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Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
Are You Triggered? Help For Empathic Overthinkers to Recognize and Respond Appropriately to Triggers
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In this episode, you'll discover how to spot a trigger in real time so you don't spiral, shut down, or say something you're going to regret. Welcome to Takeout Therapy Mini Session. I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist, anxiety expert and a big fan of short, powerful mindset shifts. Each Monday I'll drop one therapy Informed Insight to help you handle life with more calm, clarity and self compassion. Find more tools anytime@takeouttherapy.com okay, let's get into it. I'm so glad you showed up for today's episode. I talked about triggers on Friday and today. I just want to dig a little further in there to help you identify what's happening with you in real time. If you've ever walked away from a moment with your kid, your spouse, your mom, and thought, why did I just lose it like that? This episode is for you friend. Because parenting, marriage and family relationships are some of the most triggering parts of life. Not because anything's wrong with you or anyone else, but because those dynamics stir up old patterns fast. Today I want to teach you three quick signs that your nervous system is reacting so that you can get in there and work to regulate your system before anything goes awry. The first sign that you're getting triggered is that your body suddenly changes. Perhaps your chest tightens, or your arms. Maybe your jaw feels kind of clenched and tense, or perhaps you feel completely flooded, like this is way too much or frozen. Even if your mind says everything's fine, your body tends to disagree, so that's a good sign that you're triggered. Because triggered states live in the body, that's always the first place to check. Don't check in with your mind first, because it probably doesn't even know what's happening and will feed you a load of garbage. One great way to figure out if your body is suddenly changing its nervous system state is to place a hand on your chest or your belly or both, and ask yourself, what's happening in here right now? Always check in with your body as though it's part of your experience, right? The second sign to watch for to see if you're in a trigger is that your reaction is way bigger than the situation. The thing that happened doesn't really match the level of emotion that you're experiencing. Perhaps you snap, Maybe you shut down, you yell, you cry, or even spiral. Even though it's technically not a big deal, this right here is a great sign that you're triggered. It's your system remembering something bigger, something old and upsetting, right? So again, you can poke in here, into your experience, into this trigger and ask yourself like, what does this situation remind me of? Even a vague answer will help you break the spell and break the process that your body is going into when you get triggered. And the third sign that you might want to look for to see if you're triggered or not is that your thoughts get extreme and urgent. You say things like never or always. Like they never listen. She always criticizes me. You say things that are extreme, right? Like, I can't deal with this anymore, I'm not doing this anymore. Or really self degrading. I always screw everything up. I'm not good at relationship. This is your brain on overdrive. These are never facts. They're always just this flare up in response to your system's flare up. So just understand that when your thoughts start getting extreme and urgent, it's a good sign that you might be triggered. When your thoughts go black and white or high stakes, that's a red flag for emotional hijack. The thing I want you to understand is being able to discern whether you're triggered or not. Just part of the work. Triggers aren't weaknesses. They're signals that we have. A part of us that is trying to be seen, understood and protected. Something old from the past is bubbling up so that we can process it a little bit more. You know, processing our lives takes a lifetime. It's not like that happened. I'm going to process it now and then it'll be done. Not really how it works. It's just a process that takes place over the span of a lifetime. So even things you went through as a kid, your body's just still processing them. And when things in your life remind you, you gotta make a little space, have a little recognition, and go through a process of just taking care of yourself and pausing. The more you notice triggers, the more power that you're gonna have to pause instead of just repeat old patterns. I hope this helps you figure out when you're triggered or not so that then you can listen to last Friday's episode and do your work when you are triggered. This is what I'm doing. I'm trying to put together a fully comprehensible picture for you to deal when you get triggered. Because it's not fun having an emotional explosion. And sometimes it's not even necessary. That's your mini session for today. Something to focus on if you want this week as usual. I'll see you for another full episode on Friday. And if you want a little push in the Meantime, I head to takeouttherapy.com and join my free class to stop your overthinking habit. Yeah, I'm talking to you. I'm here to help. Until next time, be really kind to yourself, friend.