When someone triggers us, it is our own stuff and it is difficult to own them

This has got to be one of the most difficult lessons for all of us: being triggered and owning it. 

If we are honest with ourselves, and if we count the number of times we are triggered by people we love, our friends, things we read, people we see, and even strangers have tremendous power to trigger us. 

And all this time, we think that it is other people that are off and that they should change. Now granted, there are people who really need to change their behaviour but that is not up to us, neither is it our place to tell them they need to change unless of course, they tread on our territory. And they personally attack us or do something to us. Then we need to make a stand.

So how do we know when we are triggered? Sometimes, it is so hard to see, because we have established in our minds, and many others have established the same thing that a particular person's behaviour is unacceptable or odd, and just not "normal". Would that be considered a trigger?

It is a trigger if we keep talking about it with others hoping to get more people to be on the same page as us and if it irritates us on any level. 

Things get even more blurry when the person has done us wrong, and we still keep thinking about it, and feelings of resentment surfaces, or we feel repelled by their energies. 

Yes, all of these are triggers! In other words, we cannot justify or come up with an excuse to deny that they are triggers if some irritation is being brought up!

These triggers would bring tremendous wisdom to us if we are brave enough to sit with the triggered emotions, unveil the true cause of the bad feelings we feel inside our body, and in the pit of our stomach. This just means there is healing to be done. 

Another form of trigger which many of us may have experienced is when someone points their finger at us, and say, haha you're triggered. What is happening there? In this situation, the person pointing the finger is possibly more triggered than us! Because it shows how much energy has been laying latent there, for the person to wait for the right moment to pounce it on us. So something has triggered this person some time ago, and it has been brewing as passive aggression, and when the time for it came, they saw the opportunity and so they use it to direct the passive aggression towards us. Interesting eh?

[If you see yourself doing this, pointing out to others that they are triggered and you're not their coach or teacher or anything, then some deeper soul searching is needed.]

Owning whatever triggers us, difficult and uncomfortable as they may be, once we heal from the root cause of the triggers with the understanding that it has nothing to do with the other, brings new levels of freedom. 

This freedom is one that we feel within our soul and our beingness. We know we're no longer in the clutches of that particular deep wound manifested through different people in our various interactions. 

This freedom gives us more room for growth, and we see the world quite differently, sans the lens of our wounds. So the more we heal, the more freedom we will experience from the depths of our heart outwards. 

Take the plunge my friends, and experience and own the triggers as if there is no other way to heal, because, there is no way to heal except going inwards. 

©2021 Shamala Tan

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Shamala Tan is an author, spiritual entrepreneur and healer. Her work focuses on transforming the lives of others on the spiritual, emotional, mental and earthly level.

One of her success stories as an author is to being featured alongside New York’s bestsellers Sonia Choquette, Robert Allen, Arielle Ford, Marci Shimoff as well as Christine Kloser in the book Pebbles In The Pond.

Shamala’s clients include small business owners, holistic practitioners as well as those seeking to find more significant meaning and value in life. Shamala offers laser coaching to her clients on a one-to-one basis or in a group environment, offline as well as online.