TRIGGERS

If you want to be healthy, you have to identify your patterns and break them!  Triggers are great starting points toward identifying patterns.  Triggers are experiences you have that send you into a significant emotional state, unable to make conscious choices…you hurt the ones you love, and that hurts you. 

This is a real experience that one person shared.  After the story, I will share how to change this pattern. 

I had a terrible tooth abscess while on vacation over memorial day holiday. On Sunday, I had to fly home with my two kids by myself after spending 7 hours in the ER the night before.  My husband/their father had taken a separate trip and would not be arriving home until midnight Monday. I got my older daughter to school Monday morning, called on the help of a friend, and stayed at her house until that evening.  She kept the kids and I came home to try and rest.  That didn't happen.  The infection was getting worse, despite two strong antibiotics (however, no dentist were available until Tuesday).  

My husband got home at 1:45 AM barely spoke to me and went to sleep.  I had to wake him up at 4 to take me back to the ER.  While at the ER we had a small trigger but I was really too sick to even get that upset.  I spent the next week getting put to sleep, having the tooth extracted, and basically incoherently sick.  

I started feeling somewhat better on Saturday night, when my husband wanted to go out and see some music.  I told him I didn't like the idea and he said that he deserved to go because he had to take the week off from work to take care of the kids and myself.  I succumbed and didn't say much else about it.  

However, when I woke up on Sunday morning and walked downstairs~the house was a WRECK!!! Everyone knows I am a little OCD about a clean house.  I proceeded to yell at my children (in front of a friend who had come over) and then yell at my husband.  I totally freaked out on everyone until I was literally nauseous and had to go back to bed!  After awaking from the nap the family had cleaned up and I apologized to everyone.  But it was really explosive and felt like such a jerk!

Anyone have any guesses???   I would call this trigger disruption.  Disruption ruins certainty and comfort, one of our emotional needs.  Disruption wrecks our plan, our expectations. 

When we are sensitized to a trigger, there is something in the past that felt painful and acted like a stamp or imprint on our nervous system, specific to that trigger.  It could have been Dad not showing up for something important, moving and losing friends, or an annoying big sister that always wrecked the fun…and many more. 

As a result of these experiences, we adopt strategies to avoid the pain.  Two common strategies are to do everything yourself, and invisibility.  As you can see, this person wanted her husband to act differently on a couple occasions…but didn’t request the action.  This is invisibility.  Don’t ask and don’t get disappointed.  But, she isn’t getting her needs met…she is experiencing disruption several times before she can’t take it any longer.  Things aren’t going the way she wants and expects. 

I would use an acupressure tapping regimen to reduce the charge, the emotional charge, on the trigger (disruption), and ask her to make a couple simple changes.  Perhaps making agreements with her family towards what she wants.  Would you agree to do this, and that, and more of this?  I would ask her to not expect that all her requests will be granted, but to make a list full enough that if she got one, she would be elated.  I would have her playfully ask for everything she could think of…if the urge hit…say it…the more ridiculous the better.  “I would like a foot massage right now.” 

Doing something different begins to break the pattern of stress and inflammation.  It provides the space to soothe stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline.  This opens the door to wake up her energy and metabolism.  It takes time to shift hormones naturally, but she would be feeling more energized every week…as long as she did what I asked her to. 

It isn’t easy to break stressful and inflammatory patterns.  The more she plays it like a game, the less emotional resistance she would feel.  She will surely run into things she just can’t ask, but by practicing the easy ones at first, it will become her natural way of being…she will be in a new pattern.