The Domino Effect of Triggers

Last night, while washing dinner dishes, Chris was telling Melanie and me a story about something that happened during the day, and I interrupted him to ask Melanie to put away the dry dishes in the strainer. It was the third or fourth time I had interrupted him within the previous 30 minutes. Between the multi-tasking and my overall enthusiasm for interaction and connection, I have a tendency to interrupt and talk over people. We’ve been married 25+ years, so he knows this about me. He also knows how to get my attention when he wants me to be quiet and to listen. I’m usually attentive to his cues. 

Well, last night things were different. After my interruption, he abruptly stopped his story and said firmly, “If you don’t care about my story, then don’t ask!” To which I responded with equal firmness, “I don’t appreciate you making assumptions about what I do and do not care about! I care about what you have to say, and I want to hear it. It was rude of me to interrupt. Please continue. Sorry.” 

It was too late. He got that look on his face that he gets when he shuts down, and he took a few deep breaths. Wth?! Is he seriously going to be that pissed that I interrupted him? That’s ridiculous… Omg, I’m such an annoying person. I just can’t stop talking. I’m so obnoxious. I’m awful… But wait! He is being such a victim. I wasn’t being mean! I can’t believe he’s acting this way. 

Sincerely wanting to hear the end of Chris’s story, Melanie said, “Dad, I was really listening to what you were saying, and I want to hear the rest of what happened.” The kitchen was painfully quiet as we continued to clean the kitchen. Then, Chris put down the dish he was washing and said he needed to go do something. He walked into his office and closed the door. He can’t be serious! I’m so annoyed. I did nothing wrong. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe he’s acting this way… Omg, I am so obnoxious. I can’t keep my big mouth from rambling. I just don’t stop, do I? He finally just had it. He just couldn’t take it anymore. I’m such a big mouth…But isn’t he totally overreacting? Ugh! I hate feeling this way!

The judgment and shame I felt toward Chris and myself felt awful. I wanted to make it go away so badly. 

A New Way to Respond 

But right here. THIS is the spot. This was my call to courage. It is the spot where advice on emotional intelligence gets murky and difficult to apply. It is the spot where I have been learning to respond differently. 

My instinct was to try to make myself and Chris feel better. I’ve spent much of my life mastering ways of keeping my energy up and feeling good, and I’m good at it! I am thankful for the skills, but I’m learning that they are only useful for short-term use. In fact, these band-aid strategies can prevent me from true healing and joy.

I knew I didn’t want to just feel better. I wanted to heal. 

Giving Our Wounds Oxygen for Healing 

While the whole situation on the surface seemed trivial, I knew a wound had been exposed. I chose not to look away. I observed the cruel thoughts racing through my mind that were questioning my value as a wife, mom, friend, and coach. The wound was my shame for talking too much and thinking I have answers. It comes from a lifetime of conditioning/unconscious programming. I also recognized the fear of being seen as uncaring or insensitive which is a reflection of how closely I identify with being a kind person. I observed myself beating myself up for hurting Chris’s feelings. 

As hard as it was to resist instant relief, I did not try to convince myself that I was a good and capable person and that I don’t talk too much. Instead, I extended self-compassion to myself for having so many shaming thoughts. I validated and normalized the thoughts and emotions. No wonder you feel so heavy and unhappy right now! Those thoughts call your authenticity and life’s calling into question. They suggest that you are not who you think you are and who people have come to love. Of course, it feels crushing and terrifying. I genuinely felt compassion for myself at that moment, and I could feel myself letting go of the judgment of myself and Chris. I knew our responses were human and that we both had just been triggered for a variety of different reasons. 

It then felt natural to give Chris the space to be right where he was and not judge him. To not try to make him feel bad for overreacting. Although we didn’t speak for the remainder of the evening, we went to bed with silent respect for each other’s pain. 

In the morning, I gradually started to feel my body expand and feel lighter. I intentionally didn’t try to push myself to feel my usual high-energy self. Instead, I allowed myself to be present. I calmly listened with deep gratitude to the birds as I walked our dog, and I smiled to myself thinking about how fast a woodpecker has to bang his face into a tree to make its sound. I played some of my favorite relaxing songs on the way to drop off our taxes. By the time I returned home, I felt a deep sense of peace and calm. I no longer had a desire to fix anything or to hear Chris’s reassurance. I didn’t need anything outside of me to change. Not surprisingly, Chris figured out what was really bothering him, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. 

The Computer Doesn’t Love Us

In many ways, this approach to emotions defies gravity. Our human selves hear and trust our unconscious programming for a reason. Ancestrally speaking, when we were not at the top of the food chain, it kept us alive. But now in many ways, it is killing us. While we can never turn the programming off, we can see it for what it is. It’s a computer in our mind that has been processing and storing data since birth about what we need to do, to be, to say, to have, and to know in order to be valuable and safe in the world. The computer doesn’t love us. It’s just a product of conditioning. 

Research shows that our brains are more in-tuned to negative information and recall it better than positive information. Our computers are constantly bringing up the potential risks of any situation or variation of it. It uses those negative bits of data to shame us into staying safe and small. You failed last time you did something like that… People get annoyed when you raise a race-related issue … Cool people like your brother make fun of people who act that way… Your mom would be so disappointed in you… Only selfish people do that… Only weak people do that, and weakness is despised… 

The goal isn’t to avoid or to get rid of our computers. That would be an impossible and exhausting goal. While there are many hacks out there right now designed to help you transcend the computer’s messages, they can prevent you from experiencing further pain, but they don’t help you heal the wounds still inside you that hurt when touched. The wounds associated with not being okay with yourself exactly as you are.

If we are going to bring love into our lives and into this world, it starts with surrendering to all of the uncomfortable thoughts and emotions so that we can discern the destructive messages of our conditioning. Once we identify those messages – and this takes a LOT of courage, we can extend compassion to ourselves and start tapping into the infinite power to heal ourselves and the world. We can heal the bruised and frightened child within us who longs to play, to create, to be curious, and to be adventurous.

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