Stop Ignoring Your Triggers | Messages for the Empath Soul Podcast
You need to stop ignoring, denying and avoiding the heavy feelings when you are triggered. Especially as empaths, it's easy to feel triggered into heavy emotions or difficult thought patterns because you are constantly feeling the energetic weight of the world around you.
In order to live with more purpose, more joy and a greater sense of freedom you need to be willing to acknowledge the triggers you feel. When you take the time to work through the shadows within there is more space for your light to shine through.
The two main lessons in today's episode are about understanding that your triggers are a sign of a deeper wound you are carrying; and learning to rewrite your beliefs are how you shift your triggered patterns.
You know you want to shift and evolve, you know you're tired of constantly feeling triggered in life. This is the episode that will guide you to creating the supportive shifts you've been dreaming of.
Press play to start the journey where you stop ignoring your triggers, you create real healing, and you begin living with even more peace than you thought possible.
The 12th episode is called Stop Ignoring Your Triggers.
Listen here, or scroll down to read more on what this episode is all about!
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Back to the blog - Stop Ignoring Your Triggers
Here I will share the transcript of the podcast episode, and I highly encourage you to give it a listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
INTRO
Hello hello hello. Welcome back to another episode of Messages for the Empath Soul. Today’s episode we are going to be talking all about triggers which maybe is a bit controversial to dig in and talk about something that is difficult and challenging. I guess controversial is not the right word, but not everyone is willing to open themselves up to talk about their shadows, and their difficulties and their challenges. But you are here in this space with me because you want to live with more peace. You want to live feeling more free, so you are ready to create real change in your life, you are ready to evolve and expand. You know that that starts with you looking at yourself.
So we are going to talk about triggers and we are going to discuss what these triggers look like, what they mean, how they affect your life and more importantly why you need to stop ignoring them.
There is not much else for me to say except let’s jump right into things.
This is your soul journey and I am here channeling messages from the Universe to help guide and support you.
This is Messages for the Empath Soul.
If you’re new here, I’m Sydney a ⅖ generator, with a deep intuitive connection. My mission is to empower as many spiritual empaths in this community, creating a ripple effect of compassion and peace that is felt around the world.
We are here today to talk about triggers and more importantly that it’s time for you to stop ignoring your triggers. In order for you to live more peacefully you have to be willing to understand your shadows. I think it’s really easy for us to say “I want to live with more purpose, I want to experience more freedom in life.” It’s easy for you to choose to uncover your light. It’s easy for you to acknowledge “I want to awaken my super powers.” It’s easy for you to say that you want to bring more compassion into the world. What I have learnt in my pursuit of bringing light into the world is that I cannot continue ignoring the shadows within.
What are the shadows? It’s the fear you feel, the heavy emotions, the moments you feel triggered. Triggered into frustration, triggered into sadness, worry or doubt. Triggered into feeling overwhelmed, out of control, alone or completely drained. These are the shadows that we experience in our day to day life. It’s time that you stop ignoring your triggers. I’m going to help you do just that by sharing two important lessons when it comes to triggers.
First we are going to talk about your trigger being a sign that you are wounded. Second we are going to talk about rewriting your belief in order to shift the triggered pattern. These lessons are key in being able to live with more peace and being able to experience a greater sense of freedom, and to bring more purpose into your day to day life. Why? Why are they key? Because when you take the time to work through the shadows within there is more space for your light to shine through.
Today we are going to be talking about the darkness, the shadows, the triggers. We are not here to avoid, deny, ignore, run away from. We are here to create change, we are here to evolve, we are here to expand. So let’s jump right in because you know you are ready to stop ignoring your triggers.
THE TRIGGER IS A SIGN THAT YOU ARE WOUNDED
I think oftentimes when we talk about triggers in the world, especially because this is a topic that is going around like wildfire. Everyone is talking about triggers, feeling triggered, trying to remove triggers, trying to not be triggered. Oftentimes when we start to acknowledge that feeling of being triggered, what we start off doing is looking at the other person or the situation and believing that the person is the reason why we are triggered. It’s their fault. Or the challenge that popped up in your life, the difficulty, the obstacle on your path, whatever emotion is triggered within you, that challenge is the problem. That challenge triggered you.
Early on in my spiritual healing journey I thought I had to remove all the things in my life that made me feel triggered. What ended up happening is I ended up removing a lot of things from my life and my life started to feel very lonely and kind of boring. I didn’t go out and do things. Being a recovering people pleaser, being an empath, feeling the weight of the world, I would often be triggered by somebody else sharing their difficulty. Somebody else venting or complaining. So you think “if I just don’t spend time with that person then I won’t be triggered anymore”. But that is actually not healthy. It’s not healthy and that is the wrong way to view a trigger.
