Understanding Our Behavioral Triggers
Commentary by
Eileen Workman
FATIGUE, STRESS, CONFUSION, fear and anxiety too often serve as behavioral triggers, causing many of us to abandon our emotional centers and jettison our inner peacefulness out of the mistaken belief that we can “fix” our feelings by fixing our surroundings.
The problem with that assessment?
These “surroundings” often include other people who have little to no idea that we are experiencing any of the above emotional symptoms. So when we direct attention outward and misidentify “others” as the source of our triggering, we actually bypass our own deepest source wisdom that is lovingly informing us what we truly need.
Why do we experience these symptoms in the first place? We experience fatigue because our body signals that it needs rest and recharging.
We experience confusion because our mind signals that cognitive dissonance has arisen and we need to relax and stop trying so hard to make sense of what we don’t yet understand.
We experience fear because our emotional body is signaling an urgent need to move away from vibrational frequencies we feel, but cannot see.
We experience stress and anxiety because our entire system begs for relief when we have over-invested in past stories and future expectations.
Notice that these signals are internal mechanisms designed to inform us how to be or not be—not to inform us how to change or fix others, or how to change or fix our environment.
Too often, we interpret our own inner distress as motivation to blame, shame, or guilt “others” into radically altering their own behaviors so that we no longer need to experience these important feedback signals. But what happens when we take radical self-responsibility for attending to these inner feedback loops and use them to inform us what needs changing—within our personal field of awareness?
When fatigue arises while we are in a public setting, we can gracefully extract ourselves and go rest as a form of loving self-care.
When confusion arises while we are engaging in dialogue, we can take a moment to breathe in and allow the mind to calm itself, or we can simply drop our attachment to thinking “about” whatever seems to be troubling us in the moment.
When fear arises, we can come more present and aware of why the frequency of fear has arisen. If it’s a genuine emergency, we can move away from the perceived threat. If the fear has arisen because we have misinterpreted the vibrational frequency of others as “dangerous” to our well-being we can relax and allow the feeling to pass, because likely it’s simply an echo of a past situation.
When stress and anxiety occur, we can realize these signals serve as invitations for us to come more alive to THIS present moment and to be lovingly and tenderly compassionate with ourselves.
This does not mean we stop changing things, or that others will now not ever change because we haven’t actively sought to fix them. What it does mean?
We have reclaimed our inner power to reconnect with our souls, hearts, minds, and bodies in ways that best serve us, without us needing to apply physical force, the emotional abuse of shaming or blaming or guilting, or the mentally prompted repression of others in order to “fix” what presently disturbs us.
Embracing and honoring the wisdom of our own inner feedback loops empowers us to live our healthiest, happiest, and most creative lives with peaceful intentionality.
— Eileen Workman
Author of Raindrops of Love For a Thirsty World
and Sacred Economics (The Currency of Life)
.
.
by 