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131: Emotional Triggers: Why Small Moments Set You Off and How to Reset · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:29
  Polly Mertens: Polly here.
• 0:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Sam Pruitt in the house.
• 0:32
  Samantha Pruitts: What's up, lady?
• 0:33
  Samantha Pruitts: Let's go, let's go.
• 0:34
  Samantha Pruitts: So today your triggers know something you don't.
• 0:37
  Samantha Pruitts: It's time to listen.
• 0:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Tune in, people, right?
• 0:41
  Polly Mertens: Triggers?
• 0:41
  Polly Mertens: Triggers?
• 0:42
  Polly Mertens: I don't know what you're talking about.
• 0:44
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, so just so you know, we always have a little pre-episode.
• 0:47
  Samantha Pruitts: So Sam and I were just talking and we're like, you know, kind of heavy topic, right?
• 0:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Kind of let's bring some levity to this.
• 0:54
  Samantha Pruitts: So it's like we're gonna be, you know, bring some joy in the background of a heavy thing, right?
• 1:00
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and then we were also saying that we literally get triggered nonstop.
• 1:04
  Polly Mertens: It's just a not listen, we're human just like everybody else.
• 1:08
  Polly Mertens: Oh, yeah.
• 1:09
  Polly Mertens: Everybody who is listening has triggers.
• 1:13
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 1:13
  Polly Mertens: And so we're just here today to talk about it openly.
• 1:16
  Polly Mertens: We'll share our experiences recently that brought this topic to the forefront for today's conversation.
• 1:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:22
  Polly Mertens: And then obviously give some tools and tricks on how to navigate it, but just how to understand what's going on in your physical body and your emotional body.
• 1:29
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Cause I think it's still a mystery to a lot of people, especially if you, I mean, I think you and I take it for granted, all that we know, because we've learned and we've lived, and me as a hypnotherapist and coach, and you know, all this stuff that we work with people on so much, it's like, oh, doesn't everybody know this?
• 1:45
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, and then we and then we get it happens to us, you know.
• 1:49
  Samantha Pruitts: So we'll go into that.
• 1:50
  Samantha Pruitts: So so let's talk about like what is a trigger.
• 1:53
  Samantha Pruitts: Let's help to start to define that and you know, just set the stage, if you will.
• 1:57
  Polly Mertens: So do you wanna do you have a you probably want to read the definition or not?
• 2:01
  Polly Mertens: Because I know you'd love to do that, and then I'll get into my two cents.
• 2:05
  Samantha Pruitts: I did have the definition.
• 2:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh, what did I do with it?
• 2:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh, it was oh, it was a it was something that initiates something.
• 2:12
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh shoot, talk for a second, let me find it.
• 2:14
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm sorry, I lost it.
• 2:16
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it really it is a an event, an event, an action, a circumstance, right?
• 2:23
  Polly Mertens: An experience that happens to said person, the human that causes physiologically and then psychologically.
• 2:33
  Samantha Pruitts: Actually, that's not that's not it.
• 2:34
  Samantha Pruitts: So it sets off a chain reaction.
• 2:36
  Samantha Pruitts: So it's sets off, yeah.
• 2:38
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not the cause.
• 2:38
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like yeah, the cause is in within us, you know, so it lives inside of us, the cause of the trigger.
• 2:43
  Samantha Pruitts: But it's like an event, action, or device that sets off a chain reaction or initiates a specific process.
• 2:50
  Polly Mertens: Initiates, that's good.
• 2:51
  Samantha Pruitts: Initiates, yeah, exactly.
• 2:52
  Samantha Pruitts: And then it's so what we often think about as a trigger is our response to that event, right?
• 2:57
  Polly Mertens: So, like we've got that person caused or that thing caused, right, right, right.
• 3:01
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so we want to re-terminology and re-explain that.
• 3:04
  Polly Mertens: Yes, please.
• 3:05
  Polly Mertens: Let's get into that.
• 3:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Yes, stay back in our power, you know.
• 3:07
  Samantha Pruitts: So, yeah.
• 3:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So that's just the generic definition, if you will.
• 3:11
  Polly Mertens: So what it does generally, well, not generally, it always sets off a chain of events.
• 3:18
  Polly Mertens: But what I love about your description there, and you have a little bit more to it, is about how the physiological response in the body and in the brain, so biochemistry, that response is faster, instantaneous almost to the rational thought.
• 3:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, we'll get into the science.
• 3:40
  Polly Mertens: Leaves the train, it leaves the train station.
• 3:42
  Polly Mertens: Okay, the train is out of the before you even realize what the hell is happening.
• 3:46
  Samantha Pruitts: I didn't think like a match.
• 3:47
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Samantha Pruitts: So I want to say a little bit more, we'll talk a little bit of background.
• 3:50
  Samantha Pruitts: And so we have a couple of angles that will come at this because you've read a lot, I've read a lot, we've studied a lot of different things.
• 3:56
  Samantha Pruitts: So we just want to like soak you in a lot of information from a different perspective that will already bring up things that you're experienced, aware of, know, maybe didn't know, right?
• 4:07
  Samantha Pruitts: So I have another definition.
• 4:09
  Samantha Pruitts: This one's from AI is an emotional reaction that feels disproportionate to what just happened.
• 4:15
  Samantha Pruitts: Because it is, right?
• 4:16
  Samantha Pruitts: And so it's not about the moment you're in, it's the nervous system firing based on a much older moment.
• 4:23
  Samantha Pruitts: And we'll go into that, right?
• 4:24
  Samantha Pruitts: So the the present moment is just like a fuse.
• 4:26
  Samantha Pruitts: And, you know, something I think is important is like the distinction, I think, of what creates, let's call it a trigger, because there's moments, there's things that are happening to us all day long.
• 4:36
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, the the window slams or the person next door honks at you or whatever.
• 4:41
  Samantha Pruitts: And same two people, you on a different day, like nothing, you know, totally rolls off of you, right?
• 4:47
  Samantha Pruitts: But we're we're we're honing in on the things that trigger you in a way that feels, like you said, disproportionate to the moment.
• 4:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, whoa, why did I react to that?
• 4:56
  Samantha Pruitts: So we got that set the stage.
• 4:59
  Samantha Pruitts: Do we want to introduce the stories now so you can share your story and where where this is what kind of story is.
• 5:05
  Polly Mertens: Mine would maybe a little bit heavier than yours.
• 5:07
  Polly Mertens: So why don't you go with your story first?
• 5:09
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay.
• 5:09
  Samantha Pruitts: All right, mine's a bit gritty.
• 5:12
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:13
  Samantha Pruitts: Which is good because there's that's what so what happened.
• 5:15
  Samantha Pruitts: So I was in Seattle, we were talking on the phone, you're like, oh, this just happened.
• 5:20
  Samantha Pruitts: And you know, at the end of what you shared about your story, I was like, wow, I've I I've been in that, you know, like we were talking about how like we could relate to it in each other.
• 5:29
  Samantha Pruitts: And so for me, I was traveling.
• 5:32
  Samantha Pruitts: So I normally when I travel, I'm just like, because I love to travel, right?
• 5:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Totally enjoy it.
• 5:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Like I've I look at the whole airport experience because I've been in so many.
• 5:44
  Samantha Pruitts: So, you know, it's not a it's not a upsetting thing for me.
• 5:47
  Samantha Pruitts: A lot of people like they get, you know, airport uh like they haven't even left their house and they're already, you know, hyperventilating, yeah, and like the anxiousness of like security, things that they're not used to, right?
• 5:58
  Samantha Pruitts: Where my brain's like, done this enough, know the scenarios, you know, whatever.
• 6:02
  Samantha Pruitts: And I leave in plenty of time, all those things.
• 6:05
  Samantha Pruitts: So, but yesterday there was a moment, well, there were two moments in the last couple days, one leaving, going towards Seattle, and one coming back with some air, uh, not airport security, the people at the gate, the gate, whatever.
• 6:18
  Samantha Pruitts: So I had a carry-on, and then I had like a little suitcase, and then I had like my bag, my briefcase bag, and then I had a Trader Joe's cooler bag type thing, which was my food.
• 6:27
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, I had some snacks for the plane and stuff like that, because it was like this big long journey I was on, you know.
• 6:33
  Samantha Pruitts: And I get to the gate, and I think I'm the last person getting on the plane.
• 6:37
  Samantha Pruitts: Actually, I think I wasn't both times, because I like to get on last because I don't like to sit on the plane for very long.
• 6:41
  Samantha Pruitts: So I I get on, or I'm like trying to get on, and she's like, Oh, you have too many bags, and you have to have only two is the maximum.
• 6:49
  Samantha Pruitts: I was like, She's like, Can that be combined?
• 6:51
  Samantha Pruitts: Those two, like the little carry-on ones that I had, the smaller bag, the Trader Joe's, whatnot.
• 6:56
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was like, Well, like, I mean, I could like shove all this stuff into my suitcase bag, but my computer's there, and you know, it's food and whatnot, you know, blueberries and all sorts of stuff.
• 7:06
  Samantha Pruitts: So I started to do that, and you know, I'm like pulling it and I'm annoyed.
• 7:10
  Samantha Pruitts: So, like, that's my trigger, is like, you know, you and I were talking about like where does this come from?
• 7:14
  Samantha Pruitts: But anyway, so like in the moment, I'm like frustrated, I'm like, I just want to get on the plane.
• 7:19
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm like, just let me get on the plane.
• 7:20
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm gonna put it back in this bag after you I leave you, you know, like whatever person, right?
• 7:25
  Polly Mertens: So it's a WTF moment.
• 7:27
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, it's just like really, like it's just, you know, and so as I'm like annoyed, I and so I'm looking at them like smoke's coming on my ear.
• 7:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Not that bad, but but you know, I was just like, Yeah, why are you making me do this?
• 7:38
  Samantha Pruitts: So I start putting my food on, and then she's like, Oh, hold up.
• 7:41
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh, I didn't know it was food.
• 7:43
  Samantha Pruitts: You can have it in a bit.
• 7:44
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was like, oh, and then I'm more annoyed, right?
• 7:47
  Samantha Pruitts: And then I'm like, you're just you know, I feel like, oh, why did you just do this to me?
• 7:52
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, so like more annoyance, right?
• 7:54
  Samantha Pruitts: So anyway, I go down the gangplank and I was pretty washed of it by the time I got on the plane.
