Break Free from Patterns

In this debut episode of the Emotional Revolution Podcast, I dive into emotional patterns and how they impact your life, business, and relationships. Together, we'll uncover the hidden triggers that keep you stuck, learn how to take radical responsibility, and explore the transformative power of my Trigger Response Method (TRM).

I'll be sharing personal insights and practical steps to help you identify your emotional patterns, shift limiting beliefs, and choose empowered responses. Get ready to start your journey toward emotional freedom with actionable tools that bring clarity, confidence, and control over your emotional landscape. Don't forget to download the free TRM resource and join the conversation using #EmotionalRevolution.


TRM Resource Download

Transcript

Welcome to the first episode of the emotional revolution podcast. I'm Kayla Birch, and I'm so freaking excited to kick off this journey with you. So in our episode today, we are diving deep into emotional patterns. So we're going right into it. We're going into the things that keep us stuck, whether that's in life or business or relationships. We want to begin to explore why these patterns keep showing up for you and how they're impacting your day to day. And most importantly, how you can start breaking free from them. So I'm also going to introduce you to a powerful tool that has been transformational in my own personal life and also in those that I work with. And this method is going to guide you step by step to not just identify your emotional triggers, but also help you respond in new empowering ways. So by the end of this episode, you'll have a clear, deep understanding of your own personal emotional patterns and 
And also how they're holding you back and some practical steps to start breaking those cycles and gaining more clarity, confidence, and control in your life. So if you're ready to start your emotional revolution, keep listening because we are just getting started. So before we can go any further into all of this and learn how to shift things in our life, we actually have to be really clear on what an emotional pattern is. So emotional patterns are just reoccurring emotional responses, and they're oftentimes tied to past experiences or beliefs in our life. And our beliefs are oftentimes, again, created from experiences in our lives. So something happened and then we responded with a belief and an emotion. And so this is really telling for what is happening currently in our life by looking in our past and using that as a way to say, oh, this is why I'm reacting like this. So I have to put a disclaimer in right now. I'm absolutely not telling you that you can blame every single thing 
in your past or what's happening right now. We're not gonna go into, like I like to say, our mommy and daddy issues and blame them for anything. This is never about blame or saying, this is what caused me to have this. It is gaining insight into our current emotional patterns, our current reality and saying, this belief was formed from this incident or from this experience or from this trauma. And that is simply all it is. We're not blaming or shaming anyone. not ourselves and not others throughout this journey. We're stepping into what I like to call radical responsibility. And we are taking responsibility for how we feel in our emotional state currently by understanding what has led us to exactly where we are today. And the better we can understand those emotional patterns, the better we can navigate life now because we're not running off of these subconscious thoughts, these thoughts that are directing our every single step. 
whether that's in relationships, our personal growth, or our business. So we're actually being able to make our decisions from a higher level of choice and consciousness versus these outdated systems and beliefs from our unconscious level. And so what we're going to do today is really learn how to bring those things to the surface so they can become conscious. And so I want you to make that commitment to yourself first and foremost in your emotional journey. While you're listening to this podcast, while you're doing any type of deep work, I want you to really make the commitment to yourself that you are committed to you. You are committed to telling yourself the truth and you are committed to not blaming or shaming others. And you're not blaming or shaming yourself, right? There's no judgment here, no judgment for anyone else and no judgment for you. And that's really important as we get into this work. And so when we go back to explore from the past, we're going back for information, but not to save this, stay there. 
