Hello everyone,
I'm Dr.
Shefali,
A clinical psychologist.
I want to talk to you today about something that most of us experience.
Are triggers.
And we often think of triggers as something happening on the outside,
Our children's behaviors,
Our partner's issues.
But here's the thing,
The trigger is never on the outside.
Our children are never the problem.
The other person is never the problem.
The trigger is always on the inside.
And our reaction,
Our difficulty,
Our conflict in a relationship is the mirror.
And what shows up in the mirror is always something that we need to pay attention to.
A trigger is,
You know,
Any moment where our reaction just overwhelms us,
Overtakes us.
And often it's more than the situation actually warrants.
So your child forgets their homework and then you feel this insane rage.
You want to like.
Break something.
Your teenager rolls their eyes and says whatever and suddenly wham out of control rage.
You don't know where it's coming from.
Your toddler has a meltdown in in public and you're having a panic attack.
These are triggers and they're not signs that you're a bad parent.
Almost every one of us has gone over the top.
These are signals.
These are invitations to look inward because every trigger that we experience as a parent has a root.
And that root is in our own childhood,
Our unmet needs.
Our old wounds are conditioning.
The child in front of us is not creating something new.
They are touching on something that was already there.
That's the thing.
We think it's the X,
Y,
And Z,
But it's not.
It's something that was already there,
And that's really hard for parents.
So the most important thing I want you to take from this video and teaching is the next time you're triggered,
The question that you need to ask is not,
What is wrong with my child,
My partner,
My X,
Y,
Z?
The question is,
What is this mirror showing me about myself?
And this shift from looking outward to looking inward is the entire foundation of conscious parenting.
It doesn't mean that you don't create a boundary,
But it means you address it from awareness rather than escalation and reactivity.
And the difference between reacting out of escalation or responding out of reflection and pause It's a huge delta,
And it's enormous.
When you react from awareness,
Your child can hear you.
When you react from a trigger inside,
Your child feels controlled and unfairly punished.
So what do you do in the actual moment?
Well,
First,
We cannot speak.
We must pause.
The second one is we regulate ourselves.
The third one is reflect.
Is this about my child or is this about me?
And the fourth thing is to make a conscious choice.
Now,
Listen,
This is a muscle.
It takes time.
That's why I created this worksheet.
It's called the Trigger Awareness Worksheet.
It will walk you through the five steps to identify what's happened,
What's going on beneath the surface.
What is the emotion that's really there?
Finding the pattern.
Of what the emotion is,
Practicing the conscious pause,
And then reflecting to a new choice.
I encourage you to use it right after you've been triggered while it's still fresh.
This is not to punish you or to overanalyze you,
But to bring awareness What am I carrying into this dynamic and this relationship that is from my past and not my present?
That shift.
Will take the heat off your child,
Will empower you to look within,
And that's how you make change.
Remember,
When you're triggered,
You may feel really bad about yourself,
And you may feel it's your enemy or that you're the enemy,
But you're not.
You're just in an unconscious state,
And the trigger occurred so that you can learn.
So it is a teacher.
You see,
Every trigger has fires that point you towards something that needs to be healed.
So every time you pause before reacting,
You're giving your child the extraordinary gift of a parent who is willing to heal.
When the parent transforms,
The child does not have to carry the weight that was never theirs to begin with.
You are not broken.
You're becoming more conscious.
And this is the most powerful thing you can do for your family.
So use this worksheet and be honest with yourself.
Come back as much as you need to.
Your work is your gift to yourself and your children.
