Steps to Stop Getting Triggered as a Healthcare Practitioner

Ever leave a session feeling drained or unexpectedly triggered? In this episode, we dive into why these reactions happen, how to navigate them in real-time, and—most importantly—how to prevent them from controlling your day. Learn how to recognize your own activation, honor your responses, and turn these moments into opportunities for growth and healing. Plus, get a snap shot of the Birth Healing Intensive Program, a transformative nine-month journey designed to help practitioners do their own inner work so they can better support their clients.

✨ Episode Highlights for Practitioners:

• Understanding what triggers your activation during sessions and in life
  
  
  
• Practical strategies to ground yourself and stay present with clients
  
  
  
• Tools to separate your emotions from your clients’ to prevent burnout
  
  
  
• Turning triggers into opportunities for personal healing and growth

FREE MASTERCLASS WITH LYNN SCHULTE - Available the week of October 13th only!

Register for How to Bring More Fun Into Your Practice and Avoid Burnout and take advantage of this free opportunity to learn:

• The #1 key to healing that no one talks about
• The 4 C’s of effective release work
• How to make sessions more fulfilling for both your client and you
• What you can do to protect yourself from burnout
• Effective options for when tissues won’t release
• 2 skills that are imperative for working in pelvic health

Register for free TODAY! This class will be offered at 3 different times, so choose the date that works with your schedule.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 2026 BIRTH HEALING INTENSIVE

The Birth Healing Intensive is a 9-month transformational program that equips practitioners to deeply heal themselves through their own inside out work to expand their clinical and intuitive skills, and confidently support clients through trauma, pain, and stuck patterns for lasting, profound results. Learn more and apply to the Birth Healing Intensive TODAY!

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To learn more visit: InstituteforBirthHealing.com

Visit Institute for Birth Healing to learn more about how to care for the pregnant and postpartum body: CLICK HERE

Transcript

Have you ever gotten triggered during a session? How about feeling drained at the end of your day in the clinic?

Well, if any of these have happening to you, if so, please listen in as I share some tips on how to, please listen in as I share some tips on what to do about it and how to avoid it in the first place.

Have you ever gotten triggered during a session? How about feeling drained at the end of the day? Well, please listen.

Welcome this episode as I talk about what to do about these things, and more importantly, how to avoid them in the first place.

So welcome to this podcast. But before I dive into my topic for today in this episode, I want to just remind you that I am hosting a masterclass this week on the 13th, 15th, and 17th.

There are some times to join me for this free masterclass on how to bring more fun into your practice and how to avoid burnout.

And so I'd love to share with you what I have planned for that masterclass. So please check the show notes to register for the date and time that works best for you.

I look forward to seeing you in that masterclass. We're going to have a lot of fun while we do that.

So let's go ahead and dive into this episode today on getting triggered and feeling drained. So if you've been working with someone and...

When all of a sudden you feel triggered from maybe something they said or something that comes up, basically what happens to you is a part of you goes into a freeze response, depending on how triggered you get, but you may notice that you kind of freeze up a bit, part of you may be freezing up.

What tends to happen is we get activated, and when we get activated, we tend to disconnect from our bodies a bit, we may get stuck in our head, but yet our head might not be able to process very clearly, depending on to the degree of activation or how much we've gotten triggered by what's happening.

So first off, let's just acknowledge that when you get triggered or activated, it's an opportunity, an opportunity for you to know that there's

There's healing work that needs to be done for you so that you can hopefully not have to experience this in the future.

So first off, when you notice that it's happening, I just invite you to get really curious about what was it that triggered you?

What was it that activated you? Because you can't change what you're not aware of. So if you become aware of what the trigger was, it's not about avoiding that trigger because you never know when it's going to come up again, especially if it's in a session.

And it's about working with what it was that triggered you. Now, if you are a parent, you get triggered all the time by your kiddos and notice your reactions.

Notice what is triggering you from your kiddos. And I personally, raising my kiddos, my boys, it was all about emotions and I did not back then, 25 years ago, I wasn't.

As aware of my own emotional reaction or how my emotions were never really honored growing up. And so my kids, they would have an emotional reaction.