Right. We want to just see what led us to where we're at today. And then how can we shift where we're at today to create a different future? Right. So there's so many different aspects to this and we're going to get into that. I'm going to teach you a method where you can actually go step by step by step in identifying your trigger to your response. It's a really powerful. We have to get into a couple of other things so you can really understand what these emotional patterns are and why we stay stuck in them. So we have these things like the fear of unknown or the fear of failure. There's comfort in our familiar, I like to call it our familiar zones, not our comfort zones, because it's not comfortable. If you ask yourself right now, if you're comfortable, the answer is absolutely not. You are not comfortable with where you're at. You're just really freaking familiar with it. And so it's not serving you anymore, but it did at one point. So we can thank it and say, thank you for allowing me to be here, but now I'm ready to move on. And there's a big point of this where we stay stuck in these patterns because 
is because we just don't have the self-awareness, right? We don't have the understanding of where the patterns came from. So there's such a huge difference in how we ask questions of ourselves as well. And we are oftentimes asking questions of ourself in a really negative way of why can't I just move forward? What's wrong with me? Well, your brain's going to tell you all the things that are wrong with you. and all the things that you believe not to be supportive for you. So you're now just reconfirming the emotional patterns and the beliefs that you thought from before. And so sometimes we can just simply re-ask ourself a question in a different way to make it more positive. So what can I do differently? How can I see this differently? Or where is this thought coming from? Is this a borrowed belief from somebody else? Is this something that I adopted because I created a response to anxiety 
a situation that I was in. And then I created the belief as a way of protection. So we start to kind of step back a little bit and create a little bit more distance from what's happening in our current life and how we are responding to it. So I often like to say it takes us out of the VR headset and puts us in the controller. So we can see our, our avatar. We can see our character playing in front of us and we're not looking at it from that first person POV anymore. We can actually create a little distance to potentially have a different response. And so for me, this is a really important aspect. Whenever I started to really notice my emotional patterns and how they were really disrupting my ability to move forward. So this, I was very much chaotic in my, in my internal state. So I 
I would thrive off of chaos. So chaos in my external environment was something that really fueled me, but I told myself it didn't. And I made all of these like excuses that would say, Oh, you could be more successful if your life just wasn't crazy. Right. Or if your kids were calm or if this traumatic incident hadn't happened or wasn't happening, or you weren't going through this, but really what it was is I kept myself in a chaotic state because I It allowed me to continue to play the victim. And I played the victim because I didn't feel smart enough or good enough to actually accomplish anything. And so I, even as young as third grade, I started this story that I was not smart. So I wasn't smart. I avoided a lot of deep work. School was very, very hard for me. And so I created a lot of defense, a lot of ways around things. And by the time I was in high school, 
I wasn't even doing any of my work anymore. And so I created the story that I wasn't successful and I wasn't smart enough. So I didn't go and take any type of test to get into college because I didn't want to have a test that showed me how dumb I was. And that was the story. That was my narrative of my life. And so that impacted my next steps in my life. So I didn't take any tests for me to be able to get into college. And I told myself it was by choice, but it was not by choice. It was from a subconscious belief that I just wasn't good enough or capable or or I wasn't going to be able to make anything of myself. So I thought I'm going to create my own success, right? Great. It sounds great, but I wasn't doing it for empowerment. I was doing it from a sense of lack and fear because I was so scared that if I stepped into something else, then I was going to be shown that I wasn't smart enough. I was going to confirm what I already thought about myself and I didn't want to do that. So it's really important to also recognize where are your choices coming from? So that very instance, 
For me, it was coming from fear and fear of rejection or fear of lack or fear of proving that I wasn't smart enough. So I made a different decision. And that's okay, right? It led me to exactly where I needed to be. But looking back, I can see why I made that fear, that I did that in a very self-sabotaging way so I could avoid being outed as someone who wasn't good enough, right? But that story, that narrative followed me everywhere I went because I would pull back. If I just started doing something else, I'd pull myself back. didn't feel smart enough. I was worried that when I stepped into even my role as a coach, that I wasn't going to be successful because I never went to college. And a lot of people I were working with did, and they really, really, really honored people who went to college. And so they already had a mindset that, you know, in their perspective, someone not going to college, they weren't smart. And so that was my biggest fear confirmed over and over and over. But what I started to work on was myself and realizing that I'm not stupid. 
I am extremely capable. So I didn't have to keep living that narrative, even if the narrative of others in front of me was telling me something different. I didn't have to play into that game anymore. And I was able to shift out of this feeling of lack. And so instead of saying, oh, I'm going to do this in spite of anyone who doesn't think I'm smart enough, it was, I'm going to do this to empower myself to step into these different roles, to step into these leadership roles, to step into this really powerful, you know, position of helping others and creating containers for change. And I'm going to do it as I empower myself, not in spite of anyone else, not for any other reason. So you start to understand where these thoughts and these beliefs are coming from and how they're leading to your actions. So to even give a little bit more to that, and I want you to be thinking about these stories for and how they relate to your life. What are your thoughts? How are you derailing yourself? 
