Ep. 9 The Day I Backed Into A Parked Car...again. (Understanding Emotional Triggers and Nervous System Patterns)

It wasn't really about the car. The moment it happened I felt something in my body that had nothing to do with a parking lot - and everything to do with patterns I'd lived inside for years. This episode is about what it looks like when your nervous system reacts to a perceived threat based on old experience, how to stay present when you're triggered, and what self-compassion actually feels like in the body when you stop abandoning yourself mid-spiral.

www.lesleyturner.ca/triggered

Book 1:1 here

Transcript

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Hey, I'm Leslie Turner. I'm a mom, a somatic practitioner, and an intuitive coach. This is the Intuitive Drop. Short conversations about emotional truth, the nervous system, and living from your intuition in real life without losing your mind along the way. Let's drop in. Hi everybody. How's your January going? So, as you know, this podcast is very much about real life stories that come up for me and then the deeper meaning behind them once I've had a chance to process and then I bring them to you. And I hope that you like that methodology as such. I will be doing some interviews shortly, uh, but today I want to talk about a moment from my real life that reminded me just how fast the nervous system can take over, even when everything is technically okay. So just before Christmas, I can't believe I'm admitting this publicly. Okay, just before Christmas, I backed into my cleaning lady's car in my driveway. And uh it's not my finest moment at all. And she hugged me and told me no big deal, and my body reacted like it absolutely was. And that response had nothing to do with the car. So the other thing I want to say is she was actually in the car. So this is my friend. She cleans our house, and um, she was sitting inside her car, and I thought she had already left. She usually had at that point. Uh, and I I looked out the man door in the garage, I park in the garage, I didn't see her car. I backed out of the garage, turned the wheel the same way I do every time I exit the garage. It's a move I've done a hundred times, maybe a thousand, and I didn't look. I assumed it was clear because 99% of the time it is. And I ran right into her. And there was that oh, that crunch. If you've ever hit a car or heard that crunch, you know it. Um, and it hits your body before your mind even has a chance to kind of catch up. And I pulled forward right away and went, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. And my heart was racing and my hands were shaking. And I jumped out of the car and went straight to hers, and she had rolled down the window because she I heard a car horn and I was like, What is that? And I'm like, Oh, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? And then I burst into tears. And she got out of the car and came over and immediately hugged me and said, It last, it's just a car, it's okay, no big deal. You know, she taught me presence and calm and kindness in that moment. And logically, that should have been enough to kind of settle my system down, but it wasn't. Um, as and this was, I was backing out of the car to go pick up my son from school. So, of course, I'm like, I gotta go, I can't, I can't talk about this. Anyway. So even when she was hugging me, even when I could feel that her nervous system was calm, mine had already left the building. I could feel that internal collapse. You know that feeling. The oh my goodness, I've just done something wrong. The this is my fault, because it was my fault. It was all my fault. I didn't look, I assumed. And that added a whole other layer. Because shame loves responsibility, it loves moments where we can say, I should have known better. And my body went straight there. I should have checked, I should have slowed down, I should have been more careful. And none of those thoughts were actually about learning, they were about punishment. That's usually how I know this isn't about the present moment because I'm being punished by myself. And almost immediately, as I had left the driveway to go pick up my kid, I'm like, I'm so sorry I have to go. And she's like, I get it, I get it, just go, we'll deal with this later. And the car was still drivable, by the way. So as I'm driving to my to pick up my kid, almost immediately this memory from when I was 16 came up. I had just gotten my license. I was backing out of our cottage driveway, and across the road is the beach, and people park along the beach road, even though technically it's illegal. Uh, and I backed right into a car. Way more damage because I was in my dad's pickup truck, and this car was small, and I went down to the beach and I said, Does anybody own a? I don't remember what kind of car it was, but I remember thinking it was red. Um, does anybody own a red Ford something? And the man who owned it came up from the beach behind me, just swearing. And I was 16. I remember feeling so frozen, so small, unable to speak. I was kind of saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And the police were called. And as I'm sitting in the police car, completely overwhelmed, trying not to cry, my very large uncle came out from the cottage and was like, What's going on here? And as soon as he came, I felt like I could relax a bit because he could take charge and he totally