Triggers and Relationships

Triggers and Relationships 

A compassionate, cooperative and loving approach.

An emotional trigger is said to have occurred when someone appears to have a disproportionate emotional response to an external event. 

The essence of a trigger is the triggered person's amygdala pattern-matching the current event with the stored pattern of a previous painful experience and recalling the emotions of the original event as though it were happening again, right now. 

For clarity, the triggered person is NOT really reacting to the current external event but reliving a past painful experience; it is internal to them and genuinely not about you; this is not just some trite platitude. 

Example. She says or does something innocent that pattern-matches an interaction between his mom and dad that he witnessed thirty years ago that caused him to believe that he was a bad boy and thus they divorced and abandoned him and it was all his fault. His emotions at the time included unworthiness, guilt, shame, terror, anger, resentment, defiance; the whole gamut of 'bad stuff'.

When he is triggered, in that moment, she is not dealing with a thirty-five-year-old account executive, she is dealing with a terrified and ashamed five-year-old boy who sees his essential love and support mechanism being stripped from him because he is bad, or inadequate. 

Inappropriate emotional response? Really? 

Well, yes, from the point of view of reality but he's not in reality in the present moment; he's reliving an historic fantasy. 

So, what is the solution? Getting angry at him and shaming his bad behavior? Actually replaying the historical event in the present? 

Her getting frightened, angry and disappointed at this apparently grown man behaving like a child is natural and understandable and may even trigger her. 

!!!BOOM!!! 

Now we really have an out-of-control situation. 

The answer to all problems is, of course, love. 

At some point, both will have calmed down enough for the core issues to be resolved if the parties are willing. 

Let's see what we know:

1. He doesn't deserve to be triggered. 

2. She doesn't deserve him to be triggered. 

3. She doesn't deserve to be triggered (if she is). 

4. He literally couldn't have behaved differently in that moment. 

5. She literally couldn't have behaved differently in that moment. 

6. He doesn't deserve to be shamed for his behavior. 

7. She doesn't deserve to be shamed for her behavior. 

8. He will continue to behave in this manner until his core issue is addressed. 

9. She will continue to respond to his behavior in this manner until HIS core issue is addressed. 

10. She will continue to respond to his behavior in this manner until HER core issue is addressed. 

11. Suppression is not a solution. 

12. Avoidance is not a solution. 

13. If a solution is not found the relationship will suffer. 

14. If a solution is not sought it will not be found. 

15. With love, anything is possible. 

If both parties commit to each other, the relationship, and working together to find a solution, this creates the space for magic to happen. 

There is no formula; just the commitment to open and honest communication towards a mutually beneficial solution.

Use as non-judgmental language as you are capable of and take ownership and responsibility for your own behaviours and feelings and act with both compassion for yourself and for the other person. 

You own your feelings and emotions. If you were entirely on your own on a mountain top you would still have feelings and emotions. They are yours. You generate them. You own them. You are responsible for them. 

We habitually say things like, "You MADE me feel… " without realizing that that is impossible. 

Emotions are now known to comprise peptides manufactured within YOUR body, released into YOUR bloodstream, and received and interpreted by YOUR brain. How did thy MAKE your organs produce peptides? Did she reach inside you with her hand and squeeze your liver? 

You can come up with a de-escalation plan for when one or the other recognises a trigger. 

Can you visualize how powerful a compassionately asked question like, "Are you feeling triggered right now?" would be? How long could trauma last in the face of such love? 

How about, "Forgive me. I think I'm triggered right now?"

Love is the answer! 

Best Workout Ever

I recently signed up for the 40+ fitness package shown in the screenshot and today I had my best workout ever, though possibly not in the way you think. I stunk, and it was great. 

Funk Roberts, our program coach, firmly makes the point that mindset is king and that it is important to know our why, to keep us motivated. 

I'm 66 and my 'why' includes looking and feeling good for the next 40 years rather than a slow, miserable decline over the next 20.

Today was day #3 of the program with day #1 being the first full HIIT workout and day #2 being either a rest day or Yoga, and I chose Yoga. 

I felt like shit today; I had no energy and my muscles were suing for divorce, but I fired up his 'follow along' video, determined to do my best. 

The clue to understanding this article is in the phrase 'determined to do my best'. 

The workout was called 'Crazy Eights' and consisted of eight sets of eight reps of five bodyweight exercises performed back-to-back with no rests. 

So! How did I do? Using conventional metrics, I stunk! I performed set #1 OK(ish); I completed set #2 though much slower than Funk; then I gave up. 

It didn't end there because by set #5 I had my breath back and joined in again, though, once again, more slowly. 

After another short break I joined in for part of set #7 before calling it a day. 

Pretty dismal, eh!? 

Imagine my surprise when I found myself walking up and down for my warm-down with a big smile on my face. Trust me, I was surprised. 

You see, for a while now I've been working on the relationship between my masculine energy and my feminine energy and it appears that today was the first demonstrative sign of progress. 

"Through a poor work-out?" I hear you ask. Well, kind of, yes. Let me explain. 

I signed up for this exercise course to improve my health and fitness, lose the belly fat and gain some lean muscle, and it uses Testosterone levels as the metric. Masculinity, right!? 

Well, plans and performance targets are masculine energy and in purely masculine energy terms today's performance was poor, but execution, listening to your body, and feelings are feminine energy. 

I. Did. My. Best. 

Not my best ever; certainly not as well as some others on the same program; and certainly not as well as possible for any human ever. But, my best, under the circumstances this morning, with the physical and mental resources available to me this morning. 

It is literally not possible to improve on that. 

