How getting triggered into anxiety can lead to self-love and freedom

As a sensitive person, you may find that you often get triggered into fight or flight or a stress response. Maybe you’re really familiar with feeling stress, anxiety, or fear, and have patterns of reactions that you wish you didn’t have.

The way to deal with this might be the opposite of what you think, but when you respond in a certain way, you have the power to heal and move forward, experiencing less anxiety and overwhelm in the long run.

Getting Triggered into Fight or Flight

Last week I was lucky enough to take a trip to St. Lucia 💃🏻🌴😎 It was amazing, and so very needed!! 

One night, we were sitting down for dinner and what was gonna be an amazing experience - a chef that comes to you and prepares your meal right there in your villa! The sun had just set and we were outside on our balcony enjoying the warm, moist breeze that you get to feel on your skin when you're lucky enough to be in the Caribbean.

And I could feel it - I could feel my nervous system begin to escalate, my thoughts start to ramp up, and that part of me that doesn't feel safe start to step forward, trying to either control the situation or somehow escape.

I knew what was happening - it was the part of me that's been triggered countless times in the past in certain situations around food. The “eating disorder" part, you could say.

This is a part of me that I've been healing for a long time now. She was created when I was about 16 years old, after a traumatic breakup in high school that led to me running away to France my senior year among other things (like an eating disorder).

Over the years I've healed and grown, but it's a journey, and you don't just get there. You evolve as you go, until one day, maybe, this part of you feels safe again. 💗

So here she was. I've felt her many times in the past, and it's ebbed and flowed depending on what was going on in my life and in the moment. I've worked on healing in therapy, coaching, and through EMDR.

Observing the Overwhelm

In the past, as a reaction to her, I would have done a variety of things - gotten mad at the situation I was in, tried to control it or change it, judged myself as there being something wrong with me because my emotional response wasn't making sense and was too big for what the situation called for…

Getting triggered into this fight or flight response would have gone on to negatively effect the rest of my day and even into the next days. Until eventually, whether through support or enough time, I would have moved on, potentially healing another little bit.

But this time was different.

This time, I watched. I observed what was happening within me - the discomfort, the thoughts, the judgements, the fears - and while a part of me was reacting, another part simply watched with acceptance.

There was a deep wisdom within me that knew that there was no stopping it, and no need to. This is a wisdom that's come after years of self-judgement, and noticing how that was working out for me (not well).

Instead I knew that when I'm triggered in this way, you don't rationalize your way out of it. It's not a job for your prefrontal cortex that likes to analyze and make sense of things. No. It's a job for the part of you that knows how to hold space for your very human self.

So I watched, with love, as this part continued to feel unsettled. I watched as she tossed and turned that night. And I accepted that even after all this time, I could still be triggered in this way.

Loving Your Way Through Anxiety and Fear

As I lay awake, another part of me was so very present. The part that knows how to hold space, to love, and to nurture. This part of me that has grown a million fold since becoming a mom. And as this younger, triggered part of me wrestled with herself, this deeper, more stable part chimed in, “I love you so much.”

Later on the next day I was sitting on the beach nursing my beautiful baby, and closing my eyes for a little rest while I had the chance. I went into a sort of meditative space where, now from a more regulated place, able to see the internal patterns more clearly than ever. It was like I could picture them all of a sudden from a bit of a distance, without being identified with them in any way.

I saw what the patterns were, and that they no longer worked for me. And because I had loved myself through this whole experience, I was able to start to think about what I wanted to create instead. What this new pattern or way of being would look like.

If I had judged myself, resisted what was happening, or tried to escape it, I'd be right where I was - still able to be triggered by certain situations out of my control, and still controlled by a pattern from my past.

But by choosing to love and accept all the very human parts of me, it opened me up not only to seeing another way, but to letting go of some of that baggage I'd been carrying for so long.

When you get triggered into patterns you no longer want to have, it's not a time to rationalize or analyze. It's a time to drop into your body so you can accept, observe, and love. THIS is how we heal. This is how we receive the wisdom we need in order to grow and evolve beyond our past conditioning, trauma, and hurts.

We are all so very human. We all can get triggered. We all have patterns - some we like and some we don't. And we are all capable of change and evolution. The key is in being kind and accepting to ourselves, and recognizing that we are not the pattern, we are simply experiencing it. 

If you loved this blog post, you might also enjoy these…