An End to Being Triggered from a 3 Principles Perspective

Want to stop being triggered and discover inner calm? Join this enlightening 3 Principles talk with Clare to get insights into the nature of triggers and learn how to navigate them with grace and resilience. Experience profound shifts as you embrace your wisdom and reclaim your emotional well-being.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out head teacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

Hello and welcome to this session on an end to being triggered from a three principles perspective.

And it's a really fun topic is this,

Because I,

For me anyway,

I hope you're going to find it fun and useful too.

But for me,

It's been one of the biggest,

Probably the biggest transformation as I've experienced in this three principles conversation.

Because I would have said a lot.

So and so is triggering me.

So and so is making me feel a certain way.

That person out there is creating my experience in here,

Making me feel something that that was how I lived my life really.

And as a result of that,

I tried really hard to get people to be different,

To behave differently,

To act differently.

And yeah,

Just,

Just a lot around control,

Because,

Because they were triggering me.

So the only resolution to that,

Of course,

Looks like they need to stop it,

That the person or the certain sometimes,

I guess it feels like we're triggered by circumstances.

But for me,

It was more people really.

And it really looks that that person needs to buck their ideas up,

Doesn't it?

And so I spent a lot of time trying to control those people,

Those circumstances,

Those situations so that I could just feel better,

Really.

And so that's,

That's the first thing to make absolutely clear in this conversation is that nobody out there ever makes you feel anything.

End of there is just,

If that's the way it looks to you in the moment,

That's human.

But also,

It's a beautiful place to get curious.

Because nobody out there makes you feel anything.

And one like fun physiological way to talk about this is that if you're feeling an emotion in your body physiologically,

That's because there's there's a system being activated,

There's perhaps adrenaline or cortisol flowing in your system.

And that is creating this discomfort.

But when you when you realize that that isn't that isn't coming from out there,

And it can't come out there from out there,

Because that would,

You know,

Let's say it's my ex husband,

Or,

You know,

Somebody else's ex partner,

Or whatever is a person in my life that I think is triggering me,

Creating this feeling in me,

Then that that would mean that person really would have to come and find some means to put adrenaline and cortisol or whatever else is into my system.

Where do they have a syringe?

You know,

While they're doing this behavior,

I don't like it.

Are they syringing me with,

With those hormones and not are they?

So there must be an internal system at play in order to feel that initial reaction to somebody.

So the great thing about that initial reaction is that it's,

It's just your systems like amber warning light,

I've started calling it your it's your amber lie detector.

Because it's letting you know that you're starting to go into a story of some description.

Now,

The story itself may not be conscious,

The moment at which you get that initial feeling or that initial upset feeling or whatever you might call that feeling,

It doesn't really matter what the feeling is,

To be fair,

They're all made the same way.

So at that initial moment,

When when you're experiencing that,

That's your amber lie detector,

Warning lamp going off,

You know,

It's letting you know that you're starting to go into some kind of old pattern that you've been in many,

Many times.

And,

And what's cool to see about that is that you've been in it many,

Many times won't be the first time that you've been triggered in inverted commas,

It won't be the first time that that particular person seems to be making you feel that particular way.

You will have come across that many,

Many times before.

And it may well be that as a result of believing that people out there are making you feel something,

That you have made a lot of changes in your life.

You've made your life smaller,

You've left situations and,

And put yourself in positions that are perhaps not particularly helpful for your,

For your,

The rest of your life.

You know,

If you're giving up a job because it looks like somebody somewhere is triggering you,

Then,

You know,

Maybe that's not,

It might be the best thing,

But it's about realising why you're making that decision really.

So that,

That initial feeling is just letting you know nothing about the other person,

Nothing at all about the other person.

It's letting you know what your relationship is with what they're doing.

And it's a warning,

It's a warning about your state of mind.

And once you start to see that,

Very different things occur to do in life than would probably occur to do if you thought it was them.

Like whenever we think it's the outside world,

We,

We,

We shift the outside world.

Don't we?

We shift our,

Where we are physically in relation to the outside world.

So it might mean leaving something or someone or changing our situation or,

You know,

And we can keep doing that over and over again.

You know,

There's people about who are moving countries,

Houses,

Jobs,

Partners,

Time after time again,

Because it looks like the world out there is making us feel a certain way.

And for me,

That was a career,

Career jumping up the ladder,

A rate of knots,

Thinking that,

Oh,

You know,

I'll finally get to a career point that makes me feel okay.

And there's that it was,

You know,

It was related to chasing money.

It was related to changing relationships,

Avoiding people who I thought were problematic to me.

And really what we're doing there is shrinking our life.

We really are.

And so when we feel that feeling,

We think it's coming from the outside world,

That's what we'll do.

We'll take some action in the outside world.

It might just be to speak rudely to the person or shout at the person who's doing the thing or,

You know,

Run away from them or whatever.

It,

It can be all sorts of things,

But it's outside in the world.

