Emotional Triggers: Why You React the Way You Do & How to Heal Them

Do any of these sound familiar for you or someone you know?
 
 👉🏼 Do you ever explode or shut down in relationships and later wonder why you reacted so strongly? 

👉🏼 Do you find yourself in the same argument, with the same person (or different people) over and over again?

👉🏼 Have you ever felt totally justified in a big emotional reaction, only to realize later the moment didn't quite call for that level of intensity? 

👉🏼 Do you judge yourself harshly after being triggered or quietly see others as "too sensitive" or "too much" when they are?
 
 In this episode, we pull back the curtain on one of the most misunderstood dynamics in relationships — emotional triggers — and reveal why they are not a flaw in a person's design, but a masterfully engineered feature of your healing journey.
 
 You'll learn:
 
 🔍 What an emotional trigger actually is and why the key word "disproportionate" is your most reliable signal that something deeper is asking to be seen and healed.
 
 🧠 The neuroscience of the amygdala hijack, why your rational brain goes offline, why your body responds as if it's in danger, and why it feels so *real* even when the threat is just a look, a tone, or a five-second phone check.
 
 💥 Why triggered people, trigger people and what to do about it.
 Through a vivid real-life scenario, you'll see exactly how two people's unhealed wounds collide in real time and why the other person almost never created the wound. They just bumped into it.
 
 🌱 How relationships are classrooms, not battlegrounds
 Triggers are one of the most purposeful tools the universe uses to bring your shadow self into the light where healing becomes possible.
 
 🛠️ 8 powerful steps to heal - Drawing on the wisdom of Viktor Frankl, Daniel Siegel, Byron Katie, Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, and Kristen herself. You'll be walked through a practical, body-mind-soul roadmap for moving from reaction to self-awareness to lasting transformation.
 
 All change happens on the inside first. And it often starts with one triggered moment if you know how to use it.

