When Someone Tries To Trigger You Quotes

Pritkin gave me a little shake and I eyed him without favor. The only other occasions when I had been dragged back in time, the trip had been triggered by proximity to a person whose past was being threatened. I have to tell you,” I said frankly, “if someone is trying to mess with your conception or something, I’m not feeling a pressing need to intervene.

When we get hurt, our bodies immediately start trying to heal that hurt. This works for emotions as well. If we were scarred socially, by an incident of rejection or bullying, we immediately start trying to heal. Like pus comes out of wounds, emotions flow from psychological wounds. And what do we really need at that moment? When we are out of that dangerous situation that scarred us, and we become triggered by some little thing - what do we need? Do we need someone to look at us and say, "Wow, you're really sensitive, aren't you?" or "Hey, man, I didn't mean it like that."? Do we need someone to justify their actions or tell us to take it easy, because the situation didn't really require such a reaction? And, from ourselves, do we really need four pounds of judgment with liberal helpings of shame? Do we need to run away, to suppress, to hate our "over-sensitivity" to situations that seem innocuous to others? No. We do not need all of these versions of rejection of a natural healing process. You would not feel shame over a wound doing what it must do to heal, nor would you shame another. So why do we do this to our heart wounds? Why do we do it to ourselves? To others? Next time some harmless situation triggers you or someone around you into an intense emotion - realize it's an attempt at emotional healing. Realize the danger is no longer there, but don't suppress the healing of old dangers and old pains. Allow the pain. Don't react, but don't repress. Embrace the pain. Embrace the pain of others. Like this, we have some chance at healing the endless cycles of generational repression and suppression that are rolling around in our society. Fall open. Break open. Sit with others' openness. Let love be your medicine.

He loves me so he hurts me To try and make me good. It doesn't work. I'm just too bad And don't do what I should. My memory has so many different sections and, like all survivors, there are so many compartments with so many triggers. I'll remember a smell which reminds me of a man which reminds me of a place which reminds me of another man who I think was with a woman who had a certain smell — and I'm back to square one. This is the case for most survivors, I believe. When we try to put together our pasts, the triggers are many and varied, the memories are disjointed — and why wouldn't they be? We were children. Even someone with an idyllic childhood who is only trying to remember the lovely things which happened to them will scratch their head and wonder who gave them that doll and was it for Christmas or their third birthday? Did they have a party when they were four or five? When did they go on a plane for the first time? You see, even happy memories are hard to piece together — so imagine how hard it is to collate all of the trauma, to pull together all of the things I've been trying to push away for so many years.

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out." You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft. I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it." That so?" Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact." They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me." Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke. I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened. Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times. And Gerry's hand exploded. And so did mine. The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair. Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed in ecstasy. I grabbed the razor, could barely feel it because the nerves in my hand seemed to have stopped working. I slashed into the electric tape at the end of the shotgun barrel, and Danielle dropped away toward the ice and rolled her head into the frozen sand. My broken finger came back out of the shotgun and Gerry swung the barrels toward my head. The twin shotgun bores arced through the darkness like eyes without mercy or soul, and I raised my head to meet them, and Gerry's wail filled my ears as the fire licked at his neck. Good-bye, I thought. Everyone. It's been nice. Oscar's first two shots entered the back of Gerry's head and exited through the center of his forehead and a third punched into his back. The shotgun jerked upward in Gerry's flaming arm and then the shots came from the front, several at once, and Gerry spun like a marionette and pitched toward the ground. The shotgun boomed twice and punched holes through the ice in front of him as he fell. He landed on his knees and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was dead or not. His rusty hair was afire and his head lolled to the left as one eye disappeared in flames but the other shimmered at me through waves of heat, and an amused derision shone in the pupil. Patrick, the eye said through the gathering smoke, you still know nothing. Oscar rose up on the other side of Gerry's corpse, Campbell Rawson clutched tight to his massive chest as it rose and fell with great heaving breaths. The sight of it-something so soft and gentle in the arms of something so thick and mountaineous-made me laugh. Oscar came out of the darkness toward me, stepped around Gerry's burning body, and I felt the waves of heat rise toward me as the circle of gasoline around Gerry caught fire. Burn, I thought. Burn. God help me, but burn. Just after Oscar stepped over the outer edge of the circle, it erupted in yellow flame, and I found myself laughing harder as he looked at it, not remotely impressed. I felt cool lips smack against my ear, and by the time I looked her way, Danielle was already past me, rushing to take her child from Oscar. His huge shadow loomed over me as he approached, and I looked up at him and he held the look for a long moment. How you doing, Patrick?" he said and smiled broadly. And, behind him, Gerry burned on the ice. And everything was so goddamned funny for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. I did. But I was still laughing when they put me in the ambulance.

