How To Work With Internal Triggers on the Spiritual Path

Openhand.....I am well on the awakening journey.  Have been bruised all over
Dbody and soul, time and again in my current vessel, learning from those
blows, and flowing with it now.   

Triggers...the first was during intensive Dialectical Behaviour Therapy.  I was home, life was messy; disowned by family, friends dropping off, no longer able to work, no longer knew who I was.  It was a physical blow to my body, doubled over with a pain unlike anything else.  Knocked over, on the floor, crawling, bawling, then curled up into a ball and let it out....then wrote and wrote and wrote.  Recording for myself the sufferings survived, and gratefully acknowledging what the teachings were.

That was in March, 2019.  Since then, through mindfulness and self kindness, am empowered with a new ability to observe my thoughts and emotions, and question myself...and dig deep down into my core.  I can then accept what I cannot change, change what I can, confident that I now know the difference.

The biggest breakthrough has been to honour my breath.  As soon as an unsettling stirring is felt, I choose to remember my breath, then work through the thoughts.  
My journey has been very enlightening, reprogramming my mind with unconditional acceptance, forgiveness, and love for the past three years, albeit alone.  Have lost multiple relationships,and redefined others.  I understand my path and purpose.  Working the inside to ‘weed the garden’ full time....

I have been called “Home”.  Moving there next week - visions are abounding as the previous one comes to fruition!!!!

I cherish the (inappropriate word of your choice said with zest ;) out of you and the gift you gave me.  I have been in hiding, because I constantly channel (though it is cool stuff the divine is providing) and it has made me uneasy interacting in society alone.  The thing that was the most disarming for me is that I have been (literally recording my face, because the divine guided me to and NEVER posting...retreating from social media as much as possible.  this "hermit" phase gave me things that I am certain were more "hard won" than they had needed to be...I hear your smiling smirk of loving knowing.  That said, my wrecking ball nature ended up having 2019 kick the (choice word again) out of me; forged, iron by water.  completion.  I know me for real now, but...I have no direction, though I am in motion...I have known of this and do not feel at all afraid and, literally, just lost every single thing.  I have nothing, except my energetic currency, which is of the highest value I have come to find...I no longer choose to agree to the contract that paper says means something.  We ALL HAVE THE HERITAGE OF BEING HUMAN. It is now coalescing that is imperative; the closer we get to "wishing/hoping/praying/meditating...choice word again..." for the same unconditionally loving healing for the planet, the unity consciousness can form with energy directed towards it being your value, your currency.  from the moment you existed, as a human being, you already had and were every great thing and well deserving of it...no thing has changed in that regards.  Please allow me, if there is authentic need, to contribute in any way that I am able to in soothing and serving our fellow human beings who need compassionate care or guidance towards navigating their energetic value...so much love to all.

Dear Open, 

The lock down has obviously trigerred major karma for me. I was feeling very frustrated at the control to begin with. As I normalized with that and accepted that to a degree however, I felt deep grief for all the souls caught up in the control paradigm that will now be left with no jobs or food or shelter. For me that manifested as a deep ache in my solar plexus a Chakra I have never previously connected with very much. My distraction usually is stress eating or random readi g to get away from the uncomfortable sensations.

Yesterday I did the Chakra attunement and then also heard a track by Tom Kenyon from an album called Chakra clearing which is specific for Chakras. I was still unable to get what this attachment was. 

Today whole driving back from work I took a detour to distribute rice to migrant workers walking miles on foot with all their possessions over their head. 

And I howled my eyes out! I felt such helplessness and rage at the system and then I saw how I have been blaming myself for not helping enough in Sirius. I blamed myself and doubted myself for how things went south there. And that was what the karma was. Again I saw a group of greys swirling around. I tried to connect to angels to clear them. I'm not sure if I did.

Something got unlocked I think. This karma has been around for a while and I was never really able to feel into it properly. I still have a lot of grief and self doubt and self blame to process, but it's moving.

In a dream I saw an ancestral house that was mine fill up with water and streams flowing out of it. A little girl guided me to the house and showed me secret passages in it. And I saw my long dead Grandma who woke up after a long sleep.

It seemed important to mention the Sirius Karma. 

Namaste,

Megha 

This is a great gift to me Open, thank you. 

There's lots to percolate and I'll needs to read it again and sit with it, but as someone who's working to heal the numerous long term effects of complex-ptsd, I can say that your take on triggers is refreshingly more helpful than many of the relatively premature and sometimes experimental theories and often unconscious delivery currently offered by mental health professionals. 

I've been triggered so often recently, that I sometimes wonder how much time I spend in non arousal state. Returning to normal base line can take hours or days compared to the minutes of hours of the non traumatised brain, and in that triggered state, it's more likely to become triggered as the limbic region gets trip switched into the 5 fs so rapidly and can keep us in hyper vigilance, and the not so good kinda vulnerability.

I've wondered if the trigger of overwhelm is a normal, if somewhat immature and innocent response to what can only be called global madness that we see in every news channel as the shift occurs. So I can bring compassion to myself and others struggling with triggers large or small. And I look for their well intended roots to shine light on.

Your writing about triggers caused me to realise a bit more why I struggle with embodiment, because being embodied can trigger muscle memory too painful to sit with, and I find the state of overwhelm like a broadband speed too powerful for the cables/neural pathways, which brings up more fear, and increased suseptability to being retriggered, and so the exhausting and sometimes hopeless loop goes on. Your advocating that going inside as the place to undo the knots and pain now feels more possible somehow because I can see it in more perspective, and  I get a sense of greater possibility for peace. Thank you. With love.

Hi Open,

Thank you for the article. Triggers are a big topic indeed because let’s face it: triggers are going to happen. We can’t go through life wrapped in cotton wool, and we can’t control other people but we can delve deep and spark massive internal shifts.

I will share a recent personal experience:

There is one person in my life (let’s call her Angie) that I get massively triggered by. The other day I was on the phone to Angie when she said something that got me all emotionally charged. After I hung up the phone, I turned to one of my friends — who could clearly see I was triggered — and said, ‘What the heck, she is always so triggering!’.

My friend looked at me, and said ‘No honey, it’s not that Angie is triggering… it’s that you yourself are getting triggered.’

 … Ouch! When you’re in that triggered state, no one wants to hear that. Later on that day when I sat down on my meditation mat and closed my eyes I asked myself these questions….

 What did Angie trigger within me?

Frustration is what came up.

Why did this trigger frustration?

Because in that moment, on the phone with her, I didn’t feel heard.

Why does feeling heard matter so much to me?

Well, because as a child most of the time I didn't feel like my parents listened to me.

BOOM!

My trigger actually had nothing to do with Angie — who did actually listen to me — and everything to do with my past experience of not feeling heard. I was awed of how much gold there is in something that can be so easily bypassed J

I found this video deeply touching too, had the impulse to send it to several people. My general interest when  people have a message is not so much the words anymore, but rather the intention and the vibration behind the words. He's really vulnerable standing up there, so authentic, so human. At least as touching is the expression on Keanu Reeves face in the audience, the openness, the love. I find this personally truly inspiring. An uplifting video. :)