What to Do When You're Triggered: How to Recognise Your Destructive Loop & Break the Pattern

Do you find yourself reaching for food, scrolling endlessly, overworking, or distracting yourself whenever life feels overwhelming?

In this episode, we're diving into what it really means to be triggered, how to recognise when you've fallen into a destructive pattern, and the practical steps you can take to break the cycle. Whether emotional eating is your coping mechanism or you find yourself avoiding discomfort in other ways, this episode will help you bring awareness to the unconscious habits that keep you stuck

We'll explore how to identify your triggers, understand what you're truly trying to avoid, create safety within yourself, and begin making conscious choices that support your healing instead of sabotaging it

Because the patterns that keep showing up in your life aren't there to punish you, they're there to show you what still needs your attention

If you're dealing specifically with comfort eating, make sure to watch -- I Wasn't Hungry, I Was Hurting

Make sure to come and follow me over on socials @thecyclica for all things menstrual cycle education, feminine embodiment and magick 🧚🏼‍♀️🌀✨🌙

Transcript

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Today I want to talk about what to do when you're triggered, how to recognize that you've gone down a destructive path, and what to do to break the loop, to break that cycle and bring your conscious awareness back into the present moment so that you can choose differently. Often we make these decisions over weeks and months, and then all of a sudden we look back and we realize that we were so unconscious and we were running on a self-destruct autopilot. You find yourself comfort eating, scrolling, overworking, distracting yourself constantly with the outside world and not allowing yourself to actually sit with what's going on internally. I've experienced this myself recently, and I can see now looking back that a majority of the choices I made in the first six months of this year have been from a place of discomfort, loneliness, stress, and the desire to avoid what I actually needed to feel. So in this episode, we're talking about how to understand when you're actually in this triggered place and what you can do, the things you can put in place to help yourself get out of it quicker so that you don't end up in a six-month spiral like I did. Over the last few months, I now looking back can see that I wasn't just eating more and trying to look after my body and doing the things that I thought I should be doing to help me with my period recovery journey. I was making decisions from a place of discomfort, from loneliness, in my triggered state. I was in a constant triggered state, and I wasn't making conscious decisions that align with me and my best self and who I know I am truly at my core. And understanding when you're in this triggered state is one of the hardest things you can do. But if you are here and you're listening to this episode, then I guarantee you already are aware that you are in a triggered state in some way, shape, or form. And this episode, we're going to unpack everything from moving from this state of awareness, recognizing how you self-destruct and what you do to distract yourself, and then understanding what you can do instead to allow yourself to come out of this autopilot destructive state and live back in a place of consciousness. The very first step is awareness. Bringing yourself into the awareness that okay, I'm triggered, I'm in a funk, I don't feel great, I'm upset, I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm lonely, I'm depressed. Anything it is, however it is you want to describe how you're feeling. I always use like triggered or in a funk. Like I can usually feel myself, I want to reach for my phone or I want to go and eat something, but I'm not hungry. I'm just like I had this like agitation within me, and I feel like I'm just in this funk. And the thing is, is this funk, it doesn't have to be like, oh, you wake up and you're in a funk and you can recognize it. It might be like, oh, actually, this whole last two weeks I've been making decisions that weren't aligned with my higher self when I've been in a funk. I recognized when I got to Australia, I was like, oh shit, I've been living in a state, like even when I was in them in the midst of like comfort eating, I kind of knew that I was in this state of distraction. I didn't want to face what it was I needed to face. I just wanted to continue doing what I was doing. I wasn't ready to feel it. And now I look back, I really can see that I was in this self-destruct kind of spiral. I was really, really distracting myself and I just wasn't bringing my awareness into what was actually wrong in my life. So bringing your awareness into what is wrong is the very, very first step. If you can bring your conscious awareness to the fact that, okay, I don't feel my best self, I don't feel good to make a decision right now, I don't feel good to do X, Y, and Z. That is your very first step. Recognizing that you are in a triggered state is massive because so many people don't even recognize they're in a triggered state. So many people just continue to go unconscious and don't bring the awareness to the fact that they're actually not performing from their best self. Some