So I wanted them to feel it and wanted, but then it would get too big and I'd be like, I'm triggered and I don't know what to do.

And I would shut them down. And so I've had to do a lot of work over the years to get to a point where their emotional state wasn't triggering my emotions or I was able to handle and be present with what was showing up in my kiddos.

So the same thing happens for us with our clients and in our sessions. So just recognize that when you get triggered, when you get activated, it's a potential for healing.

So you need to know what the trigger was, what was it that caused the activation so that you can then work and understand and heal whatever that trigger was.

When we are in the middle of a session, though, it's not. Something that we can address and deal with right now in that moment.

So I want to just talk about ways that you can help support yourself when you noticing that you got triggered or activated.

And so the first thing is, number one, you have to be aware of the response in your body. You have to recognize that you're activated, you're triggered, and feel free to take a moment for yourself.

Just let your client know that you need to just take a time out. And remember, when I interviewed Kim Bartell, I think it was just this past year for the summit, it was so beautiful because she was talking about that we don't need to be in a perfect state of calm for our clients to be able to be effective in our treatments, but we have to be honest with ourselves.

And so if you notice that you're getting triggered, you got activated by. Bye-bye. Something they said or something that came up in this session, you can just say, you know, before you react or before you do anything, ideally, no matter what happens, just honor what you did.

So if you quickly take your hands off of them and you respond by withdrawing quickly, then just be present with them and say, you know, I apologize there, but I got triggered.

I, there was a part of me that had to react and I withdrew from you and I'm sure you could sense that.

And so I just want to say it out loud and honor it. If you are aware that you're getting triggered, you still have your hands on a person, on your client's body, then what I would encourage you to do is go, you know, I'm just going to remove my hands here for a minute.

I just need to take a moment for myself and I'm going to reground myself here. So just excuse me for a second, whether you need to stay in.

Whether you can stay in the room with that or whether you need to leave the room, you're going to have to tune into yourself to see how activated, how triggered you actually are, but give yourself permission to do so.

It is not our, you know, we may have this, think that we have this responsibility and that we need to be present with our client all the time, but we're human.

And so I invite you to take care of yourself because you're not going to be able to take care of your client if you're in this triggered, activated state.

So you need to ground yourself, you need to come back and be present in your own body so that you can then be present with your client, whether that needs to happen in the room with the client or whether you need to step away, you're going to need to decide.

Um, some, some tips and tools to, to help you out with, um, I, if you're sitting on a stool, I like, you know, breathing is a beautiful way to shift from sympathetic to.

Thank you. And feeling your feet on the ground, feeling your butt on the stool, sometimes stepping out of the room to clear away from their energy, to separate your energy from theirs may be what needs to happen.

And I would recommend you go wash your hands because that water, the running flowing water, you can think about that activation going down the drain, just, you know, wiping your hands, kind of clearing.

Not a way you can imagine that leaving your body as well, maybe draining down your feet down into Mother Earth.

But just giving that reaction in your body and acknowledging it and allowing that to dissipate to help calm down your nervous system is really where we want to get to.

And then once you feel like you're in a more neutral, calm space. You're I add And again, calm can be put in quotes there because you may still be activated, you may still be triggered.

And returning back into the treatment room, if you did leave, and just letting your client know, you know, I apologize, I got activated there for a minute and I'm just trying to help myself reground and get back into a state where I can be more present with you for the rest of our session.

So notice, like everybody's reaction is going to be different. So it's hard for me to say, Oh, this is going to happen.

And this is what you should do. But I want to give you permission to take care of yourself. Before you continue on a lot of us like to just power through and continue the session like nothing happened.

And I I guarantee On some level, your client has sensed that something has happened, and they may not be able to put words to it, but on some level, they're going to notice that you shifted in some way.

So the more you can honor it and speak it, the more you're going to help them to go, okay, I'm not crazy.

There was something that happened there, and it just helps to clear the air there. When we do get triggered, we get activated, we tend to go up into our head, and we may tend to force things or we may be trying too hard, you know, just reactions that aren't always as supportive as needed in that time and space.