Transcript

Kristen 0:00

There's an idea, maybe call it a concept, or at this point it might even be considered a law of the universe, that triggered people trigger people. And what this means is person A will unintentionally bump up against or touch a wound inside person B, and then person B has a really big emotional reaction, and then their reaction then triggers a big emotional reaction inside of the other person. How many of you can relate to this? I can, for sure. And I actually believe that everybody has had this experience on some level because we are all what I call the walking wounded. We've had traumas and dramas and experiences in our youth that created these wounds inside of us and we carry them around until we learn about them, we're aware of them, and then we can start to heal them. So what if instead of seeing emotional triggers as a bad thing, how about if we start looking at them as an opportunity? What about if we start looking at them as just this masterful design of part of the healing process here on earth, part of the learning journey? I believe that relationships are classrooms for us to learn. And they are so beautifully and masterfully designed to reveal the shadow self, the part of us, the disowned parts, the traumatized parts, the wounded parts, the parts that we're ignoring or we're denying, the unhealed parts of our psyche. And many times we need some type of external source or stimulus to reveal this to us. This is how it gets brought into the consciousness through our relationships. And what is in the subconscious, what is hidden, we cannot heal. But what we are conscious of, we can. Isn't that exciting? We can bring these things into our consciousness via other people touching or bumping up against our unhealed wounds. And what this does is, is it results in a knee-jerk autopilot response, some big emotional reaction that is always out of proportion to the stimulus. Even though at the time it doesn't feel that way for the triggered person, the triggered person is gonna feel totally 100% justified in their big reaction. And this is usually when the fight and the argument ensues. Because we're gonna circle back to that part where I said it's out of proportion to the stimulus. So the person who was the one who bumped up against or touched that wound inside of the other person, they're often caught off guard. They're like, what is happening here? Hello, everyone, I'm Kristen Brown. I'm a personal development self-healing author, healer, and mentor. I'm the author of the International Number One Bestseller, The Recovering People Pleaser, a spiritual guide to reclaim your true worth and attract the love you deserve. And through a blend of lived wisdom, neuroscience, and universal truths, I help people rediscover their true worth and reclaim their personal power. My motto is simple: all change happens on the inside first. And when you change your inner world, you will change your life. So just so we're all on the same page, I want to give you a true definition of what an emotional trigger is. Because sometimes people just think just think that it is they're having an emotion. You know, they see something on TV and they're just mad about it, or they're angry about it, or this thing makes them sad, and they're calling that a trigger. Because words can get watered down and misinterpreted out in the world. So I want to give you the true definition of what an emotional trigger is. So an emotional trigger is any person's situation, word, tone, or event that activates a disproportionate emotional response rooted in a past wound or an unresolved experience. The key word here is disproportionate. The reaction is almost always bigger than the moment calls for, and that's the tell. That's the time where we're like, okay, this is way bigger than it needs to be. That's how you know that you're not just reacting to the situation or what's in front of you, you're reacting to everything that moment is reminding your amygdala of. The amygdala is a part of the brain that records experiences in our life, and its job is to keep us safe. So it's continually scanning our environment, looking for things that look like that, so that it can warn us and it can try to save us from whatever the thing is. The deal is these triggers, these wounded places inside of us that are touched, will set off the fight or flight response. So what happens is that we are instantly activated in survival mode. So when that trigger gets touched, the amygdala, which is the brain's alarm system, perceives a threat and sends the body immediately into survival mode. And in survival mode, it will it will release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. That's why we get so pumped up when one of our wounds are touched. That's why the reaction feels so immediate and physical, like we literally feel it in our body, because your body is responding as if it's in danger. Even when the actual quote unquote threat is just a comment, it's a look, it's a small behavior, it's a question, it's these small little things, and all of a sudden we're acting really big about this thing. And because the brain activates, the amygdala activates, it starts sounding the alarm, we feel like we are threatened, and the stress hormones are now released, the cortisol and the adrenaline. That's why it's so hard to think clearly when we're triggered. Because the rational and logical part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, essentially goes offline. And now we're running on this instinct, this instinct to survive. And there's no quote unquote reason in the house. We're just now, it's big, it's on, it's happening. I see that some of you are relating to this or appreciating this, and thank you so much for sending your emojis up on the stage. I see you and I appreciate you so much. Yes. Awesome guys, you guys are the best. The most important part about all of this is that the trigger itself is rarely the issue. It's simply the thing, the little stimulus that knocked on the door to something that is older, that is deeper, that came from somewhere else, and that is unhealed. I'm gonna give you an example of this. Lisa and David have been together for years. And on the surface, they have a good relationship. But Lisa grew up in a home where she was constantly interrupted, talked over, and made to feel like what she had to say didn't matter. She never really truly felt heard. And one evening she was having a conversation with David. In mid-discussion, he picks up his phone to quickly check a notification. It took all of five seconds, and in his mind it was nothing. But for Lisa, it instantly activated something, and immediately she has shifted into this fight-flight response. The amygdala fires, the old wound that she has, what I say doesn't matter. I am invisible, then gets activated. But she doesn't experience it as an old wound. This is this is key here, you guys. She experiences it as David being disrespectful, dismissive, or selfish. The story in her brain writes itself in seconds. And she doesn't pause because now her nervous system is in survival mode. Remember, it's the knee-jerk response, it's the automated response, it's the fight-flight response. We can't control when that happens until we do, but I'm going to get into that in a little bit. So she snaps and she does it in a big hard way. She starts yelling at him. You never listen to me, you don't care about anything I say, you're so completely selfish. And David is sitting over there completely blindsided. Now he's been attacked. So his own defenses go up. Now think what happens. He's sitting there neutral and calm, but she starts attacking him. So guess what happens? His his amygdala recognizes threat, and his defenses go up, and now he fires back. I checked my phone for five seconds, and you are completely overreacting. What's the big deal? Why are you trying to control me? Yada yada yada. And now they're in a full-blown argument. But this was never about the phone. It was never about those five seconds. It was about two people's unhealed wounds colliding in real time. Two people getting activated. But it started for the one person. So what's really happening here is that David didn't create that wound inside of her, he just touched it. But Lisa's reaction was sized for her father or for her mother and for her home of origin, not for David. The harshness of her response or our responses is almost always a clue that something older is being activated. That's one of the key things here. Now, if Lisa can begin to understand this about herself, if she can look within, if she's learned a little something about this, she can pause. This is the beauty moment, and ask herself, is this reaction really proportionate for this moment? When we stop and we pause and we ask ourselves questions, even if it's just for six to ten seconds, what happens, because we're not staying caught up in the story, the adrenaline starts to decrease, the cortisol starts to decrease, the front prefrontal cortex starts coming online online again, and we can start to be more rational. And we can start to separate the past from the present. That's where the work happens. So I'm gonna break this down for you in a way that's showing you each thing that's happening. So the trigger. The trigger was David picked up his phone for five seconds, something small and neutral in reality. Now, some of you might be listening and thinking it drives me crazy when people do this. Right. A lot of us don't like that. The phones have become a whole big thing in our society. But for the most part, five seconds is really not gonna activate somebody. However, if you're if you fly into some big thing, you know there's gotta be something bigger happening here. The second thing is that the amygdala hijacks Lisa's brain. Lisa doesn't see this as a phone check. She sees this as I am invisible, and what I say doesn't matter. Nobody cares about what I'm saying, because her brain has been wired by years and years and years of being interrupted and talked over. So it starts scanning for that exact threat. The amygdala can't distinguish between then and now, it just pattern matches. That's all it does. It looks for that thing or something that even resembles that thing. So the amygdala says, Well, this feels like that, or this looks like that, and boom, it starts firing the alarm. Then we have a body response. And this is that the nervous system is activated into survival mode before Lisa even had a single conscious thought. Now, the way that I like to explain this, I call it knee jerk a lot because you go to the doctor, you crash your legs, he takes that little rubber mallet, he pops your knee in a certain place, and your knee just moves, right? Your leg just flips up. It's just a knee-jerk response. There's no conscious thought here. The brain catches this, sees it, and boom, you're in survival mode. And then the mind follows. Now the brain's gonna start trying to make sense of what the body is feeling, so it creates a story. And the story becomes something like, I don't matter, he doesn't respect me, he doesn't value and listen to what I say, he's just like everybody else, and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And here's the thing that's so fascinating is that the thought feels completely real and a hundred percent justified when it's gone unquestioned. So now this promotes blame. So rather than sitting with the vulnerability of feeling invisible and looking at what just happened here, Lisa becomes angry. And the anger overrides anything else that she might be feeling because anger can be a really big, heavy, dense emotion. So she immediately goes on the offensive. You never listen to me, you don't care about me, you're selfish, which is truly just a protective mode, a protective mood, a protective mechanism to avoid feeling the original pain. So the core truth here is that David didn't create the wound, he just touched it, he just bumped into it, he just slightly with even a feather dusted across it. And now they're in a full-blown argument, and it's not about the phone, and it's not even about listening, but it's about Lisa's core wound. The tricky part with all of this, and I've dealt with this with so many people in my life, and there's one individual in particular who did not understand what was happening, and so they were continually blaming me for the smallest, tiniest, strangest things, and they came out of nowhere. I'm just sitting here, doo-do-do-do-do, and all of a sudden, bam, I'm getting attacked for something. And originally I was like, hey, what's going on here? Whatever, but they were so in their fight-flight, they were so in this story that they had created, which by the way was a hundred percent untrue. The things that they were accusing me of of doing weren't true. And even though I had known about wounds and triggers and these type of things and had healed my own, I didn't understand what was happening with this person. And it was through this relationship and then other relationships too, that I really wanted to understand. Because as you guys know, I geek out on this stuff. Because once you start the healing journey and you start to feel good, you just want to know more and you just want to feel better, and you tend to want to help other people. So I started to really look into this. But over time, what happened, shockingly, is that their blowups, this is crazy, then created a wound in me because it was happening so often that the minute they gave me that look or did that thing, and my body recognized what was coming, now I'm activated. So that's one way it can happen, but it can also happen, let's say David had a father that yelled at him a lot. Well, now Lisa out of nowhere is raising her voice to David, and now David is an amygdala is recognizing this as a threat, and now David is thrust into survival mode, the fight-flight response. Because now he, that wound inside of him of a yelling father and the pain that that created, now that's been touched. So you got two people that aren't talking about the real issues. They're talking about the story that their brain is telling them about what happened. The more that we become aware of what's actually happening, I believe we can deal with it more effectively. If we don't deal with it effectively, then it too can now create a wound inside of you. And you might develop some form of PTSD based on their attacks. There's someone I know that the wife had an abandon, um, an abandonment wound. She was fear of being left, she was fear of, she had fear of not being enough. And she accused her husband for 30 years of cheating on her or gonna cheat on her. If he even so much as looked in the direction of another woman or said hi, and by the way, is a very friendly person. She immediately, boom, she's blasted, and she's blasting him with this. And he's just like, I'm not a cheater. I'm loyal, I don't do these things. But he didn't understand what was happening in her. He was just continually being attacked. So what happened is he started to really dim his light. He started not to look at or speak to to anybody of the opposite sex, even though he's a completely friendly person. And he tried to meet this, tried to avoid this by a kind of a back-handed sort of a way, but guess what? It didn't stop. Because the brain is going to continual, continually look for threats. It's going to look for threats. And here's the hardest part about all this: we can't help someone heal. If we're dealing with someone who's truly activated like this, we can't help somebody heal. We can, in the respect that we can bring light to it and we can talk to them about it, or we, once they have calmed down, we can say, hey, what was really touched here? And the hopes are that they're honest. They're like, you know, that just reminded me of my dad or my mom or my school teacher or my best friend or whoever it was in the past. And then we can talk about the real conversation. But it really depends on how open that person is, how honest they are with themselves and with you. The true, true, true work comes from them working on this and healing this themselves.

