Working Through Your Triggers

In this powerful talk, Lou helps you explore how emotional triggers can be powerful tools for personal growth and spiritual awakening. You'll learn practical questions to ask yourself next time you are emotionally stirred and practice shifting from reacting to responding from wholeness.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Lou Redman.

Thank you so much for listening.

Here are my core beliefs.

Everything is spiritual.

Every moment can teach me something.

The universe is benevolent.

Holding these foundations.

I consider nothing that happens to be a mistake.

I believe challenges help me break free from who I think I am and awaken into my true home with the beloved.

Even though I hold these beliefs,

I don't always put them into practice.

At the foundation of spirituality is surrender.

If surrender had words,

It would say,

God,

I give this experience up to you.

Give me the capacity to see things differently.

Give me the strength to learn whatever I need to learn from this.

I've been following someone on Instagram for a while.

I resonate with her work,

But sometimes her posts trigger me.

It gets to the point where I question,

Is it better for my well-being to unfollow her?

If I do,

I won't feel bad again.

But does that address the core issue?

Anthony DeMello illustrates this in an analogy.

Imagine a patient getting diagnosed with a disease and the doctor gives the meds to the neighbor.

That's what happens when we're triggered and unfollow someone.

What triggered us is still inside.

Instead of changing the external so nothing hits our stuff,

How about doing some self-reflection and asking,

What is this bringing up for me?

How can I view this differently?

What do I need to learn,

Feel,

Or heal?

As I shared in another talk that I have on here called Transforming Your Triggers,

A strong emotional reaction means we have work to do.

That work cannot happen by changing what's outside.

Unfollowing someone is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

As Jon Kabat-Zinn said,

Wherever you go,

There you are.

Let's normalize following people who trigger us.

We must expand our capacity to hold people and ideas that may counter our feelings or beliefs.

Retreating into our information silos may feel safer,

But it's not how we're going to grow as individuals and as a collective.

Instead of unfollowing people,

Use what comes up as grist for your spiritual mill,

As Ram Dass would say.

There's a difference here between a trigger and a disagreement.

Discerning the two is crucial.

In a recent podcast episode,

Tim Ferriss said,

I really want friends where the differences of opinion bring us closer and make our friendships more valuable,

Not the other way around.

If you and your friends agree on pretty much everything,

I view that as symptomatic of a problem.

The problem is most people get triggered if someone disagrees.

If someone who disagrees with us is also triggering,

It means our belief is rooted in a wound,

Not in wholeness.

Reactions come from wounds.

Responding comes from wholeness.

For example,

Suppose someone loses their crap because they believe ice cream should be any flavor,

Including sardines.

In that case,

It may be that the person's parents never let them have any other flavor besides chocolate or vanilla.

The person's reactions are coming from a hurt child part,

Not their wholeness.

Instead of trying to convince everyone of the need for sardine ice cream,

A better use of their time would be healing the wound that came from such strict parents.

After doing this,

Someone can disagree with them on sardine ice cream and they will feel no emotional reaction.

Instead,

They honor the disagreement and stand up for their sardine-flavored truth.

The divide we feel is mostly people's hurt parts fighting each other.

We'll never make progress reacting to every post or person that triggers.

I did not unfollow this person on Instagram.

Instead,

I sought support to try and understand what was coming up in me.

I now see her posts and feel less reactive and more curious.

I encourage you to explore this in your life,

Whether online or in person.

I have to note here that when I say normalize people that trigger you,

Please be in your range of tolerance.

Context matters.

If you are healing from a traumatic experience,

This doesn't mean I'm suggesting to do anything that will be retraumatizing.

I'd love to hear how this landed.

Feel free to leave a comment.

And if this triggered you,

Go see your local healer before responding.

Just kidding.

I'll welcome your emotional reaction.

Wishing you lots of love and support.

And if you'd like to deepen some work around triggers that might be coming up,

I encourage you to check out two different courses.

See what calls to you.

Learn to stop caring what others think.

We'll talk a bit about projections and triggers and that.

And then my course Essential Tools for Healing and Transformation.

Go scope those two courses out.

See what resonates and trust that it would be the right one for you.

And thanks again for listening.

Follow along if you're not.

Connect with my circle.

Lose circle if you're not.

And I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Reviews

This was a helpful talk to deepen the understanding of what is happening underneath a strong reaction. I was initially drawn to the title of this talk to support healing from a traumatic life changing experience and the associated grief. So it was hard for me to connect with the content this first time around given my own situation. The disclaimer at the end about healing from trauma was extremely important and I appreciated the delineation of triggers that are re-traumatizing. I recommend having the disclaimer earlier in the talk or adding it to the talk description to provide that the helpful clarification at the beginning.

I just listened to the talk a second time around, now that I am in a stronger place, and I was able to receive and see the application of this talk in daily life and in dealing with the challenging behaviors of others. I really valued the guidance to discern between a disagreement and trigger, especially given the current political climate. I also appreciated the line: "reactions come from wounds, responses come from wholeness" and how our reactions invite us to do more inner work. Overall, this talk provided a helpful and healthy perspective and I really liked the encouragement to transition from reaction to curiosity.

Thank you Lou for this inspiring podcast. Asking our God to help us to learn and grow with challenges and triggers is surely a good advice 🙏 👍

Thank you 😊 I appreciated that. The part that stuck is belief in wound / hurt. Then address that. It's exactly what I did with a relationship. Thank you so much!

Thanks for tying in my triggers with what ails inside of me. It’s helpful to me to be reminded that healing comes from within.

Amazing talk! I will try to use my triggers to learn so I can diffuse them instead of running from them!

Lots to think about in this talk. I need to listen to it more than once.

Excellent. I find triggers interesting and will think about the how/why more deeply..thanks Lou 🙏🕯

This was a great, short clip! I love your statement “reactions come from wounds responding comes from wholeness.” Powerful!! Thank you!!