Do you want to know how to deal with emotional triggers? I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach all
about relationships, communications, and self-mastery all over the world.
In this video, we're going to be talking about your emotional triggers and what you can do.
In this video, I'm going to share with you my plan for dealing with emotional triggers and
the same plan that I've been sharing with people all over the world now for well over 20 years.
All the steps that I'm going to share with you on this video are all part of self-government.
So, when a person is self-governing then they analyze cause and effect they
analyze their own behaviors their own thoughts and they take deliberate steps
to make a change in those thoughts. So that they don't get hung up and have the same problems again
and again. My guess is if you're with me today then you're wanting to take a good look at your
emotional triggers and figure out things that you can do to make it so that they don't trigger you
in bad ways anymore. Our emotions can either be productive or they can be
not productive. Many times when people are talking about their emotional triggers
they are talking about the types of emotions that are not productive.
They get us stuck, give us anxiety, make us feel held back, or like we can't solve our problems.
Well, those types of emotions need to be handled in a very systematic way. The first thing that
you want to do is recognize what your own thought patterns are. Do you realize that
before you feel emotional you actually have a feeling first, then you usually have a thought,
then comes the emotions. Now, occasionally you can get an emotion and then a thought but usually the
thought comes right before the emotions. If you can clue in to what the thought is that you have
right before the emotions and you can make a plan for how to deal with that thought.
The usually, you can make sure that your emotions don't trigger
you to have unproductive communication and unproductive emotions any longer. Many people
find it productive to have a regular time where they do a self-inventory and analyze where they
typically get hung up emotionally. So are there certain things that trigger you? What
are those things? If somebody says something to you that has been said before and made a specific
emotional reaction then those are the types of things that you want to write down. So, what
triggers you? You need to know that. Then you need to examine why it is that that thing triggers you,
that thought, that other person, that color, fill in the blank. I know that everybody is
triggered differently and sometimes our triggers are because of past experiences. Sometimes just
because we weren't prepared for a situation when it happened the first time we experienced it.
So, it's always good to prepare. That's what we're going to be focusing on in this video today
is how you can get prepared to handle those triggers when they come.
Let's start out by picking one trigger. What is the one trigger that troubles you the most?
So when you experience this trigger what thought do you have that is associated with the trigger?
Do you have a thought maybe like, "I always fail at this. Nobody likes me. This person
isn't safe. I'm not secure." What is the type of thought that you have when you are experiencing
this emotional trigger? That's important. In fact, you need to write that down too. We're only going
to deal with one trigger at a time because you can really only work on one trigger at a time.
After you have successfully worked on one trigger then each week decide on another
trigger that might need addressing. The cool thing about working on one trigger at a time
is that oftentimes just getting that one trigger the one that's the worst under control usually
makes it so that a lot of the other minor triggers are actually easier to control or sometimes just
come into control all on their own. Because sometimes they're related to that big one.
So, what are the thoughts that you're having write those things down. Before I get to the
next steps in this process subscribe to this channel. There are new videos just like this
that come out every single day and you're not going to want to miss them subscribe now.
We just took some time to identify the way that we are thinking and writing down some of
the actual thoughts that we experience. Then those follow-up thoughts are the evidence.
So, write down what type of evidence that you have for that type of thought that you keep having
when you're having an emotional trigger. So, maybe if you feel afraid of this one person maybe it's a
man. I know that some people feel emotionally triggered just by being around people of the
opposite sex. Well, then you're gonna find the evidence for why you are feeling afraid.
Well, maybe I had a bad experience with a man one time or maybe I made a fool of myself
in front of a girl one time. Whatever it happens to be so you write down that evidence.
Then comes the fun part. Now, we have to debunk that evidence. In fact,
usually when we're thinking our one thought that happens again and again
that triggers this emotional response every time we have it, it's because we are not looking
at the entire picture. If we're completely truthful there's a lot more that we could assess
than we are. So how do you debunk this evidence that we've already collected? Well, sometimes if
you just state the complete opposite then you can actually find truths that you didn't see before.
So, maybe you have had a bad experience with a girl before or a boy has mistreated you before.
Well, you could also say, "But I know many men who have not mistreated me or I have had
many communications over the years with girls that actually have been fun and have gone well.
So I don't need to worry." So it's important that we state facts to ourself that actually
challenge some of the things that we think are absolute truths all the time.
One of the reasons that we're triggered emotionally every time by these thoughts is
because we have a habit of jumping to conclusions. Assuming that just because something happened one
time that it's going to happen again and again and that simply isn't true. The very fact that
human beings progress throughout their life is evidence that we do not always stay the same.
We become different we improve or we don't. But we are constantly changing learning and growing.
Because of that fact, we can assume that we can have new experiences that don't have to feel the
same way the past emotional experience felt. This can give us permission to let go of those triggers
and not use them to debilitate us any longer. The next thing you want to do is advise yourself.
Advise yourself like you would advise one of your friends. You wouldn't tell one of your friends
that everything is hopeless. You wouldn't tell one of your friends that they need to get away from
everything that bothers them. You would try to encourage them to cope with it.
You would help them develop a plan because that's what good friends do.
They prepare their friends for success.
We need to start being our friends instead of our own enemies. Do you realize that when
you get stuck in emotional traps because of your emotional triggers
that you are actually becoming your own enemy.
It's true, so let's start by being our friend and thinking the best of ourselves. Thinking that we
can conquer more than we think and let's make a productive plan.
So what kinds of things would you plan for yourself to overcome this emotional trigger.
Well, usually a good skill set is a nice way to go. So, I teach skill sets all of my teaching
self-government parenting stuff and communication stuff revolves around people learning skill sets.
Well, one of the skill sets that is vital to controlling our emotional triggers is the
skill set accepting a no answer. So when a person accepts a no answer they look at the situation or
the personm they keep a calm face voice and body, they say okay or they disagree appropriately
with whatever's happening which is what we just have talked about doing within our own heads.
Disagreeing with those things that we think are true and then we drop the subject. Dropping the
subject is huge you can plan ahead of time to drop the subject. To tell yourself I will not think
about this anymore. In fact, you can even tell yourself what you will replace that thought with.
Maybe you will replace that thought with the thought of something you can do to serve and
help someone else. Usually when a person is emotionally triggered they tend to disconnect.
So, a good counter thought or a counter plan is to drop the subject about disconnecting
and to tell yourself to go ahead and connect with the people around you. That is a recipe
for how to get your emotional triggers under control. In fact, we can self-govern so many
things about our lives. If you've enjoyed this video, I know that you will like the free class
that I'm going to give you next which is called the expectation trap versus the cycle for success.
In fact, this expectation trap is actually all about when people get triggered and what they can
do to conquer those triggers. So click the link to that free class now and I will see you there.