Episode 118: When more tragedy strikes, dealing with the triggers.

We explore why public tragedy reactivates suicide grief and how to respond with steadiness, compassion, and choice. We share practical tools to set media boundaries, ground the body, reclaim agency, and honor our loved ones with purpose.

• why headlines mirror the original loss
• triggers as signals that guide healing
• naming emotions to create space
• limiting media to protect the nervous system
• simple grounding that restores safety
• channeling pain into acts of meaning
• anchoring to your loved one through ritual and story
• reframing hopeless thoughts into chosen peace
• using the five-second rule to move into action
• practicing micro-moments of hope in daily life

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Also, check out survived to thrive.com for more information and to subscribe to get the podcast's latest episode, along with useful tips you can begin to use immediately to feel better, directly sent to your inbox

As always, thanks for listening!

We are a community dedicated to empower survivors of suicide loss along their grief journey. We invite you to check out our website to sign up for our weekly newsletter, along with other free materials."

Website: https://www.survived-to-thrive.com/

Email: amy@survived-to-thrive.com

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Focus

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You are listening to the Survived to Thrive podcast with Amy Miller, a podcast for survivors of suicide loss. In this weekly podcast, you will learn more about your unique experiences and gain insights on your brain and how it processes grief and loss due to a loved one's suicide. While suicide grief comes in all shapes and sizes, Amy shows you that you still can have a life full of joy and fulfillment, even though your loved one died. You don't have to just survive anymore. You can thrive.