So that's another really useful,

That's like an extra little amber warning light really is that if you're feeling uncomfortable and you think it's coming from the outside world and it looks like you need to change the outside world to feel better,

Then that's,

You're not looking,

You're looking at it from an outside in perspective as opposed to an inside out perspective.

Now,

What occurs to do when you realise it's,

When you realise it's not you,

It's not them,

Sorry,

That this is an internal system,

Not that you're doing it because it's not you either.

You're not making a decision to be,

To be in this place of reactivity,

To be triggered,

If you want to call it that.

But very different things occur to do when you realise it's your state of mind.

And I've shared this story before,

But I'll share it again.

But,

You know,

The,

The,

There's a,

You know,

I've spoken before about a difficult relationship in my life that is,

Has to be,

Because it involves somebody's contact with their child.

But,

You know,

This person would regularly write super ranty messages to us on,

Particularly on a Sunday night after we'd apparently done the weekend with the child wrong.

And,

You know,

I would invariably previously react to that,

You know,

Long WhatsApp message comes in,

I send an equally long back one,

One back,

I'm,

She then sends another one,

I send another one,

It just would go back and forth.

And the energy of it was just awful.

And it really wasn't helpful for the child who was the most important person in all of this.

And then the first time I saw it in the moment,

Well,

It changed everything.

It was like an insight,

Really.

It was a big insight in the moment.

And it,

It changed my ongoing feelings towards this,

This person.

I saw one of those messages,

And I heard a voice loud and clear in my head say,

You're not really in a fit state of mind to answer that message.

You wound up,

Go away,

Leave it.

And I put my phone down,

And I did just go away and leave it.

And it was really so amazing to see.

So the message was still the same message,

Remember,

Nothing has changed in the outside world.

That person has still sent that rude message.

And I remember,

I remember walking,

Putting my phone down and going and eating an evening meal and just chilling and watching a bit of telly and stuff.

And then I looked at my phone again later and just felt nothing apart from compassion,

Really.

Because I could see there's a woman here who has a lot of concerns about what's happening to her child over the weekend,

Because she can't control it.

There we are again.

She thinks she's being triggered by what we're doing.

I can only assume having read her messages,

I'm making that up,

But,

And,

And I don't have to join the party.

And it's really interesting when,

When we stopped going back with anger and upset and I'm triggered,

So this person needs to know about it.

It fell away.

Now that it's not completely,

There's still some issues.

There's still some messages.

There's still some upset,

But my goodness,

It is a minuscule in comparison to what it used to be like.

It really is.

It really is a completely different thing now.

And,

And,

And how we respond now is just like,

We keep it very simple,

Very practical.

We don't,

You know,

There's nothing to do when somebody's upset.

It's just let them be upset,

Really.

You know,

They're,

They're,

They're nothing to do with us.

And it,

And it,

That's transformational to see that nothing changed.

The message was still there.

The same words were still on WhatsApp.

Nothing had changed at all,

But our,

Our relationship with that completely changed.

And that was really amazing to see,

Really amazing to see.

So it's just,

It's just so helpful to see this,

To navigate life,

Because that's all we're doing really here is bringing more ease to navigating life.

There's,

People are going to turn up in our lives and be difficult and,

You know,

And do things we don't want them to do.

And all of that stuff that is part of life,

But we,

It's,

It's really how we are in relation to that,

That changes our life and makes it easier.

So I hope you can see even just in that one little interaction there that I've described,

Suddenly there was a lot less to do.

And,

And,

And previously I would have spent ages trying to formulate the right words to get her to change,

To get her to stop,

To get her to,

Da da da,

You know,

It would have been,

It would have taken a lot of my energy and it would have been exhausting.

Sometimes I used to lie awake,

Not be able to fall asleep because I'm thinking about how I'm going to let her know that she's out of order.

No more,

Much more peace.

And really,

Isn't that what we want?

Just to have a nice relationship with life.

So I hope you found that helpful today.

It's gone on a bit longer than normal,

Hasn't it?

But yeah,

Please do,

Do check out my course on Insight Timer,

Um,

Revealing your full potential with the three principles.

That's really a conclusion today to this exploration,

This exploration around,

Um,

Revealing our potential and starting next week,

We're going to be looking at productivity.

So if you'd just like to have more ease around productivity,

Not be caught up so much in endless tools and techniques and structuring your entire day to death.

If you'd like to be,

Um,

If you'd like to find out more about that,

Then please do join me going forward on that,

This,

This next exploration.

And there will be a course next Thursday,

Um,

Thursday,

Uh,

Whatever first week of July,

2023,

The new course will be out on Insight Timer.

Um,

So whenever you're listening to this or watching that,

You'll be able to access that course.

Um,

And that's going to be called stress to success.

Um,

A three principles approach to effortless productivity.

So I'm really looking forward to you hearing that.

So take care,

Everyone.

Lots of love.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been the Calmcast with Claire Downer,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.

Reviews

Thank you! I needed to hear this , I finally understand

Very helpful talk about triggering. Thank you. 🙏🏼