When you start to acknowledge your triggers it’s not about trying to manage the trigger or remove the thing or person that triggered you. That is not what the trigger is doing. It’s not why the trigger is there. It’s not why the trigger is there. The trigger is not someone else’s fault. It’s your soul telling you where you have a wound.
So I want you, in your life moving forward, anytime you feel triggered, rather than saying “oh so and so triggered me”, or “that thing triggered me”, or “you triggered me”. Especially in our relationships if we are saying “you triggered me, you made me feel this way”, that is huge. You made me feel this. No. Nobody made you feel something. That person's actions triggered an emotion within you. But you have to own that emotion. Especially if it’s a heavy emotion, if it’s an emotion filled with darkness, if it’s a shadow. That emotion is your reaction, own it. Stop placing blame on somebody else. The trigger is simply telling you where you have a wound.
In my spiritual healing journey when I felt triggered because somebody else started venting and complaining about the awful things happening in their life, I felt triggered in the way that I felt overwhelmed. I felt overwhelmed carrying the heaviness of that person's experience. Why? Why did I feel overwhelmed? Not because that person is sharing their heaviness and darkness. I feel overwhelmed because my wound is, as a people pleaser, wanting to make everyone around me feel happy, and successful, and joyful. If I can’t accomplish that then I feel like I’m not worthy. I placed my worthiness and feeling of being enough on being able to help somebody else reach happiness or peace. So all of a sudden when someone is sharing their frustrations or venting about a problem in their life, my pattern, my wound, within me, goes “oh shit, now I have to show up, I have to do the work, I have to try and guide them back to happiness, I have to try and resolve this for them”.
I became so drained from my life experiences because I was so deep in healing my own emotional wounds. I was so deep in acknowledging how I felt emotionally and energetically and how the world around me was influencing me in my energy and my emotions. So being triggered by listening to somebody else vent and complain, it wasn’t the person venting and complaining that was the problem. The problem was the deeper wound within me.
I remember one time I was watching my cousins working on building a shed. I was watching them and they were up on the roof, doing that step of building a shed. There was a ladder leaning up against the shed and I’m just watching. It was pretty windy that day and the wind blew the ladder off of the roof and it hit my cousin's truck. It dented the hood of his truck. Immediately he is frustrated, he is annoyed because of this issue. Now all of a sudden he has a huge dent in his truck. It’s no one's fault. On the surface you can hear that story and know that it’s no one's fault. It was the wind, the wind blew it over. But me, holding on so tightly to my own people pleasing tendencies and having this wound that believing my worthiness is tied to somebody else’s perception of me, I became triggered in that moment. I was witnessing my cousin get upset, so immediately I jumped into “oh my god, this is my fault. I should’ve ran out and caught the ladder. I should have done something differently. I should have seen that it was windy and moved the ladder ahead of time. He is upset because… I could have prevented this.” I started spiraling because I was triggered because somebody around me wasn’t happy.
I started spiraling into this trigger because the wound within me believed that if the people around me weren’t happy it was my fault and my worth is tied to trying to make them happy. So instantly I was triggered and became exhausted. That is what a trigger is doing. The trigger is telling you where you have a wound. On the surface it looks like a situation that has happened that was challenging. But when you go deeper, you start to see the wounded pattern. The wounded pattern comes from your Ego’s need for safety.
In the situation I just shared, of the ladder falling over, my wound is feeling like I’m not safe when somebody around me is in a bad mood, or upset or angry. My Ego, which is my subconscious, runs on how do I reach safety. How do I get back to safety? My Ego believes that this situation is a life or death situation. So my pattern from this wound is how can I make this person happy. Once I resolve this issue, once I fix this person's problem, once I guide this person back to happiness, back to peace, then I will feel safe, then I will feel worthy.
I was talking to a client recently and in one of our sessions we were talking about triggers, which is why I felt called to share this episode today. She was sharing some very relatable experiences. A client in her business was angry because they didn’t think they received the product exactly as they wanted it to be, so they came back to her and said “you need to fix this”, that was one situation she experienced. Another situation she experienced, a teacher emailing her telling her that something was going wrong at school with her kid, and it really wasn’t a big thing at all, but it triggered her. Both of these situations triggered her. They both triggered the wound within her that her Ego was saying “I’m not safe. This isn’t safe. I’m out of control. I can’t trust anybody else. I need to do everything myself”; whatever her deeper wounds are. By going deeper than just looking at the surface of what happened and what made her angry, we can start to tie the things together. We can start to understand that this is a pattern.