protected me from this guy. But my body learned that mistakes aren't safe, accidents lead to anger, and I need someone bigger than me to protect me. So, of course, that learning lives rent-free in my brain and my body. And decades later, standing in my own driveway, an adult in my own home with a woman who cares about me, and we're completely okay. And my nervous system wasn't responding to now, it was responding to then. And this is where I want to slow this down. Your nervous system doesn't track time, it tracks patterns. After the initial emotional wave hit, there was another layer on that too. So, as is the nervous system, as is the patterns within the body, the next layer was money. Because my mind doesn't think logically in that moment, it jumps ahead. How much is this gonna cost? What if this is super expensive? How do I pay for this? And, you know, anything car-related feels like it starts at about $6,000, which it actually is. And even before I knew whether insurance would cover it, my body had already decided this could be a problem. And then there's another layer. Um, it's a little bit subtler, a little more quiet, but just as powerful. And I realized part of me was bracing for my husband's reaction, that tightening, the anticipation, the story that he was going to be furious. And when I sat with it, I realized that has nothing to do with him. Because when I was little, mistakes weren't met with curiosity, they were met with yelling and punishment and intensity. If I did something wrong, or my siblings, there was often an emotional consequence. So my body learned that mistakes equal rupture, mistakes equal disconnection, mistakes equal someone else's anger. And that learning sticks very deeply in the body. So even though my husband has shown me again and again that he's steady and reasonable and doesn't explode all that often, my nervous system still braced because the body doesn't update automatically. It updates through experience. And when I told him what happened, he looked at me and said, Well, shit happens. And that was it. No anger, no lecture, no tension, no, why didn't you look? You should have, should have. No, he let it go. And then I could feel my body do that exhale. Not because the situation changed, but because my nervous system just got new information. And then later I found out insurance is covering it. Everything is fine. I have that no fault thing because I haven't been in an accident since I was 16 years old. And that didn't even matter the most. That that resolution isn't the point. It was the regulation. The panic didn't soften because the problem was solved. It softened because my body caught up to the present moment. And that distinction is everything. Because the nervous system doesn't wait for facts. It reacts to perceived threat, especially when there's a history involved there. Money panic isn't always about money. Fear of anger isn't always about the person standing in front of you. In fact, it's rarely about the person standing in front of you. Often it's about these old patterns asking one question: Am I safe if I mess up? What helped wasn't fixing things faster. It was staying with myself. Instead of asking, how do I make this stop? How do I make this go away? I asked, what is my body remembering right now? And that question changed the trajectory of how I handled this. Now, out of this and all of the work I've done with clients just recently, I made something for my clients and for anyone who's ever felt triggered, triggered by an emotion that comes out of nowhere. Whether it's your kid is being slow and you start to yell, and you're like, wait a second, is that my voice or my mom's voice? But it's a trigger. And it can be from stories, it can be from other people's response, it can be from something in the moment that feels really potent, but it's actually from something deeper. So I created something called the tr a triggered flow on my website. And it's it's not to calm you down, it's not to make the reaction go away, but to help you stay with yourself inside this activation. Because that's usually when we abandon ourselves the fastest and go to solutions and how do I fix this? And that abandonment is what keeps the pattern alive. So if something small has ever sent you into a big emotional wave, or if you've ever reacted and then judged yourself for it, A, there's nothing wrong with you. Your body is simply remembering. Now, if you're curious, you can find this triggered flow chart. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure at my website, which is Leslie Turner.ca backslash triggered. It's there for the moments when logic isn't accessible, but compassion is. And it goes through my seven steps on how to come out of a trigger. So it really is just a car, and it also wasn't. It was an old memory, an old expectation of punishment, an old fear that love might disappear when I make a mistake. And the healing didn't come from everything being perfect, it came from staying present long enough to let the present gently contradict the past. If something in this landed for you, I'd love to support you further. Whether that's through private sessions, ongoing containers, or simply listening to another episode, trust what feels right. All the ways to work with me are linked below. There's no pressure, just options. Thank you for being here and for doing the quiet, brave work of listening to yourself.