must hide from the world. The next time you get triggered, use the opportunity to bring the light of your consciousness to what is hidden in the shadows. The world is our mirror: we can choose to look at our reflection or look away until another time. There are very few times when someone says something to us that isn’t ours. So instead of getting mad at the person who sparked your upset, instead of shutting them down or blaming them, take a look in the mirror.  What is this person trying to show me about myself?

If you feel you’re experiencing “micro-aggressions” when someone asks you where you are from or “Can you help me with my math?” or offers a “God bless you” after you sneeze, or a drunken guy tries to grope you at a Christmas party, or some douche purposefully brushes against you at a valet stand in order to cop a feel, or someone merely insulted you, or the candidate you voted for wasn’t elected, or someone correctly identifies you by your gender, and you consider this a massive societal dis, and it’s triggering you and you need a safe space, then you need to seek professional help.

It takes some getting used to,' Mr. Forkle said. 'But what you're seeing is a visual representation of each other's moods.' 'So that means if I do this...' Keefe tickled Sophie's neck. 'GAH--everything just went supersonic!' Fitz said. Sophie snatched Keefe's wrist as he reached to tickle her again. 'Don't. You. Dare.' 'Whoa, now everything's red and ripply,' Fitz said. 'Is that because she's angry?' 'Precisely, Mr. Vacker. Every time her emotions shift, the patterns and colors will change. And with practice, you'll learn to interpret what you see.' 'Okay, but...can't they just say, "Hey, I'm feeling this?"' Keefe asked. 'People aren't always honest about their feelings--even with themselves,' Mr. Forkle told him. 'Plus, many telepathic missions involve stealth and secrecy. So for this exercise I'm going to need both of you to forget everything around you. Let the world drop away, leaving only you two.' Keefe sighed. 'Just tell them to stare into each other's eyes and they'll be good.' 'None of that, Mr. Sencen. From this moment on, you have one job and one job only: to judge their translations of the various emotions I'll be triggering.' 'Triggering how?' Sophie asked. 'You'll see soon enough. And you'll go first, Miss Foster. For this to work, Mr. Vacker, it's crucial that you not react externally. No yelling or thrashing or screaming or--' 'Uhhh, what are you going to do to me?' Fitz asked. 'Nothing you won't survive. Consider it an exercise in self-control. And try not to listen to his thoughts, Miss Foster. Study only the changes in his emotional center and make your deduction. We begin now.' Sophie closed her eyes and focus on the colors weaving around Fitz's mind. She was about to ask if she was missing something when the pattern exploded into a swirl of pale blue tendrils. The color felt to bright to be sad, but also too wild to be peaceful. 'Tension?' she guessed. 'Kinda close,' Keefe told her. The laughter in his voice made her wonder what had happened to poor Fitz. She tried to think of other emotions as his mind turned electric blue. 'Shock?' she guessed. 'That counts,' Keefe said. 'Though the best answer would've been "surprise."' 'Is that an emotion?' she asked. 'Indeed it is,' Mr. Forkle said. 'One of the most common emotions you'll experience as you navigate someone's mind--hence why I chose it as our starting point.' 'Can I talk now?' Fitz asked. 'Because that was seriously disgusting!' Sophie opened her eyes and tried not to laugh when she saw red fruit smashed all over Fitz's face. He wiped his cheeks on his sleeves, but that only smeared the pulp. 'I think I'm going to like this assignment,' Keefe said. 'What else can we fling at Fitz?' 'Nothing for the moment,' Mr. Forkle told him. 'It's his turn to interpret. Everyone close your eyes. And remember, no cues of any kind, Miss Foster.' Sophie counted the seconds, bracing for the worst--and when nothing chaned, she opened her eyes and found Mr. Forkle with his finger over his lips in a 'shhh' sign. 'Um...confusion,' Fitz guessed. 'That works,' Keefe said. 'It started as anticipation, but then it shifted.' 'Very good,' Mr. Forkle said. 'And well done, Mr. Sencen. I wasn't sure you'd recognize confusion. It's one of the more challenging emotions for Empaths.' 'Maybe on other people,' Keefe said. 'But on Foster it's easy. Why are her emotions so much stronger?' 'Honestly, I'm not sure,' Mr. Forkle admitted. 'I suspect it stems from the combination of her inflicting ability and her human upbringing. But it was one of the surprises of her development. Much like her teleporting. Okay, Miss Foster, it's your turn to guess again.' She closed her eyes and watched as the lines of color in Fitz's mind blossomed to a snowflake of purple. 'Pride?' she guessed. Keefe laughed. 'Wow, add more fail points to Sophitz.' 'Quiet,' Mr. Forkle told him.

