Triggers – From A Loving Place

Daily Aligning with Love, Abundance, and Peace #267

I’m grateful for word triggers. On Day #266 (click on number to read post), I went deep into the healing potential from emotional triggers. I mentioned a recent experience of going on a very quick healing journey from a word trigger. I’m still in the state of AWE from that experience. It was probably my fastest healing experience I’ve had so far. That is why I’m feeling a calling to go deeper into the journey of healing through triggers with you here. The next couple days will be full of helpful tools I’m using to free myself from those places that still hold attachments to the energy of fear, lack, and separation. Today, is all about the power I give to words.

Let me repeat, I’m talking about the power I give to words. The words themselves hold no energy. I put the energy into any word I hear, think, and speak. I do cover some of this in the book I’ve already written. The information is down below if you feel called to read it.

My stories around words can align me with the energy of love, abundance, and peace or fear, lack, and separation. Now, I can spot them pretty quick. If I have a negative, defensive, or aggressive reactions because of words, guaranteed I have a story around them. If you look around anywhere on social media, you will see people reacting to trigger words. A trigger word can be something like my latest—coping. If you look up the definition, you would think that this would be a word I would love. It’s right up my ally with everything that I do, but because I had a story of someone using the word in a way that I would end up hurt, scared, and on constant egg shells, I couldn’t see the beauty of the word until now. I’ve written about other words on the blog throughout the years. I’m so grateful when these words come up for me because they offer me a direct pathway to healing. Some take longer than others, but with a lot of practice, I’m seeing the healing move so much faster.

I once hated so many words, now I know that if I put the energy of hate into anything, I’m aligning with the energy of fear, lack, and separation. The beauty of understanding the power people put into words, I’ve learned not to take it personally when someone verbally attacks me over words. I know that is their stuff. This doesn’t mean I won’t take a person’s feelings under consideration, sometimes I’m naive or ignorant to how a word affects a person or group of people. I never want my words to hurt people, so even if I didn’t intend it that way, I will do my best to do better next time.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Maya Angelou

I’ve given myself so much power back by taking responsibility for the stories I CHOOSE to put around words. I don’t HAVE to let any word have a negative effect on my energy if I choose a story that doesn’t give the word any power to hurt me. Just because I know the power of doing this for myself doesn’t mean I won’t honor someone’s feelings they are having about a word. I know how painful it can be, and I don’t wish that pain on anyone. The feelings are real, they are based on perceptions of thought, but that doesn’t mean they are any less valid. The more I understand about emotional triggers of any kind, the more compassionate I am towards others. That is a gift in itself.

Today, I commit to go within when I feel an emotional reaction to a word. I like seeing if words still hold a negative charge in me because it means I have the opportunity to heal and grow. It’s not always the obvious words either. Some people can feel triggered by words like amazing, awesome, God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, okay, babe, baby, sweetie, etc. Then there are sayings like, “You complete me.” That was one that really hit me the wrong way after I read a few books on codependency. I remember looking for romantic cards and getting so mad. It’s not the saying, it’s my perspective after coming out of an toxic relationship. Romance was used as a manipulation tool, I had some very strong feelings about it as I came out of it. The more I healed, the less reaction I had. Now, I can respond to the saying without aligning with the energy of fear, lack, and separation.

Here’s what I will be doing today to help me see what words I’m having a reaction to and if that reaction is aligned with love, abundance, and peace or fear, lack, and separation. If you are going to do this with me, write your answers down because in tomorrow’s exercise I will help you tap into your physical signals with the information that comes up today.

Write down any word that people say that I have a physical or emotional reaction to
Write down any feelings associated with the words
Write down any stories come up that are tied to that emotional/physical reactions
Ask myself: Is the story I’m telling myself about this word helping me to align with the energy of love, abundance, and peace?
Look up each word in the dictionary.
Ask myself: Is there a story that would keep me aligned with the energy of love, abundance, and peace?
If I need help, I will pray for wisdom and guidance through this process.

The reminder I go back to time and time again is my I am responsible and accountable statements that I talked about in yesterday’s post. Getting caught up in my story aligned with fear, lack, and separation never serves my highest good. The more I become responsible and accountable, the more I love my life. I’m so completely grateful for this journey with words.

With Love, Abundance, and Peace,

©Rachael Wolff 2021

Author of Letters from a Better Me: How Becoming an Empowered Woman Transforms the World—Click the book cover to start reading or listening today!

