Maybe you can be completely composed with strangers,
Patient with your co-workers,
Easy with people you barely know.
And then you walk into your parents' house.
And within about 10 minutes,
You feel like you're 12 years again.
And if you've ever wondered why the people who raised you can undo you faster than almost anyone else on earth,
Even now,
Even as a capable,
Self-aware adult.
I want to explain exactly why that happens.
It's not a character flaw that most of us think.
And it's also not proof that you haven't grown.
By the end of this video,
You'll understand the.
.
.
Actual science behind why family triggers feel so much more intense than everyday conflict.
And you have one tool that you can use the next time it happens.
Hi,
My name is Kinga and I'm a somatic trauma release and nervous system practitioner.
So let's get into it.
Family dynamics are the oldest imprints that your nervous system has.
These are the people around whom you first learned,
Obviously,
How to survive.
How to adapt.
How to please,
How to disappear.
How to stay safe.
So when a familiar tone,
A certain look,
A particular kind of comment shows up Your system reacts fast,
Faster than thought,
Than your thinking mind,
Faster than logic.
This is your body remembering.
Here's the simple mechanism at work.
So when something in the present reminds your brain of a past hurt,
Your amygdala,
The part of your brain responsible for scanning for danger,
Just fires instantly.
It doesn't wait to check the facts first,
It just reacts based on old patterns and it reacts immediately.
You'll notice that your heart rate climbs,
Your breath goes shallow,
Your muscles tense.
And your mind jumps straight into an old role,
Fixing,
Defending,
Freezing,
Or shutting down.
Before you've had a single conscious thought about it.
Your body is not trying to ruin the moment,
It's just trying to protect you.
It's trying to protect you using outdated information.
And family triggers aren't really about the right here,
Right now,
The present moment at all.
They are actually about the version of you.
Who once didn't have the support or the safety or the choice.
And when something resembles that old environment,
Your nervous system does exactly what it was trained to do.
It protects you and it protects you the way it learned to a long time ago.
There's a reason you cannot simply reason your way out of a family trigger while it's actually happening.
So when the amygdala takes over,
What also happens is your prefrontal cortex,
Which is the part of your brain responsible for reasoning,
Perspective,
And also compassion,
That part goes temporarily offline.
So that's why even emotionally mature,
Deeply self-aware adults.
.
.
Can feel noticeably younger the second that they are back in a room with their family.
The body,
The nervous system happens first,
The body moves first.
Awareness only arrives after.
So if you get sharp quickly or shut down or feel a wave of sadness that seems to just come out of nowhere around your family specifically.
It doesn't mean that you are regressing.
It just means that your body has learned very precisely recognize danger in a place where danger is to actually live.
I want you to let this land for a moment.
Your reactions around family are not a person of law.
They are survival patterns,
Patterns that kept you safe once and are now finally ready to soften.
Now that you have more capacity than you probably did back then as a child.
And this is exactly the territory I cover in my mini-course.
It's called How to Survive Family Triggers.
It walks you through creating safety in your body before,
And then during,
And then after family interactions with real somatic tools that you can actually use in the moment,
Not just,
You know,
Understand afterward,
Like,
Hey,
What just happened?
Why did that happen?
And here's something small you can practice the next time you feel a family trigger rising in you,
Even before you have any tools,
In place at all,
Even before you take my course.
So I want you to just bring your attention down to your feet.
Feel the floor beneath you.
Press down into it.
No need to force anything.
Just notice the contact.
The support that's already there.
And if you can,
I highly recommend that you soften your knees slightly and just let your weight,
Your whole body's weight,
Drop through your legs into the ground.
And then try a shortened version of a well-known grounding technique.
Name silently or out loud three things that you can see three things you can see.
And then notice two things you can physically feel,
You know,
Your clothes,
Your hands.
Hand placed gently on your chest,
Whatever you can sense,
Feel with your hand.
And then tune into one sound you can hear.
It could be anything in the background.
Just one sound.
And let it anchor you into right now.
And this practice can widen your awareness again,
Which is the exact opposite of what a trigger does.
It pulls you,
It contracts you.
And as your awareness expands,
The survival response starts to soften and your prefrontal cortex can slowly come back online.
Giving you access again to.
Clarity and perspective and choice.
And then say quietly to yourself.
This is a trigger.
This will pass and I am safe.
And notice what shifts,
Because often the trigger loses a little of its power,
Not because your family member changed,
But because you came back into your own body.
And you don't need to.
Calm your family.
You probably also cannot change them.
You only need to bring safety back into your own system.
That's what you can work with.
That's the whole point.
And if you spent years wondering why you can be so composed everywhere else and still feel undone by the people who raise you,
There's nothing wrong with you.
It's quite normal.
Most of us have it.
Your body just learned.
This territory a very long time ago and it's finally ready to learn something new.
So I invite you to check out my course and just come as you are,
However young this makes you feel.
That's exactly where this work begins.
So I see you in my course,
How to survive family triggers,
Or maybe in the next video or both.
Take care.
Bye.