Immigrants are almost always outsiders. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to margins the people who trigger in us the feelings we try to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and poor and sick people on the margins of the society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we are most afraid we will find in ourselves. ....And we are often not honest about what's happening. If we are in the inside and we see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves: " I'm not in that situation because I'm different. But that's just prime talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don't want to confess what we have in common with the outsiders because it is too humbling. It suggests that success and failure aren't entirely fair. And if you know, you got the better deal, then you have to be humble and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say :" I am no better than others." So instead, we invent ways for our need to exclude. We say it is about merit or tradition when it's just protecting our privilege and our pride.

refuge imagine how it feels to be chased out of home. to have your grip ripped. loosened from your fingertips, something you so dearly held on to. like a lover’s hand that slips when pulled away you are always reaching. my father would speak of home. reaching. speaking of familiar faces. girl next door who would eventually grow up to be my mother. the fruit seller at the market. the lonely man at the top of the road who nobody spoke to. and our house at the bottom of the street lit up by a single flickering lamp where beyond was only darkness. there they would sit and tell stories of monsters that lurked and came only at night to catch the children who sat and listened to stories of monsters that lurked. this is how they lived. each memory buried. an artefact left to be discovered by archaeologists. the last words on a dying family member’s lips. this was sacred. not even monsters could taint it. but there were monsters that came during the day. monsters that tore families apart with their giant hands. and fingers that slept on triggers. the sound of gunshots ripping through the sky became familiar like the tapping of rain fall on a window sill. monsters that would kill and hide behind speeches, suits and ties. monsters that would chase families away forcing them to leave everything behind. i remember when we first stepped off the plane. everything was foreign. unfamiliar. uninviting. even the air in my lungs left me short of breath. we came here to find refuge. they called us refugees so, we hid ourselves in their language until we sounded just like them. changed the way we dressed to look just like them. made this our home until we lived just like them and began to speak of familiar faces. girl next door who would grow up to be a mother. the fruit seller at the market. the lonely man at the top of the road who nobody spoke to. and our house at the bottom of the street lit up by a flickering lamp to keep away the darkness. there we would sit and watch police that lurked and came only at night to arrest the youths who sat and watched police that lurked and came only at night. this is how we lived. i remember one day i heard them say to me they come here to take our jobs they need to go back to where they came from not knowing that i was one of the ones who came. i told them that a refugee is simply someone who is trying to make a home. so next time when you go home tuck your children in and kiss your families goodnight, be glad that the monsters never came for you. in their suits and ties. never came for you. in the newspapers with the media lies. never came for you. that you are not despised. and know that deep inside the hearts of each and every one of us we are all always reaching for a place that we can call home.