• 8:00
  Samantha Pruitts: A little bit of like little sparks, but the but it was gone, right?
• 8:04
  Samantha Pruitts: And coming back, similarly, they're rushing us because the plane is late.
• 8:08
  Samantha Pruitts: And so they're wanting us to get on the plane as fast as possible.
• 8:11
  Samantha Pruitts: And I'm like in line, I'm the last person, and they're like, oh, your boarding pass isn't working this and that.
• 8:15
  Samantha Pruitts: And so there's all of a sudden there's this little bit of commotion because I have to rerun my boarding pass and get on fast.
• 8:20
  Samantha Pruitts: And oh, you have another bag, and I was like, Oh, well, they told me it was okay, and no, no, no, you gotta like combine things, and so and I had an apple and a bottle of water in that second bag, right?
• 8:28
  Samantha Pruitts: So, again, annoyed.
• 8:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Annoyed, triggered, triggered frustration, triggered my, I want to do what I want to do, don't tell me what to do, you know, all that those little right.
• 8:39
  Samantha Pruitts: And so I start putting the apple in the water, and then I'm and then I like crumpled up the bag, and I'm just like, okay, fine, you know, and I walk 10 feet on the gangplank or whatever, and there's a line.
• 8:50
  Samantha Pruitts: There's like 30 people outside of the plane pushing and rushing and yeah, they're like, You gotta go, you gotta go.
• 8:56
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was like, oh, then I'm more annoyed.
• 8:59
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 8:59
  Samantha Pruitts: So I stop and the gal in front of me saw the whole thing going on, and she was like frustrated for me, or you know, like felt for me, kind of thing.
• 9:07
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was like, whatever.
• 9:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So I take my bag out and I'm starting to put the water and the apple in the bag.
• 9:11
  Samantha Pruitts: The gate attendant comes, sees me doing this from like 15 feet down the gangplane, and he's like, Come with me.
• 9:18
  Samantha Pruitts: You're we're gonna reassign you, or we're gonna rebook you or something on a later flight.
• 9:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, it's gonna penalize me.
• 9:23
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was like, So then drama, like whatever you want to call it, helplessness shows up and and and annoyed and defensive.
• 9:31
  Samantha Pruitts: I was like, I'm not, I'm getting on this freaking plane.
• 9:33
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm already gonna be home at like one o'clock in the morning.
• 9:35
  Samantha Pruitts: If I catch this flight, you know, to hell you're gonna reassign me.
• 9:39
  Samantha Pruitts: And I and I I was like, I'm just it's just water and an apple, you know, and I and anyway, so that all got worked out, but it's still all that energy, all that frustration, all that annoyance and stuff like that could, you know, and so as you and I were saying, so what happens later for those of us that are self-aware is we get annoyed that we're annoyed, right?
• 10:00
  Samantha Pruitts: Right, yeah, exactly.
• 10:02
  Samantha Pruitts: So this like spiritual, you know, Buddha in me is like, why did I just get so annoyed?
• 10:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Why did I just get so triggered and stuff?
• 10:10
  Samantha Pruitts: Why, you know, and so I've you know, I spent all this energy trying to look inside it.
• 10:14
  Samantha Pruitts: But so that's my story.
• 10:15
  Samantha Pruitts: Do you want to share yours now?
• 10:16
  Polly Mertens: Using that story, let's just downpack it a little bit for the listeners.
• 10:20
  Polly Mertens: So, really, what we're saying in terms of this triggering is it wasn't about the persons who were, you know, critiquing your food choices or questioning why you had food or whatever.
• 10:33
  Polly Mertens: Like it wasn't about, they were just trying to do their job.
• 10:36
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 10:37
  Polly Mertens: Certain rules, they're following the rules.
• 10:39
  Polly Mertens: Some people can be a little overzealous with rule, you know, following or whatever, but it doesn't matter.
• 10:45
  Polly Mertens: That's just who they are in the world, and that's what they need to do.
• 10:47
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 10:49
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, safety first.
• 10:50
  Polly Mertens: Yes, exactly.
• 10:52
  Polly Mertens: But the triggering element is how somebody trying to do that with you in those circumstances and how it was done and how it was communicated and whatever caused a different reaction in you.
• 11:05
  Polly Mertens: And so what we want to say to the listener to kind of be thinking about for themselves in that scenario or different circumstances, you know, is what about that moment caused a reaction or a bigger reaction than need be, for example, right?
• 11:20
  Polly Mertens: Because it wasn't a your your your life was in danger over this water and apple or whatever.
• 11:25
  Polly Mertens: We were laughing with each other about how we might have done it differently or whatever, because it's you can do all kinds of hilarious things in those moments.
• 11:32
  Polly Mertens: But how can you keep yourself calm, cool, and collected so you don't get triggered in those circumstances?
• 11:40
  Polly Mertens: It really that's the biggest challenge for all of us humans, isn't it?
• 11:43
  Polly Mertens: Because we all have old stories, we all have old scars, and I really liked that one description about the map, you know, like almost we'll come back to that.
• 11:52
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah, and and how it wasn't about this bag full of a water and an apple at all.
• 11:59
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, so two things I would say to your point.
• 12:02
  Samantha Pruitts: One is because I love what you just said, because it made me more aware of something that I have studied in the past.
• 12:07
  Samantha Pruitts: So in that moment, uh I was present to the beliefs, the expectations, the story I had myself that I should be able to get on this damn plane with a bag of fruit, you know, like to hell.
• 12:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, there was the rebellion, to hell with your two-bag fucking minimum.
• 12:25
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, like really, you know, like I'm not, you know, it's a stupid rule.
• 12:30
  Samantha Pruitts: I refuse it.
• 12:31
  Samantha Pruitts: Yes.
• 12:31
  Samantha Pruitts: Right.
• 12:32
  Samantha Pruitts: So there's there's that was like what was triggered was the don't tell me what to do.
• 12:36
  Samantha Pruitts: Your rule is stupid.
• 12:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, I like getting away with stuff that not other people can get away with, whatever they're all those little mini beliefs and stuff.
• 12:44
  Samantha Pruitts: And I also noticed like I wasn't in like my Zen place.
• 12:49
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, I I don't know why necessarily.
• 12:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Like I like on a different day, if that had happened, I'm trying to think if that's happened to me before.
• 12:57
  Samantha Pruitts: I don't remember this specifically, like the two-bag minimum thing type of thing.
• 13:01
  Samantha Pruitts: Because I often don't carry on anything, like I usually like check everything and I just have like one carry-on, if you will.
• 13:06
  Samantha Pruitts: So this was this was a new experience for me.
• 13:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So but my other thought was you said, how could you know, how is knowing that scenarios of all flavors and sorts show up in either places that you don't know, right?
• 13:23
  Samantha Pruitts: So like being just curious and open, like, wow, I'm I'm now traveling with a carry-on.
• 13:28
  Samantha Pruitts: I don't usually travel with a carry-on.
• 13:29
  Samantha Pruitts: I wonder if there's things that I'm gonna bump into that I'm not familiar with, you know.
• 13:34
  Samantha Pruitts: So like I could have just been in a space of curiosity.
• 13:37
  Samantha Pruitts: I could have prepared myself in a space of curiosity or lightness or kindness.
• 13:42
  Samantha Pruitts: So, you know, whether that's a meditational intention, you know, like how you go into a space and stuff.
• 13:47
  Samantha Pruitts: But I was carrying the intention of like, I'm getting on that plane and I'm I'm carrying my bags and I need this food with me, and blah, blah, blah, you know, all these things, trying to get away with something that in their world was outside of what they ex you know, they allow.
• 14:01
  Polly Mertens: So you went into that circumstance without full capacity for expecting the unexpected, having the curiosity, etc.
• 14:10
  Polly Mertens: So that's a capacity issue, right?
• 14:12
  Polly Mertens: Like we can go into any circumstances.
• 14:14
  Polly Mertens: Hell, we get out of bed.
• 14:15
  Polly Mertens: Do we have capacity for the day?
• 14:18
  Polly Mertens: Phone rings, first text of the day.
• 14:21
  Polly Mertens: Oh, geez.
• 14:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Totally, totally, dude.
• 14:26
  Polly Mertens: And it's because every day at any given moment, you know, we have a different capacity for life.
• 14:33
  Polly Mertens: That's just how I perceive it.
• 14:35
  Polly Mertens: And it ebbs and flows based on so many things.
• 14:38
  Polly Mertens: It can be, did I get a good night's sleep?
• 14:40
  Polly Mertens: Am I hungry?
• 14:41
  Polly Mertens: Am I tired?
• 14:42
  Polly Mertens: Am I lonely?
• 14:42
  Polly Mertens: It can't be those things.
• 14:44
  Polly Mertens: And it can just be a general like load on the human, is how I normally see it show up, either for myself or with people that I'm working with, is like, okay, yo, you just got way too much load.
• 14:55
  Polly Mertens: Like, yeah, sure.
• 14:56
  Polly Mertens: You have the capacity of a freaking freight train or a garbage truck or whatever, but it doesn't mean that truck it should be full and things should be overflowing, right?
• 15:06
  Polly Mertens: Then there is no capacity for what could go wrong or right, what could be different, what could be a curiosity or a new adventure or a new learning or whatever.
• 15:16
  Polly Mertens: You just don't simply have the capacity or the bandwidth, you know.
• 15:20
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Samantha Pruitts: So it could be riding the line.
• 15:22
  Polly Mertens: You're riding the line.
• 15:23
  Samantha Pruitts: It could be like a one-time or just a whole I would call I was like, yeah, I was gonna say like an intention or an attitude, you know.
• 15:29
  Samantha Pruitts: So one of the things that morning meditation, and it's funny, some of the things you were talking about.
• 15:33
  Samantha Pruitts: I know we want to go into the science a little bit later, so I'm not gonna go too much into that, but I was sleep deprived, you know, like I had a 3:30 a.m., you know, first flight, and you know, and then all you know, things like that.
• 15:44
  Samantha Pruitts: And this was like almost well, it was 8 p.m., the second flight or whatnot.
• 15:49
  Samantha Pruitts: But you know, I'd had a long day of like meeting and blah, blah, blah, whatever.
• 15:53
  Samantha Pruitts: So yeah.
• 15:54
  Samantha Pruitts: So there was, you know, some factors.
• 15:55
  Samantha Pruitts: So I think capacity is one thing, meaning like how much do you have on your plate?
