Can we really experience true freedom from our triggers?
Someone makes a comment, plays out certain behaviours, even a single word can be enough to trigger certain painful emotions within our system. Anything can be a trigger. I'm not only talking about PTSD triggers here, I mean any kind of trigger.
Triggers are always based on past experience. Even an image in the mind of a certain person can be enough to send us spiralling out of control, lost in stories and emotions, even our own thoughts can be a trigger.
When we experience a trigger, whats happening is a whole system of unconscious thoughts/beliefs and images are fired up, along with a dense emotional charge. Causing us to get lost in painful a story.
We usually think the cause of the trigger is outside of ourselves, but its not. Its our own unconscious interpretations. To really see clearly that its not the other, its actually something within ourselves, is the birth of true responsibility. Its then possible to no longer see problems as outside of ourselves, and we can make a U-turn with our attention and turn it back within, towards the emotions and thoughts that we do our best to escape from. Ending the projection of our own issues onto others. And the keys to our emotional state are then in our own pocket, not the worlds.
If we can make this first step, of turning inward, we have a chance to really begin to understand our suffering. We can begin to look at its causes, embrace and allow the emotions and become aware of the stories we tell ourselves. Finally getting some space from them.
Can we find the courage and be honest enough to turn toward our own triggers? Can we begin to see that we are the only cause of our suffering, not someone else and not the world. Can we start to turn attention inward? if we do it may become so obvious that I have been the only real problem in my life. With this first step, we can begin a journey that can take us to places which are beyond our capability of imagining, a journey beyond our identity, to a part of ourselves which has been silently waiting to be remembered. The door is wide open, time to step into the Unknown.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton