If you've grown up in childhood trauma, you most likely lose a lot of your personal time to emotional triggers. And those triggers can range from small worries like throughout the day with your partner or your kids or someone at work that someone is mad at you and tends to take up some space in your head.
And then there's a type of trigger that's like a big rupturing attachment trigger in a, in a breakup, and you can struggle with that for months. So there really are all kinds of triggers, but they will all have a present piece. A past piece in the past piece is a lot like our past is telling our body how to experience the present.
For example, raise your hand out there. If you get triggered to fear or rage with authority figures like a boss in your life. How does your body experience them based upon your past? Here are some action-based tools to try to release the emotional charge of these triggers and regulate yourself. When you're going through them, it would be amazing to just be triggered for an hour or a couple hours instead of days.
It's very common for child to trauma survivors to be triggered for days. We lose so much time to triggers until they like eventually pass, or maybe we're in a new trigger. When we're not triggered, we have so much more capacity to focus on what we want to enjoy life as best we can even get creative or do like self-nurturing things.
So these tools that I'm gonna talk about, these are all action based, not just cerebral exercises that don't really address the charge, the emotional charge of a trigger. The first one I'm gonna talk about is something called heavy hand switching. When you're triggered, grab something heavy. And switch it between your hands.
You're activating both of your hemispheres of your brain, and that rocking motion is akin to soothing a baby. Try it for several minutes or until you feel like there's a shift, and also think about two things while you're shifting the heavyweight between your hands. First is to think about how the trigger is different from what the experiences you had in childhood.
Like your boss is just your boss, maybe not an abusive parent who takes away all your personal power. The second thing to think about is how you are actually different in the present. As a kid, you had to really watch out for your parents' moods and. You have the power now to not lose yourself or lose your goodness in context of an authority figure like a boss that's in your present life.
Heavy hand switching helps bypass the triggered part of your brain by focusing on both hemispheres. From the motor movement going on between the hands, it pauses the trigger while you're focusing on regulating in the present while thinking about the past. It's common to need to do this one several times as triggers tend to be relentless sometimes.
So you can try that one. The second tool's, what I call map it out. When you're triggered, write out on paper or even email yourself about how the trigger. Feels familiar and how the trigger typically plays itself out for you in your life. Is the trigger a part of a bigger pattern for you, like with a boss or a partner or something like that?
Is there a toxic core belief from your childhood that has become activated in the present? This is what mapping an out would look like and sound like. I'm triggered about what I said at a party and I'm having a shame attack right now. It takes me back to being with my mom who would use my words against me and weaponize things I would say in the past, and all of a sudden I'd be a terrible person to her.
When I have this trigger about having conversations with people that I actually know intellectually isn't that bad, I will lose a couple days to anxiety, shame, and worry about what I said. I have this core belief from childhood that I can't get anything. Right. How are things different now and how am I different now in the present?
Well, first is, no one is thinking about what I said last night. I'm not in trouble and I have the power to be human and say whatever, but growing up I had to be vigilant and perfect F that. That's what it sounds like. So mapping out the trigger. Like heavy hand switching puts our brain into a different space and out of the triggered thoughts, like they're, they're mad at me.
I can't believe I said that. Blah, blah, blah. Mapping it out, we're exploring, we're getting curious. We're using more of our thinking brain than our emotional brain. And incidentally, I'll have a list of toxic core beliefs that I mentioned in mapping it out in the video description that you can reference.
The third tool is what I call hit it in the childhood trauma work that I do. A big part of that work is what I call truth work or rage work. In short, what this looks like is when you're triggered, you write out a list of like 10 things relating your issues to how abusive your parents were about the issue.
Be specific, and you'll see what I mean in a minute. Find something to hit a karate bag, a drum, a pillow, a cardboard box. Even if you don't want to hit, you can rip up old t-shirts. You can hit your bed with like a, a foam nerf bat or a broom, drumsticks on a pillow. Whatever you can hit. Something in safety.
What you do in this is you think of the abusive piece from childhood and how it relates to what you're triggered about now, like feeling shame about that. Maybe you were just people pleasing and it, the idea is to put that issue of people pleasing back on the abusers. It only works if you're able to use your voice and say what you would want to say to the abusive caretaker now, and the idea is to actually get angry and release the charge and stand up for your inner child about the trigger.