Telling your story. All forgiveness must begin by facing the truth. You can write down in a journal or tell a trusted friend what happened. Telling your story also allows you to integrate the memories in your consciousness and defuse some of your emotional reactivity. To help heal the memories and avoid retraumatizing yourself, it is helpful to imagine that you are watching the event happen in a movie. This way you may reduce the chances of triggering the brain’s neural stress response. One scientific protocol by Ethan Kross and his colleagues suggests recalling your experience this way: Close your eyes. Go back to the time and place of the emotional experience and see the scene in your mind’s eye. Now take a few steps back. Move away from the situation to a point where you can watch the event unfold from a distance and see yourself in the event, the distant you. Watch the experience unfold as if it were happening to the distant you all over again. Observe your distant self. Naming the hurt. The facts are the facts, but these experiences caused strong emotions and pain, which are important to name. As you watch the situation unfold around your distant self, try to understand his or her feelings. Why did he or she have those feelings? What were the causes and reasons for the feelings? If the hurt is fresh, ask yourself, “Will this situation affect me in ten years?” If the hurt is old, ask yourself whether you want to continue to carry this pain or whether you want to free yourself from this pain and suffering. Granting forgiveness. The ability to forgive comes from the recognition of our shared humanity and the acknowledgment that, inevitably, because we are human we hurt and are hurt by one another. Can you accept the humanity of the person who hurt you and the fact that they likely hurt you out of their own suffering? If you can accept your shared humanity, then you can release your presumed right to revenge and can move toward healing rather than retaliation. We also recognize that, especially between intimates, there can be multiple hurts, and we often need to forgive and ask for forgiveness at the same time, accepting our part in the human drama. Renewing or releasing the relationship. Once you have forgiven someone, you must make the important decision of whether you want to renew the relationship or release it. If the trauma is significant, there is no going back to the relationship that you had before, but there is the opportunity for a new relationship. When we renew relationships, we can benefit from healing our family or community. When we release the relationship, we can move on, especially if we can truly wish the best for the person who has harmed us, and recognize that they, like us, simply want to avoid suffering and be happy in their life.

26. In intimate relationships is your inability to linger over conversations an impediment? 27. Are you always on the go, even when you don’t really want to be? 28. More than most people, do you hate waiting in line? 29. Are you constitutionally incapable of reading the directions first? 30. Do you have a hair-trigger temper? 31. Are you constantly having to sit on yourself to keep from blurting out the wrong thing? 32. Do you like to gamble? 33. Do you feel like exploding inside when someone has trouble getting to the point? 34. Were you hyperactive as a child? 35. Are you drawn to situations of high intensity? 36. Do you often try to do the hard things rather than what comes easily to you? 37. Are you particularly intuitive? 38. Do you often find yourself involved in a situation without having planned it at all? 39. Would you rather have your teeth drilled by a dentist than make or follow a list? 40. Do you chronically resolve to organize your life better only to find that you’re always on the brink of chaos? 41. Do you often find that you have an itch you cannot scratch, an appetite for something “more” and you’re not sure what it is? 42. Would you describe yourself as hypersexual? 43. One man who turned out to have adult ADD presented with this unusual triad of symptoms: cocaine abuse, frequent reading of pornography, and an addiction to crossword puzzles. Can you understand him, even if you do not have those symptoms? 44. Would you consider yourself an addictive personality? 45. Are you more flirtatious than you really mean to be? 46. Did you grow up in a chaotic, boundaryless family? 47. Do you find it hard to be alone? 48. Do you often counter depressive moods by some sort of potentially harmful compulsive behavior such as overworking, overspending, overdrinking, or overeating? 49. Do you have dyslexia? 50. Do you have a family history of ADD or hyperactivity?

Everything in this manual is blatantly manipulative, but here’s the deal--all communication is manipulation. I cannot communicate, I cannot put a thought in your head, without manipulation. I have to get you to read this book. When you read it I must use skill to make sure that the message received is the message I intended. I want you to communicate skillfully, and one of the keys is to engage with the other person’s Human brain. And that means not triggering his or her Monkey brain. If someone feels their status is being challenged or questioned, much less threatened, the limbic system will kick in. Once the limbic system has kicked in, well, how good are you at talking to Monkeys in a way that gets things done? So study status. If you have a boss who acts out, gets aggressive and yells, instead of labeling him as an insecure little prick (labeling, hmmm?), try to take away his insecurity. If you are about to present an idea, ask for help with it instead of offering to help. The status that you manipulate here is not real. It is imaginary status based on what the ghost community of long-dead primates values.