great questions that you can ask yourself are how have you been feeling lately? Have I been making choices to that support my health, or have I been making choices that don't support my health? Am I acting intentionally or am I reacting? Am I taking a breath and like really thinking about how I want to do this and how I feel and how I want to move forward, or are you just doing think something because that's just what you've habitually and subconsciously and unconsciously been doing? Have I been present in my life? Have you been present day to day? Do you remember something you noticed on your walk this morning? Did you smell your coffee this morning? Did you taste your breakfast or did you just consume it? It's like bringing your awareness into oh, actually, am I just living on autopilot? And am I just doing things because they're habitual or am I actually in the present moment experiencing life and responding rather than reacting? Because the thing is, is you can't change a pattern that you aren't aware of. You have to be able to bring conscious awareness to what it is you're doing. And if you're not there yet, then that's okay. You probably won't be watching this or listening to this. But if you are here and you are listening or watching, I guarantee it's because you have noticed you are going unconscious, you have a pattern, maybe it was comfort eating like me, or scrolling, or whatever it is you're dealing with, there will be something that you are aware of and you've just realized I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to have that habitual unconscious behavior. So this is the very first step. You are here, you have noticed it. And then number two is how do you avoid feeling it? So, for example, for me, I use comfort eating or scrolling. They are two of the biggest things that I know. Sometimes I can catch myself and I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just scrolling on Instagram and I'm like, how did I get here? How did I get here? Or I just all of a sudden I'm just like it's like I wake up from a dream and I'm in the kitchen. I'm like, why am I here? I'm not hungry, I've just eaten, I'm bored, I'm trying to fill a space. So it's like understanding what is it you go to? Do you fill it with distraction like I do with scrolling, eating, doing anything to avoid feeling the present moment and understanding what it is my body is trying to communicate to me? Or do you overwork? Do you push yourself, over-exert yourself so that you're running, running, running at like 110%, so that you actually don't ever have a chance to stop to land and see how you feel. When you can bring the awareness to what it is you actually do, what kind of distraction you like to default towards, then you can most of the time catch yourself when you're going unconscious. Some other examples, as I mentioned, were comfort eating, scrolling, overworking, shopping, that is a good one. You can also find yourself maybe you're in like the supermarket, maybe you're in the clothes shops, maybe you're scrolling online, or online shopping, constant productivity, over-exercising, binge watching, sex, that's another one. People use like sex and porn to distract themselves, to feel something, to try and fill a void within themselves rather than like actually understanding how it is they're feeling. It's just about understanding what the first thing is that you lean towards when you feel uncomfortable. Because it isn't this habit that's actually bad. Yes, obviously, scrolling too much on Instagram isn't great, or spending too much on shopping isn't great, but it's not the habit that is the problem. The issue is the emotion that lies beneath it. What is it you're trying not to feel? What is it you're distracting yourself from feeling, from understanding, from being within the body? So, some questions you can ask yourself about this is what emotions am I avoiding? What void am I trying to fill? And what feelings keep resurfacing? For example, for me right now, I am bored. I am in Australia, I have things that I'm like filling my days with, but there is like chunks of time when I don't have anything to do because I'm still job hunting. And I will find out of boredom, I'll be sat here and I'll just I'll find myself on Instagram and I'll be scrolling, or I will go to the kitchen and I'll like be like, oh, what can I have for a snack? And I'm like, no, you don't need a snack, you're bored. Go for a walk, go do something, fill your mind or your space with something else, something productive, something that's gonna make you feel better, something that's gonna take away that boredom or that loneliness or that need to fill with something. Just allow yourself to sit with the feeling and use a different habit to fill that gap, something that is beneficial to you, something that's gonna help you grow. We just need to get curious and understand what it is that's swimming beneath the surface that we don't want to see. Because allowing yourself to actually sit with this feeling, allowing yourself to sit with these emotions is what you really need. It's the connection to the body, it's the connection to the mind, it's the connection to this behavior that keeps pulling us back to this distraction. What is it you are looking to avoid? What is it you don't want to face? Because when you face it, you'll understand that actually it's