Relief from a Toxic Belief
I get flipped off a lot. It doesn’t upset me. I, and the flipper-offer, both know that I triggered them. I flicked the emotional nerve they’d been trying desperately to hide from the world. They are confused, overwhelmed, and don’t know whether to attack me or kiss me.
I sit in my seat, give them a cheshire smile, and feel very proud of myself.
It’s sort of fascinating. When I see their finger uncurl, I think to myself, “oh, it’s bulbous, or slender, or crooked, or stumpy.”
After my initial observation, I look at the person’s eyes. Their eyes are usually welling with tears at this point. Or, their eyes are sparking with flames and their knuckles have gone white.
I start to feel bad, so I tell them something comforting like, “you know, this is all your fault.” They don’t generally like that. I don’t know why. I am empowering them after all.
Why am I telling you this verbose story about my insensitivity and my client’s sensitivity?
Because, like my clients, we all have unresolved pain or trauma. It becomes a trigger when it is activated (exposed).
A trigger is a disproportionate emotional response to the present. In other words, it is something difficult we experienced that needs to be resolved.
Being triggered is a gift. It’s an opportunity for us to resolve our trauma. Unfortunately, most triggers occur in an environment where we won’t receive compassion and connection. Usually, it’s the opposite. It tends to happen when we’re protecting ourselves, in a fight, or overwhelmed.
As an example, I tell my clients, “in all likelihood, you’re going to marry the perfect person to press your buttons.”
We’re drawn to these people because 1.) they feel familiar, and 2.) we are subconsciously drawn to individuals who will reenact our trauma because we want it exposed and healed.
When spouses are not aware of what is happening to their emotions (they’re being triggered), they end up blaming or attacking their spouses. The other person becomes the adversary, instead of a potential ally in uncovering our long-harbored emotions.
With my clients, it is generally a big, triggery revelation that causes them to angrily unfurl their finger at me. Here are a few of my favorites:
Realizing dad wasn’t present (and that made them feel unvaluable).
Recognizing they married someone exactly like one of their parents. Ouch.
Finding their own culpability for the downfall in their businesses.
Uncovering a big pool of pain that jaded their self-value.
Discovering the reason they’ve been single, in crappy relationships, or miserable in their romantic relationships (just bad luck?).
It’s very uncomfortable to have one of our triggers exposed. And those triggers are almost always accompanied by a major, albeit subconscious belief.
For example, perhaps you attract men who are emotionally disconnected or feel like a project.
Well, you might have a belief system that says men are going to be emotionally unavailable, you feel safer with a passive (unchallenging) male, or that men aren’t good communicators.
It’s not much of a head-scratcher that this situation keeps repeating itself. THE REVELATION comes when you realize something like, “oh shit, my dad was emotionally unavailable to my mom and me.”
Whoops. In this situation, you’ll believe men are emotionally unavailable. This belief attracts you to emotionally absent men and magnetizes emotionally unavailable men to you.
But don’t worry, we all have silly beliefs :)
All of us learn lessons in early life that affect our adulthoods. That’s not the problem. The problem is that these beliefs stay in our subconscious, reenacting themselves over and over, and we don’t know what the hell is going on. It’s the ignorance that is the real problem.
I have a tendency to expose these beliefs in my clients. It’s a little mischievous, but it’s for their good!
When they have their dawning realization, they are in a tizzy. They don’t know how to respond. They feel relieved, empowered, but also angry and frustrated that THEY were the one that put themselves in poor situations. It’s as if they realized they truly were the victim and the villain in their own story. It doesn’t absolve anyone else of the pain they caused my clients, but it does make my client realize they played a part in being in that situation.
After their realization, and their finger temper-tantrum is over, they inevitably say, “well, what am I supposed to do?”
That’s when I gently tell them, “I don’t know. That’ll be $240. Maybe try google?”
Or, more likely, I tell them, “these revelations are 60-80% of the breakthrough. When we have these revelations, it is creating a vacuum for a new understanding. If we do nothing at all, it will likely be re-filled with similar beliefs and experiences. But if we choose to rewrite these beliefs we can create what we actually want.”
For each belief, the rewriting can take dozens of forms. I tend to think the impact is less about nailing the process and more about the intention.
For example, if I’m working with a client with an emotionally unavailable father, I have them write a list of the characteristics of an emotionally present father. And then, to visualize themselves experiencing each of those characteristics. Or, I would have them write out a biography of an emotionally present/healthy man. Or, I would have them write a list of TV or movie characters with fatherly characteristics that cause them to respond positively. And to write down what characteristics they notice and why they respond so well to it.
In other words, I give them some type of activation homework. I am getting them to CHALLENGE their former belief with new experiences and thoughts. They had an example of a father (their father), but he isn’t the only father in the world. If we take our experiences as the universal rules for our life, we will never get better results than what we initially experienced. If we challenge those “case studies,” we will find that there are multitudes of other experiences available. There are emotionally present men! There are kind and loyal women! There are people in their dream professions! There are people who won’t take advantage of you! There are good friends with brilliant advice! Etc.
The world is bigger than our initial experiences. But if we don’t challenge our experiences as “the reality,” we’ll never enjoy a better one.
You may disagree with me, but if you do, I’ve got a very special finger to express my displeasure.