Right. So even as I stepped into it and I said, yes, I'm going to do it. Right. I gave myself that pump. I believed in myself. What I would do is I would get started and a little bit of success would come my way and I would completely sabotage it. So I would stop being consistent. I would stop showing up on social media. I would stop creating new offers. I would create any reason, even though there were actual external stimuli that were valid excuses. Right. I would create anything that would derail my success. And that was because I had to be very honest with myself about that. Why was I doing that? Why was that showing up for me? I had to really start telling myself a deep, deep, deep truth. And the deep, deep, deep, deep truth was that I didn't think I was capable of being successful. And so it was so scary for me to step into a situation where I might become successful because I didn't know how to handle that. 
That shattered every paradigm I had about myself. Every belief was rooted in me not being smart enough to be successful. And so all that self-doubt, all that indecision, all that overwhelm, all that procrastination, all of those things would rise to the surface. And so here I was repeating the same cycles over and over and over. I was in that same groove, the same record, playing the same tune until I realized, oh, I can change this. I can play a different tune. I have to be radically responsible for what's going on in my life. I can't blame anyone else. So it's really important to, when we're identifying our emotional patterns, one good place to start is with blame. Who are you blaming? Who are you blaming for your current state, for your disruption and peace? Who are you blaming for not being able to step into your own emotional revolution? Because you're giving that power over and over and over every time you blame somebody. 
And one of my biggest beliefs is that we have to be able to see other people really clearly, but we have to do so in a way where we are allowing ourself to see that it's okay if they believe a certain thing. It's okay if they think something about us. Because if we are truly loving ourself and if we truly believe in ourself, it does not matter what somebody else thinks about us. It does not matter if If somebody else doesn't believe that we are capable, what matters is that we believe we're capable and other people can have their opinions and they can have their thoughts and they could keep those because we don't have to adopt that belief for ourself. And so as we get into these spaces where we're really starting to see and track our emotional cycles, we have to be able to process through them. So I want to teach you a way to be able to recognize your triggers and consciously choose a new response. 
And so going back to my story, that's exactly what I did. I recognized that I had a trigger. I recognized where it came from. I recognized what I was gaining from it. And I recognized what was true in that. And then I released it and I made a different choice. And that's the power of this method. And so this method is called the trigger response method. And you'll hear me reference it as the TRM. And so this is the TRM. It is the root and the basis of the work I do and how I help people identify their triggers. So So I wanted to teach it to you today on our very first podcast, because I think it is such a powerful foundational approach. And I want you to be able to take it with you on your emotional revolution. So I want to walk you through each of the steps and I have a free resource that you'll be able to download. And so this will help you go through deeper, but if you are capable and able right now, take your notes, do what you need to do. And if not, if you are driving or wherever you're at, just know you can come back to this resource. So 
The very first step in the TRM is identifying your trigger, which is what we just have been talking about. So you're recognizing the moments when you feel emotionally reactive or stuck. And so these are signs that there are emotional patterns in play. And so this could be something like feeling really defensive when receiving feedback, avoiding tasks that bring up fear, failure, things like that, right? That's what we're looking at, right? Being very emotionally defensive to your partner. Being... withdrawing when you get negative criticism online on social media, right? That's your trigger. So I want you to begin to work through this. I want you to begin to look at this for yourself as well. And what is the trigger that you need to personally be working on? What is the biggest thing right now in your life? Maybe it's super present. Maybe it just happened. Or maybe it's just something that you know you need to adjust because it is derailing your life or your business growth. And 
And I don't mean that in such a way where it's like I'm like derailing your life, like everything is absolutely falling apart and everything is super chaotic all the time. I just mean it's that little disruptor in your life where you feel super reactive. You don't feel like you have a deep sense of control, right? So identify your trigger. That's step one. Now I move to step two. So step two is just simply observing your reaction. This is when we pause and we observe our immediate emotional response without judgment. So how do you react when you're triggered? Are you angry? Do you have anxiety? Is there avoidance? Right? So the really key thing here is that awareness is the key to shifting this pattern. So you have to get really clear on what you do. Do you withdraw? Do you blame? Do you feel guilt? Do you feel shame? What comes up? What is your reaction? Are you super defensive? Right? So we have identified the trigger and then we start to observe our reaction. And then we move into step three where we begin to question the emotion. 