not that scary. You can handle it, you can deal with it, and you can choose to respond and react differently. For example, maybe if you're going to food, it's because you're lonely. If you are scrolling, maybe it's because you're overwhelmed and you can't process what's going on in your mind. So you just want to shut it off. You just want to fill it with something that's just kind of like numbing. If you're overworking, maybe it's your need for validation. Maybe you need to be validated from something in some way, shape, or form. So you're overworking so that you get that form of validation in the work you're putting in. Maybe if you're constantly busy, you're avoiding grief, you're avoiding feeling sadness or loss or pain. Maybe you just don't want to sit in the stillness, you don't want to land long enough for these emotions to bubble up to the surface. It's just about understanding what it is that lays beneath what this habitual unconscious autopilot pattern is that you have implemented into your life. Because realistically, you know what it is. You know what it is that's bubbling down beneath the surface, you know what it is you don't want to deal with on an unconscious level, which you can bring into your conscious awareness, you are aware of it and you are very aware of what you're doing. You just don't want to acknowledge it. So once you have brought your awareness into the present moment and understand that you're triggered, you understand how you react when you're triggered, whether you distract with overeating, with over-exercising, with scrolling. You can then have a look at what emotion is lying under the surface. You can understand what it is that you are avoiding feeling. Maybe you don't want to deal with it right now, but that's okay. You've brought your awareness to it. You're aware of this pattern. Then the next step is understanding what it is you can do today. What is 1% that you can give in order to make this a better outcome for yourself? What is 1% you can bring to this scenario, to this situation to make it beneficial, to make it better than how you responded yesterday, to make yourself a step out of this habitual autopilot pattern. Because most people think, oh my gosh, I've gone unconscious, I've gone triggered, I have spent the last six months self-sabotaging, everything needs to change right now. But that is so unrealistic because we just cannot change everything overnight, even though we want to over and over and over again, you have to create consistency, you have to do one small thing over a period of time. You have to give one percent every day. Just give another one percent, another one percent. Like I listened to a podcast, I can't remember who it was by, but she was saying that if you have a great big Sunday, like a big Sunday dessert, like an ice cream dessert every day with all the toppings, you can't go from Sunday to no Sunday because you're gonna really, really crave it. Go from the Sunday with all the toppings, and maybe you take off the brownies, and then the next week you take off the fudge sauce, and then the next week you take off the sprinkles, and then the next week you maybe swap the Sunday for a Greek yogurt. Like it's about making small changes, implementing this 1% every single time. Make yourself 1% better every single time you notice that you've gone unconscious, and you will eventually find that you're 100% down the path, and you now don't do that anymore because you've created a whole new pattern and you've created a whole new routine of consistency for yourself. It's about bringing your awareness into this moment and giving it that extra 1%. Could you text a friend? Could you call somebody and ask them if they're free, they have a chat, they want to go for a walk? Could you go out for a walk in nature? Could you just sit outside somewhere beautiful, somewhere that I always find sometimes when I get overwhelmed and everything feels too heavy and too big, I have to go somewhere that makes me feel small. Like go to the ocean or look at the stars or go look at some mountains if you have any near you. Like try and find something that makes you feel whole and happy. Can you put your phone down? Can you put it in a drawer and lock it and not look at it? Can you drink a big glass of water? Can you journal? Take a journal out, write down everything it is you're feeling. Can you send a voice note to your friend explaining how you're feeling? Could you voice memo yourself and then just get it all out there and then just delete it? Could you take a breath? Could you just allow yourself to come back into the body? Take a breath, maybe use some somatic movements. Maybe you can just touch your face and just bring yourself back into your kind of like sensory awareness and bring yourself back into the present moment. So if you notice that you're overwhelmed and you want to go and eat, can you go in the kitchen and have a glass of water or make a herbal tea? Or can you go for a walk? Can you fill your space with something that's going to help you feel better and give as much capacity as you can? If you can only give that 1%, then just give that 1%. Because as I said, over a period of time, that 1% adds up. Because healing doesn't happen through massive actions, healing happens through consistency, happening over and over and over again. This is something that I am