Trigger Truths
Your boss says, "can we chat later today?" And forty-five seconds later, you've been fired, you're updating your resume in your head, and you're already rehearsing how you'll break the news to your family.
Your best friend takes three hours longer than usual to text back. By hour two, you've decided she's pulling away, she's talked to someone about you behind your back, and honestly, you probably deserve it because you're too much anyway.
Your partner sighs while you're mid-sentence at dinner. One breath, that's it, and suddenly you're not talking about your day anymore, you're silently drafting the opening argument for why this relationship was doomed from the start.
None of this happened. Not one part of it. A comment. A delay. A sigh at the dinner table. And somewhere in the space of a single breath, you've built an entire disaster movie, complete with a soundtrack, and cast yourself as the person everyone's finally figured out.
That's not a character flaw. That's a trigger, and it moves faster than you can think your way around it.
This is exactly the territory of the sixth chakra, your third eye. It's the seat of clear sight, of intuition, of seeing what's actually happening instead of the story your nervous system slaps on top of it in a nanosecond. And a trigger is, quite literally, your third eye going momentarily blind. You stop seeing the boss, the friend, the sigh at the table, and you start seeing the disaster movie instead, so vividly and so fast that it feels like the truth.
Here's the part that actually matters: the story always arrives faster and louder than the facts. By the time you notice you're spiraling, you're usually three acts in. The trick isn't stopping the spiral before it starts, because half the time you won't catch it in time. The trick is noticing the sensation underneath it, the moment right before your sight actually clouds over.
Before the story, there's always a feeling. Your face gets hot. Your chest tightens. Your stomach drops out from under you like a missed stair. Your jaw sets before you've even registered you're upset. That sensation is the actual signal. The five-act tragedy your brain writes on top of it is just commentary.
So here's the practice: the second you feel that heat, that tightness, that drop, pause and say to yourself, "hmm, isn't that interesting." Not "why am I like this." Not "get it together." Just curious. Isn't that interesting. That pause is the third eye blinking back open. It's the moment you go from seeing the disaster movie to seeing the actual room you're standing in.
I also need to be totally honest with you: that pause won't always land before the reaction. Sometimes you'll already be three texts deep into a passive-aggressive spiral before you catch yourself. That's fine. That's still a win. The pause can happen in the recovery instead of the moment, and it still does the job, it still interrupts the story enough to ask what's actually going on.
Because here's the truth underneath all of it: your triggers aren't about the comment, the delay, or the sigh. They're pointing to something still lingering in your nervous system, something that got wired in a long time ago and never got the memo that it's safe now. The boss's "can we chat later" isn't dangerous. But perhaps some earlier version of you learned that being called into a room meant something was about to go wrong, and that part of you is still on high alert, still scanning for the same danger, still ready to build the worst-case scenario before you've even sat down.
You don't have to believe every story your nervous system hands you. You just have to notice when it's handing you one, meet it with compassionate curiosity instead of judgment, and let your third eye open back up long enough to see what's actually underneath. What's fact and what's fiction.
There's an old saying: the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. Your triggers are just the truth, arriving a little early and a little loud. Get curious about what they're really pointing at, and freedom is usually right on the other side.
Love what you read here? Send to a friend or subscribe for more posts, perks, and inspiration!
0 Comments