Why Getting Emotionally Triggered is the Best Thing to Happen to You

Getting emotionally triggered, experiencing discomfort, getting your button pushed is probably one of the best things to happen to you on your journey of self-evolution. Why is being triggered, having your button pushed, or becoming emotionally uncomfortable the best thing to happen to you?

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Whatever discomfort you are feeling, it’s really not about the situation, the people involved, or the event. Make note of that for yourself and permanently brand that recognition into your awareness. It’s not about the characters or landscape or the details of what is or isn’t happening. It’s not about it, it’s not about him, it’s not about her, it’s not about them, it’s not about this, then, or that. It’s entirely about what beliefs, thoughts, and emotions have become activated within you as you’re focused on the situation, circumstance or relationship (past, present, or future) that you’re focused on. Whatever pattern of thought and feeling has been brought to light is what you have to look at directly.

As you’re focused on some situation, you could have a thought come up that says “I’m being picked on” or “I’m being ignored” or “I’m not being valued” and a plethora of other judgements and conclusions. In response to that first thought then a number of other thoughts follow and the level of discomfort grows. Whatever the focus, whatever the situation, there is a current of thinking and feeling that you are generating automatically. That automatically generated pattern of thought and emotion will make you expand or contract depending on its content. If you’re feeling comfortable it is because of this automatically generated narrative. If you’re feeling uncomfortable it is again because of this automatically generated narrative.

What happens usually however is, instead of looking at the automatically generated content directly, you focus on and believe that your response is about the triggering stimuli – the person(s), relationship(s), or event(s) that has stirred up this content and brought it into your awareness. In focusing on that external source of stimulation and stirring and perpetuating the belief that it’s about this external something, you miss and overlook the true source of your discomfort – your own internal narrative.

Something amazing happens when you are triggered – a window of opportunity to update, revise or eliminate the root of that unwanted response opens up. About a five-hour window to be exact according to current research on memory reconsolidation, which is a known form of neuroplasticity. Anytime you get your button pushed and that response pattern that makes you feel anywhere from mildly uncomfortable to really uncomfortable arises, the neural cluster where that response strategy is stored has become unlocked. As that neural cluster is unlocked, it has opened itself up to change.

For anyone who has taken it upon themselves to live the art and science of self-transformation then, being triggered is the best thing that can happen for evolution, for growth, for transformation to take place because a window of, and opportunity for, total (and even instantaneous) change is opened. The moment you experience a triggered response, an internal activation that has you feeling some level of discomfort, your nervous system is ripe for restructuring. How do you evoke that restructuring? First by looking directly at the response with your full awareness. Awareness is a potent transformative power. When you look directly at a pattern, rather than just peripherally knowing it’s there, and expose it to pure awareness, that pattern gets reorganized.

Make it your practice to unravel any response strategy that is leading you into contracted states. When you are triggered look directly at your own response at the psychological, emotional, and physiological level and ask: what am I thinking here? What am I feeling? Where am I feeling it? What narrative is starting to take shape right now? What am I saying is happening? What is the emotion here? Often times, when you expose patterns in this way, you’ll become flabbergasted at the narrative that has formed and the associations that come to light. Lean into the entire pattern emerging with your full awareness without looking away or getting distracted, and you’ll find yourself transformed on every level.

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