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Pain is inevitable. We’re going to have triggers. We’re going to feel them. But suffering is optional.

What we do with these times of intense emotional discomfort is what is going to count. It’s the difference between just getting through an experience and growing through an experience.

The reason for a trigger is to let you know that something’s broken on the inside. Something needs your support. Something needs your healing. Something needs your attention.

Unless you actually address the deeper cause of what is triggering you, it is not going to go away.

In this latest Thriver TV episode I will teach you what is really going on when you experience a trigger, why most of us try to avoid dealing with our triggers and a simple exercise that will help you get past these painful experiences quicker than you can imagine.

 

 

Video Transcript

Triggers are painful and we’re going to talk about them today, because after you’ve been abused, your triggers can go off at any time and maybe it’s when you’re being belittled, abandoned, or invalidated. Maybe it’s happening when you’re alone and you see or remember something that sends ice running through your veins again.

How do you handle these triggers when they hit? Today I want to help you be able to get through these triggers like a boss and I really mean that. By helping you understand why triggers hit, then teaching you how to self-partner with the trigger to self-soothe, and how by doing this, this is going to start dispersing healing and evolving you beyond the painful trigger.

Before I get started, thank you for supporting the Thriver mission, if you’ve already subscribed to my channel, because you are a valued member of this lovely Thriver Community, and you know how much we share and grow together. If you’re new to my channel, please subscribe, so that you’ll be notified when I release each new video.

I’ve got an important announcement. I have an upcoming free Masterclass, which I would love you to join me in, because that is going to help you heal your triggers so much, evolve beyond them, where you don’t need to keep reliving them or the people that bring those triggers to you.

I’m going to have more details about my free Masterclass, you’ll see the link that appears now, and I’m going to talk about it more at the end of this video.

 

Why Do Triggers Hit?

Let’s get going regarding triggers. So let’s start with the first point, and it starts with a very important question. Why do triggers hit? Why do they hit? I really want to start by getting this very pertinent truth across to you. Pain is inevitable. We’re going to have triggers. We’re going to feel them. But suffering is optional.

And what I mean by this is triggers are going to go off, you’re going to feel them, and especially after trauma, when you felt broken and fractured, and when all of your traumas are very up and conscious in your experience, it means that on a hairline trigger, you’re going to experience triggers.

You’re going to be experiencing emotional discomfort often. Now, that’s a given, but it’s what you do with these times of emotional discomfort that is going to count. It’s the difference between, are you going to just try and go through this experience? Or are you going to grow through this experience?

Because if you just try to go through this experience, you’re never actually relieving the trauma that is setting off the triggers and you’re going to have to try to find ways to numb out the triggers to, in effect, make them shut up.

And that’s the truth. You’re going to be ignoring them, which means that as soon as they get a gap, your triggers are going to be doing pushups in the background, waiting for that gap, and they’re going to come and get you and keep coming, because there’s a reason for triggers.

The reason for a trigger is to let you know that something’s broken on the inside. Something needs your support. Something needs your healing. Something needs your attention.

And what have we done to try to get our triggers to shut up?

What we have done is we’ve self-medicated, self-abandoned or self-criticized. We might tell ourselves that we’re hopeless or pathetic or dysfunctional, we’re unlovable because we’re feeling triggers.

Or we might drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, or eat too much food, or run back to an abusive person and have sex with them to try to drown out the trigger. Or we might just keep really busy or we overwork, or we spend too much time on Netflix or social media. This trigger is not going to go away.

I want you to imagine that if you were living in a house and you had a dripping roof because there’s a leak, and if you ignore that leak and it just keeps dripping and you pretend it’s not happening and you just put a bucket there and avoid it, your whole roof could cave in one day.

And it’s like your motor car. If your engine is making really strange noises and you just turn your radio up and you pretend it’s not happening, your whole engine could blow up. Why didn’t people teach us this, that there are reasons that triggers are going off? They’re saying, “There’s something faulty in here. There’s something not right. I need your attention to put it right.”

