Anytime someone digs into their patterns of behavior and uncovers the root cause or causes of the belief that created the thought that created the feeling that caused the behavior, we tend to uncover things that we then can see throughout our lives. When we experience a trigger, something that connects us right back to that feeling of unworthiness, that feeling of being unsafe, of not being whole, we have an opportunity. We can use it as a springboard to heal some deep trauma, perhaps creating new beliefs that help us think/feel/behave differently, we can use it to understand ourselves better and make different choices. We can use it to change or not, we have an opportunity to make a choice. No choice can be made without awareness.
These triggers do not always uncover trauma with capital T, sometimes it is the small t traumas that truly created our belief system, our reactions come from a lot of places. They are traumas all the same. They made us feel something bad, low level energy, that then caused us to believe it as truth. People’s words, people’s behavior toward us created some of these wounds that left unchecked have created a pattern of behavior. Some of those behaviors could more about how we see the world, versus things we do. We may look at life through a lens of lack, of not having enough. That can come from hearing our parents argue about money. That could come from knowing we didn’t have much as children. That could come from having friends who didn’t have much. We could look at life through a lens of individualism and only caring about ourselves because we had a parent who did that, and we didn’t feel cared for. We may have been isolated a lot as a child and feel that the only way to do anything is to do ourselves. It could create hyper-independence and an inability to ask for help, even when we need it. We may have had an experience where we watched a parent or another adult use food as punishment or reward and therefore our relationship with food is difficult, either we eat too much and rely on it as a panacea or we don’t eat much and control our lives through food. There are so many ways that these patterns become a part of us. They are nobody’s fault, they just exist due to conditioning, interpretations, assumptions.
Recently through work I have embarked on to truly change my mindset, my behavior, my results, so I can be the best version of me I can be, I have uncovered a trigger that I believe I have ignored. I also uncovered the behavior and belief that I have due to this trigger. Although I had come to understand it somewhat a few months ago, it came out loud and clear yesterday. Not only did I figure out where this trigger began, I started to see all the places it impacted me and how I have behaved because of it. The 2 biggest behaviors associated with it have been tears/crying and lashing out/defending.
Yesterday I was in a class for Pilates instructors. Whether I decide to instruct in the future or not, I am enjoying how much I am learning about the body as well as the focus of Pilates. In doing so I am definitely deepening my practice and learning more about how to help me become stronger, more flexible and create stability especially in my spine. Really great for someone my age. We were trying an exercise on the reformer (the machine that you can use for many pilates exercises that gives you the ability to do a lot of isolated muscle movements and helps you focus on alignment and less on joint issues) called the corkscrew. This exercise which is an advanced exercise calls for you to do a rollover where your feet go up over your head as you lie on your back. You get yourself up onto your shoulders and then with small isolated movements using your abdominal muscles you move your body and legs around like a clock. It is not an easy exercise. My partner was trying to help me and I wasn’t able to do this exercise well. Our instructor came over to help my partner with how to help me and to get me to do at least part of the exercise. Up to this point I was able to do each exercise, some more difficult than others to get the form right, but got them eventually. This one I couldn’t seem to do without a lot of help. I got up from reformer and felt the stinging of the tears in my eyes. As my instructor was talking to me about how I did do it, I felt the tears. I felt the stare of my partner on the back of my head. I felt as if my chest was closing and knew I had to get out of the room. I excused myself and walked out in full fledged tears. The gentleman who is the massage therapist at this studio was sitting in a chair in the hall as I walked by. His words stuck with me, “you must be processing something.” I looked at him and smiled through my tears and said yes. I remembered the quote by Abraham-Hicks I had recently read that said “tears are a release of resistance, every time.”
I began to think about what I was resisting that the tears had flowed. I stood in the restroom looking at my tearstained cheeks and realized that this all came from my fear of being embarrassed. That I resist doing many new things for fear that I will embarrass myself. Throughout my life I have either held back so that I am not embarrassed, cried when I was, lashed out when I was or was so self-deprecating that no one person could hurt me more than what I said or thought about myself. Self-deprecation was my best defense against feeling embarrassed, I did that so much through my life. I made myself feel unworthy, not whole, and unloved.
That embarrassment came in many forms as a child but one of the most vivid memories of it was second grade. I am sure I am not the only one whose mom cut her hair. My mom cut my hair so short that when I went to school I was made fun of, kids laughing asking who the new boy was in class. I was so embarrassed that when I got home I told my mother that I was 1) never going back to that school again (which I did) and 2) I was never letting her touch my hair again (which she did not!). I didn’t get another haircut except for a trim of the dead ends for about 7 more years. I sat on my hair by 6th grade. It was long and beautiful, and hard to handle and I didn’t care. She wasn’t cutting it, I was never going to be made fun of like that again.
That experience taught me a lot. It taught me that I didn’t like being different. It taught me that I would never wear short hair ( and I have only very briefly ever had my hair up to my shoulders or shorter). It taught me that I didn’t want to ever be embarrassed by something again, where I would be made fun of by my peers. This is why I became self-deprecating. If I made fun of something I did, then the power of others making fun of me dissipated.
My drive home from yesterday allowed me to fully process what occurred. I was embarrassed that here I am someone who wants to teach Pilates, who thinks they are strong, and I couldn’t do something that I would have to teach. I was embarrassed that perhaps I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. Perhaps this is another thing I start but quit before it comes to fruition. I was embarrassed that I cried, in front of people who now only know me as a crybaby, something that I heard a lot as a child. I was embarrassed that as a 60 year old woman I became flustered just because I couldn’t so something.
As I processed, I saw all the other times that I reacted due to embarrassment. Stopping going to a class in college because I didn’t understand the material, already having the muscle of “don’t ask for help that says you are weak” and I was embarrassed that I couldn’t get these concepts. I remembered a time when I had a number of friends over to my home back in my late 20’s and when we looked for something in my kitchen that had fallen we saw old food under my stove. I was so embarrassed by that, I cried and lashed out. I remembered times at work when I tore into myself so others would not so I wasn’t embarrassed by something. I reminded myself of times I was embarrassed at a baseball game with my parents and nephew. The guys behind us made fun to my larger ass and I was mortified. I didn’t stand up the rest of the game.
Embarrassment has been a trigger for me for a very long time. I have reacted, I have felt rejected and I have beaten myself up for the meaning I attached to each and every one of these situations. I realize that this is a trigger that I need to heal. I need to release this feeling of rejection and self loathing that is attached to embarrassment. I need to find a new belief that helps me move to acceptance versus embarrassment for things.
The trigger is helping me to heal small “t” trauma. By understanding the trigger and finding a new belief to help me accept myself fully and with love and compassion, I can heal and move forward to the woman I am destined to become.
Triggers help us heal if we heed their knowledge. If we process and understand them and then change our beliefs and therefore our thoughts and action, we will have different results. As painful as yesterday was in the moment, it was welcomed as it gave me new perspective to something.
Triggers and healing, they go together.