When I was younger, I used to hate getting triggered. To be clear, I don’t even know if I realized I was being triggered, but whatever it was, I know it was quite painful, and I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.
Many times what this resulted in was trying to find a bandaid to make it go away. Like many of us, I had a pattern of looking outside of myself for love and positive feedback, so I remember constantly reaching out to friends and family to feel better during these difficult moments.
One of the biggest ways this showed up for me was in relationships with my abandonment pattern. I dated inappropriate people or people that, inevitably, wouldn’t be able to give me what I needed, and yet, I had the expectation that they could. This usually meant going on a date(s), liking them, worrying that they’d leave, getting triggered and circling through a variety of concerns on if I’d see them again.
Putting all of this energy into this thought process, you can imagine what happened. Hint: It was not good.
It wouldn’t matter if I said something or nothing at all. While we don’t always realize it, we can feel when something is off, and we are always creating our reality. I was creating a reality where people would leave. And, while of course, I didn’t want to be left, being left was a way I felt safe and comfortable. You see – it was all I had ever known, and, while I desperately wanted things to change, I had no clue how to undo it.
So, fast forward, I started doing this work, and, with that, learning how to connect to and feel my feelings. Initially, it was quite uncomfortable. As I stayed with it, though, and did it more and more, the discomfort I had felt at the beginning, in part, because it wasn’t part of my norm and, in part, because I was taught emotions were wrong, dissipated. (Just like most of us, I had learned many judgements about emotions and tears that I had took with me into every experience, many of which created resistance.) This isn’t to say, at times, it wasn’t hard or it didn’t hurt, but for me, as I feel my feelings, I feel fueled by these because I know I’m making myself matter. Even deeper, I know when I feel, I exist.
So, back to my abandonment pattern. It was last year when my guides told me that I could completely clear this. (Prior to that, I thought this pattern would be with me this entire lifetime.)
Of course, it was then that I got triggered AGAIN around this.
Initially, I found myself in an old version of the trigger, with my mind circling and every part of me wanting to be curled up in the fetal position.
Then the awareness came to me to use the feeling for all it was worth. It hit me that it was helping me to access my abandonment pattern, and if I didn’t have access to it, I couldn’t clear it. So, I did, and with it, I found myself asking my guides for more opportunities to feel this pattern. (It may sound crazy, but, in this lifetime, I am very committed to feeling everything, as the more I feel and embrace it all, the more alive I feel. I know, too, that the real reason I’m here is to grow, expand and love, and to light this path for others.) So, while it wasn’t comfortable or easy, I’m happy to say, on the other end of it, I’ve cleared a pattern I have carried in many lifetimes.
And, I write this to you today as an invitation. Where in your life can you:
– Feel more
– Allow yourself to own a situation (or trigger!) you were previously resisting
– Embrace an opportunity to grow
To our triggers that help us to feel it ALL,
Deb