ourselves with is an opportunity to create the cultural climate that we want. We can create a climate of compassion or one of fear, depending on what we do with our mistakes and our judgments of ourselves and others. Because I wanted to create a climate of compassion in the microcosm of my couplehood, I hunted in my memory for the tools with which to accomplish this. I remembered what Dr. Marshall Rosenberg said: “All judgments are the tragic expressions of pain and unmet needs.” Perhaps this might even apply to my oh so right, sophisticated, clinical judgments? So I started to look for the pain in my body. Oh, there it is! Outrage! And what is the universal human need underneath the outrage? The need for respect, gentleness and safety. What else is in there?—because I know that anger never comes alone. There is always hurt or fear or something under it. Now I can feel it: Devastating hurt. A need for reassurance that I am valued. -§ I may be the detonator but I am never the dynamite. I may be the trigger for another’s pain but the cause is their unmet needs. -§ As I lay there giving myself empathy, (i.e. paying attention to, and feeling into, what my reaction was all about) I start to feel a relieving shift in my body. The shift came as I allowed my awareness of my feelings to lead me into a reconnection with the life force within me. As soon as I am fully in touch with my true need, like the need to feel valued, I immediately feel the beautiful strength of it. (This is much different than staying up in my head meditating on images of the ‘lack’ or the hunger to feel valued. This only produces more fear and pain.) I began to wonder if my friend was experiencing the same thing—hurt, and the need for reassurance that she is valued. I know that if I had tried to play lifeguard earlier, attempting to save her from drowning in her distress, it would have been a double drowning. I know that the undertow of my own unconscious reactions from my unhealed past would have prevented me from really being present. I had been drowning and needed to get myself to shore first before trying to throw her a line. Or as a wise man from the Middle East once said, -§ When I am in pain I want to wait till I am clear what I want back from you before I speak. -§ “Get the dirt out of your eye first, so you can see clearly to help someone else do the same.” After giving myself empathy, I was moved by compassion to go to my friend and see if I could offer her the understanding that would restore our connection. I am glad that I waited until my desire to connect with her came from my need to understand and reconnect, instead of from fear of abandonment, or guilt about abandoning her. I am glad I remembered the first commandment of nurturing relationships: Me first and only. I waited until my giving came simply from my heart, without any fear, shame, or guilt. Once this shift happens, the energy I give from is the same joy and innocence a child has when it feeds bread to a hungry duck. “When I heard you call me a jackass a while ago, were you feeling angry and hurt because you were needing reassurance that your need to be heard mattered?” Her eyes started to fill with tears and a faint outline of a smile started to creep across her lips as she said “It’s about time, jackass.” “Yes, I’m guessing that was painful for you, and you would have liked this quality of listening earlier.” I said. “Yes” she said, the tears now flowing freely. “But I am also relieved that you waited till you were really in a position to do so instead of trying to give me empathy

Like high blood pressure and diabetes, chronic inflammation has no visible symptoms (though it can be measured by a lab test known as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein [hs CRP]). But it damages the vascular system, the organs, the brain, and body tissues. It slowly erodes your health, gradually overwhelming the body’s anti-inflammatory defenses. It causes heart disease. It causes cognitive decline and memory loss. Even obesity and diabetes are linked to inflammation because fat cells are veritable factories for inflammatory chemicals. In fact, it’s likely that inflammation is the key link between obesity and all the diseases obesity puts you at risk for developing. When your joints are chronically inflamed, degenerative diseases like arthritis are right around the corner. Inflamed lungs cause asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Inflammation in the brain is linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions, including brain fog and everyday memory lapses that we write off as normal aging—except those memory lapses are not an inevitable consequence of aging at all. They are, however, an inevitable consequence of inflammation, because inflammation sets your brain on fire. Those “I forgot where I parked the car” moments start happening more frequently, and occurring prematurely. Inflamed arteries can signal the onset of heart disease. Chronic inflammation has also been linked to various forms of cancer; it triggers harmful changes on a molecular level that result in the growth of cancer cells. Inflammation is so central to the process of aging and breakdown at the cellular level that some health pundits have begun referring to the phenomena as “inflam-aging.” That’s because inflammation accelerates aging, including the visible signs of aging we all see in the skin. In addition to making us sick, chronic inflammation can make permanent weight loss fiendishly difficult. The fat cells keep churning out inflammatory proteins called cytokines, promoting even more inflammation. That inflammation in turn prevents the energy-making structures in the cells, called mitochondria, from doing their jobs efficiently, much like a heat wave would affect the output of a factory that lacks air-conditioning—productivity declines under extreme conditions. One of the duties of the mitochondria is burning fat; inflammation interferes with the job of the mitochondria, making fat burning more difficult and fat loss nearly impossible. While someone trying to lose weight may initially be successful, after a while, the number on the scale gets stuck. The much-discussed weight-loss “plateau” is often a result of this cycle of inflammation and fat storage. And here’s even more bad news: Adding more exercise or eating fewer calories in an attempt to break through the plateau will have some effect on weight loss, but not much. And continuing to lose weight becomes much harder to accomplish. Why? Because inflammation decreases our normal ability to burn calories. (We’ll tell you more about other factors that contribute to the plateau—and how the Smart Fat Solution can help you to move beyond them—in Part 2 of this book.)