What is the attention of a trigger? It’s our own self-love, dedication, and devotion to heal ourselves beyond that trauma, that insecurity, which is letting itself be known by a trigger.

 

How To Self-Partner With The Trigger To Self-Soothe

The next point is how to self-partner with the trigger in order to self-soothe.

This is the management of it that is leading into the healing, because if we don’t do that, if we don’t self-partner to self-soothe, what do we normally do when an emotional trauma surfaces?

What we really do is we can go into our head, which means that we’re going to start thinking at the same level of consciousness of the trigger.

A trigger is a painful, emotional feeling. So it could be something like anger or resentment, or it could be something like anxiety or a panic attack. It’s a feeling that we’re not whole in our body, we’re not in control. We’re not safe in our body, we’re not safe in life, and we’re not safe in our relationships. That’s what a trigger is all about.

Now, if we go into our head – this is a phenomenon that you need to understand – that your brain wiring, the signals in your head and the messages that are happening will always be within the consciousness of the trigger.

The trigger itself is going to be a belief system that you’ve already had that’s getting set off by the outside abuse, or it’s just coming up within you, or something’s bringing it back like PTSD, a reminder of that thing that’s hitting that trigger, and it’s bringing up a belief system for you like, “I’m unlovable. I’m unsafe. The people who love me, hurt me. I’m not safe in my body. I’m not safe in life,” all of these kinds of things.

Your thinking is going to be in line with that. The thoughts that are going to come into your head, I call it ‘stinking thinking’, are going to be exactly about the trigger. They’re going to make it worse, and this is why when we think about the things that are scaring us or hurting us, we end up in stinking thinking. It makes it so, so much worse. We have to find a different way to do this.

Let me give you this metaphor. If you were to imagine having a young child who you love and that child came up to you and that child had been playing in a playground and other kids had ignored her or him, and that child came up to you crying – this is very real for a child – “I’m not acceptable. I’m not lovable. I’m not worthy of other people’s attention,” or whatever it is. It’s a big wound.

And this child was crying to you and if you were to just say things to them that were not going to validate them, not going to hold them, not going to heal them, or if you ignored them and pushed them away and said, “Don’t speak such nonsense to me. I’m going to go have a cigarette. I’m going to have a drink. I’m going to get back to whatever I was doing,” or, “I’m going to go and hang out with this abusive person rather than be present with you.”

How do you think that child will become? Even more wounded, more frantic and so much more triggered. And this is what we’re continually doing to ourselves.

What you need to do is turn inwards as you would give your attention and your devotion to that child. Turn inwards with love, with the intention of a mother bear with her cubs – that you are going to show up, that you’re going to show up and love and hold and heal.

By turning inwards, rather than self-avoiding, self-rejecting, which would be to tell the inner child, “You’re useless, you’re hopeless. Stop being so stupid,” … how many times have we talked to ourselves like that?

We cannot shame and blame our way into health. It never works. So rather than doing that self-abandonment, what you can do, and this is what you can do on the run at any time when a trigger goes off – you recognize the trigger is going off and you can now open up your body and breathe.

Because what we normally do is reject, we shorten our breathing, and we go into our head. That’s self-abandonment right there. You’re no longer in your body with your wound, with your inner child, with your inner being. You’ve detached from yourself, you’ve self-abandoned just by shortening your breath and starting to think about it.

I want you to get very clear about that. So when you breathe deeply and open your body and you take your attention into that part of yourself, that somatically is triggered and you’ll feel it in your heart or your solar plexus, or it’s so big it’s under your skin everywhere. It’s a panic attack.

But when you partner your attention in there and with full presence be with it, and you say to yourself, “I bless and accept this feeling,” that would be like you saying to the child, “I’m here. I hear you. Your feelings are important.” Immediately the inner part of you feels validated, feels heard, feels held.

 

You Healing And Evolving Beyond The Painful Trigger

This takes me to the next part, which is the healing and evolving beyond the painful trigger. And this is really important, because while you are connected with this painful trigger in your body, you’re not going into your head, you’re not doing stinking thinking. And not only is your inner being feeling validated and held now, you’re actually in direct relationship with it.