struggling with right now because I am very, very impatient. I like to see results now. I like to get what I want now. I like everything to be here now. And consistency is one of the greatest challenges and rewards you can have. Because showing up for yourself every day when it feels small and mundane and boring, and you can't see any massive results, but over a period of time you will see really strong, consistent change. It's one of the best things because you know you're going to get there. You know that you're building this discipline with yourself, but it takes so much willpower because you don't see the change straight away. It's about bringing yourself back to your higher self, bringing yourself back to the version of you that you know you can be, and bringing awareness so that you don't go unconscious and you don't make these habitual autopilot unconscious habits part of your daily routine anymore. You can allow them to go in the bin and you can choose differently and you can get back to your best, boldest, brightest, most beautiful self. Okay, so we have bought awareness, we have understand what it is we're doing to distract ourselves, we've understood what it is that is swimming underneath the surface, we've then given an extra 1% to try and change how it is we respond. Now we want to create safety around this feeling rather than escaping it. We want to feel it, we want to sit with it, we want to allow ourselves to experience it because we've given ourselves that extra 1%. We've walked ourselves back off a kind of like the edge of the cliff, and we aren't immediately in this moment, like where I need to fill the void. Can we feel it? Can you name it? Can you understand if you're lonely, if you feel rejected, if you're sad, if you're grieving? And then can you just sit with it? Can you sit with this emotion? Can you just close your eyes? Notice, drop down into the body. Is there somewhere in the body that feels hot or heavy or tight or constricted? Somewhere you can recognize that this emotion might be sitting. And then can you move it? Can you walk? Can you stretch? Can you maybe do some yoga? Could you get out in nature? Could you shake it off, shake the body and get things moving so that you can kind of try and release this tension that you might be feeling? And then can you share it? Can you talk to somebody about it? Can you get your journal out? Can you write it down? Can you try and actually as well validate what it is you're feeling? Like, yes, okay, you might be feeling lonely. Why are you feeling lonely? Okay, I'm in a whole new country, completely alone, and I'm making new friends, but I don't have like my girlfriends and family around me who I've always kind of been around. You don't have a partner, you don't have X, Y, and Z to fill your time. So can you validate, yes, okay, your feelings of loneliness are very valid. Like you're going to feel lonely. It's all part of the process. But can you allow yourself to understand that it's just a part of the process? This isn't the end. This isn't how it's going to be forever. If you are bored or if you're grieving, can you understand that okay, you're grieving because maybe you've gone through the loss of a relationship or a loss of a friendship or a loss of a loved one? Maybe somebody's actually physically died in your life. Can you understand that these feelings of grief are valid? They are valid. Of course you're going to feel like this. But then can you understand as well that it's not also going to last forever? It's about bringing yourself compassion, understanding that you feel these things, and these things are very valid. Part of the human experience is to feel every single emotion, is to experience the full array of feelings, to feel happy and sad and lonely and grieving and depressed and angry and joyful. It's about experiencing all of it. So know that just like happiness comes and goes, this grief will come and go, this loneliness will come and go. All of these feelings will come and go. So bring yourself the compassion to know that if you can just allow yourself to change how you react to them, bring conscious awareness into how you react, then you're gonna understand it. You can choose to respond differently, you can choose to respond rather than react. Because the thing is, these emotions aren't gonna go away. And most of us just want to bypass this discomfort. We don't want to feel it, we don't want to sit with it. We just want the solution, we want to heal, we want to be at the outcome already. But it doesn't work like that. You can't skip past the difficult part. Sitting in that difficult part, feeling it, is something that so few people do that if you can do it and bring yourself to this level of consciousness, you will be able to understand in future when you go offline, when you go unconscious, when you are in a triggered state, when you're in that funk, you'll be able to snap yourself back quicker. And that is healing, that is growth, that is taking your life into your own hands and allowing yourself to be in control of your mind and body because you are you are the one in control. You're not run by your mind, you're not run by your body. Bringing yourself into this awareness and understanding that you have the power in every moment to choose differently is one of the most liberating things you can do because that which we