Do you ever recommend low-dose naltrexone to your patients? For those reading this who aren’t familiar with low-dose naltrexone (LDN), I’ll give a brief explanation. Naltrexone is an FDA-approved medication, approved to help heroin and opium addicts by blocking opioid receptors. In 1985, Dr. Bernard Bihari experimented with lower doses of naltrexone and realized that it can modulate the immune system. Soon thereafter, it was found that LDN can benefit many people with autoimmune conditions, certain types of cancers, and some other chronic health conditions. While at times I recommend LDN to my patients, it’s not something I jump into for the following reasons: 1. LDN doesn’t do anything to address the cause of the problem. Although LDN can modulate the immune system, it doesn’t do anything to address the underlying cause of Hashimoto’s. However, some people choose to take LDN while simultaneously trying to detect and remove their triggers. 2. LDN isn’t always effective. Although I can’t say that I’ve had a lot of patients who have taken LDN, I’ve worked with enough people to see that LDN sometimes is effective, but, at other times, it doesn’t seem to help at all. 3. LDN can have a negative effect on sleep. Initially, it is common for LDN to interfere with sleep. However, this seems to be more common in those people who start with a higher dosage (i.e., 4.5 mg); thus, if this occurs, you would want to lower the dosage. Better yet, start with a lower dosage of LDN and then gradually increase it if necessary. When Do I Recommend Low-Dose Naltrexone? In most cases, I will recommend a natural treatment approach first, and if the person isn’t responding after a few months, then I’d consider LDN as an option. In addition, before someone takes LDN, it’s important to address certain imbalances in order to increase its effectiveness. For example, low or depressed vitamin D levels should be corrected before someone starts taking LDN. In addition, according to some healthcare professionals, having a Candida overgrowth also can make LDN less effective.

Keeping the kindness aspect of this RAIN step in mind, we can now move on to what it means to investigate. Investigation is the process of inquiring what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you. In the previous steps, the anecdotal characters had accepted that they were feeling a certain way and allowed it to occur. This is the step that would allow them to understand where these core wounds are coming from. Moreover, it will be indicative of what they both need in this situation. Often, without practicing RAIN, an individual would become emotionally caught up in a situation and make judgments about their external environment. However, such judgments are often inaccurate because, ultimately, everyone has their own attachment style and core wounds, and everyone assigns their own individual meanings to situations. To begin the investigation process, remember that what you are feeling when you’re triggered is everything in the current moment in addition to all of the past emotions that trigger is associated with. For example, consider someone with PTSD. When something in their external present is reminiscent of the original traumatic experiences they’ve endured, the emotions they’ll feel in response to the present event will be significantly stronger due to the past emotions they’ve stored. Therefore, it is essential to ask yourself questions like: “What am I believing?” and “What emotional response wants the most attention?” By asking probing questions, you may surface the unmet needs that the situation is calling to satisfy. Ultimately, your subconscious mind will do nearly everything it its power to meet needs that are seemingly unmet.

IN 1971, as the Vietnam War was heading into its sixteenth year, congressmen Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois made a discovery that stunned the American public. While visiting the troops, they had learned that over 15 percent of U.S. soldiers stationed there were heroin addicts. Follow-up research revealed that 35 percent of service members in Vietnam had tried heroin and as many as 20 percent were addicted—the problem was even worse than they had initially thought. The discovery led to a flurry of activity in Washington, including the creation of the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention under President Nixon to promote prevention and rehabilitation and to track addicted service members when they returned home. Lee Robins was one of the researchers in charge. In a finding that completely upended the accepted beliefs about addiction, Robins found that when soldiers who had been heroin users returned home, only 5 percent of them became re-addicted within a year, and just 12 percent relapsed within three years. In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight. This finding contradicted the prevailing view at the time, which considered heroin addiction to be a permanent and irreversible condition. Instead, Robins revealed that addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment. In Vietnam, soldiers spent all day surrounded by cues triggering heroin use: it was easy to access, they were engulfed by the constant stress of war, they built friendships with fellow soldiers who were also heroin users, and they were thousands of miles from home. Once a soldier returned to the United States, though, he found himself in an environment devoid of those triggers. When the context changed, so did the habit. Compare this situation to that of a typical drug user. Someone becomes addicted at home or with friends, goes to a clinic to get clean—which is devoid of all the environmental stimuli that prompt their habit—then returns to their old neighborhood with all of their previous cues that caused them to get addicted in the first place. It’s no wonder that usually you see numbers that are the exact opposite of those in the Vietnam study. Typically, 90 percent of heroin users become re-addicted once they return home from rehab.