And so I invite you, the more you can become aware of what's happening within your body and your reactions, and just to be verbally.

I'll see It wasn't with whatever's showing up for you. As Kim said, we don't need to be perfect. We just need to be honest with our clients and good healing can still happen.

It's as long as we are there, there's a coherence between reality and what's going on. So if you continue a session, go, no, I'm fine.

I'm fine. I'm fine. That's not offering a coherence to your client that is on the table noticing that you're not fine.

Okay. So, um, one other thing that you can, a lot of us as practitioners here are empaths and that we take on a lot of our clients, um, feelings, emotions.

And, um, if you're getting activated, you're getting triggered. It means you have a hole in you that needs to be filled and healed, but sometimes a way to disconnect yourself from whatever's coming up in your client.

If that whatever's coming up is activating you. Is to ask yourself the question, who does this belong to? So if you're noticing that all of a sudden you're feeling a lot of anger inside of you and your client is talking about the anger that they're experiencing, sometimes if you, you know, just say quietly to yourself, okay, I'm noticing this anger and who does this belong to?

Just by saying those words in your head, it separates you from the energy, from the emotion of that by asking, who does this belong to?

Usually if you are picking up on it, it means you have a hole or a resonance with that emotion somewhere inside of you that needs to be addressed so that you can heal it, so that you don't keep getting activated.

So asking the question, you know, who does this belong to, is this mine or is this theirs can be very, very helpful.

Helpful. So just recognize that this trigger, this activation is a signal for you that there's work for you to be done.

And you need to, you know, it's an opportunity, opportunity to look at something that is in you that is wanting support.

And just remember that it's really, really hard to take someone where you haven't gone yourself. And that's why it's so important for us to do our work.

And I tell you, I have experienced it over and over in my practice that when I've gone and done therapy, and I've worked on a piece of myself and healed a part of me, the next three to four patients that laid on my table had the same exact thing.

And now I knew how to better support them, because I had done the work myself. So please know that that is so, so important.

And so I just invite. I you to be curious and be open to whatever is showing up, however you are responding in sessions with your clients or with your kids, because your kids, they know the buttons to push to help you to heal, so know that your kids are your mirror, and your clients can be your mirror too, and everybody in this world is just helping you to become a better part of you when you can look at yourself and, look at the healing that needs to happen inside you, so that you can have less triggers, less activation, less reaction in, as you're going through life, okay?

So, know that the Birth Healing Summit is, we're getting ready to open the doors here next week to, for the 2026 cohort, and that is the main part of the program is to do your own work.

It's designed to help you to dive into what's showing up for you, how can we work with our own stuff so that we can clear it out so that we're not getting activated and triggered, and it's laid out beautifully and in a beautiful nine-month-long program where it's got a container you'll learn, there's videos that you watch and listen to, and then you have study buddies.

There that you can get support through, however you guys choose to support each other, there's group calls each month where you get to work with a group of three people, and one person's the therapist, one person's the client, one person is the observer, and you get to see how people work with each other and learn from that, and during that time, you're getting your stuff worked on, you are, this program is designed to take you as deep as you want to go, and those people also tend to see stay successful.

Superficial, whatever works best for you, but you will learn the tools and the skills to be able to help take your clients to help them to look at issues that are coming up in their body, because the issues are in the tissues.

And as we're working on these tissues, it's important for us to have these skills to be able to address whatever is coming up in our clients.

And the more you do your own work, the more you're going to feel more comfortable being able to help them in their journey to healing and to becoming better humans, because that's really what life is all about.

So please check out the Birth Healing Intensive Program if this resonates with you and you just need to fill out an application and we'll get on a call and set something up so that we can see if the program is the right fit for you.

All right. And if you want to learn more about it, make sure you check out that masterclass, how to bring more fun into your practice and avoid burnout.

That is also telling you more about that Birth Healing Intensive Program. Okay. So thank you all for listening in.

Please become aware of your reactions to life, to your sessions, to your clients, to your kids, because it's all just giving you information on where you need to look, maybe where you need some healing done.

All right. Take care, everybody. Here's to greater healing for all and to smoother births and faster recoveries. We'll see you on the next episode.

Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.