• 15:59
  Samantha Pruitts: And and we can talk from a neuroscience perspective.
• 16:01
  Samantha Pruitts: I can share about from the hypnotherapy, like what your brain has capacity for and then just gets overloaded by.
• 16:07
  Samantha Pruitts: You're more easily susceptible and overloaded when you haven't had full three rounds of REM sleep.
• 16:12
  Samantha Pruitts: We'll we'll talk about it.
• 16:13
  Samantha Pruitts: Anyway, okay.
• 16:14
  Polly Mertens: So let's I would say, yeah, sleep and food are biggies that people completely ignore.
• 16:20
  Polly Mertens: Back to the nervous system.
• 16:21
  Polly Mertens: So do we want to touch bases on that before I give my own.
• 16:25
  Samantha Pruitts: No, we were just sort of like we're unpacking this in a totally different way.
• 16:28
  Samantha Pruitts: We're like, oh my god, we gotta like throw this in now.
• 16:29
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, this is important.
• 16:30
  Samantha Pruitts: We just have to do it.
• 16:33
  Samantha Pruitts: We must say this now.
• 16:39
  Samantha Pruitts: We're we're we're emotionally uh empowered, like triggered to like express like here, you need to hear this now.
• 16:47
  Polly Mertens: Well, so okay, so I had a situation and I was texting with you this morning.
• 16:51
  Polly Mertens: Like, I'm still, it was a couple days ago now, whatever it is.
• 16:55
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I'm still carrying around the nervous system charge.
• 17:01
  Polly Mertens: So I'm not like ruminating about it or really consciously thinking about it, but there's an undercurrent in my nervous system that's carrying that energy into other places and experiences and conversations and relationships that I'm having.
• 17:17
  Polly Mertens: So it's like this energy vortex almost that I kind of dropped into with my experience of being triggered.
• 17:24
  Polly Mertens: And then now I'm trying to flush through it, like flush the toilet is kind of this is what I'm getting.
• 17:30
  Polly Mertens: But that energetic swirly, swirly bob moment.
• 17:34
  Polly Mertens: What would you how would you describe that?
• 17:37
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, I want to talk, you know, but first I'd love for you to share.
• 17:40
  Samantha Pruitts: Let's put the story in in now just so people can relate to the story that you want to share about, and then we'll talk about, you know, like the how it occurred for you and how the last couple of days have been and what what some of that is.
• 17:51
  Polly Mertens: So share, share the yeah, however much of the moment.
• 17:54
  Polly Mertens: Oh, excuse me, I will share it tactfully because I don't want to get too nitty gritty about it.
• 18:01
  Polly Mertens: But basically, I'm out in the world all the time, as you know, and most people will know who know me.
• 18:07
  Polly Mertens: And I'm always meeting people, like literally meeting strangers, talking to strangers all of the time.
• 18:13
  Polly Mertens: I have a big expansive world like that, whether it is in person or online or whatever.
• 18:18
  Polly Mertens: I'm very, very comfortable with that.
• 18:20
  Polly Mertens: Like, have no stuff around that.
• 18:23
  Polly Mertens: However, that was violated in a way, and that's what triggered me.
• 18:30
  Samantha Pruitts: With or you allowed yourself to be triggered by this experience.
• 18:34
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 18:35
  Polly Mertens: Right, exactly.
• 18:36
  Polly Mertens: So I met a human being, a male human being, in an environment that was very safe and comfortable or whatever.
• 18:44
  Polly Mertens: We made a connection talking about running, talking about ultra-running specifically, all the things that I love.
• 18:48
  Polly Mertens: It was a very natural experience.
• 18:50
  Polly Mertens: And then that person came back into my space.
• 18:52
  Polly Mertens: I met them again, we talked again, and basically it was all about ultra running and running running because they were getting ready to do that.
• 18:59
  Polly Mertens: And I am passionate as hell about it.
• 19:02
  Polly Mertens: Anyone who knows me knows that.
• 19:04
  Polly Mertens: So great connection, good conversation, fun.
• 19:07
  Polly Mertens: They had asked for my phone number to be able to get more tips, advice, or whatever.
• 19:11
  Polly Mertens: Well, I'm a coach.
• 19:12
  Polly Mertens: This is literally what I do for a living, very comfortable with that, also.
• 19:16
  Polly Mertens: No qualms, happy to do it.
• 19:18
  Polly Mertens: Let's talk it through.
• 19:19
  Polly Mertens: And there was an injury.
• 19:20
  Polly Mertens: So basically, we were kind of talking through the injury and how to get through the race, survive the race, if you will, with this injury.
• 19:26
  Polly Mertens: And it was fun and light and all the things.
• 19:28
  Polly Mertens: But a couple days later, basically, that person reached back out to me, started a texting conversation, which seemed benign enough initially.
• 19:38
  Polly Mertens: And so we were talking about the injury and other things, but very quickly that conversation went south and became a sexually charged, inappropriate conversation.
• 19:46
  Polly Mertens: And I had to shut it down, which I did.
• 19:50
  Polly Mertens: And I was crystal clear about how I was communicating, the inappropriateness, et cetera.
• 19:55
  Polly Mertens: But it did a thousand percent trigger me.
• 19:59
  Polly Mertens: A thousand percent.
• 20:01
  Polly Mertens: Not that I felt unsafe or that whatever.
• 20:04
  Polly Mertens: I mean, I definitely did feel disrespected, a hundred percent.
• 20:08
  Polly Mertens: Yes, I did, but that was hugely triggering for me.
• 20:13
  Polly Mertens: And so basically I stepped back while I shut it down, of course, and then I stepped back and gave was giving thought to wow, this is really bringing up some shit.
• 20:21
  Samantha Pruitts: And what was so what was your emotions?
• 20:22
  Samantha Pruitts: What was the state that you felt?
• 20:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Give us like two or three of the emotions that were showing up.
• 20:28
  Polly Mertens: Mostly pissed off, pissed off, anger, and then disrespected for sure.
• 20:34
  Polly Mertens: Those were like my two hot buttons, if you will.
• 20:36
  Polly Mertens: And then I will say there was an underlying post when I thought about it, post-event, post-conversation or whatever, of lack of safety or need to make myself feel safe quickly, right?
• 20:50
  Polly Mertens: Like my my instinctual primal self did go there very quickly too, right?
• 20:57
  Polly Mertens: Like, hey, is there a safety breach here?
• 20:59
  Polly Mertens: Do I need to, you know, I need to check this, that kind of thing.
• 21:03
  Polly Mertens: So those three things happen in a very rapid session.
• 21:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Just like whoosh, like wash over you.
• 21:08
  Polly Mertens: Boom, boom, boom.
• 21:09
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 21:09
  Samantha Pruitts: So when you were talking about the, you know, like, so that was maybe Tuesday, I think, Monday or Tuesday that that happened, and this is Thursday that we're recording this.
• 21:18
  Samantha Pruitts: And so a couple days have happened, and you're like you said, there's still stuff in your energetic body or whatnot.
• 21:24
  Samantha Pruitts: So let's start to unpack, you know, there's different stories, theories, people out there who have studied this from a lot of different angles.
• 21:32
  Samantha Pruitts: So maybe we start to introduce some of those people, like you're one of your favorite people, Dr.
• 21:37
  Samantha Pruitts: Kabor Mate.
• 21:38
  Samantha Pruitts: I think we can talk about his work.
• 21:40
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:42
  Polly Mertens: Well, I want to just close down that story real quick.
• 21:44
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 21:44
  Polly Mertens: Basically, the next day the other person apologized, and I had given great thought to how I felt about what had transpired.
• 21:52
  Polly Mertens: And I very crystal clearly delivered a concise message, offering some compassion to the breach of the human, but not forgiving in any way or excusing in any way, absolutely calling it like what it was, speaking my truth and standing tall and strong in my own self and wisdom.
• 22:10
  Polly Mertens: But just so people know, like that I just handled that moment.
• 22:15
  Polly Mertens: However, that person responds and boundary.
• 22:18
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 22:19
  Polly Mertens: But it really did liberate me.
• 22:21
  Polly Mertens: I felt totally liberated from that particular experience, like you with the plane.
• 22:26
  Polly Mertens: By the time you had sat down and calmed yourself and whatever, it moved on.
• 22:31
  Polly Mertens: It washed off.
• 22:32
  Polly Mertens: It washed off.
• 22:34
  Polly Mertens: But there is this little bit of residual energy for me, not related to that humor, that story, but that trigger still has an energy or a spark to it that's floating around.
• 22:48
  Polly Mertens: And I'm kind of bumping into it a little bit and trying to navigate that now.
• 22:53
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 22:53
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, I think I want to point out when you and I had a call the day after this happened, you know, the morning after, and you hadn't checked your phone to see, you hadn't communicated back the boundary, you hadn't seen any anything from him about apology and stuff like that.
• 23:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So that where you and I stood when we were having that conversation was, you know, just present to the the experience that you're having, like the unsafe, the pissed off, the, you know, and and we we went a little bit, you know, we blew this up to like women shouldn't have to, you know, well, because it did open a doorway of awareness, which I have great appreciation for, by the way.
• 23:32
  Polly Mertens: And of course, as I say, this is all the curriculum, right?
• 23:35
  Polly Mertens: This exactly, and that's what we were talking about.
• 23:37
  Samantha Pruitts: So I wanted to just you, I wanted you to introduce about like Earth School and how we look at it.
• 23:41
  Samantha Pruitts: So, like, that's what you you and I immediately go into, oh, here's today's curriculum.
• 23:47
  Polly Mertens: Like, and we had a good sense of humor.
• 23:49
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, sure, we were pissed off and ranting a little bit, but we were also laughing our asses off.
• 23:52
  Polly Mertens: It's like, this is how it fucking shows up, dude.
• 23:55
  Polly Mertens: This is the curriculum.
• 23:56
  Samantha Pruitts: Exactly.
• 23:57
  Samantha Pruitts: Exactly.
• 23:58
  Samantha Pruitts: So, what what you say what you mean by that?
• 24:00
  Samantha Pruitts: Just like, you know, what does that mean to you and me?
• 24:02
  Samantha Pruitts: What is curriculum, you know, earth school curriculum?
• 24:04
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 24:05
  Polly Mertens: Well, we're all humans in this earth school, you know, we're all here for a reason, which is to continue to evolve ourselves, ideally.