This is where you ask yourself, what is the, what is this emotion really about? Is it based off of this current situation? Is it tied to something deeper, like a past experience? How does this emotion affect me right now? Right? Well, I'm feeling very angry, which leads to the shame and blame. So step two and step three are very, very, very, they go hand in hand, right? So you could be doing step two and step three, oftentimes at the same time. And another important thing to remember as you work through this TRM that it doesn't have to be this linear step one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, right? It doesn't have to be exactly like that. Just know that all of these things are going to be supportive in this journey of identifying your trigger and going to a very conscious response. So step two and three, you'll oftentimes be observing your reaction and questioning the emotion at the same time. Like where did this come from? And that question of what is this emotion really about and how is it really affecting me? 
really leads us into step four. And so this is where we start to get into the meat of it, right? This is really the juicy part is when we start to find the root. So this is when we start to trace things back to its origin. Like where did this come from? And so this step is about uncovering the belief or the past experience that's really fueling that emotional response now. And so oftentimes this is going to be rooted in childhood. That's where a lot of our beliefs were formed. And so if you go back to it, your defense and your belief about whatever your trigger is, was oftentimes formed or at least started in the childhood. And so I want to really, really, really drive in the fact that we're not blaming anyone here, right? We're not blaming anyone else for what happened in our life. We are just looking at it as a way to say, oh, this is where it started. Oh, this is where I started this belief. Oh, this is where this emotion was rooted from. And now I'm going to begin to uncover what that looks like for me. 
And so some examples would be, you know, just a really simple one of fear of failure, right? That's rooted in childhood experience of being criticized for mistakes, right? So you tried something or you're excited about something and then maybe a little something went wrong and you got criticized for that. That is huge. That is a huge impact in how you show up today. So it can seem so minor, but it doesn't really matter. We don't have to, we don't, we're not just talking about like, you know, what a big tea, a big drama or a small tea. what is considered a little trauma in your life, we're looking at what happened and you created a belief around this. It doesn't have to even be that dramatic. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. It could be, oh, you created a picture and then you went and showed a parent and your parent said, oh, or just completely ignored you and you were so excited about it and that created a belief that you weren't seen. 
Now, that does not mean that your parent is to blame or that your parent wasn't seeing you, right? That's not what we're doing here. We're saying, oh, wow, my beliefs are created from the reality of how I see things. And I think it's also important to remember here that your perspective is always going to be different than somebody else's, even if they were in the same situation, because you are not the same people. And so your point of view is your experience and your emotions are going to be different because you're not the same, right? And so that's why it's also important to recognize, to not blame somebody else or shame them for their response or what, you know, their action that they had because it was their response and the reaction and it couldn't have been any other way. And so that's really important to remember here. So we're finding the root. We're saying, where did this come from? How did I continue to validate this experience in my life? And so for me, this is a really, really funny one. 
But for me, with not being smart enough, it actually really occurred to me in third grade. I don't know what your third grade life was like, but that's when you started multiplication facts. And I could not remember a multiplication fact to save my life. To save my life, I couldn't remember. And so there was a huge board where each time you mastered a multiplication fact, and after like zeros, ones, and twos, I was toast, right? It was hit or miss if I was going to make it through. But what happened was everyone got an ice cream sundae. And based off the ice cream sundae, how many of those multiplication facts you mastered is what toppings you got. And so my little ice cream sundae stayed very, very, very small without a lot of toppings. And that was when I truly realized, oh, I'm not as smart as everybody else because I'm looking at a representation of that on a board of telling me that I'm not right. So that was my root. That was a big part of it. 