The moment you are triggered into that anger the wounded pattern of your ego’s need for safety takes over and starts trying to figure out how you can resolve this issue. The key in understanding this wounded pattern is that it’s unhealthy. It’s an unhealthy pattern, an unsupportive pattern, it’s coming from a misaligned space. It’s unhealthy because you are behaving, and acting or reacting, on this need to try and get back into safety. Your Ego believes you are in a life or death situation so you need to get back into safety.
That is what your trigger is doing. The trigger is not someone else’s fault, it’s your soul telling you where you have a wound. The wounded pattern that you experience when you begin to react from this triggered energy is coming from your ego’s need for safety. How do I get back to safety?
Stop ignoring your triggers. Stop ignoring your triggers.
If you continue to ignore your triggers the fuse you have gets shorter and you continue to react and behave from a subconscious pattern of not feeling safe.
So, what comes next?
It’s time to rewrite your belief in order to shift the pattern. I was saying earlier you can’t just manage your triggers, you can’t just try and remove all of the things in your life that trigger you. It’s not the outside thing, it’s not the external situation that is the issue. It’s not the person or the problem. It’s the wound within us that needs to be healed.
REWRITING YOUR BELIEF SHIFTS THE PATTERN
I want you to take a moment here and listen to these two scenarios.
I want you to imagine being triggered by something happening in your life. Maybe you can put yourself in that place because it’s happened recently. Maybe somebody said something, somebody did something, or a problem occurred. Something happens in your life and immediately you get mad, or frustrated, or bitter, or upset. As you experience this emotional reaction to the trigger you start to spiral into a cycle of thoughts about being angry or upset about the situation. This cycle of thoughts and this feeling of being angry or upset, you begin to hear this story “why does this keep happening to me? Why does this keep happening to me” or you hear this story about the other person is wrong and this situation is shitty. You continue to perpetuate that feeling of being mad, bitter or upset.
Can you recognize this moment in your life? Can you clearly see these moments that you felt triggered?
Now I have a different scenario for you.
I want you to imagine the same scenario happening in your life, the exact same situation. Immediately you acknowledge how this would’ve triggered you previously, but instead it’s something you can let go of and not let affect your mood or your day. You calmly acknowledge the situation knowing you’ll take the right action for resolution and you’re able to move forward peacefully. Imagine that. Imagine the exact same thing happens and immediately you can say “oh man, this would’ve triggered me into anger previously, but today it didn’t. And although this situation is a bit shitty, I can let it go. It doesn’t pull me down into the shadows of fear, anger, stress, worry, bitterness.” You can calmly acknowledge the situation, knowing you’ll take the right action for resolution and you’ll move forward peacefully.
This is what it feels like to heal that deeper wound that is attached to the trigger. You are able to move through your life more peacefully, not because you are able to manage your triggers, but instead because you aren’t as easily triggered anymore. That is what it feels like when you begin to rewrite the belief that is attached to that original trigger, the belief that is attached to that wound. That is how you shift the pattern.
The old belief says “when this happens it means I am not safe”. For instance, my example of the ladder falling, the old belief was, when somebody else is angry it means I’m not safe; or when somebody else is upset, whatever that emotion is when they are upset. Maybe the emotion is frustration, anger, sadness, bitterness. The old belief said, I’m not safe if the people around me aren’t in joy or aren’t in peace. I had to work to rewrite that belief system. I found the wound. I learnt that every single time I was triggered, no matter the situation, I was triggered because I felt like my worth was tied to somebody else validating me. My worth was tied to somebody else’s mood. If they were in a bad mood it meant that I was the problem, it meant that they were mad at me.
I didn’t want to live from that way. If I tried to manage my triggers or remove the things that were triggering me, it meant that I removed every single person from my life. Because anybody, anybody around me could be mad. We are human beings, we are meant to experience emotions. But them being mad or angry actually has nothing to do with me. I talked a couple episodes ago about learning the lesson that taking care of your emotions was not my job. I think I talked about that in the episode People Pleaser versus An Empath.
The old belief says “when this happens I’m not safe”. It’s time to rewrite a new belief. What is that new belief? What does it look like? For me, it’s not my job to take care of somebody else’s emotions. For me the new belief is we are allowed to have emotions and it does not affect my worthiness. For me, the new belief is that I can hold space for someone when they are moving through an emotion. I can offer compassion. The new belief says, if I don’t feel safe I can walk away for sure, but also, their emotions are not my job. The new belief for me is to make sure I am taking care of my emotions, make sure I’m taking care of how I feel. Then I can offer compassion, love and support, or whatever that person needs. My worth, my worthiness is not defined by what I offer to somebody else. I am worthy as I am.