• 24:12
  Polly Mertens: And in that, I mean getting to know thyself, understand thyself.
• 24:17
  Polly Mertens: So then you can understand your place in the world and how you're connected to all living things and this planet and all of that stuff.
• 24:23
  Polly Mertens: I mean, to me, that's all part of the curriculum.
• 24:25
  Polly Mertens: But these things that happen, and sometimes they do look like triggers, are very informational.
• 24:32
  Polly Mertens: Little bits of schooling, if you will, around like, wow, holy shit, what just happened and how did that show up for me?
• 24:41
  Polly Mertens: Why is that a thing, right?
• 24:43
  Polly Mertens: Or why are any of these circumstances major or minor, whether it's getting on the plane with a food bag or having something a little more extreme, like my situation's pretty dicey, right?
• 24:54
  Polly Mertens: Why do they fire us off?
• 24:56
  Polly Mertens: And you and I quickly were able to talk through and unpack together like our own experiences of being women in the world and being seen in a certain way, and being, you know, navigated with other species or the opposite sex in a certain way, and what our experience maybe was when we were younger and growing up and becoming a woman and all of that stuff.
• 25:16
  Polly Mertens: I mean, there's a lot of weight to these things in some instances.
• 25:20
  Polly Mertens: They're pretty major things for us to have connection to as an integrated piece or a wound or a map within our physical body, our somatic body, connected to the emotional trigger or the experience response.
• 25:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, and I think one thing we want to point to, and maybe I'll read a little bit about Dr.
• 25:43
  Samantha Pruitts: Gabor Mate, but you and I both were able to recognize because we've done a lot of this work and we've been in school.
• 25:49
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, it continues, you know, maybe this is just another summer school or something like that, right?
• 25:53
  Samantha Pruitts: But we recognize, oh, this is because of something else, right?
• 25:56
  Samantha Pruitts: And I just want to read something from about Dr.
• 25:59
  Samantha Pruitts: Gabor Mate's work because this ties it together.
• 26:02
  Samantha Pruitts: So his distinction is trauma is not what happened to you, it's what happened inside you as a result, right?
• 26:10
  Samantha Pruitts: The same event can shatter one person and roll off another.
• 26:13
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, so somebody could be like bumping around, not necessarily this one, but like the original event is what, you know.
• 26:18
  Samantha Pruitts: So depending on the internal landscape at that time.
• 26:22
  Samantha Pruitts: So let's introduce something that we've talked about in other episodes, but in case you haven't heard those, so he identifies two types of trauma, and you may have heard this because it's becoming more socially like aware.
• 26:32
  Samantha Pruitts: There's a big T trauma, the capital T trauma, abuse, assault, loss of your parent, violence, you know, something let's call it major happens to you.
• 26:41
  Samantha Pruitts: And then what he was beautiful about introducing is there's lots of small T trauma, right?
• 26:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Lowercase T trauma.
• 26:47
  Samantha Pruitts: So it could look like unmet needs as a child, it could look like emotional dismissal, it could look like chronic disapproval, like never measuring up, or just not being seen, you know, like parents weren't there, you know.
• 27:00
  Samantha Pruitts: Let's us lashkey kids, right?
• 27:01
  Polly Mertens: So we know not having a need met, and we all have needs.
• 27:05
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 27:06
  Samantha Pruitts: And so what he leans on is saying that the small tea traumas are responsible for most of the triggers that we're all walking around with.
• 27:12
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, I mean, yeah, some people have got the big T's and you know, and and they probably, you know, work to protect those and and evolve those, if you will.
• 27:20
  Samantha Pruitts: But a lot of us are just walking around from varying degrees of loving families and have small T's show up, you know, and it's and one of the things I wanted to tack on to something you said about Earth School being the curriculum, and it's like we're here to, you know, evolve.
• 27:36
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, I've been studying a lot of Ram Das lately, and you've been studying a lot of Buddhism and stuff.
• 27:41
  Samantha Pruitts: And I don't, I don't know that I know the answer to this.
• 27:44
  Samantha Pruitts: One of my favorite uh authors, and we'll talk a little bit about his work, Michael Singer.
• 27:48
  Samantha Pruitts: They all sort of point to the idea of either the human being at peace, so anything that takes us out of peace or well-being or groundedness or centeredness, that's the path to enlightenment, is like none of this bothers us, you know.
• 28:02
  Samantha Pruitts: And at the end of life, right, you would see that those people who are at the end of life don't have these same triggers, you know, they're just in a space of pure oneness and pure like equanimity, and you're me and I'm you, right?
• 28:16
  Samantha Pruitts: Like so the things that our stories and our mental mind make up.
• 28:20
  Samantha Pruitts: So, but a lot of this, the foundation of these things is because we're not totally free.
• 28:26
  Samantha Pruitts: We are human beings, and we have this two million-year-old brain and how it works, right?
• 28:31
  Samantha Pruitts: And it stores things, right?
• 28:33
  Samantha Pruitts: So in Mate's, Dr.
• 28:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Mate's work, he says it fires abandonment circuits.
• 28:39
  Samantha Pruitts: That's what he calls them.
• 28:41
  Samantha Pruitts: They're brain patterns formed when we're little.
• 28:43
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, we all say it's all from our childhood, when we felt unsafe or unseen examples, and we suddenly reactivated by something in the present, right?
• 28:53
  Samantha Pruitts: So as we're little, we were either ignored, we weren't seen, we were dismissed, we were, you know, told we're not good enough, whatever.
• 29:00
  Samantha Pruitts: Or we interpreted we were not good enough by the way our parents reacted or, you know, treated us.
• 29:04
  Samantha Pruitts: And in the moment today, as adults, that's still inside of us.
• 29:09
  Samantha Pruitts: You, you know, you said, why am I, is it kind of swimming inside of us?
• 29:11
  Samantha Pruitts: And there's we're gonna talk about a couple of different theories and look at this.
• 29:15
  Samantha Pruitts: So he's saying, you know, that's in your body somewhere, right?
• 29:18
  Samantha Pruitts: And we'll talk about like the body keeps the score and it's somatic.
• 29:22
  Samantha Pruitts: And his, I maybe we'll go into like how how they we'll go into how to work with these things.
• 29:28
  Samantha Pruitts: I'll introduce one of my favorite books was the Untethered Soul, Michael Singer.
• 29:34
  Samantha Pruitts: And his language for what Dr.
• 29:36
  Samantha Pruitts: Bohr Mate is talking about is he calls them some scaras, which are like thorns in the body, right?
• 29:43
  Samantha Pruitts: So he's he has this way of talking like thoughts are just constant, they're like air bubbles or like little bubbles floating through life, right?
• 29:51
  Samantha Pruitts: And so like in a cartoon.
• 29:52
  Samantha Pruitts: In a cartoon, right?
• 29:53
  Samantha Pruitts: So like a bubble floats in, you hear something, you see something, you experience something, and it's like, and just let it float on, like a cloud passing through the sky, right?
• 30:02
  Samantha Pruitts: So I remember this one that I heard recently is like, you are the sky, and thoughts or things that happen to you are like clouds passing over it.
• 30:10
  Samantha Pruitts: But we think that those clouds are real.
• 30:13
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like, no, you're the you're the sky, you're the thing that these thoughts, these experiences happen within, like who you really are, our identity.
• 30:22
  Samantha Pruitts: We we take on, you know, why why this triggers us, why we get upset and then we get justifying, or me, I'm like righteous, like I should be able to take two bags on.
• 30:29
  Samantha Pruitts: It's right, like we get a stance, you know, instead of being like, I'm the sky and you're just doing your job, like, okay, no worries, right?
• 30:38
  Polly Mertens: But I have a the way I interpret how these things become so hot, you know, and take on a life of their own, literally energetically, you're like take us over.
• 30:50
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, is that the human, whether it's me or whatever, their sense of belonging is threatened.
• 30:57
  Polly Mertens: It's literally their sense of belonging is threatened.
• 31:00
  Polly Mertens: It is a safety and security threat to the human called you.
• 31:05
  Polly Mertens: And it doesn't seem like it would be, especially carrying water and an apple on board.
• 31:10
  Polly Mertens: But actually, yes, it is or can be perceived as a threat to that sense of belonging, you know, and to me, that's at the root of it, at the root of it, you know, whether there's trauma associated to it or not, you know, and however people perceive trauma in their life and how to be able to work with it and navigate with it.
• 31:34
  Polly Mertens: I know we're gonna get into, but you know, if you don't have actual like emotional fitness or you know, spiritual spiritual audacity or whatever the things are that you and I have, okay, because we do have both spiritual audacity, which is a whole fun thing to talk about on another podcast, and emotional fitness, navigating these things when they arrive is very difficult.
• 31:58
  Polly Mertens: Very difficult because there is that physiological reaction before the psychological reaction.
• 32:04
  Polly Mertens: Like when I experienced my thing, my body just reacted before my brain was even really processing what was occurring, you know, before my intellect could get involved and rationalize or not rationalize, right?
• 32:18
  Polly Mertens: My body was like, whoa, there's a fire in the building.
• 32:21
  Polly Mertens: What the fuck?
• 32:22
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 32:23
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:24
  Samantha Pruitts: So let's talk, let's go into the science behind this.
• 32:26
  Samantha Pruitts: So there is an amazing little video that I saw.
• 32:30
  Samantha Pruitts: This was probably like 10 years ago, and I've shared it many, many times in classrooms that I've led when people just to help them understand, you know, what goes on behind this eyeball and these ears, and you know, like the interpretation, right?
• 32:40
  Samantha Pruitts: Like you hear something, right?
• 32:42
  Samantha Pruitts: And how is it filtered through the brain, in the brain?
• 32:46
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not just like, oh, because we've know, you know, two people see the same car accident, different response, whatever.
• 32:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Totally different.
• 32:53
  Samantha Pruitts: Two people grew up in the same household, turn out differently in life.
• 32:56
  Samantha Pruitts: Two people look at, you know, somebody says something, they go, so what?
• 32:59
  Samantha Pruitts: And you go, what you you don't think that that's horrible?
• 33:01
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, like, you know, it's it's all what's between the ears and how it's being so science-wise, when you talked about, you know, like this fire and like you're just fueled up, right?
• 33:13
  Samantha Pruitts: So a word for that they talk about called the I call it emotionally hijacked, but it's another phrase is amygdala hijack, right?
