I’ve done a lot of work on myself. Spent considerable time over the years to learn and put into action healing methodologies that have changed my life for the better. So why this post then?
A recognition of a surfacing trigger tonight, only 10 minutes ago.
I don’t post much if anything on my personal facebook profile for various reasons. I don’t like sharing my data and personal information but another reason is that I just don’t like the platform from a personal perspective. I don’t feel the world needs to know what close friends know.
Parental alienation is not a myth. What I post here is related to the parental alienation that I have experienced and impact it has on our children too.
So I happened to look up my daughter on facebook which I haven’t done for a while. I actually do have contact with her and she lives here 50%. What I saw was a web of inter-connectivity.
She’s friended her boyfriend, my old friends who have supported the narc and hid my children from me at one stage, and these old friends that started as my friends, have done terrible things to contribute to family violence.
My daughter has friended all her Dad’s side of the family yet none of mine. She even friended her boyfriend’s mother and yet not her own mother – me. Her meddling aunt has friended my old friends and the web goes on deeper.
I felt a swell in my chest. I felt my head pumping blood and inside, I wanted to post something to the world on facebook about the truth coming out about these horrible people that support the narc. (which tells you just how triggered I was).
I wanted to reach out to one of the only ex-in-laws who might be sane, to put the truth straight.
I felt like….the narc had won.
He had done enough lies, smearing and gathered enough to make it look like I was the problem. Heck,he did such a good job that one of my children now lives with him full time even though I see the unhappiness, the lack of care and the harm.
On the inside I was screaming out. It was like an anxiety attack was rising. It felt just awful. It felt like old times. It felt familiar and yet a foreign space that I no longer dwelled in nor wished to dwell in.
Cumulative Knowledge and Lasting Healing
Sometimes when we work on our own healing we might feel like it is a momentary fix and then we are triggered again and again at various times only having to work on that same trigger.
What is more helpful is to view triggers as layers we peel back. After listening to a ‘letting go‘ podcast a really good piece of knowledge stuck with me.
We have a number of emotional states where we can recognize we might be and we may bounce between these negative states of being. The positive, natural emotional states are covered with layers of the negative emotional states. Once we work on the negatives, we can shift back to the positives and stay there more often.
All the reading, learning and, more importantly, DOING has stayed with me. So what helped me tonight? I momentarily paused, just ever so briefly and this came up….
you cannot change this through the outside world. The work needs to be on the inside and then change will occur. You have to surrender to this. It is what it is.
My inner voice.
I then felt a release of bad energy from the heart space. In this moment right now, as I write, I am still releasing and oh boy, it feels great.
Surrendering to what IS…RIGHT NOW….is really powerful. I am NOT those feelings nor those triggers. I am the awareness of those feelings and I can compartmentalize those feelings into a box and send them out into the ether.
I am able to ‘view’ the feelings and separate them from me because I am not them. I am the witness. I am made of love and all these other emotions are not my natural state.
Don’t confuse this with pushing feelings down. This isn’t about ignoring them, this is about releasing them from your heart space, and that’s exactly what I did.
Triggers as Messages
Life has events but it is us that applies meaning and emotion to those events. If there is emotion attached you will be triggered like I was tonight. Rather than surpress those emotions, just let them be. Sit with them briefly and witness the feelings. See if you can become the awareness of those feelings, not the feeling themselves. Then, put your hands on your heart and open your arms out like you are going to hug someone and let the feelings go. Do this until you feel better. If you really focus on the feelings, close your eyes and release them from your heart or chest space, you will feel better.
One last thing I came to recognise is that it might not be that my daughter doesn’t want to friend me on facebook, but it might be waiting for me to friend her. I don’t know the truth so I don’t have the right to guess. Assumptions are dangerous.
So, as you can see there were a few key take away pointers for me in the trigger I had. I will check back tomorrow on the same event and see if there are any lingering feelings but I can tell you right now that I am not feeling the trigger I was initially and I feel calm. How good is it to shift triggers that quickly! You can too. Try it!
If you like my articles and moments captured on paper, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear about your own healing journey.
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