Why post this now, in the middle of the holiday season? With the holidays comes added stress; end of the year evaluations, reports, exams, holiday shopping, anxiety over gift giving, added pressures of parties, social gatherings, stress of finances, travel, and familial expectations, just to name a few. When stress levels are high, it is easy for suppressed emotion to come to the surface. THIS is the perfect time of the year to focus on unwanted triggers.
If your current state of upset was not all brought on by current circumstances, where did it originate, why is it surfacing now, and what do you do about it?
In this article, I will focus on answering your question of, "Where did it come from?" In order to find the source of your pain, I want you to first take a deep breath. As you breath with me, release the self-blame, shame, and guilt you may be feeling for the emotions that you have. Harboring judgement about your triggers hinders you from releasing them AND it prevents you from learning in the moment. (Tweet that)
As you continue to focus on the breathing and allow yourself to take deep, centering, and slightly controlled breaths, force the air from your lungs, purging all of the toxic, stale air that is kept down with any stress, worry, or anxiety that you're experiencing in the day. It helps to make a sound as you release the breath. The sound supports you in releasing that trapped air, bringing fresh oxygen to the body.
Once you've cleared your energy with breathing, ask yourself to identify what trigger is being brought up. And then, ask yourself the first time you experienced that emotion. It may help if you close your eyes and allow yourself to visualize the source of your trigger. What are the hurts that reside in your past? Bringing old pain and anger to the present moment will help you to identify the source of where your trigger is coming from.
Throughout the week, continue this exercise on a regular basis. It is extremely important for you to allow the experiences of your past to surface while remaining an observer, and not to judge. While remaining in the observer role, journal, move your body, exercise, drink plenty of water (supporting your body to release the toxins of the emotions being released), eat as many healthy, raw foods as possible, and take notes about your experience. Notice the memories that trigger you the most. Again, this is not a space of judging and re-attaching to the emotion, but instead simply noticing the reality of it. Become aware of being triggered by these past sources of pain. This present-day trigger is an indicator that the emotion of the event is still alive today and is in need of being cleared.
As you process the earliest sources of your pain, continue to focus on your breathing. Practice free-flow journaling, writing unedited and without judgement for a minimum of three pages. Connect paper to pen, as this stimulates different areas of the brain and will give you the best results for processing. Refrain from giving it attention outside of your designated exercises. If processing with others is necessary for you during the week, be sure to do it with safe and healthy company, preferably in therapy, with a coach or a counselor. Discussing it in an unhealthy ways of blaming, shaming, and judging (yourself or others) can jeopardize the healing release that you seek.
Giving yourself permission to identify the source of the trigger is the FIRST step in releasing it. In Part 2 of this article, I'll discuss the reasons for the unwanted and misdirected emotion showing up in your life now. Following that will be Part 3 of this blog, where I share more about what you can do in the present moment to avoid passing the pain on to present-day experiences and relationships.
Before I send you on your way to do this work, it is important that you know one more thing - - your emotion is OK. You do not need to feel shame or judgement about it. What happened in your past to give you a source of pain was NOT ok. It is NOT your fault that you were unable to process your emotions and your experience safely and properly at the moment of it's conception. You did what you knew how, with the tools that you had at the time. Congratulations for being READY and focused on taking charge of doing something about it TODAY. THANK YOU for taking the time to go through this process and allowing yourself (and others) the gift of releasing your triggers from the past. As you heal, others are healing with you.
