TLC Application 06|09|2011 “Triggers”

Have you ever ended a conversation feeling worse than when it started, even though nothing in your own life changed? That unsettling shift may not be a sign that something is wrong with you. It could be that someone else’s trauma just triggered your own. Understanding how emotional triggers work is one of the most liberating discoveries you can make on the path to inner peace.

How Other People’s Pain Can Trigger Your Own

Other people can trigger within us a trauma that we are not even in, but rather a trauma that they are in. This can happen by discussing with another the trouble they are having, an anguish they are in, that can, in fact, trigger a deep-seated trauma in us that we did not even go into. Unfortunately that trigger can happen and then we believe that we have fallen into a hole. Then we get down on ourselves because we do not know how or why we got into a hole — we just end up there.

As we try to escape from this hole the pain gets stronger and we get into self-condemnation because we have put ourselves in a hole and do not know how it happened. We are upset, we are angry, and we are looking in our life and beating ourselves up because we are disappointed that, once again, we have gotten into a bad spot. We are in hell, and we are baffled because we do not know how we got there — not realizing that as we walk through life and engage with others, they can hit us with a trigger and we do not even know it.

Awareness Is the Antidote

We must be aware in our interaction with other people when someone is relaying a struggle they are going through. Because when we are trying to help them get clarity, see the light of their situation, find resolve or peace, and give comfort, by the relaying of their discomfort to us they can trigger something deep inside of us. It is an opportunity to not engage with their discomfort, but to recognize if we shift.

We can find ourselves in a dialogue with someone in an area of our lives where we have some similar struggles, and we are not currently struggling with that area at that moment. We are giving someone else clarity or insight from our life. And then we feel a shift. We must become aware that they just triggered our trauma. Like we get into a conversation, we are helping someone else, and maybe when that conversation ends we realize that we do not feel good. We are starting to get a little uptight. We must recognize that we have been triggered and disengage — because it really truly is nothing more than a bogeyman. Someone else’s trauma has triggered our own.

The beauty is that we can disengage from it right away if we recognize it. If we do not, the catastrophe is that we think we have created and energized our own trauma when, in fact, it was just triggered by someone else.

What to Do When You Have Been Triggered

If you are engaging with someone in a similar area of sensitivity that you have gone through in your life, be aware. Be aware if their trauma or anguish triggers your trauma and disengage from it. What you have is an opportunity to recognize: “Oh, that is their trauma, but it triggered in me my trauma which is not real right now. I am not in that space. I have not fallen into a hole or taken myself down.”

This is what we get upset with. When we get in a bad place or frequency in life, we actually beat ourselves up for falling into that state. There are lessons to learn and we need never beat ourselves up for being in a hole because we are never going to figure out a problem in life with the mind that created it. We are never going to use referencing negative areas of our lives to find a positive solution. This becomes beating ourselves on the head with a hammer to relieve the pain in our foot. It does not make sense.

When you are feeling bad the last thing you should do is beat yourself up for feeling bad. The mind is trying to find something positive by going into something negative — and that is not possible.

Two Forms of Emotional Transference

These triggers are called emotional transference, and there is a way to be totally liberated from it. Emotional transference can happen in two different ways. We can be in a bad relationship, get out of it, not truly be healed, and then enter a relationship with someone else. But because we have not healed we start to think that new relationship is similar to the one we left. The reason we do that is because we are emotionally transferring old emotions from a broken relationship into a new endeavor. This can be really unfortunate.

The other form of emotional transference is when somebody is going through something and we are trying to help them, and somehow we have allowed that person’s struggle to emotionally transfer into us.

Be aware of this, and as we become aware we can shift gears. There will be that crossroad where we feel a recognition: “Uh oh. Their emotional anguish has just triggered something in me.” Emotional transference. We can ask our Creator to not let that happen and be protected. We can help people, but just be aware that we do not want to have that emotional transference take place.