Don't do this in person with a childhood abuser that's not productive or safe, or not even, uh, good for you, you know, or, or even good for them. What this sounds like when you're hitting is you set me up to always be perfect and I people please, because you couldn't handle your emotions or handle being a parent, it's your fault that I treat people like they're always mad at me.
Is what that would look like and sound like. A reminder is that you are not bad for voicing anger. It's a normal human emotion and you're not putting it on anyone in the present, which is what actually what we needed our parents to do with their emotions. Hitting something, using your voice and putting the issue on the abusive parent for accountability gives us perspective and it's about saying.
This is about my trauma and how I was parented, not about me being weak or weird for people pleasing, like of course I do that, given who my parent was. A quick note, this tool is about releasing anger physically. It can be powerful, but it's essential. You do it in a way that is safe for you and your environment.
Make sure you have some privacy and be mindful about what you're hitting. A soft Nerf bat on a couch is perfect, but be mindful of those around you and yourself. Getting loud is ideal, but maybe that can freak out others. So here's a full length video in the description on this type of work. Uh, I believe the video is mostly about survival mode, but it's also about this truth work and rage work.
I'll have that in the video description. If this is something you're not ready for, just buy some drumsticks and drum on a pillow using the thought principles in the heavy hand switching that I referenced earlier, and the fourth tool is dialoguing. The most effective tool I teach and still use in my own personal life is dialoguing on paper.
With my inner child. This is dominant hand and non-dominant hand journaling. To have a discussion with the inner child and help them through the trigger, anyone can do it. All you gotta do is grab some paper and with your dominant hand, I'm right-handed. You start helping your inner child by talking from your older, wiser self about the trigger you're experiencing in the present, and you're exploring what your inner child is feeling about it and what childhood was like around such an issue, such as like authority figures.
Somebody being in a bad mood, feeling like you're in trouble making a mistake. You flip the pen after your wiser older adult self has talked and asked some questions and see what your inner child says from your non-dominant hand. The non-dominant hand is the scared or angry child that needs help, validation and clarity.
It will definitely feel awkward at first, and it might take a bunch of tries to kind of land for you, but that's usually how it goes. The goal with this one is to get the inner child to talk about the feelings from childhood because the inner child does not differentiate between the past and the present.
Or you can simply say that your, your subconscious doesn't differentiate between the past and the present, but the boss in our present life is just probably a pain in the ass. And they actually don't own us the way that an abusive parent would sort of have power over their child. That's true. Even if your boss is actually a nightmare.
The work is about how the present is different or how you are different, like having more power to decide on how to think and feel about things around your boss or something like that. As kids, we just had to buy into the idea that. Everything was our fault and we weren't good enough. See what I mean?
About how that energy can get projected onto a boss, even if that boss sucks. So I'm not trying to say that they're not, you know, difficult. So the wise adult self helps the inner child validate the feelings and what happened growing up. And the best part is, is that our inner adult can actually take over a situation in the present through the idea of dialoguing, like we're gonna.
Take over an issue like, let me talk to my boss 'cause he seems not safe to you, or she seems not safe to you. That's a message that we can say to our inner child to protect them from the triggered feelings and dealing with that boss. Like with the heavy hand switching, we're going between the hemispheres of our brain to self-soothe and dissipate the trigger energy, but we're also bonding and integrating with ourselves.
Bonding with our inner child that isn't just about getting outside of a trigger. I teach the dialoguing reparenting tool in a full course that you can find right up here. That will take you to a link in the video description, which will explain more in depth about that course and how it works. So to recap these four tools when you're triggered, the first one is try switching something heavy between your hands while thinking about how the present is different and how you are different than what happened growing up.
The second tool was map it out, write out the patterns to this kind of trigger. Like have you been here before in a journal entry or an email to yourself? What is the stuck place or charge from childhood that your inner child is feeling? How are you different? How might a core belief have been activated in that?
The third tool was hit it where you can release a charge from the emotional trigger by finding your anger and voice while physically doing something like drumming to release the energetic charge of the trigger. The fourth one was dialogue. Can you be a good parent to yourself and help your inner child about what happened and how you can help them think and feel differently in the present?
Even if you don't feel like you can do it, try that one Anyway. So I hope that that was helpful to you. I wanted to do a quick video on these four tools. I would love to hear from you in the comments. Like, subscribe, ask questions about it or leave a comment if you tried one of these and it actually helps.
Was any of this confusing? And I hope that these were helpful to you. And it's always, may you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease, and may you be joyous and I will see you. Next time.