Just like the child, if you were there and you said, “Sweetheart, I’m here. Your feelings are valid. I’m not leaving you. I’m here to hold you and be with you,” that puts you in direct relationship with the child.

Not how they look or what they’re doing or their behavior, what is the person’s real true self, their Inner Being, warts and all?

Their emotional self is their true self, and if we don’t emotionally connect with ourselves with love and acceptance, unconditionally you’re never going to have anybody else be able to do that with you either.

If you can’t show up for you, nobody else is going to show up for you. Your subconscious, which is your emotional self, which is your Inner Being – it’s all the same thing – needs you to self-partner for you to be on the same team. That’s integration. And if you’re not integrating, you’re disintegrating.

This means that you’re able to work together. And the important thing about self-partnering, if we’re not self-partnered, which means starting to heal and control ourselves in healthy ways, we are going to be controlled by everything and everybody else, because we’re not in control of our Soul, our life, our destiny.

And we’ve thought by really dissecting and thinking about things has meant that we’re integrated and that we’re in control. But the cognitive part of you does not relate to your limbic emotional subconscious system at all. It’s a complete disconnect.

It would be like wanting to watch your TV but yet you’re tuned into a radio station. There is a complete disconnect.

To prove it to you really easily, if you were to say the words, “I feel traumatized,” and then you say, “I think traumatized,” it’s a complete disconnect from your body. You cannot think your way out of emotional trauma. This is the self-partnering that’s needed on the inside. So you have to be with yourself inside of yourself to be able to access self-soothing, wisdom, healing, and evolution.

Let’s get the steps happening. So what happens if you get a trigger go off, breathe, open your body rather than tense and go into your brain and shorten your breathe. Open up. And then you feel inside where you’re feeling it and you say, “I bless and accept this feeling.”

Then what you can do is that you can actually breathe love and presence into that part of you that hurts. Stay out of your head at this point. Just do that.

Then what you can really do, once you’re doing that and once it comes and once that inner child feels, and you can even make the statements, “I’m here with you. I love you. You’re doing an amazing job. I’m never leaving you. I love you. I accept all of you and I’m here for you.”

Then you can, when it settles down enough, you can actually say to that part of yourself, “What is it that this is teaching me? What do I need to heal here?”

If those words work for you, or you can say things like, “Sweetheart, what can we evolve? What can we learn from this?”

But really the fundamental question is, what is it I need to heal? And then sit with yourself and journal.

Okay, so what I’d really love you to do, I’m going to set you a little bit of homework with this video. So what I’d really like you to do is to go away from this video, think of a trigger that goes off for you that hurts. And then I want you to breathe in a word and say, “I bless and accept this feeling,” and breathe love in it. And then you’re going to ask it, “What do I need to heal here?”

And I want you to just journal. Stay open with love and acceptance, breathing love into that part of yourself. And you may want to share the experience that you have with this process in the comments below.

I really want you to know, sharing your healing accelerates your healing. It really makes it so powerful. Plus, it helps other people heal as well. I hope that this has given you something that you can really work with to come home to yourself, to your power, your healing, your truth, your evolution, because it’s up to you. That’s the only way you have true power is for you to be your healer. That’s what all of my work’s about, giving you the power to do that.

 

Conclusion

If you want to take this journey to a very powerful evolutionary level, I have some exciting news for you. I have an upcoming free Masterclass that is going to take you through my entire abuse recovery method, and you’re going to learn incredible things about why it’s been so hard to break away from a narcissist, how to heal the trauma, release the triggers, and break free from abuse once and for all.

You can register for this free upcoming Masterclass where you’re going to get to spend two and a half hours with me. Plus after that, we do a question and answer time, which I love doing with you. And you can connect to all of that, it’s all for free, by clicking the link at the top right of this video.

I hope that this has really helped today and given you hope about how you can soothe and heal. I look forward to you sharing your process, your homework, and any questions you have in the comments below.