Imagine I was driving a 1.2L Nissan Micra; what's its top speed? Google says 106mph/170kph. If I set a target of driving at 150mph/240kph how should I feel if I 'failed' and 'only' hit 106mph/140kph?

Pretty good, I would think. 

Was this as fast as when I drove a BMW? No!?

Was this as fast as that other guy in the Ferrari? No!?

Was this as fast as last year's F1 champion? Again, no!?

The fact that I got the maximum speed possible out of the Micra is impressive, regardless of the number representing that speed. 

My success was ORDINAL, not CARDINAL. 

This is just a wimp's excuse for poor performance, right!? NO! Absolutely not! 

I know I did my best under the circumstances because I was in the British Army for ten years and know what it is to try; try as hard as you can; to avoid jail due to the Sergeant's displeasure. I tried that hard. 

I realized later that my post-workout smile was due to having honoured my FEELINGS, a feminine energy metric, rather than a number, a masculine energy metric, and wasn't my 'why' about how I feel? 

If I honoured the masculine energy metric I would probably have felt like a failure, and, to be honest, that's what I expected to feel with those numbers, and that negative feeling would make it less likely that I would continue and, thus, succeed. 

By honouring the feminine energy metric of feeling good I not only tried as hard as I could but felt good as well. 

I am almost GUARANTEED to succeed if I keep on showing up and trying my hardest, aren't I? 

The moral of this story is that I am most likely to achieve my masculine targets by using feminine metrics. 

Using masculine metrics for my masculine targets would likely result in feelings of performance dissatisfaction leading to failure. 

Using purely feminine metrics of feeling good would likely mean never even starting. 

But together? They do say that behind every good man is a good woman. 😉

Onwards and upwards. 

You are the only thought in the mind of God

"Don't be ridiculous. God probably doesn't even know I exist," I hear you say. "Au contraire, mon Amie," for the briefest of moments, you are the only thing that exists, the only thought in God's mind. Let me explain. 

TV and video, moving pictures, don't really move, as you probably know. What we perceive as moving images is really a series of still images flashed before our eyes sufficiently quickly to appear as continuous movement to our brains. I believe that anything above 30 Frames Per Second (FPS) is sufficient. 

A computer works in a somewhat similar manner; a Von Neumann machine; sequentially processing one 'instruction' at a time and, thus, changing the state of the whole machine each processor 'tick'. 

Lost? Imagine you are in your kitchen about to bake a cake. The first 'instruction' might be, "Get 200g flour. So, the state of your kitchen work-surface changes from empty to having 200g of flour on it. Each step of the recipe will change the state of your kitchen and you could film it, one frame at a time. 

You can only think one thought at a time. You might think that you can think of several things at once, but you can't. Go ahead, think of an elephant and think of a giraffe. 

Maybe you can visualize both of them standing next to each other but that's not what I mean. You can think of the elephant, then, you stop thinking about the elephant and think about the giraffe, and you switch back and forth between them.

It's much easier to do this in words. To describe them walking you would say something like, "the elephant lifts it's front right leg and the giraffe places it's left rear leg down." These are separate actions. First you described what the elephant did then, you stopped describing the elephant and described the giraffe. 

So, what if God describes a small State change for you, then describes a small state change for me, then describes a small state change for John, then describes a small state change for Mary, then describes a small state change for... until everything in the Universe is processed, then He goes back and does it all again, Ad infinitum, so fast that we can't (yet) detect it? 

This is not ridiculous or outlandish, some quantum physicists already think something similar. 

So, as I said earlier, for one Universal 'frame' the only thing that occupies God's attention, the only thing on God's mind, is YOU. For one brief period, you have God's undivided attention. 

Use your time-slice well. 

Love and peace!

Where is God?

Where is God? 

So, does God exist? 

Exist!? 

What is existence, anyways? 

Things in the world of sensation are said to exist. 

>Things<

Things that can be experienced through the five senses. Seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched. Existence then is the world of things. So can God be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched?

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing men he doesn't exist."This saying is popularly taken to mean that the devil hid himself from us such that we doubt that the devil exists. 

What if it doesn't mean that? 

What if there is a capital missing? 

What if THE capital is missing? 

What if it should be understood as: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing men He doesn't exist"?

So, who convinced men that He doesn't exist? 

Men, that's who...

You!?

Me!?

You doubt God exists or you wouldn't be reading this. Maybe, up to now, we have been the devil's advocate. 

Hmmmm!

Have you ever looked everywhere for the keys in your hand? Have you ever looked everywhere for the keys that were right there in front of you on the coffee table all the time? Hidden, in plain sight!? I know I have. 

When we can't find something we are looking where it's not, not where it actually is. 

Maybe, just maybe, if we walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror we would see Him or Her. 

God is THE all-powerful creator. 

What if I AM a powerful creator? 

What if we are powerful creators? 

What if we are ALL powerful co-creators with God? 

What have we created up to now? 

Heaven on Earth for all? 

Maybe not. 

If I were God, what would be different? 

If you were God, what would be different? 

If we can't prove that we are not God, and we can't, we might be God.

What kind of God's do we want to be? 

Can we risk not being loving Gods? 

Evil? 

Or would we want compassionate, caring, forgiving, merciful, nurturing Gods?

But, is it just me, is it just you, or is everyone God?

Everyone, I hear you scoff. 

Yes! We are ALL capable of evil. Not acting evil is a matter of choice. Of freewill. 

Can we risk offending others if they too are God(s)?

What should God-to-God relationships look like?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? 

Hmmmm! 

Copyright Notice 

This is an original article by Graham Gambier 

All rights reserved.