What If The World Is Not The Trigger

Projection can make you certain you’re reacting to someone else, when you’re actually meeting your own fear, anger, or unmet need. I’m Naomi Mills, and I’m taking you into a moment from my firewalker instructor training where a trust fall goes wrong, the group panics, and one person’s distress gets pointed at the “obvious” problem. It becomes a clear mirror for how quickly our minds decide what something means and how fast our bodies follow.

From there, I unpack projection in everyday life and in group healing spaces, where witnessing someone else’s release can stir up material we didn’t expect. I share the fable of the monk bumped by an “offending” boat that turns out to be empty, and we use it as a practical way to spot when a trigger is really an internal signal. When we miss that, the nervous system stays on guard, sleep and mood suffer, and we end up trying to control what was never ours to control.

To bring things back to the ground, I walk you through the circle of control: what you control, what you can influence, and what is genuinely outside your reach. We talk nervous system regulation and simple self-care that actually supports resilience, from food and movement to meditation, nature, bodywork, and time with the people who steady you. I close with an embodiment prompt from my nervous system reset cards: healing starts when you notice, not when you fix.

If this lands, subscribe, share the episode with someone you care about, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to their body.

Transcript

Opening And Welcome

Naomi Mills 0:22

Take ownership of your well-being without quick fixes or health facts. Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer. Hello and welcome to You Are the Answer. I'm your host, Naomi Mills, and this is episode 24.T

How You Can Support The Show

Naomi Mills 0:57

Thank you so much if you are one of my regular listeners who's been tuning in every week. Welcome if you're new to the podcast. If you like what you hear, if you click like, subscribe, and follow, and maybe even share it with your friends because it's difficult for people to find small podcasts like this. Sometimes it feels hard for me to get the word out there, and I am by no means my best salesperson of even sharing it. So if there is anything you would like to do in the spirit of reciprocity in sharing this podcast, I would be extremely grateful.

What Projection Really Means

Naomi Mills 1:31

Today I want to talk about projection. We're in our mindset series, and understanding projection is a really good way of understanding how somehow our minds take over our bodies. And so I'm going to begin with a small story for you. And it was when I was doing my firewalker instructor training, which is

Trust Fall Story From Training

Naomi Mills 2:00

about much more than just learning how to set up and run firewalks, it was also all kinds of other self-empowerment challenges from breaking arrows on our neck, walking on broken glass, and the trustfall. And this wasn't just any old trustfall, it's quite high up, I would say minimum six feet. And when you climbed that ladder up to that platform, where you were then going to turn your back to the group that were meant to be catching you and shuffle your way back, it actually doesn't matter how much you trusted that you would be caught. There's still that moment of allowing yourself to fall over the edge that is frankly terrifying and difficult. And so we were as a group practicing these trust falls in a very in the kind of the safest, most organized way that you can do it. But what happens fairly inevitably sometimes is the group doesn't catch the person. And wouldn't that be your worst nightmare, hey? The one that wasn't caught. And there was a member of our group that wasn't caught properly and they fell to the ground, had a little bang to their head. They were okay, they were safe, they weren't badly injured, and they were taken away by other members of the team that were training us just to let them take a breath, double check they were okay, weren't really making a big deal of it. And I remember the leader, the guy in charge, really very consciously in that moment, as everyone's like, Oh my god, we just dropped someone in. Are they okay? And who's gonna go next and what's gonna happen next? Really rallying his energy to be like, right, who's next? Who's coming up? Right, you are okay, blah, blah, blah, blah. Taking us through the next fall, the next kind of series of steps that we would do to do that with somebody and getting on with it, basically.

Where Your Energy Needs To Go

Naomi Mills 4:09

And for me as a facilitator, it was a useful lesson because it helped me realize that where you want the energy to be is really important. And what we give when we give energy to the wrong thing, or the thing that's not helpful, it's wrong because it's not helpful in that moment, we can let the whole group down. And I learned that lesson because as he carried us on, another group member really had a bit of a meltdown at him and said, I don't know why we're all still doing this. So-and-so's over there, they've banged their head, are they okay? It's like you don't care. And this stopped the leader in his tracks, and he said, What do you mean I don't care? Of course I care. But I can see that that person is safe, I can see that they're okay, I can see that other members of the team are dealing with them, and my responsibility is to you, making sure that this group is okay and that we're not losing all our focus and our energy on this negative outcome. And he said to her, You are projecting, because this woman got really upset that that other person probably didn't feel cared for or seen or like they mattered. And what he was trying to point out was all of those feelings weren't really coming from the person who'd fallen and banged their head. It came from one of the witnesses.

Projection In Groups And Healing

Naomi Mills 5:28

It's something I see sometimes in in the sweat lodges that I hold and where things are being spoken and being released, other people in the group sometimes share that they felt uncomfortable. And it's not the person sharing that's uncomfortable. They're releasing, they're letting go, they're speaking their truth because that's what they came to do. But if you're witnessing it and it's bringing up stuff for you, that's projection. When we don't see that it's our stuff that's coming up, we put it on somebody else.

