I got triggered last night. You know what I mean when out of nowhere you start to feel something that you don’t want to feel. My daughter was supposed to be finished work but I couldn’t get a hold of her on the phone. After two hours and multiple calls and texts, I started to get scared. I called a friend. No answer there either. I thought about getting in my car to go looking for her. I kept trying to tell myself I’m sure everything was OK, but that fear kept trickling in my mind. She finally pulled in the driveway. And then you can guess what I did when she got home. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to be upset with her. But I couldn’t help myself. My fear had morphed into anger. I was angry that she caused me to feel scared. When we get triggered, we tend to look outside ourselves for the cause.
A better response would be to look inside ourselves. What is our belief about the situation? When I found out that her phone was on silent and so she didn’t hear my calls and was actually working late that night, I wanted to feel relieved that she was OK, but I was fighting that belief in my head that I’m not respected. By owning that as my own belief, I was able to not make her responsible for my feelings. I knew that was my work. And we were able to stay in relationship with each other. She felt bad about my scare. But I’m glad that she didn’t have to make me feel better. That was my job. I didn’t always know this. I spent many years trying to make other people responsible for my feelings. It left me frustrating and controlling. And out of relationship. Getting triggered is not fun. We can’t control it but we can learn from it about what beliefs are underneath it. And addressing those beliefs reduces our likelihood to get triggered in that way again.