As described by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of empirically based psychological intervention that focuses on mindfulness. Mindfulness is the state of focusing on the present to remove oneself from feeling consumed by the emotion experienced in the moment. To properly observe yourself, begin by noticing where in your body you experience emotion. For example, think about a time when you felt really sad. You may have felt despair in your chest, or a sense of hollowness in your stomach. If you were angry, you may have felt a burning sensation in your arms. This occurs within everyone, in different variations. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University traced emotional responses in the brain to different activity signatures in the body through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. If someone recalled a painful or traumatic memory, the prefrontal cortex and neocortex became less active, and their “reptilian brain” was activated. The former areas of the brain are responsible for conscious thought, spatial reasoning, and higher functions such as sensory perception. The latter is responsible for fight-or-flight responses. This means that the bodily responses caused by your emotions provide an opportunity for you to be mindful of them. Your emotions create sensations in your body that reflect your mind. Dr. Bruce Lipton, a developmental biologist who studies gene expression in relation to environmental factors, released a study on epigenetics that sheds light on this matter. It revealed that an individual’s body cannot heal when it is in its sympathetic state. The sympathetic nervous system, informally known as the fight-or-flight state, is triggered by certain emotional responses. This means that when we are consumed by emotion, an effective solution cannot be found until we shift our mind into reflecting on our emotions. Let’s take a moment and test this theory together. Try to focus on what you’re feeling and where, and this will ground you in the present moment. By focusing on how you are responding, you essentially remove yourself from being consumed by your emotions in that moment. This brings you back into your sensory perception and moves the response in your brain back into the cortex and neocortex. This transition helps bring you back into a more logical state where emotions are not controlling your reactions.

Automatic thoughts occur because the subconscious mind stores information that is meant to protect you. However, it also stores negative associations better than positive ones because it acts as a safety mechanism. Although this is effective from an evolutionary standpoint, it unfortunately perpetuates a lot of anxious and hopeless thoughts. Also keep in mind that since the subconscious mind is programmed through repetition and emotion, the more we perpetuate beliefs, the more deeply ingrained they become over time. So, how do we identify automatic thoughts and the core triggers that created them? Well, the brain is always looking for information to support what it believes. This is called supportive evidence. Supportive evidence is the information that the brain picks out of its environment to reinforce its existing thoughts. In the context of reprogramming your subconscious, this is a negative practice. An example of this may occur if Connor were to go to a work party—remember that he believes that he is fundamentally unworthy of emotional connection. When he walks in, his automatic thoughts include “No one likes me, and no one wants me here.” The brain then begins to look for supportive evidence: Someone frowning in conversation while looking in his direction, to Connor, means that they hate him and want him to leave. With Suneel, supportive evidence may occur when Suneel makes grammatical corrections in the project they’re working on together. To Connor, this may again reinforce that Suneel is trying to undermine him. A powerful aspect of supportive evidence to consider is that it occurs every day and everywhere in our lives. Our mind is constantly looking for supportive evidence of what our subconscious believes. When the subconscious stores fundamentally painful beliefs, they become projected onto our reality everywhere we look. Therefore, it is essential to begin looking for contradictory evidence for our core wounds to reprogram our subconscious and heal our everyday perspectives. Contradictory evidence is information that disproves existing beliefs. Since memory is colored by emotion, finding contradictory evidence in our past and present and pairing it with the emotions associated with that experience allows us to begin reprogramming our subconscious. Essentially, finding proof of the opposite helps to equilibrate our subconscious, and from there, it can be taught new and updated beliefs.

