SPIRITUALITY
Own Your Triggers
Pollinate Sunday Sermon 2.5.23
Good Sunday my fellow seekers. I hope you are enjoying the full moon and that maybe it even gives you a trigger because I have something you can do with it.
I recently experienced an abrupt ending to a relationship that was very centered in my life for the last two years. It had felt strained for several months. When we finally engaged in a conversation about this dynamic, my friend became very triggered by my observations about the relationship. While I assured them before I shared my perspective that I didn’t need them to agree with my assessments, and that both of our different experiences were valid and true, my friend was deeply triggered. Because I had seen this trigger in several of their other close relationships I knew it was from past occurrences when their feelings were described in mental health terms (I referenced a mutual co-dependence between us).
The situation rapidly spun out, just as many of their other relationships had over similar dynamics. I knew there was no way out for me at this point. I wasn’t going to be able to be seen within the trigger storm. That’s the thing about triggers. It’s hard to know what’s going to set them off; either as the person experiencing them or the person on the receiving end.
I too have been in the fiery destruction of my own trigger, asking someone to take responsibility for my emotional fall out. Here’s what I learned in retrospect from those experiences. I hope it will assist you in leveraging your triggers for healing.
Triggers are portals to your deepest wounds, not the result of another person’s behavior, and the faster you can get to that wound the better. Others’ behaviors are a distraction from healing. The last time I was significantly triggered it opened me to the painfully unconscious damage of my childhood. I can look back on that now with gratitude and grace for the human who triggered me. Some days I wish I would have had the capacity to not react so quickly within the relationship, because I ended it in the frenzy of feeling unsafe. The trigger was so overwhelming it swallowed that relationship whole. I have given myself grace here as well by accepting the fact that my reaction was the only one I could muster at the time. The good news, in an otherwise tragic story, is that I found possibly my deepest wound and have been working diligently to heal it. In this way the purpose of my trigger was revealed.
That experience also taught me that safety is an internal state of being, and can’t be given to you by another. The only real safety is in healing the wound. Setting a boundary only takes you so far and is completely reliant on someone else holding that boundary. Were it that easy. The truth is no one can be wholly responsible for your safety, they can only contribute to it, if they are willing.
We must remember they have the right to their space too and if they’re always centering your safety they will give up responsibility for their own. That dynamic brings an underlying instability to a relationship because when a person is protecting you from your triggers they are stepping forward without the benefit of their own realized and practiced authenticity. That’s called codependency. I know because I have been a consistent practitioner of codependency my entire life.
This is why owning your triggers is so important. When you give them away by blaming someone else for their arrival, you also give away your power to heal them and create enduring safety. Had I had the power to create this safety for my friend I would have, but unless I had been prepared to lie about or downplay my truth, I couldn’t. I’ve come to that sweet point in my life where I can no longer do that. Thanks in part to dealing with my wounds and their subsequent triggers.
Although we are all on our own divine timing I will offer this positive trigger if you’d like to receive it… own your triggers, own your safety. Don’t you dare give those precious gifts away!
Kathryn A. Dickel 2023