Now, I look at my best friend and she went through something really difficult a few months ago. I was able to be there for her and hold space for her. Then a few days later I was feeling emotionally drained myself, and I was able to tell her “I’m here for you, I love you, but I need to take some time for myself today. I need to guard and protect my emotions right now. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I just need to take care of myself today.” And she was totally okay with that. Because I changed that old belief that said when somebody else is upset it means I’m not safe. Because that’s not true, I don’t want to live from that.
It’s important for you, that when you start to acknowledge your triggers, you stop ignoring them, you go deeper and you find out what is the wound that is being triggered and what is the belief behind that wound. We learn those belief systems because when we are children or young adults or teenagers, we don’t know how to take care of ourselves in a healthy, supportive manner. So sometimes we learn coping mechanisms, and ways to protect ourselves that are unhealthy, unsupportive and misaligned.
So this belief system that I learnt, that when somebody else is upset it means that I am not safe. Nobody taught me that belief system, I just learnt it. I taught myself it in order to try and protect myself because I didn’t feel safe in my own emotions. I didn’t feel safe in my own emotions. So if I don’t feel safe when I am emotionally distraught, then how am I going to feel safe when the people around me are emotionally distraught? That belief system is something that I just learnt as I continued to experience life. It’s something I learnt as a way to try and protect myself.
Beliefs are just repetitive thoughts that we experience again and again and again. That is how a belief is created, it is the same thought. So every single time I felt triggered when someone around me was not happy, the story in my mind was “I’m not safe, I’m not safe. Oh my god, they're not happy. How can I fix this? I need to fix this. What if I can’t fix this? What if I can’t guide them to happiness?” I created that belief through the pattern, the repetition of that pattern every single time I was triggered and that’s what deepened the wound.
It’s time to rewrite a new belief. Find out what you do want to believe. What is a belief that feels supportive? What is a belief that feels healthy and aligned? How do you rewrite a new belief? Through repetition.
The process of healing that wound begins with awareness, acceptance and release.
So your take home work, something that you get to practice in your daily life, is to acknowledge the trigger. Stop ignoring them. Notice when you become triggered, in that moment awareness, “Oh shit I’m triggered”. Acceptance comes next. “It’s okay that I feel overwhelmed right now” or “it’s okay that I feel frustrated right now” or “it’s okay that I feel angry right now”. Then release, breathe.
One of the ways that I release an energy is through my breath. I calm my nervous system, deep inhale, long exhale and I repeat that cycle. Sometimes as I breathe, on the exhale I say “I’m choosing to release the frustration” and on the inhale I say “I am calling in peace and calmness” and that helps me to shift my energy. In the moment of feeling triggered, it helps me to come back into a calm and connected state.
Right now when you feel triggered, it’s triggering the wound, setting off the fuse for the pattern that comes from your Ego’s need to feel safe. You are living from an unconscious state. These reactions of anger, frustration, the behaviour, it’s not healthy. We are rewriting that pattern, we are rewriting the deeper belief system through awareness, acceptance and release.
Every single time you get triggered moving forward, you catch yourself in that moment “ah I’m triggered”. You accept how you feel “I feel frustrated”. Then you choose to release that energy of feeling frustration. The release, maybe that is through your breath. Maybe you choose to turn on some music and dance it out. Maybe you choose to go do a workout or go for a walk and get outside. Something needs to happen for you to release that energy.
That is the process of healing.
This is how you heal your triggers. We aren’t managing our triggers and we aren’t trying to remove the things that trigger us. Instead we are healing the deeper wound that is being triggered.
I hope that this has given you some insight into when you are triggered and how it feels when you're triggered. Or maybe a different perspective on what a trigger is and being able to understand that it is a deeper wound that is just your soul asking you to heal. Rewriting your belief system allows you to shift that old outdated pattern.
As I say in every episode, all of this wisdom, all of these channeled messages, they mean nothing to you and your life if you don’t apply it. And that’s why we come to…
SELF REFLECTION CREATES SOUL CONNECTION
Self reflection is a powerful tool that helps you to better understand yourself and strengthen your connection with the Universe. Which is where you build trust and find a way to surrender more easily to your soul path.
I want you to take the information that I just shared and I want you to apply it to your life and you do that through self reflection. I want you to grab your journal and write down these four journal prompts.