Imani 19:08

Yeah, this is a really good topic. And for me, it's a little bit unique because I deal with an immune condition that affects the autonomic nervous system, which is your fight or flight response. So for me, my response is always on. It does never turn off. Oh gosh. It doesn't turn off. And uh the biggest thing about it too is it affects your ability to sweat because that's also responsive to your fight or flight. It's helping your body to regulate its temperature to either get ready to flee or get ready to fight. And so I didn't even realize that that was part of that until I stopped sweating. Um and so for me, I had to look at it differently when I was being triggered by things that would be brought up from my past. Um, for example, I have a half-sister, and she's named after my mother. And for a long time, I had issues with my mom and how she raised me and the way she talked to me growing up. And it was always a constant, I'm going to yell at you to get you to fall in line. I'm going to tell you bad things about yourself to get you to fall in line. And it would only cause me to cry all the time. And she would tell me how soft I was and how I had to stop crying. And if I didn't stop crying, she'd give me something else to cry for. And so I brought that into adulthood that I didn't have to deal with my emotions. I had no way of how to deal with it. And so every time my house is called and I would see the name pop up, it would mommy my mom, and I'd be like, oh, here we go. That's it. That's that's it right there. You know, like can't do today. But I learned in talking with her the reason why she's named after my mom because they have the exact same personality. They are right, you are always wrong. They invalidate your, you know, your experiences, they invalidate your emotions if it doesn't line up with what they see or what they've done in their life. And so I've tried to talk with her and explain to her, hey, um, you know, the way you talk at me really hurts my feelings. You know, you invalidate my feelings when I express them to you, and it's really not helpful. And she doesn't want to hear it. She just talks over you. So I've learned, okay, to protect my peace, I just need not to accept her phone calls. And that might seem harsh to other people, but I'd rather preserve my peace because I already know if I get on the conversation with her, it's gonna trigger me. I'm gonna shut down because I already know she's not listening. She's gonna remind me that I'm a bad person when I know I'm not. So to not have all those emotions and have it mess up my day, I've chosen not to pick up the phone. Now, my messages I'll reply back when I feel I'm in a good headspace to reply legibly after I've gotten over my feelings some type of way about her reaching out. But I've learned that that is the best coping mechanism for me is to not even. Entertain the conversation because I already know where it's gonna go. I already know how it's gonna make me feel. I already know I'm gonna feel really small at the end of the conversation. And it'll cause me to doubt my capabilities, it'll cause me to doubt how far I've actually come, how great of a person I actually am. And so to preserve that peace, to preserve the truth, I just choose not to engage. And I will say that's a big step for me because I would always engage. I would always get into the conversation. I would allow you to make me feel bad. I would allow you to just make me really small because I felt like I have to have this conversation with you because I want to feel like I'm part of something. And I've learned that that's too a disservice to me. I'm showing them I don't honor or respect myself, so they don't have to either. And that was the big aha moment is I show everyone else how to treat me by how I treat myself. And that was a gut punch to that reality. People treat me exactly how I show them how to treat me by how I treat myself. And so I'm learning to be more intentional and caring about me, not looking at as being selfish or I'm self-centered or it's all about me, but instead it's selfless because once I make sure I'm restored, renewed, replenished, all those things, then I can adequately show up as I would like to, and I can actually show up as I would like to in the lives of the people around me. So thank you so much for this conversation as well. Always, you're always in my closet.