The Empty Boat Fable

Naomi Mills 6:01

There's a fable I sometimes tell of a monk in a boat, and he's out meditating on the water and this beautiful, gentle body of water in his boat, eyes closed, really at one with nature and with source. And he's there with his eyes closed, just floating gently, as he has been for maybe half an hour now, when he feels a thunk of another boat hitting his. And he's so ready in that moment to fly his eyes open and shout at the person that has disturbed him from his meditation, that has not kept good control of their boat. But when he does that, only to find it's just a completely empty boat that's lost its mooring, it's just come loose, and that anger is what's inside of him. And that's projection is when we are putting our emotions or allowing those filters to come in front of us. And it's not really about us at all, it's about something that's happened or that we're witnessing, but it's throwing up loads on us, and we make it about the other thing or the other person not realizing that it's really about us. And I don't want to give too much energy to this story because it doesn't fit my worldview. But there's no point in pretending

Why Projection Feels Louder Now

Naomi Mills 7:31

that right now there's a lot of reasons why we might be experiencing projection, people worrying about if they're going to get on their holidays or their petrol prices or the cost of living or food or whatever new story is being put out into the public consciousness and it's coming in waves, and people panic about something for a week or two, and then the the media most often moves on to something else, and we can feel probably more sensitive and more on guard right now than we normally would. And so let's think about this for

The Circle Of Control Tool

Naomi Mills 8:10

a second. This is their invitation for today, and it's called the circle of control. And when you see it, it does help reframe perspective and take away some of that projection. Because remember, everything I share about in this podcast is about what your body and brain are doing with each other and to each other. So if our minds are in this state where we're taking our emotional baggage and we're allowing it to be thrown up, if we're allowing these stories to become our reality, then it's pushing our central nervous systems more deeply into that fight-flight protection fear response. And that's going to be affecting our sleep and our mood and our behavior and just how we feel in ourselves, how settled we feel in our own bodies, in our own futures, in being able to trust ourselves as well. And the circle of control is very simple. And so I will include a link to a visual on the show notes. But you can imagine this very simply. And if you're if you're not driving, if you're just sat somewhere maybe enjoying a cup of tea, you might want to just draw it out in front of yourself. But it's a central circle that has you in the middle, and that's what you control. Then there's a slightly larger circle outside of you, and we call that your circle of influence. And that could be your friends, possibly your family, your colleagues, people that you have close enough relationships with that the way that you think and act might be influencing the way that they think and act. But you don't control them. Gosh, don't we wish we could control our children and our families sometimes? But we don't, but we may influence them. And then everything outside of that is out of our control, whether that be world politics, world wars, the price of whatever, is far outside our circle of control. So when we're thinking about regulating our nervous systems, creating lives and states that make us feel safe and held and grounded, guess where we need to look. So when we are noticing that some of this stuff is really showing up, looking back into that circle of what can I control?

Regulating Your Nervous System Daily

Naomi Mills 11:16

Well, really, it's me. So then I refer you back to some of the other episodes we talked about right at the beginning of this podcast, and all the things you already naturally know help you feel better, safe, calm, and grounded. Whether that's making sure you're eating the right foods, making time for exercise, making time for friends and family, letting go and recognizing the things that you are trying to exert control over that you really have no control over. And it doesn't mean we like it. But actually the trust fall is a great metaphor for this because there's a point when you are shuffling back, shuffling back, and you decide you're gonna do it or you're not gonna do it. And there's also a physical point, isn't there, where you lean so far back, you're going, you're falling, you can't catch yourself anymore. You have to trust that you'll be caught. And that is the world and the kind of spiritual side, I guess, that I live in is trusting that I will be caught, that I will be okay anyway, whatever happens, whether I fall and bang my head, or whether I fall and I'm safely caught, or somewhere in between, I will still be okay. I will recover. And the way to make that even more likely is to really dig deep right now into spending all the time and money you do have, the resources you have

The Deeper Trust Fall Metaphor

Naomi Mills 12:58

got, into reinforcing your own sense of well-being, safety, and okayness. It's not even a great word, but you know exactly what I mean. So it's doubling down on your self-care practices, your meditation, your being outside on bare feet, your adjustments if you if you get them, massages, yoga, pilates, time with your friends. It's making sure all those things come together: quality family time, nutritious food, so that your nervous system is being fed and supported so it can catch you, so that you can be a strong, resilient version of yourself regardless of what's going on outside. Because ultimately we can't control anything other than what we're doing for ourselves. And I hope that feels really freeing, and I hope it feels true, and I hope it invites you to kind of put yourself in your mind's eye up on that ledge with your back to a group of people that you've not really met before, and trusting that you'll be caught.

Noticing Before Fixing

Naomi Mills 14:23

And so to end today's podcast, I decided to randomly pull one of my new embodiment cards, my you are the answer nervous system reset cards. And it's funny because the one that's come up is noticing. Healing starts when you notice, not when you fix. Notice one body sensation without trying to change it. And ask yourself, what is my body already asking me to notice today? And I think actually that's a really great uh reminder from the universe, actually, when we're talking about projection and what we can control and how the external world might be influencing our inner worlds. That it might not be something that you can suddenly change or fix, but the real power comes in the noticing and noticing how that feels in your body, how everything is showing up for you, and that noticing in and of itself will create the change.

Closing Thanks And Review Ask

Naomi Mills 15:34

Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparks something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey. And until next time, stick your next time.