memory at time. Sometimes the themes are similar, but with a nuance that tests my mettle. Grit is required.
Carrying old wounds is a heavy burden. When I avoid them, they show up as depression and despair. Use the blindside . . . walk through the Kubler-Ross grief cycle.
When I don’t own my resentment and suffering, I bounce around the grief cycle and never achieve acceptance. Fixating on someone else’s side of the street, denying my part, feeds bitterness. If I want to move on, I must do the work.
These two TikTok’s by Inna Aizenshtein are informative on how to see, own and release what triggers me:
Appreciate the lesson.
“It might be possible that ‘triggered’ may not be the most helpful word … For me, there is a felt sense of violence in this word, while ‘touched and awakened’ more accurately describes what happens to these sequestered neural nets.
This gentler wording helps us cultivate a sense of meeting the experience every time we are so ‘touched’ with an appreciation for what it might be offering.” ― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
The last time I read The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel, mom was diagnosed with brain cancer – then two months later a workplace reorganization relieved me of my management responsibilities. First my heart was broken, then my ego crushed. A definite low point.
A melancholy infected me recently. Not the familiar personal struggle to overcome in private – but a more existential communal misery. I’m reaching for familiar tools – strong friendships, long talks; helping others, caring for animals; exercise and involvement.
Four years ago I read the book, Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley & Henry S. Lodge, M.D. They told me that if I want to be vital and energetic; to maintain the get-up-and-go that gets more elusive each year – I need to stay active (“Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life”). Oh; and I need to eat right (“Quit eating crap!”). Two of my favorite things! HA! Gotta REALLY want health to make that effort.
In his book The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin says “Grit is our future.” He doesn’t mean the grit that interferes with our assembly lines and our spinach leaves. He’s talking about the internal grit that asks us to stand up and speak up; to point out the problems we see; to stay focused on doing “work that’s worth doing.”