Here’s the interview where my most recent word trigger came up…

https://nitasweeney.com/2021/04/author-interview-rachael-wolff/

April 24, 2021April 24, 2021

Rachael Wolff1 Comment

Daily Aligning with Love, Abundance, and Peace #266

I’m grateful for the path inward revealed by emotional triggers. I recently had an AHA moment about emotional triggers. It was something I logically knew, but finally sunk down into an emotional connection of truly absorbing and understanding. I cannot trigger others and they cannot trigger me. I can feel triggered, which is a sign I have emotional stuff to work on that is keeping me aligned with the energy of fear, lack, and separation. The only thing the other person is doing is providing me a path inward. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to go inward and get to see what is keeping me in an energy I don’t want to be living in.

I love when things hit me on a deeper level. This is just another way I’m tapping into taking my power back. I LOVE IT! I know when I’m feeling triggered, it’s mine, but to really dive in and to go through the actual emotions and tap into each one is a priceless gift. Someone else is not MAKING me feel unsafe, I feel unsafe. Someone else is not making me feel pressured, I feel pressured. Someone else is not MAKING me feel unwanted, I feel unwanted. Someone else is not MAKING me feel uncomfortable, I feel uncomfortable. Someone else is not making me feel neglected, I feel neglected. If you have been reading along with me, you know I talk about the mantra:

I find that each statement offers paths to go deeper. So, I’m going in… When I feel emotionally triggered, it’s important for me to look at each individual feeling that the exchange is bringing up and see the opportunity to heal them. This taps into making statements of “I feel ______________ because_______________” without placing blame on the other person. How another person acts, thinks, and lives isn’t about me, that is about them. That is theirs to figure out. What I can do is take care of my own emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, and financial health. I can choose to live in the energy of love, abundance, and peace and see MY triggers as a pathway inward to healing. Doesn’t that sound so much better than being the victim of someone else’s choices? It does to me, so that is really all that matters for my personal journey.

Today, I commit to looking at my emotional triggers as an opportunity to heal, grow, and empower myself. When I make this statement, it helps me commit to the journey of looking deeper. It keeps me from jumping into the STORY of what someone else did and how that is affecting me. It’s my story of what the other person did that is affecting me, not what they did. What they did offers me an opportunity to see my stories of my past and how they are affecting me now. What they did gives me the opportunity to show my strength, perseverance, hope, faith, and commitment to staying in the energy of love, abundance, and peace.

I recently wrote about being triggered by something that was happening while I was writing my piece (#252). I KNEW I was being shown an opportunity to get out of my own way, which was the topic of that post. I had no idea how much deeper this one experience would take me. There was a layer that had to be revealed later. Just a couple days ago, I read a word in an interview question that made my body physically react. The first thing I did was look up the definition of the word. The word had a great and empowering definition, so why did I have a knot in my stomach. I sat in my breath and realized I was feeling fearful, like the feeling of walking on eggshells kind of fearful, and anxious. Then BAM it hit me. My ex used to use the word when he was making an excuse for drinking or doing drugs. I took a deep breath and the knot, fear, and anxiety went away just like that. My energy was fully aligned with love, abundance, and peace so seeing things clearly and feeling the Divine connection came in so strong. I felt the AWE in the wisdom, which is how I know it was connected to the Divine truth which fully aligns me with love, abundance, and peace. That’s how fast a healing of something extraordinary painful can happen if we let ourselves go there. I could have easily got defensive and said how much I hate the word. I could have blamed the interviewer for the use of the word or I could have blamed my ex for ruining the word, but all any of that would do is keep me in the energy of fear, lack, and separation. That energy doesn’t feel good to me, so I’m so grateful I stayed aligned with the energy of love, abundance, and peace instead.

I’ve been asked before, “What does it looks like to feel painful feelings and stay aligned with love, abundance, and peace through it?” There is your answer. I let my body’s reaction guide me into the feelings. Then the feelings took me to the story that I was attaching to the word. Seeing the definition of the word offered me healing by understanding the word beyond my story. I didn’t blame or shame myself or anyone else in the process. My body felt expansive after a few minutes. I felt lighter.

Before all this happened, I put a question out to the Universe: Why is it so important that I identify the individual feelings when I’m processing feeling emotionally triggered? What I realized is that when I break it down, I can take full ownership of the feelings, which gives me the power to do something about them. If I don’t look at them individually, I can’t go back to heal where the stories about the feelings have taken charge of my life. If I felt neglected as a teenager, and somewhere deep inside I blamed a family member or members for the things that happened to me because of not having the attention I felt I needed… I’m going to get triggered by anything to do with feelings of neglect. I’m going to feel triggered by parents I feel are neglecting their kids, breaking it down might feel like anger, rage, frustration, and even hate in extreme cases. If a child feels neglected, I’m going to feel triggered. This trigger could surface as sadness, grief, loneliness, being unsafe and unprotected, fear, etc. These are just some examples, but it’s in those individual feelings that I’m given a doorway into healing my own past stories that are keeping me from approaching the current situation with the energy of love, abundance, and peace. If I try to MAKE other people accommodate to my feelings without healing my story, I haven’t done my job and the trigger will keep resurfacing.