Use these journal prompts to help you to understand your triggers. I talked a little bit about in the moment what we can do, that awareness, acceptance and releasing. That is in the moment what you can do when you feel triggered. We also have to, when we are not triggered, we have to be willing to reflect on it, to go a little deeper. To find out what is the most common trigger you experience, when you are triggered, because that is how you can better understand what the wound is and where healing is needed, and how you can shift the belief system. In the moment of being triggered that is not the time where you dig deep and you think “what is the belief system behind this trigger” because you were triggered. When you are triggered, you need to just move through that emotion, let it flow out of you and release it.
Today, if you aren’t triggered right now, now is the time for the shadow work. Now is the time to do some digging, some introspection in order to be more aware the next time you are triggered. The more work you do right now, in this moment, it builds your level of awareness, it builds your level of consciousness. So you can catch yourself more easily when you are triggered, so you can continue that healing process.
1 - What has been triggering you lately?
Let’s figure it out. The perfect way to create healing and to better understand yourself is to look at what has been happening in your life.
2 - What emotions or thoughts crop up when you feel this trigger?
This is how we start digging. We can see the trigger, now let’s turn inwards. Let’s stop blaming that person or situation that triggered us. Let’s turn inwards and let’s uncover the wound.
3 - What is your patterned reaction or behaviour when you become triggered in this way?
Now we are looking at, what is my Ego’s reaction from the wound. What is the protection mechanism? What is the protective behaviour? What is the unhealthy or unsupportive pattern or behaviour that I have instilled in myself through this trigger. No blame, no shame. I’m not saying this to call you out. I’m not saying this for you to judge yourself. These patterned reactions are created in a moment when your Ego believes you are in a life or death situation. It’s not a problem this has happened, it’s just human behaviour. But right now you are actually realizing you are not in a life or death situation, and you don’t want to continue to behave that way. We have to understand what it is, what is that patterned reaction because the more awareness you have on what that patterned behaviour is the easier it becomes to change it.
4 - How can you slow down and offer yourself compassion next time you feel triggered?
This is important. You have to know how you want to show up for yourself. How you want to guide yourself from a more healthy and aligned way. Because you will be triggered. We are human, we are going to be triggered. You recognize that you don’t want to continue to behave in that old pattern. So what can you do to show up for yourself?
This is what I have for you today to stop ignoring your triggers. This is healing, this is so healing and I’m so excited to be here and to help you in this process. I’d love to hear from you, please leave a review or send me an email or a message. I’d love to know how this connects with you. This is some of the work that I do with my 1:1 clients all of the time. This is also very similar to sessions I lead in my membership space, The Soul Care Space. This is the work that I do.
If this is something that interests you, if you feel like you want to be guided to go deeper, you like the journal prompts and you will answer the journal prompts, but you also want some assistance in finding the patterns, this is what I do in my 1:1 mentoring program. I guide you and I offer you all those tools and practices and strategies on how to show up in your everyday life. In my 1:1 mentoring program we have 3 calls every single month for 6 months. So you aren’t alone, you are walking with me, I am walking with you.
The Soul Care Space, my membership community, there are two calls every month that are community calls, where I continue to offer more healing guidance like this and I guide you through more journal prompts like these in order for you to create real healing and change in your life. If this resonates with you, then check out the link in the description of this podcast episode because maybe we are meant to work together in some capacity.
That is what I am here for, I am here to help you. Thank you for being here, thank you for choosing to press play on this episode and thank you for showing up for yourself on your healing journey. I am so excited to be here with you each step of the way.
GOODBYE
As I close out this episode I want you to remember, your life is happening right now. There is not some future moment you need to rush forward to. Be here, take a deep breath, know that you are meant to be in this moment.
Life will always bring more lessons.
Your soul will always guide you to more healing.
Your mind will always require support to see from a bigger perspective.
You will always desire to be seen, heard and understood.
Be here now for yourself. In time you will feel the call to share more light and compassion with the world.
I’m Sydney, signing off and saying thank you, thank you, thank you.
Take your spiritual growth journey to the NEXT LEVEL and start creating real, positive changes in your life now.
You want to feel free from your triggers.
You want to the overwhelm and heaviness to be a thing of the past.
You can see the patterns in your life that are no longer working, and you are ready to heal and create real change in order to experience more peace.
Access the FREE Spiritual Workshop - Beginning to Heal Your Triggers - by signing up for my email community at the link below!
Until next time, sending love & light on your spiritual journey,
Sydney Smith
Spiritual Mentor
Founder of Adventuring with Poseidon Wellness
