Emotional Triggers and how to deal with them

Article SARAH TUMP

As a young adult I remember screaming abuse at my partner in fits of rage. Naturally, he yelled back. I thought it was ok and normal. It is not!

It wasn’t until I started to explore spirituality that I realised my rage was due to unresolved trauma. My rage was heightened because I had pushed down my emotions from the past, and in that moment my body took the opportunity to let go of the weight I had been carrying for so long. The anger was saying, “If this is my only chance to be heard, look out, cos I’m on the war path.” And that’s literally what it felt like. An attack on my partner and myself.

But the good news is, I woke up, finally, and now I deal with my negative triggers.

Quite often life can be triggering. By triggering, I mean, how we feel, be it love, sadness, and anger etc. All these feelings are our emotions signalling to us a pleasant experience or unpleasant experience. This article is aimed at processing and healing any negative emotional triggers in our daily lives.

While it’s easy to cruise along when life gives us roses, it’s rather uncomfortable and challenging when a negative emotion arises. What happens when we deny our emotions? We become a ticking time bomb. The extreme denial to allow our negative emotions to surface could result in a nervous breakdown, self-harming or addiction, executed as a form of protection.

Each day our body talks to us and what we hear is a choice. We can listen when it whispers, or we can be forced to listen when it screams at us through illness and the aforementioned.

But there is good news! If, as aware humans we just sit in the discomfort of the negative emotion and talk to it, questioning what it’s trying to tell us, then we can set it free.

The easiest way to release the trauma and negativity from your head, your body and energy field is to write it out. Grab pen and paper and ask yourself these questions.

1. What are you telling me?

2. How do I feel right now?

3. What experience has triggered me?

Now, just flow. There is no right or wrong here. If you don’t hear any solid replies, then write down, “I don’t know what’s going on but I’m willing to know.” Then write anything, even words like bla bla bla, scribble artwork; allow the energy to expel out of your body.

Once you feel you’ve exhausted yourself, with either knowing or not knowing the negative trigger, you then write what you’d like to feel instead; rewiring the pattern from negative to positive. Then scrunch the paper up, and safely burn that sucker. It’s over! Be proud that you were courageous enough to try to understand and heal your emotions.

If writing isn’t your thing, then voice the whole act, and at the end instead of burning the paper, ask Saint Germaine and his violet flame to engulf your throat, transmuting the experience into love and light.

Our negative triggers don’t need to control us, but they will if they are not acknowledged. So darling, sit in the brief discomfort and give yourself permission to feel your emotions, allowing them to be heard.

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