where I thought I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. All these other people got it figured out and I don't. And so then what did I do? I started validating that in every single experience. Okay. So we are on step four, finding the root. So one important part about this is sometimes you actually may not know what your root is and that's okay too. You don't have to just dig up something just to dig up something. Like if it comes to your mind, absolutely perfect. If it doesn't just say, okay, I don't know where this originated, but I know that it originated maybe sometime in childhood or maybe in my early adulthood or wherever it was in life, right? And that's okay. You don't absolutely have to get held up on where it came from. And I think that's where a lot of times we get sidetracked as a distraction, which is also very important to recognize that that can be very much a defense mechanism as a distraction. So you don't actually have to solve anything, right? So don't get caught up in finding the actual origin if it's not coming to you. 
But if you know, it's great. Mine's pretty specific with my four little ice cream sundae. All right. So step four. Now we move into step five, which is identifying the payoff. So this right here is something that if you followed me for a while, you've definitely heard me talk about this, but it's not talked about near enough in this healing journey. Because a lot of times you know what your root is, right? You've talked about that. You've excavated as best as you can. But what we don't recognize is that there is a trigger. There's emotion. There's a place that it came from and there's something we're gaining from it. So this step asks you, what do I gain by staying in this pattern? And what I hear so often is I don't gain anything. And that's not true. If you didn't get something, you would not be doing it. So if you weren't getting something in return, you would absolutely change your pattern. That is exactly how it works. So there is a sense of safety there. 
there's a sense of control. It's a perceived sense oftentimes, right? So sometimes staying stuck provides that false sense of safety and control, right? So even though it's uncomfortable, it's familiar. So now we go back to that familiar zone. So that's, what's really important for you to remember here is that you're gaining something, right? So for me, by staying not, I don't want to say not trying, but me staying in this thought of, I wasn't good enough. My payoff was that I never had to find out that I wasn't. So it was a deep sense of safety and protection. So I didn't have to confirm that I wasn't smart enough or good enough out in the world. So those are some really important things that you have to be able to recognize is that what are you gaining from this, right? So if you engage in something like you are really defensive and you want to change that and you say, what am I gaining from this? Well, I'm gaining a sense of keeping people at arm's length so I don't have to be 
for them to then reject me. So there's a sense of safety from rejection. And so you can really start to identify these payoffs. Being a victim is actually a really huge payoff, right? Because when you're the victim, you don't have to step into responsibility, right? You don't have to be responsible for what comes next or how you're acting because you can blame other people. You're the victim, right? I was a queen of victimhood, right? I love to make everybody else at fault because I didn't want to step into responsibility, right? And so that's a really common factor as well. So you have to ask yourself, what do I gain from this? Why do I derail my business growth and success so often? Why when I get a little momentum and things start coming in, the money starts coming in or the followers start increasing or, you know, people start calling to get me to speak. Why do I pull back? Why do I stop being consistent? Why do I insert whatever habit you have? 
that derails your success. And so for me, when I would get a lot of success, now we're staying on the same storyline of not being smart enough or capable enough. I had this thought that, oh, they're going to find out that I'm not good enough. Oh, they're going to find out. Just wait until they find out that Kayla's not what she says she is, or that she's really not as capable of we thought she was. So just wait until they find this out. And so that was my big payoff was Oh, I'll pull back from this momentum because if I get this big speaking gig or if I get this or I do that, they're finally going to find out that I'm just not good enough. So it was that fear of being outed as not smart. And so I kept doing that over and over and over. And I wasn't even realizing it because I was rationalizing it. And it sounded so it sounded so rational in my brain. So the things that I'd pull myself back from, it sounded like I was really making a very conscious and supportive decision. 
But it was not. It was coming from a place of fear and rejection. And one important thing to say here is that it wasn't that I was scared from other people rejecting me. It was that I was really scared of me rejecting me. So are you rejecting yourself? And how can you see that you're rejecting yourself over and over and over and over again? So these are the things that we start to explore. And that's when we also step into that personal responsibility. So that's why we have to really be clear on the payoff. You have to identify what you gain from this and not judge it, not think, oh my gosh, I'm so dumb. I keep doing this. I'm not getting anything in return and I wish I could change it, but I don't. We're not doing that. We're not playing that game. We're not blaming or shaming ourself or judging ourselves. We're saying, oh, I see this clearly now. When I see it clearly now, I can change it. So that's when we get to step six. We're accepting what is. We're acknowledging the pattern without judgment. 