The most amazing things happen when I release the old stories that keep me tied to the energy of fear, lack, and separation, I can see the current moment so much clearer. I can come at the current situation with a feeling of gratitude for what it’s showing me. If the current situation is unsafe or unhealthy, I can trust my intuition, because nothing is in my way from being in the energy of love, abundance, and peace. I project and attract so much less drama the healthier I get, and the drama that does show up has been opportunities for growth. I love this process. I’m always amazed at how much deeper I can go and how empowered I can feel.

With Love, Abundance, and Peace,

©Rachael Wolff 2021

Author of Letters from a Better Me: How Becoming an Empowered Woman Transforms the World —Click book cover to get your copy and start reading or listening today!

April 23, 2021April 21, 2021

Rachael Wolff2 Comments

Daily Aligning with Love, Abundance, and Peace #213

I’m grateful I’m open to see my emotional triggers. When I react in extreme ways that don’t match the situation, I know I’ve been triggered. If something happens and I start playing a story in my head of how I want to tell someone off or a million things that I would love to say, I know I’m emotionally triggered. If something small makes me hide behind my walls, I know I’m emotionally triggered. None of these reactions are about what is happening in the moment. They are about an old story playing about something that isn’t fully healed from my past.

I used to be very unconscious of this and take it out on the person in front of me. I would blame them for how I was feeling. I would give my power away. Now, I see when I’m triggered as an opportunity to heal. Sometimes I catch it after I react, I’m human. I’ve learned to take the space I need to see my trigger clearly. If I reacted to a loved one, I always go back to take responsibility for my reaction and explain how I was feeling and why. This has helped my relationships grow and strengthen.

I feel so blessed to have learned how to process and learn from my emotional triggers. Doing this definitely aligns me with the energy of love, abundance, and peace over fear, lack, and separation. It helps me not be vulnerable to people, groups, organizations, products, or influencers that feed on people NOT recognizing their triggers. When we don’t recognize them, we become prey to people who know how to manipulate them to get us to do what they want. The problem is when we don’t recognize them, we are unconsciously leaking out the energy of fear, lack, and separation. Like attract like, so if someone is looking for that energy, we begin to feel the magnetic force drawing us in. It’s so incredibly dangerous, I much rather take responsibility for what is mine and transform my energy into love, abundance, and peace. The people that are attracted to that energy are the ones I love spending my time with.

Today, I’m committing to take responsibility for my emotional triggers. If the feelings start coming up, I will give myself space to see what they are really about. I will take a deep breath and release it to give me space to step outside of the chaos of the emotional trigger. If I react before I catch myself, I will look at my reaction, take responsibility for it, and then learn from the experience.

Holding myself responsible and accountable for my triggers doesn’t mean I am blaming myself either. Self-blame is just another form of self-abuse which keeps us in the energy of fear, lack, and separation. Taking responsibility for my emotional triggers is about learning from them so that they don’t have power over me and making sure I don’t give myself away by unconsciously sliding into the energy of fear, lack, and separation. When I take responsibility for the energy that is coming out of me, I can do something about it. I can sit with it to learn from it, and when I’m ready, release it through forgiveness. Then, I bring myself back to the energy of love, abundance, and peace.

If you are wondering about the other party involved, I’ve learned that when I can speak clearly from an, “I feel _____________ because____________” without an extreme reaction, the other person is more open to hear what I have to say and the communication tends to be on a healthy level, unless they are an abuser. When I was dealing with an abuser, I found it best when I kept a calm voice, never blamed, and stated how I felt, but it wasn’t about how they responded. It was about me staying in my peace, because I was less appealing to attack if I genuinely remained in my peace. This took a lot of practice, and when I got REALLY good at it, I felt strong enough to leave and I never looked back. I had to interact with him over the years from time to time, but because I don’t react, I stay in my peace, I don’t blame, and I just state facts with no emotional windows for him to sneak through, he has no power of me. Remember, like attracts like. Abusers can only have power if we are in the energy of fear, lack, and separation too. They are not attracted to people who live authentically from the energy of love, abundance, and peace.

All the things I’ve been talking about for the last 213 days are all just steps on the journey. I’m sharing my daily work to stay in the energy of love, abundance, and peace as much as I can. I will slip in and out, but I want to be in more than I’m out. There are so many amazing blessings on this journey, but the key is doing things to stay conscious daily. If you want to come on this journey with me, scroll down and sign up to follow this blog. We can only create more love, abundance, and peace in the world if we are doing the work to stay in that energy as we represent what we stand for out in the world.