• 33:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Because it's hormones, it's chemical, it's the chemical factory that's like yeah, hold up.
• 33:25
  Samantha Pruitts: So that like the amount of like timing of this thing.
• 33:30
  Samantha Pruitts: So like the thing comes, this the the waves come in through your ear, it's interpreted.
• 33:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Thought happens in the brain that interprets the sound, those wavelengths, if you will, translates that through the lens of your life experience.
• 33:43
  Samantha Pruitts: Like it goes through the brain and goes, is that you know, fight or flight?
• 33:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, what is this?
• 33:47
  Samantha Pruitts: Is this something we should be scared of?
• 33:49
  Samantha Pruitts: Right, gives you a response, goes through the amygdala, sends out chemicals 12 milliseconds.
• 33:55
  Polly Mertens: 12 milliseconds.
• 33:57
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, that is craziness right there.
• 34:00
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 34:00
  Samantha Pruitts: So before the thinking brain is even online, like you did.
• 34:03
  Samantha Pruitts: That's why it's called hydrogen.
• 34:05
  Polly Mertens: The reason it's 12 milliseconds is because the human had to survive.
• 34:09
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 34:09
  Polly Mertens: So primal, there was not time to fuck around and give thought or analyze circumstances.
• 34:16
  Polly Mertens: Y'all best run now.
• 34:18
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 34:19
  Polly Mertens: And then later, when we're done being chased by the lion, we can sit in the savannah under the tree and like contemplate what strategize.
• 34:26
  Polly Mertens: How the hell do I get out of here?
• 34:27
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, that's what starts to happen.
• 34:28
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like, oh, you know, and so when you, you know, in that moment when the they're trying to rebook me on a flight, and I go into, oh hell, you are.
• 34:37
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm like, no, like my my safety is threatened, or whatever you want to call it.
• 34:43
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, I gotta get home and you're gonna take me from getting home, you know?
• 34:47
  Samantha Pruitts: And so, and I just don't, I don't have access to the oh no, no, no, it's just an apple, you know, like like the we're gonna get upset and I'm gonna get rebooked by an apple.
• 34:57
  Samantha Pruitts: You really want that on social media, you know, like exactly right.
• 35:01
  Samantha Pruitts: That that's not the that's not where I was, right?
• 35:03
  Samantha Pruitts: Because 12 milliseconds happened.
• 35:05
  Samantha Pruitts: Rebooked me because I was carrying an apple in a bag.
• 35:09
  Samantha Pruitts: Wow.
• 35:10
  Samantha Pruitts: Anyway, so you can't think yourself out in real time.
• 35:14
  Samantha Pruitts: That's why, you know, especially in emotional, sorry, in relationships, you know, when way something comes in through the ears and we interpret it in a way, that person made me angry, that person upset, no, no, no, no, no.
• 35:29
  Polly Mertens: Disrespected me.
• 35:30
  Polly Mertens: This person disrespected me.
• 35:31
  Polly Mertens: So I kind of don't know about that.
• 35:33
  Polly Mertens: Didn't you know?
• 35:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Exactly.
• 35:36
  Samantha Pruitts: All they did like in so I was telling you that in my year in TMLP, landmark work, my team management and leadership program, we did a lot of work on this, right?
• 35:44
  Samantha Pruitts: Because it was a communication, it was one year about communication.
• 35:47
  Samantha Pruitts: And one of the ways that they would train you or like distill it down is there's just breath and sound waves coming out of their mouth.
• 35:56
  Samantha Pruitts: That's all that that's all that's happening in that moment is like air and sound waves are coming out of their mouth.
• 36:05
  Samantha Pruitts: And if you went, fuck, that's really all that's ever going on.
• 36:09
  Samantha Pruitts: That's all that's ever going on.
• 36:11
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like like breath and sound waves.
• 36:13
  Samantha Pruitts: And then all this other stuff, you know, and be like, how long have I known this person and is this a threat and all this stuff happens inside of us, right?
• 36:21
  Samantha Pruitts: And they call it inside of our listening.
• 36:23
  Samantha Pruitts: I say it's inside of you know our paradigm, our perspective, or the stories that were stored in our brain and our body, you know, subconsciously, is what it's bouncing up against, you know.
• 36:33
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:34
  Polly Mertens: And in our Buddhist world, you know, we would very quickly and closely look at the other, whoever is doing the talking and the uh mandating or whatever shenanigans they're up to, is like without any attachment to what is coming from the other, huh?
• 36:50
  Polly Mertens: We're gonna simply have awareness and observe.
• 36:53
  Polly Mertens: It's called a noting practice.
• 36:55
  Polly Mertens: Oh, I observe this, I observe that.
• 36:58
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 36:59
  Polly Mertens: So that that pause and that air, if you will, that we breathe into the moment.
• 37:04
  Polly Mertens: And then with again, without judgment or attachment, just that other person is doing them.
• 37:10
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so to the best of their ability, which might be very minimal cat capabilities humaning on the other side of this table or whatever all, they're doing them, and that's not about me.
• 37:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:25
  Samantha Pruitts: And so a couple of things I just want absolutely and I just want to throw in here.
• 37:28
  Samantha Pruitts: So we talked about the amygdala hijacking, and so what happens is, you know, the sound wave comes in, gets interpreted by the brain like so fast, right?
• 37:36
  Samantha Pruitts: The emotional flooding.
• 37:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, so the amygdala is, and I think it's hypothalamus too, for some reason.
• 37:43
  Polly Mertens: The library where all the nasty stuff is at.
• 37:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 37:46
  Samantha Pruitts: So basically, what happens is your bloodstream, a chemical factory, gets released.
• 37:51
  Samantha Pruitts: We interpret it as a feeling or an emotion, right?
• 37:53
  Samantha Pruitts: So anxiety, adrenaline, you know, all these areas of the body that it hits, right?
• 37:59
  Samantha Pruitts: If you go into fight or flight, we know that like the heart rate goes up, you know, blood goes to the extremity, so you can run or you can fight, right?
• 38:06
  Samantha Pruitts: You it shuts down digestion.
• 38:07
  Samantha Pruitts: So emotional flooding is what happens.
• 38:11
  Samantha Pruitts: And I just want to point out that that initial like thing happened interpreted by the brain, 12 milliseconds, the flood happens, chemicals get released, you experience it as an emotion, whether it's punch that person in the face or, you know, or like I want to rebel and like get on the plane or whatever we want to do.
• 38:28
  Samantha Pruitts: 90 seconds is all those chemicals are probably gonna last in the body, depending on how long that experience was or how long you were even focused on that thing, right?
• 38:36
  Samantha Pruitts: Like if you were like whatever and you walked away, like maybe it's 20 seconds, maybe it's 30 seconds, right?
• 38:41
  Samantha Pruitts: Up to 90 seconds.
• 38:42
  Samantha Pruitts: Those so I would you, you know, so in my work with addiction and helping people with, you know, emotional floods around food and addiction triggers and things like that.
• 38:53
  Samantha Pruitts: I would say, you know, if you can sit out that wave, if you can just sit ride that wave of that flood, guess what?
• 39:01
  Samantha Pruitts: On the other side of it is like calm water, right?
• 39:04
  Samantha Pruitts: Like we go back to our homeostasis.
• 39:06
  Samantha Pruitts: So, and it's amazing.
• 39:08
  Samantha Pruitts: We don't think it's gonna end.
• 39:09
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, when we're in it, we don't think it's gonna end.
• 39:11
  Samantha Pruitts: Because what are we focused on?
• 39:12
  Samantha Pruitts: What are we, you know, we're just like jamming the circuitry, if you will.
• 39:16
  Polly Mertens: Well, let me point out what many of us do.
• 39:18
  Polly Mertens: I'm not speaking for myself right now.
• 39:20
  Polly Mertens: Oh no.
• 39:20
  Polly Mertens: Yes.
• 39:21
  Polly Mertens: But so the 90 seconds, you know, it's processing this experience.
• 39:26
  Polly Mertens: And rather than let it pass and freedom and liberation being on the other side.
• 39:32
  Polly Mertens: Oh no, we pour gasoline on it.
• 39:34
  Samantha Pruitts: Let me text somebody about that.
• 39:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh, wait, did you see?
• 39:36
  Polly Mertens: Let me tell you what this person just did, or do you know?
• 39:38
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, we've got our phone.
• 39:39
  Polly Mertens: We start to react, we do all these things that are basically oh, put a little more gasoline on that fire.
• 39:46
  Polly Mertens: Oh, it looks like it's smoldering, it might go out soon.
• 39:48
  Polly Mertens: Nope, not having it.
• 39:49
  Polly Mertens: Keep right?
• 39:51
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 39:52
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 39:53
  Polly Mertens: And by the way, we can do this for years and our entire lifetime in many relationships.
• 40:00
  Polly Mertens: Oh my gosh.
• 40:01
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, we're not going to get into, I mean, we could totally do a whole episode on the addiction to the emotional chemicals, right?
• 40:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Because that becomes a thing, right?
• 40:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So if you grew up in a household where chemicals were flying, like I think my mom grew up in a household where like fear, fear, fear, or whatever, the states that I see her in, it became her adopted norm, right?
• 40:20
  Samantha Pruitts: And your body will adapt, just like it will adapt to extra weight, it will adapt to an extra you you've seen it, you know, you live in the warm desert, then your body gets cool, you know, it's just adapts, right?
• 40:31
  Samantha Pruitts: You are used to eating crappy food or smoking or whatever to keep you alive, it will adapt.
• 40:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Same with emotional regulation, like you have a different thermostat and it wants that quote home.
• 40:40
  Samantha Pruitts: So it's for another episode, but so yeah, whatever.
• 40:44
  Samantha Pruitts: So emotional flooding happens and it's her survival state pretending, and you put you're pretending to have a conversation, but guess what?
• 40:52
  Samantha Pruitts: You're just hijacked, you know.
• 40:53
  Samantha Pruitts: And you're right, you said it lives in the nervous system, right?
• 40:57
  Polly Mertens: So yes, it does.
• 40:58
  Polly Mertens: Oh, yes, it does.
• 41:00
  Polly Mertens: It's an energy within the nervous system.
• 41:02
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:03
  Polly Mertens: So I was talking to you during that thing, and I was like, I'm gonna go to the gym.
• 41:07
  Polly Mertens: Um lift the ways, we'll crush the things.
