Are You Triggered?

"The willingness to look within, which doesn’t require introspection into the cause of your mood, just the simple awareness that it comes from within your own self and not from the other person’s action, will enable you to shift out of reactivity and craft a response that’s more grounded.” Shefali Tsabary from the Conscious Parent.

In my last post I shared one expert’s way to start feeling and letting go of the crap we have buried inside. Michael Singer author of the Untethered Soul and Dr. Shefali Tsabary author of the Conscious Parent recommend a different way; using triggering events to dig into our emotions. We become triggered when we don’t want whatever is happening in our life to be happening.  We resist what is essentially saying, “I don’t want this situation to be happening.”  When this type of situation occurs and you are feeling triggered, Singer and Tsabary recommend finding a quiet space and asking, “Why am I being triggered right now?”  Then remain silent and still and listen. “Truly feeling an emotion means being able to sit with the incoherence we experience at such a time, neither venting it nor denying it, but simply containing it and being present with it.”  Shefali Tsabary from the Conscious Parent.  Feeling the emotion requires you to stay in your body, feel your body, while physically doing nothing; if you are struggling with not doing anything and quieting the mind (which oh MY I did), focus on your breath.  Focus on where the feeling sits in your body and what it feels like?  Is it in your gut causing nausea; is it in your chest making you feel like someone is sitting on you?  Stay with it until the emotion (remember its just energy in motion) leaves your body. 

***Feeling our emotions without reacting to them can be terrifying.  To sit with our emotions means we have to be in solitude, which is unbearable for many of us.  We are too used to having a thought and being triggered by it, experiencing an emotion and reacting to it.  For instance, if we feel anxious, we eat or self-medicate in some way.  If we feel angry, we experience an urge to vent or even explode at someone.  Sitting and watching our thoughts and feelings in stillness may seem pointless to us, but it’s by doing precisely this that the core lessons of consciousness are learned.  By silently witnessing our thoughts and feelings, we learn to accept them as they are, allowing them to rise and fall within us without resisting them or reacting to them.

Shefali Tsabary from the Conscious Parent.

 

This process terrified me.  I wasn’t sure I had ever TRULY felt a feeling.  I was an expert on how to react, blame, distract and stuff, but DOING NOTHING…doing nothing was NOT in my DNA.  At first, every time I felt triggered, my head immediately screamed “IT’S THEIR FAULT!!!!”  and soon after sitting down in silence, I stood up and reacted.  I felt like I was coming out of my skin and simply couldn’t handle it.  I tried a few times with the same result.  Since I was struggling miserably, I decided to find, and start with, one person and one type of situation.  I scanned my life and decided to NOT respond immediately (i.e. react) to my Mom’s emails.  With my Mom’s barrage of daily emails, and how often they triggered a firestorm of anger, frustration and hurt, this would allow me to practice while not being face to face.  The first few times were rough forcing me to turn off my computer and just sit there while my mind drafted a hurtful and totally appropriate response J. But, eventually my thoughts would start to tire allowing my feelings to pop through.  They felt like pockets of pain as they popped through and if I sat silently, I could feel them eventually leave my body.    

 

As more “pockets of pain” were released, the less reactive I became.  My relationship with my mother became better and I began to see her in a different light.  I can honestly say (on most days) it’s the best it’s ever been.  “Your wisdom will increase in line with your capacity for embracing all of your feelings, whatever their nature.  Along with an increased wisdom comes a greater capacity for compassion.”  Shefali Tsabary from the Conscious Parent.

DEATH to "Spiritualese!"

“I let negativity and darkness dissolve in my light.’  Deepok Chopra

 

I have been doing a 21 day Oprah/Deepok meditation challenge and this was todays topic.  I read it and was immediately irked, “What the crap does that mean?”  This was exactly the spiritual mumbo jumbo language that I read often and confused me always.  I listened to the meditation’s 5-minute introduction/explanation hoping for some clarification.  Sifting through the 5 minutes of talking, I pulled together enough clarity to understand the topic was about getting rid of negative feelings (the topic I am knee deep in).  I was disappointed that Deepok’s introduction provided not one concrete step, procedure or strategy for “let[ting] [my] negativity and darkness dissolve in my light.”  I had no clue how to “let” my negativity go anywhere, let alone into my light; in fact, where the heck was my “light” and how could I find it? 

 

I’m a lawyer and have read a ton of “legalese”(writing only other lawyers can understand).  I couldn’t help but wonder if there is a legalese type of writing for “spiritual/self-help-ee” experts that only other experts can understand?  I admire Deepok Chopra greatly but couldn’t he drill down his statement to provide something more concrete and usable when we are knee deep in busy life.  I once heard an interview with Deepok where he said he meditates for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening.  Some days I forget to brush my teeth and I haven’t shaved my legs in a month.  No wonder I couldn’t understand; we live VERY different lives.  My hope is that my blogs use my lawyer/legalese skills to make “spiritualese” easier to understand and incorporate into life !