resist will persist. It just will, unless you see it, unless you feel it, you name it, you witness it, you understand it, you be with it, you then alchemize it and you choose differently, it will always persist. So bring yourself compassion, bring yourself the awareness, bring yourself the love and the guidance you need to know that you can choose differently. So you need to bring awareness into the fact that you are triggered, you are in the funk, you understand it, you can see it, you have that awareness. You are not performing from your best self. You are not showing up as the version of you you know you can be in, the version of you that you know you're proud of. And then what is it you're doing to distract yourself? What is it you immediately go towards to avoid feeling this level of discomfort? Is it doom scrolling? Is it comfort eating? Is it shopping? Is it sex? What is it you're doing to fill this void? Then can you look beneath the surface and can you understand what it is that you're avoiding feeling? Can you maybe just notice what it is, how you're feeling? And then can you give yourself an extra 1% of compassion? What can you do in this moment to diffuse this trigger to bring yourself 1% better? Can you take a glass of water? Can you go for a walk? Can you step out of a situation? Can you put on a podcast like this? It's gonna help you change the way you feel. Can you read a few pages of a book? Can you call a friend? What is it you can do? Give yourself 1%. What do you have capacity for? Give 1% more of that capacity. And then when you're not so triggered, can you feel it? Can you understand what it is you're feeling? Can you get intimate with it? Can you understand how it feels in the body? Can you give yourself compassion and validation for feeling this way and knowing that there's nothing wrong with feeling this way, but it's how you react to it. It's what you do unconsciously that you need to look at. It's that that you need to change in order to come back to your best self, to come back to the version of you you know you can be. Because the goal is never to be triggered. You are always going to be triggered. As I said in my other episode, I wasn't hungry, I was hurting. You are always going to have situations in your life when things feel like they're falling apart. You are always going to be triggered. And if you can understand what it is you lean towards when you're triggered, when you're in this discomfort, and you can allow yourself to replace it with a better behavior like journaling or walking or talking it out with somebody, you are going to be able to take control of your life and you're not going to run on this unconscious spiral in this unconscious habitual pattern every single time you're triggered. Because the goal is noticing it sooner. The sooner you can bring yourself back, the sooner you can snap back, the sooner you can notice, okay, I'm on I'm triggered, I'm unconscious, I'm in a funk, I'm going down the wrong path. You bring yourself back so you don't spiral all the way down to rock bottom like you might be at now, like I know I was before I came to Australia. Can you allow yourself to notice it when you're starting off in this spiral? Okay, no, I'm unconscious, I'm triggered. Let's bring it back. Let's bring it back. We know how to deal with this, we know what we need to do instead. Let's bring it back, let's change it, let's be better, let's do this differently and change our outcome. Because every single time we bring awareness to the pattern, you create the opportunity to choose differently. And every time you choose differently, every time you bring this small conscious awareness into this choice, healing happens. Every single time you do it, you heal just a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And then eventually you will look back and realize that you did that 1% every single day. You did that 1%, you gave it 1%, and then now you are 100% off in the future, and you look back and you maybe haven't done that thing for days, weeks, months, years. And you can be so incredibly proud of yourself because you bought your conscious awareness into this unconscious pattern and you healed and you chose differently, and now it doesn't affect you anymore. And what a great gift that is to know that you can actually change the way you are, you can change the way you respond, you can take your life back into your own hands, and you can live from a conscious and aware state of being. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this resonated with you, if you know somebody who goes unconscious, who spirals and needs to bring themselves back over and over and over again, make sure to share this with them if they need to hear this message. Know that they have it within themselves, they have the power within themselves to make these small changes and to heal slowly over time through consistency. We can all get to this state where we don't go unconscious and we don't allow these unhealthy patterns to rule our life anymore. So if you haven't already, make sure to follow or subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening or watching. You can find me on Instagram at the Cyclica for all things menstrual psycholisdom, earth based spirituality, and magic. Thank you again so much for listening, and I will see you again next week. All my love, as always.