• 41:09
  Polly Mertens: And actually, then I finished that conversation with you, and I did feel a good sense of relief and was already kind of working through things, and I was like, Oh, you know what?
• 41:19
  Polly Mertens: That's actually not what I need right now.
• 41:21
  Polly Mertens: I didn't go to the gym, even though I was parked in the parking lot with my door literally open.
• 41:26
  Polly Mertens: I closed said door, and then I drove to the nearest trailhead and I went out into nature for an hour.
• 41:33
  Polly Mertens: Totally recalibrated.
• 41:35
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 41:37
  Samantha Pruitts: So good, so good.
• 41:38
  Samantha Pruitts: I want to introduce two other bits of like let's say the science or different angles that we can take on this.
• 41:43
  Samantha Pruitts: One is there's a great book out there.
• 41:45
  Samantha Pruitts: I know you have another one, but the body keeps the score.
• 41:47
  Samantha Pruitts: We're talking about the somatic, and then I also want to talk about hypnotherapy.
• 41:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, if you're watching the video of this, Samantha's got the book, but that's a long time great book, right?
• 41:56
  Samantha Pruitts: Unbelievable.
• 41:58
  Polly Mertens: This is this work is life-changing.
• 42:02
  Polly Mertens: Okay, well, there's the next one.
• 42:03
  Polly Mertens: I've got two more here.
• 42:04
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, and then hypnotherapy.
• 42:05
  Samantha Pruitts: So, well, that's because uh the background that I have and whatnot.
• 42:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So with Peter Levine, who wrote Somatic Experiencing, and I I may butcher this name, but Bessel van der Koelk, the body keeps the score, that's the author of that book.
• 42:17
  Samantha Pruitts: They made the same argument that triggers are not stored in the mind, they're stored in the body.
• 42:23
  Polly Mertens: And and of course, my favorite human in the world right now.
• 42:27
  Samantha Pruitts: Is that Gorora Mate?
• 42:28
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:29
  Samantha Pruitts: When the body says no, such a good book, such good book.
• 42:32
  Samantha Pruitts: So you want to really dive into that.
• 42:34
  Samantha Pruitts: I mean, like, depending on how far deep you want to go into this, there's just there's so much.
• 42:38
  Polly Mertens: If you want to heal, you might want to get one of these.
• 42:40
  Polly Mertens: I mean just get started, right?
• 42:42
  Samantha Pruitts: So, you know, they point out that, you know, like animals in the wild, when they're facing life-threatening circumstances, you know, they don't develop this trauma.
• 42:50
  Samantha Pruitts: This is a this is a totally human experience, right?
• 42:53
  Samantha Pruitts: That we like carry these things.
• 42:55
  Samantha Pruitts: Like I was talking about Michael Singer says they're like some scars, like these bubbles are just floating by.
• 42:59
  Samantha Pruitts: And in that moment, if that thing wasn't something, like you said, in our curriculum we're supposed to study, and then we fucking hold on to it for 20, 30, 40 years, whatever our lifetime, it's like wanting to be released, wanting to be healed.
• 43:11
  Samantha Pruitts: And you and I were saying when you were texting me that morning, you're like, look at this classroom I'm in.
• 43:15
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh my God, I'm I hadn't thought about this, you know, area of the school district for all, you know, school building for a long time.
• 43:22
  Samantha Pruitts: I was like, oh, I guess you're like revisiting that because one thing where you said is like it wants to be healed, it wants to be released, it wants to be transformed.
• 43:30
  Samantha Pruitts: You don't want to be like walking around with that little thorny, like raw, like somebody touches you with sandpaper and you're like, ow, ow, ow, right?
• 43:37
  Samantha Pruitts: You don't want to be that emotionally hijacked all the time.
• 43:41
  Samantha Pruitts: So heal that, you know.
• 43:42
  Polly Mertens: And the reason animals aren't, of course, is that you know their cognitive capabilities are completely different than the human.
• 43:48
  Polly Mertens: And then additionally, after they were chased by the lion, right, and survived, they all animals they shake.
• 43:56
  Polly Mertens: So their nervous system releases that experience, that somatic energy.
• 44:02
  Polly Mertens: And literally they'll just be in position, shaking, shaking, shaking until it's released from the body and then it's gone.
• 44:08
  Polly Mertens: It doesn't get stored into the memory bank, right?
• 44:12
  Polly Mertens: So I have to walk around every day now looking at every lion.
• 44:15
  Polly Mertens: Are you a lion?
• 44:16
  Polly Mertens: Are you a lion?
• 44:17
  Polly Mertens: Are you a lion?
• 44:18
  Polly Mertens: Are you a lion?
• 44:18
  Polly Mertens: Mm-hmm.
• 44:20
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, for the just one thing.
• 44:22
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 44:22
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 44:22
  Samantha Pruitts: So I I would say that these triggers or these traumas or little tees or whatever that are I think they are stored in our body.
• 44:29
  Samantha Pruitts: Because I'll say that my work in hypnotherapy taught has shown me not only learning about it, but also seeing it with my clients and how the mental.
• 44:40
  Samantha Pruitts: So, you know, and there's even work these days that are saying like it's not even up in our brain, like these synapses and things that we think we have.
• 44:47
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like actually, like our memories aren't stored in our head.
• 44:50
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not like it's inside of our head, it's out in the universe, and we just are a receiver for it.
• 44:54
  Samantha Pruitts: So that's another episode.
• 44:55
  Samantha Pruitts: But but I do find that like it gets stored in the body.
• 44:58
  Samantha Pruitts: And you and I, I think would say like where it's stored is probably like a weakness area.
• 45:02
  Samantha Pruitts: And Ayurvedic would say then that's where disease is gonna happen.
• 45:05
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, it's usually no surprise, like, oh, somebody's got ovarian cancer.
• 45:08
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, and that's the work of what's her name with the sh uh the well there there's science, there's real science on all this stuff now.
• 45:20
  Polly Mertens: I mean, uh so autoimmune because I have autoimmune, and I could possibly have another one we're exploring now.
• 45:25
  Polly Mertens: Like that's absolutely what's happening.
• 45:28
  Polly Mertens: Absolutely, yes, on a cellular level, deep inside my little cells and mitochondria, right?
• 45:34
  Polly Mertens: Over time, some things happened, and eventually my body's chronic response to those circumstances, those experiences, that triggering or trauma or whatever, has a physical eventually has a physical manifestation.
• 45:49
  Polly Mertens: I mean, there's science, isn't it?
• 45:50
  Polly Mertens: You and I are not just making this shit up now.
• 45:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, it like fries the nervous, the endings of the nerve system.
• 45:56
  Polly Mertens: It changes everything, right?
• 45:57
  Polly Mertens: Gut microbiome has changed, pH body balance is changed, cellular health is either eroded or not, inflammation goes up, like all the things.
• 46:06
  Polly Mertens: Forty percent more receptors in the stomach and belly of cortisol alone.
• 46:13
  Polly Mertens: 40% of course I'm gonna have belly fat.
• 46:18
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:18
  Samantha Pruitts: So, so from the work of hypnotherapy, we look at it, you know, like, and neuroscience is like, you know, we often think that they say neurons that fire together, wire together, right?
• 46:31
  Samantha Pruitts: So how that looks like in your life is like the one I used to teach my patients and clients about a lot, especially the food ones, is the scenario looks like when you're a child, and I don't know many birthdays you had that were celebrations and people came over to your house, and it was you know, fun experiences around birthdays, not the ones that went a little, you know, yeah.
• 46:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Happy birthdays.
• 46:55
  Samantha Pruitts: And what do they put in front of you when everybody's around and they're singing and all the eyes are in attention are on you?
• 47:01
  Samantha Pruitts: Most likely for most of us growing up, it was a big chocolate birthday cake, right?
• 47:05
  Samantha Pruitts: Or some whatever.
• 47:06
  Samantha Pruitts: For me, it was anyway.
• 47:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So all these years of associating friends, laughter, play, good time, center of attention, cake is introduced, right?
• 47:17
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh, yeah.
• 47:18
  Samantha Pruitts: So, how do I associate chocolate, cake?
• 47:21
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like a reward, a celebration, you know, right?
• 47:24
  Polly Mertens: And I remember love and belonging.
• 47:27
  Samantha Pruitts: Love and belong, all like layer all that stuff in, right?
• 47:30
  Samantha Pruitts: So you see cake, you see chocolate, whatever.
• 47:32
  Samantha Pruitts: Just like, you know, we talked about you can have this in a lot of sensory areas.
• 47:36
  Samantha Pruitts: You could have it in music.
• 47:37
  Samantha Pruitts: A song reminds you of a place or a person, right?
• 47:39
  Samantha Pruitts: It could be you go and visit some place and all the memories of that, you know, somatic experience, that that kinesthetic experience come back to you, right?
• 47:47
  Samantha Pruitts: So it's it's doesn't, it's not sensory dependent.
• 47:50
  Samantha Pruitts: It's it can come in.
• 47:51
  Samantha Pruitts: But that's what the brain is doing is it's associating, it's linking things up, it's tying things.
• 47:56
  Samantha Pruitts: So if you did it over and over again, right?
• 47:58
  Samantha Pruitts: So, you know, it and this can work for you and it can work against you.
• 48:01
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, you can have things that you were repelled by.
• 48:04
  Samantha Pruitts: Like I know I used to have a black dog, and I remember I was living in the South for a while, and how many black people were afraid of my black dog.
• 48:12
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was like, wow, but it was like they associated the black dog with danger or attack or something like that, where he's the sweetest little dog ever.
• 48:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Or not little, but I mean he's a big, you know, black lab, but black dog to them was like fear, no good.
• 48:28
  Samantha Pruitts: They would walk on the other side of the sidewalk and like, wow, he's so sweet, you know, right?
• 48:32
  Samantha Pruitts: And we can have those things that are good.
• 48:34
  Samantha Pruitts: Like you have a positive, you and I have a positive association to going to the gym or getting out on a trail or working up a sweat or doing something hard and challenging because we know, you know, the the other side.
• 48:44
  Samantha Pruitts: Where some people are like, hell no, I don't want to, you know.
• 48:47
  Samantha Pruitts: So that's what neuros, so that neuroassociative binding, conditioning, linking up.
• 48:52
  Samantha Pruitts: And that's where in hypnotherapy we break those links, right?
• 48:56
  Samantha Pruitts: So you've linked up something that you don't want to, you know, like if you have an addiction, you've linked up for my a lot of my eating clients.