Kristen 23:32

Thank you, Amani. Thanks for coming up. Thank you, beautiful. Yes, that was that was an excellent share. And what Amani is talking about is having boundaries with people who attack you and make you feel small and you all the things that she was talking about, which is a little bit different from the trauma triggers that I'm talking about. But this is really important because if you have somebody who is in your life who is continually being their wounds are being touched and they're now attacking you, which I'm not saying that's the case with Amani's half sister. I think you said her stepsister. I think you said half. But if you have somebody continue in your life that's doing this and you've tried to reason with them, and this has gone on and on and on and on and on, I'm telling you, sometimes you just got to cut your losses and either move on completely or to have really firm limits in place. Because the attack that comes from a triggered person, an unhealed person, and I'm not, you guys, I'm not shaming or blaming. I was triggered and unhealed. I know what it is, but I also know that we have the choice. We have the choice of how we respond and we can recognize when we're responding some way. And if this is repeated and a person decides not to work on that aspect of themselves, you are in your full right to minimize time with them or to not spend any time with them at all. Knowing Mani's Amani's backstory and how far she's come, that is a really big, powerful decision for self because you heard her say, this is not selfish. Because at some point, we're gonna say, is this bad? Is this wrong? Am I am I a bad person? Am I being selfish? What am I doing? We're gonna question ourselves at some point on this journey, because most of the time we're people pleasers and we have just kept putting up with the unacceptable over and over and over again until we decide no. So, really powerful point, really powerful point. And the fact, Amani, that your nervous system is always activated in some type of survival mode, that is not easy. Because that probably means that if you're already heightened, it doesn't take much for that to really blow up for you. And you guys, whether you have that type of situation going on or you just know that you are in the business now of maintaining and prioritizing your peace. If you haven't given yourself permission yet, I'm giving it to you for you to give it to you. We got to take care of ourselves, everyone. We have to take care of ourselves. And I have set some pretty doggone firm boundaries with people who kept getting activated by the most benign things. When I say benign, it's something as simple as, would you shut the door? I've said something like that and I've had come at me. And I'm like, okay, what now? And the story that follows, it's like where I honestly scratched my head and I started thinking, is this person crazy? Is there something mentally wrong with them? And I'm not saying that sarcastically because it was so not what was happening and so blown out, but also so not KB. It wasn't like, if you know me, you'd be like, yeah, no. And it just spiraled and it went into crazy areas. And I found myself, they'd be in this area and I'd jump over there and try to dispute why that's not true, and then be in this area, I'd jump over. It was like we were all over the place. And finally I said, you know what? I can't engage with this until this person gets out of fight flight. And what was interesting is that sometimes this person would take them days. And why? Because they would keep feeding themselves the story. So the longer they fed themselves the story, the more that those chemicals are activated, and the more their brain's gonna keep looking for more evidence. So pretty soon there's this massive case against me that wasn't even true remotely. And evidence of my person, my character, who I am, how I show up in life was everywhere. And still their brain was telling them something else was true. If you've dealt with this, send up some emojis because sometimes this gets labeled narcissist, just so you guys know. And this is why I try to, yeah, I see y'all. I see you. This is why I'm really careful about this whole narcissist word. And I gave that whole talk on deconstructing the narcissist narrative, and this was a part of it because they will minimize us, they will change the story, they will blame shift, they'll do all kinds of weird things when they're activated. And we're over here going, This person must be a narcissist. Are they really? Or have they just not done their healing work? Are they just really wounded? And this is what's happening. But I have a loved one right now who's dealing with a very difficult person, a very difficult client. And the conversations that we've had to have around this, because my loved one is getting triggered left and right and center from this person, and it is quite literally touching a wound inside of them that is throwing them into the ethers. They're not blowing up on the person, it is a client, and they're not doing things like the per the client doesn't know, but they're just like so activated. So we've been having a lot of conversations around this, and one of the conversations that we've had is thank God this is coming up. My loved one said, Yeah, I'm really glad this is coming up. I'm really glad. Because I said, You are being shown a part of you that you didn't know was there, and this person has really looked at and delved into and rolled around in wow, I really do have a wound in this area because other people that have are working with the same individual are not being activated. It's really just this person. This person is like, wow, I they're kind of blown away. I always consider it the masterful design, and that's why I titled it that the masterful design of triggers. They're here for a reason, but we have to recognize that rather than allowing ourselves to go, you know, 20 different directions and spinning these tails and oftentimes falsely accusing others of something that's not actually happening. Our brain just thinks it's happening, but it's not. Umani said that yes, she is my half-sister. I had many traumatic experiences with my mom. I'm still in process of healing from all of them. I'm certain you are, girl. I am certain you are. And Lena said, it's like you put this talk up just for me to share it with my husband. He is mentally ill, schizoaffective, and had a TBI. It took me a long time for me to be patient enough to recognize when he is triggered. Yeah, very understandable. All right, we're gonna go ahead and bring up Dayo and see what she has to say about this conversation. Welcome up, Dayo. Thank you for being here.

