Triggers All Around – Ideas on How to Navigate them during and long after your divorce!
Because many people think of February as the month of love (it is Valentine’s Day next week after all), I thought it would also be a good time to talk about TRIGGERS! We all have them!
Here’s a short story about a trigger of mine….I left my location at 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon (what was I thinking!) I knew I had to drive on PCH, the 10, and the 405 S. Even still, I didn’t imagine 80 miles would take me 3 + hours!!!!! While I was sitting in traffic I was thinking to myself, I have so much to do, what a waste of time, getting frustrated, short tempered, unhappy, and mad at the drivers around me. And then, I took a deep breath and checked myself. I said to myself: Janet, there’s nothing you can do, you made a choice to leave at the hour you did, so start thinking about how you can enjoy yourself and get out of all the negative speak in your head Janet
That Thursday traffic, was a trigger for me AND because I’ve worked for a long time on being conscious about myself, my feelings, how quickly they can change when in the moment, and also how to shift my mindset quickly, I was able to get myself back on track fairly rapidly. We all have triggers, in our personal life, professional life, with our work peers, with our families, and yes working with our soon to be co-parent especially.
Which means, we all have an opportunity to take a look at our triggers so we can be happier for ourselves, happy for others, and most importantly emotionally balanced even through our triggers! See here’s the thing…when we are triggered, we are taken back into a ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ mode and in this mode our brain, is NOT able to function in a logical, understanding, empathetic, and cooperative manner. When we are a divorcing parent or somewhere after the divorce in post-divorce custody issues, we need to be functioning in the logical, understanding, empathetic, and cooperative mindset NOT the ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ mindset!
Here are some ideas that might help you identify and work through your triggers
First, it is important to pay attention to when you are calm and when you become triggered. Here’s some things to pay attention to, they may give you clues to your triggers:
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- You shut down and don’t respond for weeks
- You start sending text or emails one after another demanding things to happen
- You feel scared or frantic
- You feel anxious
- You get immediately overwhelmed with emotiins and you don’t have any words to describe how you’re feeling
- You have very strong emotions that really don’t feel like you
- You can’t seem to keep a thought, seem confused, or really unfocused (almost disoriented)
And here’s the thing about Triggers, we have the power to make them disappear!
Here are some ideas you might want to try…
1. First, we all have triggers in our lives, it is a very natural response for human beings and during a divorce many of these triggers get heightened. To help yourself for your divorce, and your children during and long after the divorce in your co-parenting relationship it is important to start working through your trigger
2. Next, finding the root cause of the trigger is the first key to working through the trigger. Challenge yourself to find something from your childhood that left a lasting negative impression. Maybe you felt unworthy, or maybe you felt humiliated or small. (As a side note, I had to work through individuals who wanted to control everything I did as a trigger for me. That is because as a child, I had a parent who needed to control their environment. I would happily go out and do my chores, but when I did not follow the exact way I was supposed to rake the leaves….by the way the leaves all got in the plastic bags….but because I didn’t follow the script I was made to feel……stupid, incompetent, selfish, thoughtless, uncaring of others, lazy, ridiculous for thinking that there was any other way but their way to do the raking of the leaves, and flat out bad and wrong! So as an adult, individuals in the workplace, friends, and yes relationship partners whom had their own need to control situations most definitely triggered me and I went into to both FIGHT & Flight, sometimes all at the same time making me look like a crazy person!!!!) Becoming AWARE of the root cause for your trigger, gives you your power back!
3. Next, pay attention to what happens in your mind, body, emotions, and thoughts and then find quick tools and techniques to use to help calm yourself down so that you don’t go into Fight or Flight. There are many tools to help tame the pain such as: EFT, tapping, mediation, breathing, and visualization exercises
4. Finally, once you become aware of your triggers, you can do something about it! We are learning more and more about how to stop the trauma and triggers from ruining our lives. Professionals who work with individuals on trauma and inner child work all have tools such as: EMDR, brain spotting, hypnotherapy, and much more as part of their tool belt to help people reframe their childhood wounds so that these wounds don’t end up controlling long into our adulthood.
Working through triggers is a continual journey, as one trigger goes away a new one will come up. If you are divorcing or are divorced, identifying when you are triggered and reframing your mindset will help you tremendously with your children and your co-parent and most importantly help you as a person! Because really…if we don’t work through our triggers, someday our triggers will end up taking control of us!
warmly,
~janet