• 49:02
  Samantha Pruitts: Eating is pleasure, it relieves stress, it you know, relieves loneliness, it whatever, right?
• 49:09
  Samantha Pruitts: So that gets linked up.
• 49:11
  Samantha Pruitts: So you've got to unhook that, right?
• 49:13
  Samantha Pruitts: And so these triggers that we talk about, those mini ones that are good, like, oh, I gotta go to the gym.
• 49:18
  Samantha Pruitts: Like you've linked up a good trigger to go to the gym.
• 49:20
  Samantha Pruitts: You're motivated.
• 49:21
  Samantha Pruitts: But when these things in our life happen, they trigger us in a not so good way because it reminds us of something from the past that got linked up.
• 49:29
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, dogs now.
• 49:30
  Polly Mertens: This is an interesting, this is just my personal evolution, but being in this year to live course and life inventory and all these things that are in process, it's fascinating, by the way.
• 49:41
  Polly Mertens: We are revisiting.
• 49:43
  Polly Mertens: So, this last course, this last weekend was about in particular doing the life inventory, and everybody was kind of sharing how they're doing it or what it's bringing up for them.
• 49:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh, I want to hear it, yeah.
• 49:53
  Polly Mertens: And talk about triggering.
• 49:55
  Polly Mertens: Dang, girl.
• 49:57
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 49:58
  Polly Mertens: So I was like, wow, this is fascinating to listen to other people's experiences.
• 50:02
  Polly Mertens: And just how many people have a fear of even going there, even doing it, right?
• 50:07
  Polly Mertens: Because there's so much trauma or negative or pain or all these unresolved emotions and ideas around relationships and their life experience, right?
• 50:16
  Polly Mertens: And how to change that perspective so that you can open the doorway to that healing.
• 50:23
  Polly Mertens: So just for myself, one of the things that I have been doing quite a bit lately, you have awareness too, is examining and revisiting old relationships and old music and old places.
• 50:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, you're doing a lot of this.
• 50:39
  Polly Mertens: How I kind of did my, and everyone was like, Well, that's so interesting.
• 50:42
  Polly Mertens: Because I how I put mine together was okay, well, here is all the places I lived over my course, of course.
• 50:49
  Polly Mertens: Because by the way, it's very hard to remember some things, especially when you do have big T or little T flying around in your world, right?
• 50:57
  Polly Mertens: Your memory does not want to go there, it's gonna still continue to try and protect this human being here.
• 51:03
  Polly Mertens: So, where were all the places I lived?
• 51:06
  Polly Mertens: What were the relationships I had in these different places and times?
• 51:09
  Polly Mertens: So that's an evolution of you know, birth up to adulthood.
• 51:13
  Polly Mertens: That's a lot.
• 51:13
  Polly Mertens: I lived in a lot of places, by the way.
• 51:15
  Polly Mertens: Half of them, I was like, what the hell?
• 51:17
  Polly Mertens: I totally forgot I even lived there.
• 51:19
  Polly Mertens: And then these relationships, and then I put layers of like music and experience on top of that.
• 51:24
  Polly Mertens: So it's been a really beautiful collage, if you will, like a retrospective collage.
• 51:30
  Polly Mertens: And somebody, by the way, did do a collage, which I also thought was amazing with old pictures.
• 51:34
  Polly Mertens: Oh my god, that was phenomenal, like piece of artwork.
• 51:38
  Polly Mertens: Absolutely brilliant.
• 51:40
  Polly Mertens: And in that, you can do an incredible amount of healing because you go back into those places at your own accord, under your own devices, in a safe environment, supported or unsupported, however you want to do it.
• 51:53
  Polly Mertens: So for me, like I literally have been visiting some of these places that historically I would have had a lot of negative emotional experience or psychological expression around.
• 52:05
  Polly Mertens: And I diffused it.
• 52:08
  Polly Mertens: And it's crazy.
• 52:09
  Polly Mertens: That's so incredibly empowering.
• 52:11
  Polly Mertens: And I'm still doing that work now.
• 52:13
  Samantha Pruitts: You went to those places, or you just like were sitting and like visualizing them or pictures.
• 52:18
  Polly Mertens: No, I physically have gone to many of them.
• 52:20
  Polly Mertens: Oh now, of course, maybe you can't always do that, right?
• 52:24
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, but you can mentally, or with some really good coaching, you can go to those places and do that work.
• 52:31
  Polly Mertens: But for me, no, I've been physically visiting some of them, and that has been wild.
• 52:37
  Samantha Pruitts: So good.
• 52:37
  Samantha Pruitts: Wow.
• 52:38
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, because it's it's so in the work of Tony Robbins, he talks about it as we have a reticular activating center, right?
• 52:46
  Samantha Pruitts: So something triggers us and it's always there.
• 52:48
  Samantha Pruitts: Like it always, you know, sends fires off the same signal.
• 52:51
  Samantha Pruitts: So he's about like interrupting that pattern, right?
• 52:53
  Samantha Pruitts: That's the first thing is like, oh, you know, like interrupting it in that moment so it doesn't fire and wire together, like it stops the signal and going, chocolate cake, eat it.
• 53:01
  Samantha Pruitts: Chocolate cake, feel good, right?
• 53:03
  Samantha Pruitts: You interrupt it and then you replace it.
• 53:05
  Samantha Pruitts: And this is the work, this is where NLP, neurolinguistic programming, is fucking brilliant, dude.
• 53:10
  Samantha Pruitts: Like repla and I also wanted to say, I love that you were talking about that in collages because your subconscious mind is often stored in pictures, right?
• 53:17
  Samantha Pruitts: Not just, it doesn't store words.
• 53:19
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not like this narrative that shit that's up in your brain.
• 53:21
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like snapshots, videos, you know, and they're literally stored as micro moments, like microfiche of like bink, bing, bing of what was happening and all the emotional stuff, all the sensory stuff is there with it.
• 53:34
  Samantha Pruitts: It's visual, but it's also the sensory comes.
• 53:36
  Samantha Pruitts: That's why you can hear a song, right?
• 53:37
  Samantha Pruitts: Like you see a place, like a whatever place that you enjoyed, and then the song plays in your your ear.
• 53:44
  Samantha Pruitts: So the collaging, that's awesome.
• 53:46
  Samantha Pruitts: And that's you know, and that's where talk therapy is not going to interrupt this stuff, right?
• 53:51
  Samantha Pruitts: I love, you know, it's it it just can't interrupt those because it's stored as pictures and videos with sensory stuff.
• 53:58
  Samantha Pruitts: So it can help you to revisit it and you know, like hypnotherapy is great about like putting you back in those scenarios and you can change that and then unpack and then with the intention, and this does require a great deal of skill, people, to disconnect, like you're saying, to disconnect those things, right?
• 54:18
  Samantha Pruitts: Mm-hmm for sure.
• 54:19
  Samantha Pruitts: And the work we were doing in so in the landmark courses last year, you know, it's all about communication.
• 54:25
  Samantha Pruitts: It's surprising how much it worked on these types of things.
• 54:28
  Samantha Pruitts: So they had a whole process, I it's called recreation, which doesn't exactly define it, but we do these exercises where you put yourself back in that space and people can act out the people that were there with you.
• 54:43
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, like we did this one where it was like if you know, like, for example, somebody would have an experience on a playground, right?
• 54:50
  Samantha Pruitts: And there were kids and they dropped the ball, or you know, and the kids started laughing, or somebody pushed them down and they cried, or whatever, you know, something, and there's a bunch of people around, right?
• 55:00
  Samantha Pruitts: And so that moment creates that experience.
• 55:02
  Samantha Pruitts: You can take them back in that experience and have, but in this adult, when they have access to the prefrontal cortex of an adult human, not a you know, young person, you can trans transmute the story, the experience of it.
• 55:17
  Samantha Pruitts: And NLP is all about that in like micro time, not like, you know, it's not like nine years of therapy.
• 55:23
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like, yeah, just some quick vision.
• 55:26
  Samantha Pruitts: It's fascinating.
• 55:27
  Samantha Pruitts: It's so good.
• 55:28
  Samantha Pruitts: So good.
• 55:29
  Polly Mertens: And you know, you aren't that you and I are not suggesting or saying that everybody needs to revisit all of their traumas.
• 55:34
  Polly Mertens: We're not saying that this is what you need to be doing in order to fully get out.
• 55:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Don't go walking around trying to dig all stuff up.
• 55:42
  Polly Mertens: That's very intense.
• 55:43
  Polly Mertens: And in some cases, might not be the right path or choice for the human being, right?
• 55:48
  Polly Mertens: But there are so many things that we can undo, unravel that will give us so much more freedom to have, again, capacity for emotional fitness, capacity for, you know, awareness, awakening for all of the things that we just call liberation, freedom.
• 56:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 56:06
  Samantha Pruitts: So anything that throws you off that state, let's say, of peace or well-being, or like all is well.
• 56:10
  Samantha Pruitts: The work of Michael Singer, you know, somebody was asked him in a class one time, just what you were talking about.
• 56:15
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, okay, so I gotta go like clean up all this, you know, junk in my my stomach scars in me.
• 56:20
  Samantha Pruitts: He's like, oh no, life will just bring them in.
• 56:22
  Samantha Pruitts: You, you know, just like you know, like me at the airport, like, oh, guess I still have this one there, you know, right?
• 56:28
  Polly Mertens: Here comes the curriculum.
• 56:29
  Polly Mertens: Here's the yeah, your classroom, class is open, class is in session.
• 56:33
  Polly Mertens: Here we go.
• 56:34
  Polly Mertens: Eyes open, eyes open, classroom open.
• 56:36
  Samantha Pruitts: So let's just you know, leave them with a few things that we can actually do.
• 56:40
  Samantha Pruitts: So you know, part of is like naming it, right?
• 56:43
  Samantha Pruitts: The self-awareness that you talked about.
• 56:44
  Samantha Pruitts: Like for me, it was like, oh man, I'm freaking triggered, you know.
• 56:47
  Samantha Pruitts: So I call it emotionally hijacking, whatever, you know, but you know, label it like is basically look at it with courage.
• 56:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Be aware and look at it with courage.
• 56:56
  Samantha Pruitts: And don't make yourself wrong.
• 56:57
  Samantha Pruitts: Like unless you do some of that deeper work, or maybe there's some really key things that you do want to evolve.