Dayo 30:53

Oh, thank you. And as always, appreciate the conversation. And um, yeah, I I really appreciate uh how you've approached this today because uh the phrase triggered is something, of course, I hear it a lot, but I haven't ever heard it uh explained the way you've uh broken it down with a definition, and then I think it's also very helpful when you explain the neurology of what is happening inside our brains as well. You know, I I think it's sometimes not all the time, but sometimes it's so helpful. Uh it kind of helps, it helps me at least sometimes step outside of the situation and tell myself, uh, okay, Dial, this is what is happening. And then because I think sometimes also with with triggers, there can be an emotional uh response. And then I think you you also mentioned this earlier. Sometimes there's actually a physical response. Oh, 100% physical. Yeah, temperature might go up, other things, and then it feels so real, it feels so real, and then being able to to uh yes, just to kind of uh understand, and I'll explain it in you know in a different uh way to you, uh with this like with the neurology of the brain. Sometimes I think of it sometimes as like the sort of a catalyst, quick short circuit. So in my case, I can short circuit like straight to anger or frustration. It's like a shortcut, it's so quick. I don't even exactly I don't even have a time to think about hey, it's like I'm driving. Am I gonna take this shortcut? No, the the shortcut just happens, and then before you know it, you're there. It happens so quickly. It doesn't feel like a choice. And uh I think uh another aspect of triggers that is challenging for me sometimes. When I say challenging, it's it's it's an extra step in the thought process. And it reminds me, I think it was a conversation I may have had about maybe nine days ago. And I guess it was an argument, uh or a disagreement, a spirited discussion, however we call it. And at one point the person said to me, There's no need to be triggered. And that triggered me completely. And then I've also told people when they say calm down, I'm like, Do you know what one of the worst things to say uh to or at least I I could say to me is um the yeah, the person said to me, they said, um, they said you don't they said you don't need to be triggered. And and and it depends, you know, sometimes, because sometimes for me there's also a layer of judgment, and I have to judge between uh so the the word which you use, which was very helpful, was disproportionate. And then I have to this is my and I feel for me, I'm okay with me making this judgment for myself. Some of us listening in, and you could ask yourself this question. Sometimes when you're distinguishing between, okay, am I triggered, is this disproportionate, or is this my well, my protective response? Yeah, and I'm okay with that. And in my case, uh I'm comfortable with deciding, that's me. And it's interesting, there may be other people listening that sometimes it's helpful to have uh, if you have a trusted third party, right, who can give you give you a perspective, and then sometimes maybe you'll know for yourself. And then this person said to me, you know, that there's no need to be triggered. And I feel in this particular case, uh, in this particular case, um, I can't remember what it was, but I I said I don't I said I don't like being spoken to that way. So yeah, you've triggered me, and I'm like, I'm okay with that because you can't talk to me that way. So if you talk to me a certain way, yeah, I'm gonna react. Uh and and I'm like, I'm okay with that because that's a perhaps a particular boundary, right? That I have. But you know, at the same time, I feel like only the individual will know. And then you also have a choice in terms of sometimes, well, you know, do you want to be triggered? Sometimes I have to ask myself, you know, this is gonna maybe throw me off for the next two hours. Don't always have a choice, but you know, am I willing to lose whatever mood I wanted to be in because of this? But Kristen, as always, thank you so much. I'm gonna drop back and keep listening. You're giving me a lot to think about.