However, when you are tired and want to make meaning of your world, you can also open yourself to searching for that connection to something bigger. The act of doing that connects you to yourself and to hope. Sometimes I experience a sequence of frustrations. I can’t put my finger on it, but there appears to be a common underlying pattern to them. For instance, I might be allowing my boundaries to be violated in the same way by the same person each time. Or I might be triggered by someone’s behavior that seems out of proportion to the situation. At that time, I might not be aware of what’s going on and simply feel angry or frustrated. I can’t name the emotions that are coming up that are underlying my anger and irritation, and I can’t see what’s going on. But if I start to reflect, I start to become aware that through these patterns and these emotions, the Universe is trying to bring something to my attention. That is the moment I become aware and need to go within. I need to understand the pieces of me that I am trying to weave back together into coherence. I keep asking myself the questions, “What do I need to see? What do I need to learn? What do I need to understand? What is my resistance to?” The answers to these questions may not show up right away, but the more open I am to receiving answers, the more I am able to receive guidance from the Universe. When I experienced this series of frustrations, I realized that I was not being forthright about the extra help I needed to manage the demands that were being placed on my time. Knowing that everything is part of my journey allows me to stay hopeful and optimistic, and the answers are the catalyst for a deeper connection with myself, allowing me to trust and accept life. From that space, it’s easier to accept others.

Stop. This first step simply asks you to stop and pause rather than react in habitual ways. When you enter an interaction that feels challenging, work hard to stay open-minded. Open-mindedness means being open to other points of view, other ways of doing things, and staying open to changing your own view point. This might mean not allowing a certain cultural display such as a student’s animated verbal exchange trigger you. Observe. In the second step, check yourself. Don’t react to what is going on. Instead, take a breath. Use the 10-second rule. When the brain gets triggered, it takes stress hormones approximately 10 seconds to move through the body to the prefrontal cortex. In the pre-hijack stage, the biochemicals cortisol and adrenaline are just beginning to kick in. There is still some “wiggle room” to listen to your wiser self and begin using stress management techniques to interrupt the amygdala takeover effectively. Try to describe to yourself what is happening in neutral terms. It is during this step that you can recognize that what was originally perceived as a threat isn’t really. Detach. Sometimes when we get triggered, we get personally invested in being right or exercising our power over others. Deliberately shift your consciousness to more pleasant or inspirational images. If those techniques fail, go get a drink of water, literally take a few steps back to shake yourself up a bit. When we can detach from the goal of being right or defending ourselves, we can redirect our energy toward being more responsive rather than reactive. Awaken. When our amygdala reacts, it’s because we are trying to protect ourselves. Shifting focus from yourself to the other person in front of you helps you “wake up” or become present in the moment. Try to see the other person as someone with his own feelings. He might be scared and reacting out of fear. Ask yourself a few questions about the other person. What are they thinking? How are they feeling in this moment? Shifting over to their perspective will get you out of your own reactive mode and will put you in a better position to have a positive interaction.

The child who grows into an Anxious attachment style has one or more parents who are present and loving one moment, and then absent or unavailable the next. Consequently, they can trust and deeply connect with their parents and then feel a strong emotional hunger when they disappear. As Live Science discusses, connection with caregivers releases oxytocin, among other neurochemicals, in the brain. Immediate withdrawal then creates a more significant sense of longing and a deeper dependency on their parent or parents to be soothed. However, the child will not actually have enough distance to learn how to self-soothe, so they will feel an even deeper need to rely on their caregivers. Consequently, a subconscious program that revolves around the fear of abandonment begins to be ingrained in the Anxiously attached individual. They will begin to get deeply triggered when the caregiver separates from them and will often feel lonely and unloved because they hunger for closeness. The inconsistency in parental availability for the child ultimately results in the child believing they must self-sacrifice to maintain their caregiver’s presence and be worthy of their love. If they do exactly what is demanded of them in relationships, they will subconsciously believe that people will stick around. In adulthood, this eventually creates a strong sense of resentment from the Anxious individual toward those they are sacrificing their needs and values for. Without the understanding of why they are doing this, they will continue to do so and will create turmoil in the relationships they value the most. Another scenario in which an Anxious attachment style can arise is when one caregiver is incredibly present and connected and the other is very withdrawn—again, a form of inconsistency. This time, imagine there is a child named Parker. He has a father who is ever-present, understanding, and loving. Parker’s mother, however, is always busy at work. A constant need to be clingy will arise in him because, while positive associations are being built by his closeness to his father, they are also simultaneously being taken away by his mother. He will eventually try to use activating strategies—the process of using past knowledge to make future decisions—to keep his mother from leaving. However, his energy is invested into maintaining closeness to his mother rather than learning how to self-soothe. This is why you’ll see the Anxious Attachment in adulthood ultimately working to prevent someone from leaving by doing whatever they perceive that person needs, rather than working on the actual problem at hand.