Triggers As Signals Not Weakness

Normalizing Emotional Reactions

Tools: Limit Media Exposure

Tools: Grounding In The Present

Channeling Pain Into Purpose

Anchor To Your Loved One

Reframing And Reclaiming Power

SPEAKER_01 0:37

You are listening to the Survive to Thrive podcast with Amy Miller, episode number 118, when more tragedy strikes, dealing with the triggers. Welcome back to the podcast, friends. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you all had a fantastic week. I'm back at it. I recognize that I've been on kind of a significantly long break. It's been wild around here, just a lot of things going on. But I really appreciate having this platform to talk to you all, share with you the things that I've been learning and share and using in my coaching. And I just want to express some more gratitude towards you all for taking time out of your day to listen. It really means so much. So today we're going to be talking about tragedy. We're going to be talking about how it triggers us. And we're going to talk about how we can cope when we are reading the headlines, when we're reading the papers, and when we're, you know, dealing with new tragedies like assassinations, wars, mass shootings, or other acts of violence. And we're going to talk about how this can reopen our own wounds. It's like when the world erupts with this tragedy, it doesn't just hurt us as citizens. It stirs something very raw in our grief. And a lot of times it can feel like we're living our loss all over again. And it can create some anxiety. It can create some thought loop things in our nervous system. It's going to create some responses in our bodies, responses in our thinking, responses in our emotions. So today I just want to walk you through why this happens, what it means for your healing, and how you can create resilience even when the world feels so unsafe. So I'm going to first talk about why tragedy triggers grief. So grief is not just about a person we lost. I think sometimes we think that's what it's all about. But what it is, it's the rupture of safety, of love and meaning in our lives. And when we see this tragedy on the news, it typically mirrors our own loss, whether it's a shooting, a war, an assassination, it just brings us back to the idea and reminds us how fragile life truly is. Now, what our brains like to do is seek safety and certainty, right? So after suicide loss, our sense of safety is already disrupted. It's definitely taken for a whirlwind, right? And more tragedy confirms our brain's fear that the world is dangerous. Okay. So if we're watching the news and we're hearing about a new event that has occurred, a tragedy of some sorts, maybe it's a school shooting, maybe it's a targeted attack on a religious place of worship, or maybe it's an assassination of a political figure or something of that sort. Sometimes those triggers just come up out of nowhere, right? One thing I want to say about this is triggers are not weakness, they're signals. They show us where healing still wants attention. And I think this is super important because I think sometimes we think as we've gone through and processed our grief and we've made a lot of progress, our grief is still going to be carrying different things, different pieces of it, right? Like different memories, different feelings, different emotions. No matter how long ago our loss happened, it's just part of what the reality and the consequence is of experiencing a loss, especially experience, especially when it comes to losing a loved one to suicide, right? So I think it's really important to remind ourselves that when we feel triggered, or as some people like to say, instead of trigger, activated, it shows us where the healing still needs attention. Okay. Now, one thing I do want to say right here is that emotional reactions are normal. I think sometimes we think something has gone terribly wrong, but the truth is it's completely normal when we have emotional reactions to things we hear on the news, things that are happening in the world, things that are happening to other people in our lives, when they're going through experiences, right? And I think for me personally, I have to spend a lot of time reminding myself that it's not mine to carry, right? That having this emotional reaction is completely normal, and that it's okay. Okay. It's okay to have the emotional reaction. It's okay to feel triggered, it's okay to feel activated. Because a lot of times we feel a lot of like confusion, maybe irritation or anger towards having a reaction, but it is a completely okay. Okay. So if you feel rage, sorrow, despair, numbness, or even survivor's guilt, all of these are pretty normal. So one thing about feelings is they are vibrations in our bodies, they aren't permanent. And so when another tragedy stirs grief, it's simply your body is remembering loss. Okay. So one of the strategies I like to use here is naming the emotion. You can say something like, This is sadness or this is fear, this is anxiety, this is pain, this is grief. Okay. And when we name it, that small pause helps you separate the event from the avalanche of the emotion, right? And it's really important to recognize that, okay. Another thing I want to say here is just because you do get triggered, just because you start having an emotional reaction to an event, it does not mean you're back at square one. You're simply revisiting grief with new layers of compassion. You're being reminded of the feelings and the emotions that you felt when you experienced your own loss, right? And life is going to give us those reminders here and there. And that's okay, it's normal. And it's actually part of being a human being. So I think it's important to be mindful of that. Okay. So, with all that said, how do we overcome the weight of collective tragedy? I want to offer you some tools here to help you hold on to your healing when the world feels like it's falling apart or unraveling. Okay. The first suggestion I always recommend, especially for those who feel triggered often, really, really, is to limit media exposure. Okay. Because the truth is your brain can only process so much. There's only so much information, so many different, so much in the angles and the spins that you read in the media that your brain is going to be able to take. And you don't have to consume every single detail of a tragedy. Okay. You really have to create boundaries within yourself around what you let in. So limit that media exposure. Maybe that means turning off the television. Maybe that means, you know, taking your social media app off of your phone for a while. Maybe that means, you know, muting your Google news that you receive. Okay. Whatever it is, I think it's really important to sometimes just give yourself a boundary to limit what you're being exposed to. I know for me personally, I think it was about a year after I lost my sister. I made this decision that I just didn't want to consume the news. And that was really difficult for me because I was pretty religiously obsessed with listening and reading the news. I felt like I needed to be informed. I needed to know what was going on in the world. But I started to realize as I was consuming what the news was sharing with me on how it was making me feel. I was becoming more aware of that consumption and what it was creating for me. And I had to make a decision and create a boundary for myself because I knew that if I took a break and if I stopped, that I would have the consequence of feeling a little bit lighter. Okay, feeling a little bit less of a burden. The heaviness would start to go away. And it did. So I highly recommend doing this and limiting your exposure. The second one I want to talk about is grounding yourself in the present. Okay. It really applies to all survivors. Okay. To really come back to your breath, touch something solid, remind yourself that in this moment I am safe. Sometimes when we're really thinking and our minds are going wild with either the event that we're processing or the tragedy that we're processing, and we start to spiral and we start thinking about our own losses and the experience and our brain not managed can go pretty crazy with this, right? So when you start to go into that spiral, when you start to go into that spin, I just really want you to think about coming back to your breath, touching something solid. Okay. That means anything that's around you, maybe a table, maybe a chair, maybe your soft pillow. Okay. Just touch something solid and just remind yourself that in this moment I am safe, right? You're breathing, you're alive, okay, you're in a place of shelter, you have food, you have all the things to sustain your life with you in this moment. And I think that's a real powerful thing to do because a lot of times when we go wild, we feel unsafe. And so this helps us to remind us that our brain is lying to us and that we truly are safe in this moment. Okay. The third thing I want to talk about is channeling pain into purpose. Okay. I talk a lot about this in my classes and in my workshops that I do. But one of the things that I really took from David Kessler in my grief educator program was finding meaning, right? It's