It's not a trigger warning, it's a trigger opportunity
A Motley Mystic Monday Moment
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Welcome to the Motley Mystic Monday Moment. Each week I'll be providing you with a tool you can use for your spiritual growth and giving you an invitation to think differently about your spirituality and how you're connecting with the Divine (God, the Universe, the Holy – however you may understand this overall life-giving force).
I got triggered yesterday while having lunch with a couple of dear friends. The specifics are not important to share. But, my ego had an immediate reaction to the trigger: Never have lunch with these people again – you don't need this kind of negativity in your life!
Ego always has immediate answers to whatever challenges arise – and those solutions may make us happy and seem to solve the problem, but it doesn't. The ego only ever offers short-term solutions that make us feel like immediate winners. Think of all the smug, gotcha responses you made on Facebook posts that were satisfying in the moment. The ego says, "Hey you handled that well," but really the ego has driven you right off a cliff by helping you avoid dealing with the underlying trauma that caused you to be triggered in the first place. Rest assured, though, it will be back, bigger and badder than ever, whether it's 20 minutes from now or 20 years. So, we have to go deeper.
I've been doing my work long enough to know that first, loud, solve-this-right-now, ego reaction was not the answer when I got triggered. So, instead of having a reactive experience over lunch, I relaxed, took some deep breaths and waited. Not long after my initial reaction, I heard that still, small voice of spirit say: "What if your friends are really just trying to help you? What if they're offering you a way to expand your spirit?"
And honestly, they were. Not even so much in whatever suggestion they had for me – but because it triggered me. They gave me a gift – the chance to expand my spirit – BY triggering me. My ability to be in that moment – to no react in my ego, gave me the chance to see the true blessing in the encounter.
A lot of what triggers us, if we explore it, comes from a fear if violating some societal expectation that's ingrained within us, or from childhood traumas. The conversation with my friends hit some childhood stuff about being told I was doing something wrong – even when what I was doing felt right and good and jibed with my own inner integrity.
This was what happened around my sexual orientation. The church of my youth – not to mention society at large – had me so convinced that I was the spawn of the devil that I was afraid people would reject me, or worse yet, harm me in some way if they knew I was a lesbian. I got triggered all the time about this until I realized the source of my fear is simply some made up doctrine from long-dead church fathers and had absolutely no basis in fact, let alone being grounded in love. It was just an unfounded prejudice that got canonized in a religious body's dogma. Once I realized that, my fear and anxiety were gone. I'm not triggered by that anymore.
The key though is to always live into your integrity, no matter what society or your religion says about it, and you can only do that by healing your inner traumas and ignoring the ego's quick-fix solutions that feel good in the moment but leave your wounds unhealed.
The most important thing about this lunch with my friends was that I discovered a trigger, whether I take their advice or not has nothing to do with it. The gift they gave me was the chance to expand, to heal a long-held trauma and be willing to see things in a new light. They gave me the chance to experience a miracle. I want those kinds of people in my life.
You don't have to wait for a trigger. Scroll through Facebook for five minutes and you'll find one. Instead of allowing your loud ego voice to drive you – or write your reply for you – I invite you this week, when you feel triggered, breathe deeply, relax and do not do whatever pops into your head first, because that will always be the ego's short-term, feels-good-right-now solution.
Instead, take that trigger and do whatever is needed to feel it completely and release it. Whether you need to write it out, cry it out, exercise it out, meditate it out or yoga it out, this is your opportunity to heal. It's an opportunity to ignore the ego's urge to go for that immediate, feel-good solution that doesn't solve your problem, and step into your integrity by healing past wounds.
Let me know how it goes for you!
(And thanks to my friend Wes Heath for the "trigger warning"/"trigger opportunity" idea.)
Music for the Journey
“Let it Be,” The Beatles
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass. She is also a musician and avid beer drinker.