Kristen 35:22

Thank you, Dio. I appreciate you coming back in. I appreciate that. That was a really honest and vulnerable share. And this is why I love Noom Vibes so much, is because I know somebody got something from that, from uh Dio's share, and also is equally from Amani Share, because we can relate in real life. We're like, oh, you know what? That that that's ringing true for me too. So here's my thoughts on this. And I love that Dios said, you know, put yourself in that position and give your be make yourself the authority. We really do. We need to make ourselves the authority. I have a whole chapter on that in my first book, You Are Your Own Authority. But making yourself the authority, but by asking yourself real questions and being radically honest with yourself, which was my topic yesterday, being radically honest with ourselves. So here's if this was me and somebody is speaking harshly to me or yelling at me, there was a time where I would boom immediately react back to that because I had a yelling father. And they were random. They were random outbursts. So when my system gets touched by a random outburst like that, I'm immediately in fight flight. Over time, as I started to heal that and started to work on that, I can still have a boundary, I can still stop this and shut this down, but I don't have the triggered response. Does that make sense to you guys? Because I slowed everything down and said, now I don't need to be hyperactivated because they are, I can handle this calm, cool, and collectively, and still be in the power seat of my own life by saying, Oh, okay, slow down. You're raising your voice, you're speaking to me like this, you're doing this. And if you want this conversation to continue, then you know, here's what's required. And trust me, I've had to say this to many people in my life. I really have. I got a big emotional family. I mean, where I'm like, okay, I want to hear what you have to say, but right now you're yelling at me, and and I don't like the way this feels. My body wants to react. Now, if it was a trigger, boom, I'd immediately start yelling back. And I have. I absolutely have in my past. Okay, let's see what we got here. We have, yeah, Lena's Lena said, he has accused me of some straight bizarre stuff, which used to make my blood boil. And then she would think, how could I think so? Oh, she would say how, or he would say, How you could you think so low of me, blah, blah, blah. That's her words, blah, blah, blah. He had a rough childhood as well. And I have to really separate myself when this happens. It takes patience. Yes, it does. Patience and love, she said. It is a thing, you guys. This is why we have to be personally responsible for our own behaviors, our own triggers. When I notice that I'm doing something and it is disproportionate, it is a knee-jerk autopilot response. I know I've been triggered. That's it. Okay, so we're gonna talk about steps to heal. And we we've briefly touched on this a couple times with um conversations that have come up, but this is really important because this is healable, you guys. That's the cool thing about all of this. I've explained it this way before. What we keep experiencing is not the trauma that happened, it's the effect from the trauma. It's the recording that the brain made of the trauma or the belief systems that came from the trauma. Because the trauma's over. It happened, it's over. But now we're left with this residual stuff from it. Remember, the brain is neuroplastic and it is rewirable. We can change the brain. That's the coolest thing about all of this. So, step one to heal is of course, it's awareness, is to recognize you are triggered. Recognize that this reaction is really big or that you've had a habit of it. Typically, we have to look at our patterns. We have to go back into our patterns and say, wow, I keep having these massive reactions about something that is really small or trite or it's not a thing. And why am I blowing this up into something? The awareness is key. Recognizing this. And like I said, usually it happens when you see a pattern. Same thing happens over and over and over again. So the first thing is to pay attention to the sign. And this often comes through the physical body tells, which is your heart will start racing, your chest will tighten, you will start thinking super fast, maybe your body movements get jerky. What did Dios say? Uh, her respiratory, what was let me go back to my notes here. Oh, she said she gets hot. Yep, hot's a big thing. Maybe your jaw clenches, your respiration increases, you start, you know, panting more, these types of things. Notice that is your clue right there. You are triggered because your body has responded. Boom. Okay. And it's going to be disproportionate to the event. Remember, the brain sees all threats the same. So whether it's a threat, a perceived threat that you don't matter, or you're going to be abandoned, or you're going to be attacked, whether it's a perceived threat or the or a real one, your brain's going to see them all the same. Or a perceived threat in those areas, or someone you're running down an alley at you with a weapon of some type. Your brain's going to have the same response. It just sees threat. That's it. So recognizing the body first. And like Steven said, you know, you've talked to a lot of wise people in your life, Stephen, and you've acquired a tremendous amount of wisdom yourself. And I love your shares. Thank you. And he said that somebody that he listens to said, What's my body trying to tell me? Yes, I call these body tells in my book, The Recovering People Pleaser. I have a whole section about this because this is part of our healing. What is your body trying to tell me? Notice the moment that happens. Recognize that and say, and saying to ourselves, I am triggered. I am triggered right now. Because when you name it, you begin to activate the rational brain. You're out of the lava flow. You've stepped out of it. And now you're activating the rational brain. And there's a gentleman called Daniel Siegel who calls this name it to tame it. I think that's kind of cute. The second step is to pause before you were you react. Easier said than done. I know. But the more conscious that you become of this, the more that you practice this, it's gonna, it will fall into place. You just have to be intentional about it. Step one, you have to know I have a pattern of this, I make things way bigger than they are. People are starting to get annoyed with this, or it's hurting my relationships, or whatever it is. I really need to recognize that this is me. There's nothing that's happening here. When I calm down, I notice that I made a big deal out of nothing, or that the threat wasn't real, and I keep accusing this person of something, or however it looks in your story. And then you pause. Now you know you start practicing that pause. And the pause can look as simple as I'm not gonna yell, scream, start blaming, start attacking. I'm just gonna sit with my mouth shut. That's it. I'm not gonna run, I'm not gonna hide, I'm not gonna yell, I'm not gonna attack, I'm just going to pause. Victor Frankel, who is, I think it was a psychologist or psychiatrist who was in a concentration camp. He wrote the book, A Man's Search for Meaning, great book. He said between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is our power to choose. That pause is everything. That space is there, you guys. It is there. But we have to make it bigger. And I remember talking to someone many years back who was having this problem, and they looked at me with the most soulful eyes and they said, I don't know how to stop. Tell me what to do. I said, You just pause. When you feel those familiar emotional re reactions happening, just tell yourself every day because the more conscious we are of things, guys, the brain will recall it. So if you say every morning when you wake up, you say, I am going to be intentional. I'm going to notice my triggers. I'm going to pay attention to my body, and then I'm going to pause. And you keep repeating that, but the brain starts remembering it. And then when the thing comes up, the brain goes, This is your moment to pause. And this is where We get to do that magnificent thing of pausing. Now you can go even a step further in that pause. You can take three deep breaths right there. You're telling the body it's safe because your respiration increases when we're in survival mode and we're in fight flight, and your heart rate increases. So when you take those three deep breaths, you're telling the body we're okay. We're okay. We don't need to run. There's not a saber-toothed tiger coming after us or a neighboring tribe with their, you know, big, what do you call them? The big spears. I'm thinking of Gilligan's Island right now. You guys remember Gilligan's Island with the headhunters, they called them. Okay. So we can't do any additional work if the amygdala is running the show. We can't do it. The pause is the most powerful thing we can do in the moment. So number one, recognize you're triggered by your body tells. Number two, pause before you react. And number three, and this is so fun. And you guys are gonna have fun doing this. You really will. Once you get some momentum in this department, I'm telling you, it gets fun. And I'm surprised Lois hasn't joined me because she and I could talk about triggers and healing triggers for days and how much we love them. So we're two individuals who have had all kinds of histories of being people pleasers and all the things and abusive relationships and all kinds of crap that we got ourselves into. And we are on the other side of that now. And it gets it gets more fun. I promise you, it does. Get curious. Number