Acceptance creates the space for change, period. So we accept it. We say, okay, I see that this thought was originated from this thing. I see that I'm gaining this as a sense of protection. I see the habits that I am playing out over and over and over and over again. I accept that. That is what is happening right now. Now, accepting it doesn't mean you have to live there. That's not what we're doing. Accepting means we are bringing awareness to a situation and a pattern, and we're doing so without judgment. Because the more we resist and push, the harder it is for us to change because we're only looking and focusing on that negative space, right? So acceptance creates a space for change because we are saying, okay, it's here and now I want something different, right? So now we move into step seven, which is finding the truth, right? So we're challenging the limiting belief behind that pattern, right? Is this really true that you're not good enough? Is it really true that I'm not smart enough? 
Is the story, is this just a story that I created about myself or is this a conditioned response based off of the conditioning that I'm surrounded by? Well, the answer is always yes. Like for me, of course it wasn't true that I wasn't smart enough or wasn't capable enough. Does that mean that I mastered my, do I have some amazing triumph story about, you know, my multiplications tables? Absolutely not. But I know how to use a calculator and everything is golden. Okay. But I am capable and smart in the areas of my life that produce the skills that I have to make me extremely successful. So for me, finding the truth is why would I focus on the things that I'm not good at? And how can I focus on the things that I am good at? How can I focus on what actually moves me forward and what highlights my skills and my personality and the way that I show up in the world instead of focusing on all those other things? So I started to find the truth, right? The truth was that I wasn't very good at math. 
Right. But also the truth is that I'm really good at a lot of other things. Right. So how can I shift the story and the narrative that I'm telling myself? And then we move to step eight of choosing your reaction. So that final step is about consciously choosing a new empowered response. So instead of just reacting out of fear or doubt, you're responding with confidence and clarity. You're responding with a place out of pure awareness, a conscious awareness like before you were not before it was trigger response. or trigger reaction, I should say. You were reacting to the trigger and the emotion was taking over and the emotion created the thought storm. And then you were spiraling out of control and you were just defaulting back to patterns that were not supportive for you. So when we start to choose our reaction because we have a deeper understanding, our response is now an empowered response. It's a conscious response. And so it's a really, really beautiful space to get into. And you'll notice that 
it doesn't require as much thought over time. So you might notice that you slip back into what is perceived more of like a backslide into old habits, but you have to recognize, oh, of course, of course that's here. I responded to this this way for so long. How could I immediately change it? And so that's what I want you guys to be working on in seeing how you can apply this to your life, right? How could you add the TRM steps into your own life and reflect on a recent experience a situation where you felt triggered maybe it's a person that's triggering you and you're asking yourself why so a place for you to work on some writing like a journaling prompt i like automatic writing where you just ask the question and you just write until you don't you can't write anymore it's you're not really consciously thinking you're just allowing your subconscious to flow under the paper that what is one reoccurring emotion reaction you experience emotional reaction you experience so what is one recurring emotional reaction that you experience 
And just allow that to come out and then use that TRM, use the steps to really break down that response and explore how you can choose a new reaction. How can this help me? How can this help me with my emotional patterns? How can I be more free? How can I help this move my business forward? How can I stop being so triggered when I post on social media or the lack of posting on social media? How can I use the TRM as a way to move forward and start to take control of myself? my emotional landscape. So thank you so much for joining me today on the emotional revolution podcast. I am absolutely so excited for you to start using that TRM and to be here on this journey. It's going to really help you break those emotional patterns and create that new path forward with more clarity, more understanding. And don't forget, I have a free resource for you. I'll put that in the show notes for you to be able to download and just work through. And there's going to be some added things on each step so you can understand it more as well. 
So if you're ready to continue this journey, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And I would love to hear from you. So share your reflections using the hashtag Emotional Revolution. And I want to know what patterns you're breaking. I want to know what you took away from this episode. And I can't wait to see you next time.