 

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Commments (17) + Leave a comments

17 thoughts on “How To Soothe Triggers Instantly

  1. Hi Melanie,
    Nobody is commenting on this, or at least I don’t see any comments, and I’m not sure why. Being able to deal with triggers is so fundamental to everyday functioning and self confidence, as I see it, and I appreciate very much you bringing this up. It took me many years to even realize what triggering is. For the longest time it just seemed to me that I would all of a sudden find myself being negative, for lack of a better term, for no apparent reason. Finally it dawned on me that the thoughts were a response to memories, not to the current situation, and they were more like emotional reactions “in the shape of” thoughts. When I was able to identify at what moment they were set off, things started to change. But learning to recognize this chain of events was a long process. There is so much I didn’t know, and still need to learn, obviously, about how the human body and brain functions and how we can monitor ourselves and adjust. Soothe ourselves and heal, in other words.
    These were my thoughts, for what it’s worth. Thanks again for the video and for adding to the pool of knowledge on this subject.

  2. Hi Melanie,
    this is a wonderful episode! I have watched it several times – it so helps me in my healing. I apply this every day now. Thank you!

  3. Mel I found this video EXTREMELY helpful!! I also attended you Free Masterclass yesterday! It was AMAZING!! THANK YOU MEL and your TEAM!
    For months now, I have been living in FEAR of what I would find on the inside of myself!! I now know for certain that I MUST face whatever I find inside of me with love, unconditionally in order to heal my wounds and triggers. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH AGAIN!! I am on my journey to THRIVE!!!❤❤

  4. Hi Melanie,
    All I can say is thank you. And I will replay it and listen again. Your video and your message found me while I have been in the middle of triggers left, right and centre. I nearly didn’t watch it because you are talking about ourselves rather than the narcissist, which is something that made me think already – that is where self avoidance on my part starts. Your comparison to a young child that would come to me to tell me what happened is so very powerful. I tried to think about it in terms of what I actually DO to the child (in me) rather than what I would like to do in an ideal world being an ideal person (whatever ideal means) and came to “have something to eat”. So I tried to do that little homework and tried to embrace that part of me that feels hurt in many ways but is not allowed to show it. It is the part that would make people in my past abandon me, so I just left it alone as well. Since I have been abused from a very young age I really don’t really know what self-partnering feels like so it is a new experience which I approach a bit like a young child – with curiosity. I so would like to be aligned with my inner self rather than keep adjusting to the outer world. I would like to learn that Thriving is for myself and not for others to show-off as if that was their doing, another huge issue for me. My success used to be owned by somebody else in my life.
    Although I was a bit hesitant to listen to this video I now think it is one of the most powerful for me. I will take your message with me and come back soon. Thank you!!

  5. I have never been a broken child or adult. The pathological jealousy of a mentally ill narcissist would like that though eh? Instead I’m just going to be mature, as usual.

  6. Reminded again why I made the right decision to leave a smug mental addict. Also reminded why me and my new parter made the right decision to leave the haggy townships for our awesome new life in Seattle!! 🤩😎😁🎸🌲🌲🌲🛥

  7. I need to feel whole and full of love for myself, no matter how others treat me or behave. I need to feel secure with myself and who I am RIGHT NOW, not as if I always need to improve or change somehow in order to be worthy of love. I need to understand that I am worthy of everything I want and deserve, right now. I need to know that if someone else can’t see that, it’s not my problem. The right person will come along. That person who wasn’t right for my future was right just for now, and their time in my life has passed, and it’s ok.

  8. Hi Mel,
    The “inner child” method is what helped me climb out of a endless black hole I was in at the time with my (1st) Narc.
    (The 7yo looked at me one night and just said ‘why?’
    That was it for me)
    My 2nd was a bit more subtle. I have become well aware of my triggers!
    You are doing amazing work!
    God Bless You!

  9. Triggers are echoes from the past, some have extraordinary depth and others from the shallows of history. How you hear them and how one reacts to them feels important.
    Great work Melanie, as ever.

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