three, get curious, not defensive. Ask yourself, what just happened inside of me? What just went on here? What did this moment remind me of? How old is this feeling? Is there a source of this feeling? Do I remember the first time that this happened to me? Right there. Again, you're slowing down, you're getting curious. Instead of doing that knee-jerk response, blasting out at somebody, accusing them of something that's not true, pause. Byron Katie's work centers a lot on this. And this is questioning the story your mind just created rather than automatically believing it. If you guys haven't followed the work of Byron Katie, it changed my life in the most profound way. And this is she has four questions to ask yourself and then a turnaround statement. And I started doing this religiously. And I, by the way, you guys, I didn't even write it down on paper, I did it in my head. I had a girlfriend once that said to me, Byron Katie says, quote unquote, all war, meaning your internal stuff, belongs on paper. And so I had a friend that would fight with me about that. And she would say, you have to write it down. You have to write it down. And I said, you know, this is going back to Dio's point that decide for yourself. Why? I was getting massive results doing it just in my head. I didn't have the time to write it down. And you know what? It worked. But you do what works for you, okay? There's many, there's many paths. You got to figure out what works for you, but as long as you continue to do the thing that works for you. So get curious, ask yourself what happened. What am I believing to be true right now? What am I believing to be true? Got to be careful there. There's nuance here. If you're like, well, I'm believing that this person is a jerk and they don't care about me and they're gonna leave me, and I'm always left behind, you know, whatever, and you're blaming the other person, that's not what I'm talking about. What did this touch inside of me? I'm believing I don't matter. I'm afraid this person's gonna leave me. I'm afraid that I'm insignificant, whatever it might be for you. Okay, there's lots of wounds. What does this mean for me? Slow it down. The next step is trace it back. I kind of already said that. Where is this living in my past? Right? This is where self-reflection comes in. And you can do this through journaling, you can do this through meditation, you can do this through therapy or through coaching. Okay. When you can connect the present reaction to the original wound, it loses power. You just turn the whole system down. I'm picturing a big computer in some movie where somebody runs in, they're like, shut the system down, and they're pushing all these buttons and levers, and you hear this, ooh, you know what I'm talking about, you guys? Yeah, it will lose its power because you're now putting it with the source. Putting it with the source. You are not holding people in your present accountable for the behaviors of the person in your past. There's a cool quote with that, and I couldn't quite quite come up with it because I'm I talk live, I'm thinking real time here. Yeah, don't um don't accuse the people in your present for the sins of the oh, something with the sins. Um don't punish your current people for for the sins of someone in your past, something to that effect. And that makes sense. That makes perfect sense because that's what we'll do. We'll bring it to our current people when they had nothing to do with it. You know, I was cheated on many times in my life. And a big, huge time when my um tsunami tsunami ex had actually, you know, had an affair and left me for the woman. Do you know going into my relationship with my current husband, I had no fear of being cheated on? Why? Because I left it with a tsunami ex. Now, there was a couple of times, and I've shared these before, that there were little slight triggers that came up for me. But because I had done the healing work, I never took them to him. I didn't go blast him. I was talking to him about this the other day. I said, you know, there were times those triggers came up for me because we were talking about some triggers that he was having with some other situation. And I said, I was triggered, but I knew what was happening. And I slowed the whole thing down. And I said, Is this him or is this tsunami X? Like, no, he doesn't do these things. He's never given me any reason to think this. I had to override that system. This happened many times. He is unaware of. And when I told him that, he's like, really? Well, the look on his face, he didn't say that, he just looked at me like, wow. There was one time I did tell him about, and I've spoken about it on here before. I don't want to get into the whole story again, but he had gone out of town and he didn't answer my text, and and then the electricity went out on the house, and I called him, he didn't answer, blah, blah, blah, blah. He finally calls me back. Well, when my tsunami ex, I guess I am getting into the whole story, but I'm telling it very briefly, when my tsunami ex was doing dastardly things and sinister things behind my back, he wouldn't answer my messages because he was traveling, he was a pilot. And so my nervous system immediately went, Oh my God, oh my God, he's not answering you. He's doing something bad. He ended up calling me back. He's like, hey, babe, well happy, what's up? What are you doing? And I remember I didn't attack him, didn't yell at him, but I said, Oh, why didn't you return my text or my call? Why is it taking so long? Inside, I'm screaming, I am panicking. My body, my nervous system is recognizing this as red alert, red alert, red alert. He goes, Oh, I went outside to start a fire in the fire pit and I left my phone inside. I was gonna go back inside and get my phone, but then everybody else came out, and then we just were outside. And you know, it took me a while before I went inside and got my phone. I heard him, I knew it was the truth, and my body was screaming. But I knew enough to say, I'm not gonna blame him for the sins of the ex. Not gonna do it. But what I did say to him, and he knew nothing of this language, I said, okay, I'm triggered right now, so I'm gonna hang up and collect myself. And he said, Do you want me to come home? And I go, no, no. Now inside, I'm like, yes, get your butt home. Prove to me that you're not doing something bad. That was what my inside was saying. And my outside said, Nope. It would have been so much easier, right? To follow that fear, but no, I didn't want to be that guy. Hung up the phone, I sat on the edge of my bed. I want to say five, 10 minutes, and I just breathed and I literally repeated in my head both their names. Doug is not blank. Doug is not blank, Doug is not blank. I just repeated it over and over and over and over and over. Pretty soon it was gone, and I went about the rest of my evening. That was it. But I had to catch it because I knew tracing it back where it came from. It came from the X. All right, the next one is to regulate your nervous system. Shocker, shocker. KB talks about this ad not. I believe this is truly one of the single most important things that we could do for ourselves because it creates the foundation for change. Again, nervous system activated, we can't change. The things that the parts of the brain we need to access for change are unaccessible at that point. Nervous system. This is body work. Peter Levine, Bessel Vanderkoelk, and Gabor Mate all point to this. Trauma and wounds live in the body, not just the mind. Breath work, somatic therapy, meditation, they're saying cold exposure and movement are all excellent nervous system regulating modalities. They are tools that literally rewire the nervous system over time. So are you ready? Drumroll. So the amygdala doesn't fire as fast or as hard. Huge. And I believe that the reason why I was able to catch myself in those moments, and some of those moments my husband was none the wiser, had no idea, is because I am a consistent meditator. I'm a person who consistently practices presence. That's what I do. And I believe that's again another reason why I'm getting validated on my journey is when reading things like this. Okay, the next one is to reparent yourself. I've given a whole talk on reparenting. It is on New Vive, it's also on all of my other podcasting platforms, it's on YouTube. Reparenting is so crucial on the healing journey. And that is to give yourself what you did not get then. And even if it the trigger doesn't have to do with your parent, like let's say I felt very unsafe in my ex in my former relationship. Then what I did part of my healing, it was making myself feel safe, which by the way, self-lovant number one, respect and protect self. I spoke to little Kristen. I said, You are now my charge. I will take good care of you, I will always put you first, and I will pay attention to how other people are reacting and responding around you or initiating or doing things, and I will protect you. If you were never heard, and this is the example of the example that I gave with Lisa and David, if you were never heard, practice listening to yourself. If you were abandoned, practice being a safe and consistent present for yourself. If you were verbally abused, practice being very verbally gentle to yourself. This is inner work healing. All right, the next one is communicate the wound, not the blame. And this is very important. So instead of saying you never listen to me, you don't care about me, I'm insignificant to you, whatever, instead of saying that, and this is going back to the Lisa and David example, you can say something like, When you picked up your phone, I felt invisible. And I don't think that feeling is entirely about you.