you can't stop wars or shootings, but you can bring kindness to someone today. You can donate, you can volunteer, or even just listen to someone, right? Sometimes just having a conversation with somebody who needs a little bit of support can really help you to find some meaning, some reasons why you're still here, why you are still living. It helps you to understand your purpose in the world, right? To gain some clarity on what you can contribute. And it doesn't even have to be a big deal. It can be something that is super small and even minor, but it really helps you to gain more meaning, right? And it really helps you to transform how helplessness you feel when tragedy strikes. Okay. The fourth one I want to talk about is to anchor to your loved one, right? When violence in the world triggers grief, use it as a moment to connect with the loved one that you lost. Okay. Say their name, light a candle, remember their life mannered. Maybe share a story, maybe a funny story, maybe something that you remembered about your loved one that you haven't spoken about in a long time. Share that story with someone. Share it with a friend. Share it with your significant other other or your child or a parent, right? I think it really does help when we use these triggers in our grief as a moment to connect with the love that you still carry. Because the truth is, just because you've lost your loved one doesn't mean the love was lost as well. Okay. In fact, your love for the one that you've lost has probably grown even more, significantly more since the passing of your loved one. So I think it really can help you if you purposely decide that you're gonna use whatever is trigging triggering your grief to connect with your loved one a little more. I think it's really helpful. Okay. Now I want to talk about reframing and reclaiming your power because when tragedy strikes, it's real easy to spire into hopelessness. Am I right? I find myself to be very guilty of this. And one of the things that I always remind myself as well as the people that I coach is how our thoughts create our feelings. And when we're continually spiraling into this hopelessness, usually it's this thought that the world is unsafe and always will be, right? Or the world has gone crazy. The world is uncontrollable. Okay. I feel like these types of thoughts that our brains go to when we listen to the news and we watch feed or comment sections in social media platforms where it's very political or very, what's the word, volatile. Okay. We're gonna be thinking that this world is unsafe. Okay. And it really can create a sense of despair when we're constantly thinking those thoughts. So one of the things I really like to recommend is try shifting the thought the world is unsafe to yes, the world was tragedy, has tragedy, but I'm choosing to create peace in my little corner of it. I'm choosing to create peace in my corner of it. I think that is so helpful because number one, it puts us in the driver's seat of our own lives. Number two, it's a decision, and our brains love it when we finally make decisions. Our brains hate it when we don't make decisions, and so I think it is a super useful thing when we do that. Okay, and number three, you do have that power to create the peace in your own environment. Okay, you have the power to create peace in your home, in your bedroom, in your backyard sanctuary, okay, wherever you are, okay. You have the power to create that peace in your little corner of it, even when the world seems to be going crazy. Okay. Another thing I want to mention here is how I feel like it's really important to really consider to choose how we show up, even when life feels so unfair. Okay. Sometimes things will happen that are unbelievably unfair, that they feel unfair. But people at times choose to how they're going to show up, even when it feels unfair. I was just reading a story. There was a tragic event that happened in Michigan where a man crashed his vehicle into a Latter-day Saint chapel in Michigan. And in the news article, they talked about how about four people had died, eight people were injured, and the church was set on fire and it was completely burned down. But I was reading an article that um members of that faith decided to start a GoFundMe or a fund, correct me if I'm wrong, to raise funds for the family of the perpetrator. Because in that event, the perpetrator was shot down by police, and he left a wife and he left a child. And these individuals, these members of this church faith, decided to come together and choose how they wanted to show up, despite it feeling so unfair. And what a powerful thing that they did there. What a powerful way to choose to show up, despite the unfairness of the tragedy. They showed up for that family of the perpetrator. And I think it's so incredibly powerful to do something like that. And I was just blown away. One of the other things I want to talk about here is this five-second rule, right? Where I learned this from Mill Robbins. This is, I think, the concept that she talks a lot about because she was the one that was saying that sometimes you really have to push your brain to act, right? Because you can think and think and think, right, and think you're going to do something. But then there is a disconnect sometimes from what you think you should do and what you do do. And so this five-second rule that she created, I think really helps to push you into action. And what she does say is you count backwards from five, four, three, two, one, and then you take a small action. Okay. Whether that's step outside, text a friend, make a phone call, turn off the TV, take a shower. Okay. I think this is super fantastic when you're going through a tragedy or you're consuming tragic news and you are glued to the television, you know, just take that small action, turn off the TV, okay? Connect with someone. Maybe talk to something about something positive that's happening in the world. One of the things about the news and the media, they always like to expand upon the bad things in the world. But the truth of the matter is there's so many good things that are happening in the world. There's so many amazing people that are contributing to community and to, you know, different charities and service, and things are happening all over the world that are such good news, yet the news doesn't choose to expand upon it or share it because it doesn't get as many clicks, it doesn't get as many reactions, because our brains are really trained to be attracted to negativity, to be attracted to the things that are horrible in the world. And again, this just shows how our brains are always looking for danger and threats, right? So I think sometimes just taking that small action, excuse me, and to talk with someone, to learn about something that's taking place. Maybe there's a fantastic, you know, benefit luncheon that's happening, or maybe there's somebody that's trying to raise money to help someone with their medical expenses or something like that. And just learn about those things, right? I think it's really helpful. Okay. Now, the last thing I really want to talk about today in this podcast episode is hope in the midst of brokenness. I think hope is a really important concept. And I think it's really important to understand how grief and love are twins. Okay. The only reason world tragedies hit so hard is because we know love, right? There's a lot of power between love and grief, having the polar opposites in the world, the yin and the yang, right? And the only reason why we know love so well is because we know grief. The only reason why we know grief so well is because we know love. Okay. And there's a lot of power in understanding that. The next thing I want to talk about is we cannot fix the whole world, but we can honor our grief by living with compassion, by being really gentle with ourselves, and simply by not giving up on life. Even when the world feels unsafe, we can choose to create micro moments of safety, a walk, a prayer, a connection, a memory of our loved one, right? Being present in the moment, being present with ourselves, being present with the food that we're eating, being present in the joy that we're experiencing. Okay. So in closing today, if you feel shaken when more tragedy strikes, you're not weak. You're a human being and you are grieving, and grief will rise and fall with the world's events. But healing is certainly possible, even when chaos surrounds us, and you have tools, you have choice, and you're not alone. Take care of your heart and honor your loved one. And remember, while the world may be broken, you still have the power to create light. And I hope that you remember that. Thank you so much for listening to this, my friends. I really love you, appreciate you. Until next time, bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Thank you for listening to the Survived to Thrive podcast. If you like this podcast, please share with your friends and write a review on iTunes. Also, check out survived to thrive.com for more information and to subscribe to get the podcast's latest episode, along with useful tips you can begin to use immediately to feel better, directly sent to your inbox.