• 57:04
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, you can't walk around just doing this work all the time, right?
• 57:07
  Samantha Pruitts: You can, but like don't go about it and like quit your job and do all this stuff unless you have some drowned in it.
• 57:13
  Samantha Pruitts: Right, right.
• 57:14
  Samantha Pruitts: But find it in the body first.
• 57:16
  Samantha Pruitts: Where is it?
• 57:17
  Samantha Pruitts: Breathe into it.
• 57:18
  Samantha Pruitts: There's lots of great somatic work that you can do, and then just do something to buy yourself that 90 seconds.
• 57:23
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm usually like, okay, I I gotta go in the other room because you know, I'm I'm hijacked, you know, or and don't exacerbate it, like you said.
• 57:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Don't start texting about it and talking, look at what this person did, right?
• 57:35
  Samantha Pruitts: So just get curious, you know, get curious about it.
• 57:39
  Polly Mertens: And I would add to the curiosity piece, you know, if you want to ask yourself a simple question, what do I need to do now for me?
• 57:49
  Polly Mertens: What does love ask me to do for me?
• 57:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, what can I learn here?
• 57:53
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah, what can I discover here?
• 57:55
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 57:55
  Samantha Pruitts: And I would say, you know, if you do want to do some of that work, like hypnotherapy is great, NLP, there's great somatic body work that you can do, collaging, that I've, you know, lots of things.
• 58:05
  Samantha Pruitts: And just know, like it is those neural pathways is what's causing the trigger.
• 58:10
  Samantha Pruitts: These things are linked up, right?
• 58:12
  Samantha Pruitts: So things that can help unlink them.
• 58:14
  Samantha Pruitts: And I what I've discovered from a lot of different teachers is they're not going to go away.
• 58:20
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not like that's never gonna be there.
• 58:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Some would say, I think it's like an old highway that gets abandoned.
• 58:25
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like, oh, there's like a distant memory, like, oh yeah, there used to be a like the road near my highway 46.
• 58:30
  Samantha Pruitts: I don't know if you know it, but they like moved it.
• 58:32
  Samantha Pruitts: And it's like, I can kind of still see a little bit of where like it used to be.
• 58:35
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm like, oh, I remember riding over there, but I don't drive over there.
• 58:37
  Samantha Pruitts: I don't like get off the road and like try and go down that highway anymore.
• 58:41
  Samantha Pruitts: So like your brain can get some new neural pathways.
• 58:44
  Samantha Pruitts: And then it's just about you conditioning that, you know?
• 58:46
  Samantha Pruitts: And so that's where, you know, like me, like with the chocolate and food, like I do, like I'm on a 30-day no sugar.
• 58:52
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm like, you know what?
• 58:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Hold up.
• 58:54
  Samantha Pruitts: That little neural pathway is firing way too like on the daily, and I don't want that, right?
• 58:59
  Samantha Pruitts: And that's if we have that sense of ability to regulate that, and it then I can that's good.
• 59:06
  Polly Mertens: That's good.
• 59:07
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 59:07
  Polly Mertens: And with the thing that I was mentioning, like I am a little bit on this mission because this is part of the curriculum, obviously, why this thing occurred to me and came up and created some awareness around it.
• 59:18
  Polly Mertens: I was like, huh, there is some old shit in this arena I need to heal.
• 59:23
  Polly Mertens: And then in addition to that, I want to feel empowered around this subject matter, around this experience for other girls and women.
• 59:32
  Polly Mertens: And you bet your sweet ass I will be doing that.
• 59:35
  Polly Mertens: So I will be using that in a positive way to do my work in the world.
• 59:41
  Samantha Pruitts: Totally, totally.
• 59:42
  Samantha Pruitts: And and you know, what I love about what you're saying is like healing, uh, healing a trigger or, you know, working with a trigger isn't about never feeling it again.
• 59:50
  Samantha Pruitts: Like I said, that old highway, maybe it's just like an old thing.
• 59:54
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not about no longer being run by it.
• 59:56
  Samantha Pruitts: Like that's what we're, you know, like you're being empowered by it.
• 59:59
  Samantha Pruitts: You're like, I'm taking action in spite of it, or as a result of it, it's like, oh yeah, this is who I want to be more.
• 1:00:05
  Samantha Pruitts: And you and I were talking about, because I shared with you when you shared your story about that man, about how I was, it wasn't like an attack, but somebody, a man was inappropriate with me when I was a teenager, and it like shut down and it had me like cover my body because I didn't want to like send out this signal of I'm available, come, you know, be inappropriate with me, type of thing.
• 1:00:26
  Samantha Pruitts: And so, like, I'm not, you know, you and I were like, I want to wear what I want to wear, and I want to do what I want to do.
• 1:00:32
  Samantha Pruitts: And you can use your mouth to create a boundary or create, you know, an expression of yourself and not be, I was being run by it by covering myself up all the time because I don't want to invite that inappropriateness or that kind of male energy, if you will.
• 1:00:46
  Samantha Pruitts: So it's like, no, set ourselves free, right?
• 1:00:49
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, that will not have power over me.
• 1:00:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:52
  Samantha Pruitts: So good stuff.
• 1:00:55
  Samantha Pruitts: Good stuff.
• 1:00:55
  Samantha Pruitts: So what's your what's your one thing about today that you want people to to remember or take away?
• 1:01:03
  Polly Mertens: I mean, well, I it comes from something that you said about how much time what was it, 12 milliseconds or whatever it was.
• 1:01:11
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 1:01:11
  Polly Mertens: So I think that's a really important point to drive home is just the rapid succession of how your physical body and then your mental body, emotional body will respond to these circumstances.
• 1:01:25
  Polly Mertens: So don't make yourself wrong, right?
• 1:01:29
  Polly Mertens: Don't again compound or put gasoline on this by fueling it and feeling shame, embarrassment, like all of the things that also might happen by the fact that you have this that keeps coming up.
• 1:01:41
  Polly Mertens: And it is a form of, in my perspective, a form of suffering, right?
• 1:01:46
  Polly Mertens: So you're a human.
• 1:01:48
  Polly Mertens: This is how humans, this is how we work.
• 1:01:51
  Polly Mertens: You know, this is part of what we do in this show, is just to explain to people like, hey, this is how your body and brain work.
• 1:01:57
  Polly Mertens: And you know, sometimes they're working in your favor and sometimes they're not.
• 1:02:01
  Polly Mertens: So please give yourself endless compassion and love and just grace with us.
• 1:02:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 1:02:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Going back to Gabor Mate, he says, compassionate inquiry.
• 1:02:12
  Samantha Pruitts: So I would say, because I started judging myself about, you know, I was like, oh, I got pissed off at that really nice agent, or maybe they weren't very nice, but you know, that person, that's another human that I see as me, right?
• 1:02:24
  Samantha Pruitts: But in that moment, I got defensive, I got righteous, I got, you know, angry, la la la, right?
• 1:02:28
  Samantha Pruitts: And it's like, and then the wise sage in me is like, oh, you shouldn't be triggered by that.
• 1:02:34
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like, yeah, just be compassionate, like you said, and and be open to what what's what's there to learn or to discover in this.
• 1:02:40
  Samantha Pruitts: And I think that's a really sweet uh way of going about it.
• 1:02:43
  Samantha Pruitts: And not everything that you have to solve and like get to the bottom of too.
• 1:02:46
  Samantha Pruitts: So it's like, like, okay, I get triggered at airports from time to time.
• 1:02:50
  Samantha Pruitts: Like, I'm not gonna like go into therapy for something.
• 1:02:54
  Polly Mertens: No, but I'm gonna be honest and say, okay, so I need to set myself up for maximum capacity when I am traveling.
• 1:03:00
  Polly Mertens: So I will be well slept, I will be well fed, I will not be in a rush, blah, blah, blah, whatever your list of things is, I will prepare myself, right?
• 1:03:10
  Polly Mertens: So this is just proactive healthcare, really, right?
• 1:03:12
  Samantha Pruitts: Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  Samantha Pruitts: And I love the idea, like we talked about, well, a discovering more about this.
• 1:03:16
  Samantha Pruitts: I think there's layers of this that we've just touched the surface in terms of what is going on in your brain and in your body about this.
• 1:03:24
  Samantha Pruitts: So if you are not a student of emotional mastery and emotional intelligence and you know, being able to, you know, recognize this or even having this self-awareness, like you just keep doing it.
• 1:03:34
  Samantha Pruitts: You're like, oh God, I'm I I'm so annoyed with myself that I keep doing this.
• 1:03:37
  Samantha Pruitts: A is understanding more about it, the mechanics of it are very freeing.
• 1:03:42
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, it's kind of like once you know how electricity works, you're like, oh, I get it, right?
• 1:03:46
  Polly Mertens: Totally liberating.
• 1:03:48
  Samantha Pruitts: Yes.
• 1:03:49
  Polly Mertens: And it's also freaking hilarious.
• 1:03:51
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 1:03:52
  Samantha Pruitts: And that's the other thing.
• 1:03:52
  Samantha Pruitts: It's like, it's school, man.
• 1:03:53
  Samantha Pruitts: School's in.
• 1:03:54
  Samantha Pruitts: All right.
• 1:03:54
  Samantha Pruitts: You're just in it.
• 1:03:55
  Samantha Pruitts: We're all in it.
• 1:03:56
  Samantha Pruitts: People play with it.
• 1:03:59
  Samantha Pruitts: Be curious, be like, okay, like you said, uh, this is a curriculum today.
• 1:04:03
  Samantha Pruitts: Got it.
• 1:04:04
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay.
• 1:04:04
  Samantha Pruitts: That's it.
• 1:04:05
  Samantha Pruitts: That's it.
• 1:04:07
  Polly Mertens: So showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up.
• 1:04:09
  Samantha Pruitts: All right.
• 1:04:10
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, let's wrap it up and uh reminder, beautiful humans, where we're what's most important.
• 1:04:14
  Samantha Pruitts: What's most important?
• 1:04:16
  Polly Mertens: How your messy, complicated, triggered life, trigger, highly triggered life looks.
• 1:04:23
  Polly Mertens: Oh, it's not that important, but how it feels is.
• 1:04:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:04:28
  Samantha Pruitts: And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.
• 1:04:31
  Samantha Pruitts: Love you guys.
• 1:04:33
  Polly Mertens: See you next week.