Kristen 56:08

Wow.

Kristen 56:09

When you did blank, I felt like I didn't matter. I felt like you were gonna leave me. I felt rejected, and that scared me, whatever it is. It was a big reaction. My gosh, if you can start this conversation with your people, mostly your romantic people, we spend a lot of time with our romantic partners, but also with your children or your grown children or your parents or whoever, if you gosh, when couples that grow together stay together, families that grow together stay together, when you can start having these conversations, wow. To me, I just drop to my knees in awe that we can have such healing conversations like this. When we approach things like that with the I feel statements, this is language of emotional intelligence, this is language that cares about the other person's experience of you. It is very disarming rather than attacking, and it invites connection rather than separation. So communicate the wound, the feeling, not the blame, not you suck. And step eight is to get support if needed. Some wounds are very deep, or you don't feel strong enough to handle them yourself, or they're really too old to heal alone. And this is where specialized therapy can come in. Things like EMDR, somatic therapy, or attachment-based therapy. Oftentimes these types of things can reach places that we cannot reach ourselves. Sometimes we can listen to talks like this, take a few notes, start implementing it, and we're off and running. And there's other people where these things are so deeply ingrained, and this is no fault of theirs, by the way, that it's going to take a little outside help. Never be ashamed for needing outside help. Never be ashamed. And like with all hairdressers and restaurants and doctors and everybody else in the world, there are good therapists and there are not so good therapists. Get a referral, get a recommendation. Look and research for somebody that's in this particular department for you. I want someone who does EMDR. I want someone who does somatic therapy. I want someone who does attachment-based therapy. I want someone who's not going to let me weasel my way out of it. Because there's some therapists that are so passive that they won't push you when you're starting to convince them or weasel your way out of something. Sometimes we just know what to say because it's worked with us for a long, long, worked for us for a long, long time. You know? If you really want to heal this, there is help out there. But the number one thing is do not condemn yourself. Do not tell yourself that you are broken for the love of Pete. Do not tell yourself you are broken and this is unfixable and you suck and nobody's gonna ever love you. All of that, it's not gonna help you. It's digging that hole deeper and it's making that wound firmer. You just have this big, gorgeous. I just drew a circle on my paper, this big beautiful being. You're this amazing work of art. And then I'm drawing a little tiny circle over here on the right, inside that big circle. That's your wound. Your wound does not take away from the work of art that you are. You are purposefully made. You have gifts and talents, and so much about you that the world needs, especially now more than ever. We're in the weirdest era that I think we've ever been in. The world is so weird right now. You just have this little wound. You are not fatally flawed. We all have these wounds. Every single one of us, we are the walking wounded. Think of somebody, anybody right now, anybody. Gandhi, he had a wound. Mother Teresa had a wound. Oprah has, we know Oprah has wounds. She talks about her wounds. You know, you name it, has had a wound. But these are healable, and you can do this. And on the opposing side of this, if you're dealing some with somebody who is continually blowing their stuff at you, having these big emotional responses at you, and you're you're just sitting here like, I can't take this another minute, you know what? Now you've just got the best information. Maybe have them listen to this conversation, maybe have them listen to Maya Bialic's breakdown and listen to Nicola Para, her episode. Get some new language involved. And when we approach our people with compassion and the and and love, I love you. I want you. I choose you. And this is hurting me. Let's figure a way through this. Let's do this together. Let's find a solution. My gosh, the coolest things are going to happen in your life and your relationships. Beloveds, you guys are the best. I love this community. I love you so much, and I appreciate you so much. And I know that you have so many other places that you could be spending your time and you choose to spend it with me on Empower Hour Monday through Friday here on Noom Vibe. And for those of you listening on another podcasting platform, please know that not every single episode goes to those platforms because I can't edit all of those. I'm lucky if I get to one a week that I can put up on those other platforms. And I do invite you to come over to Noom Vibe because I'm not the only speaker here. We've got tremendous speakers here. And this is a free platform. It's free. It's free. And you get access to all the other talks that never make it to over to the podcast. It doesn't mean they're less than. Originally, when I started doing this, I was putting them all over on my podcast. I was burning myself out and I said, okay, I need to do like one or two a week, maybe. That's it. I would really love for you to come over and be part of this absolutely gorgeous, nothing like it Noom Vibe community. We are community strong, and it is a safe and supportive place to be. So we hope that you come join us over here. Much love, everybody, and I will see you again tomorrow. Bye.