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60. Anxious, Angry & Triggered; A step-by-step Plan to Handle that $h!t · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi love.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: So clearly.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: You felt anxious, angry and triggered for a very long time now.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: But the difference in this season of life in a divorce scenario is you no longer have that person to go to, maybe even to battle with or express to or struggle around right?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: You don't have the person to bring these big feelings, these triggers, this anxiety, this anger, and so now it's just like you, with you and the temptation to go to this person, your ex is still so fricking strong.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And so today's episode is all about how to move through anxious, angry and triggered with you.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: We're in a season currently where we're really being encouraged to learn how to work through these big feelings in a very different way than we've ever done before.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And so in the past, maybe we tried to work them out with the ex.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe in the past, we just got really busy working or moming or doing whatever right To distract from all of those big feelings or to quiet them down.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe in the past, we pushed them deep down inside and just said, well, i'm not going to feel that today, so carrying on.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: And so right now, in this moment, we are in a time where we are being called literally to approach the discomfort in such a way that that's new and it's fresh and it's different than how it's been happening, i think, in a global trend for the last many decades.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So, fun fact, this morning I woke up at 5am as I sometimes do not because I wanted to and I felt very anxious And this isn't common for me anymore, but it used to be the state that I lived in, right, i used to function in this heightened state of anxiety, anger or being kind of chronically triggered, and so it's a very familiar state.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: But, man, like when I woke up feeling that this morning, i knew, i just knew it's what we had to talk about today.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And so I want to walk you through how to move through these moments, what I did this morning and the additional steps that you can take to really come through these moments in a way where you've leveled up as a result of taking 15 minutes to process through anxious, angry or triggered, right, it doesn't have to be a huge time commitment And it's one of those things that you kind of can't afford to skip, because when you shove it down, when you distract from it, if you do that here or there because you just kind of don't like, literally cannot facilitate in that moment.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Great, fine, understandable.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we have to press skip every now and then, because life just kind of demands that of us.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Right, and more than that.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: You really need to be creating the space again, like maybe 15 minutes right To process through it, because otherwise it's just going to rear its ugly head again, bigger and batter and more painful, and what we resist persists, it pushes through, it ain't going away on its own love.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So all right, let's dig in.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: So, 5am I wake up and I feel, literally physically in my body, so anxious.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: What do I do?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: All right, so first things first.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, i know on an intellectual level that everything I'm feeling right now is not necessarily rational, right, what has happened is my brain is no longer clicked into what is sound, what is true, what I believe to be spiritually grounded or rooted, or what is the truth of who I am or the world I function in.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Right, it's just this very loud humming discomfort in my mind and in my body that has drowned out any kind of reasonable thought.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yay, so first things first.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I acknowledge to myself that that is what's happening Now.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: You may not always remember that right away, that's okay, but the goal is, you know, to remind yourself sooner than like.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: You know faster and faster and faster as you experience this.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make a note.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: This is how I functioned.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: A lot in the beginning of my healing was I would make notes for myself and leave them around the house, right?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: This is why, in the post-divorce roadmap the immersive journaling experience we have phone screens and mirror messages and all these things to remind us, to cue us right, of what's true.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So my mind was drowned out with this awful hum of anxiety.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I knew that, though, and I was like well crap, i really want this to go.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I don't want this to stay Okay, so what am I going to do about that?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, i know that what I'm experiencing right now is a flashback.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Isn't that fun.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: We think flashbacks are like picture images a lot of times, but we've learned through so many of the researchers that have brought us all this beautiful data, like Bessel Vander Koch and his you know colleagues, have taught us that, a lot of times, flashbacks come in the form of nervous system reactions, right body sensations and emotions.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm like okay, this is a flashback of some sorts.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: What does it want me to know?
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: What is asking to be processed right now.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So that's the thing about anxious, angry or triggered is something is asking to be processed Now because you're going through something really kind of acute and painful and awful right now and a very real time issue that that may involve your ex violating your boundaries or may involve you having to tackle some really big stressors like going to court, co-parenting, you know, having to sort out who gets to keep what, having to move through some difficult financial situations, having more bills, less income.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: These are very real things that are going to trigger needing real time solutions.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And so sometimes when we're having these flashbacks or these really big feelings, it's about what's happening in the present moment, and then a huge chunk of what you're feeling or experiencing is also a flashback from a whole host of similar experiences that you've had in the past.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So it's a mashup of present day struggles and old stuff And a lot of times, one of the things that gets us into trouble in the moment is teasing out what's what.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I got into the biggest snit with my ride or die a couple of weeks ago and I watched it happen.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Right, i got so angry and I was so triggered and I was like, well, this isn't very cute.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It's not pretty.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much of this is about right this moment and how much of this is about back then.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I genuinely don't know.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing This relationship is strong enough to handle it.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say a handful of things.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say them kindly, even though I'm feeling huge feelings and I'm going to trust that she and I are going to work it out.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So that happened, right, but I could tell in there I didn't know how much of it was present and how much of it was past.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So just know, as you're moving through these flashbacks that's part of it is sifting and sorting what needs action now to do with this person or this problem or this situation in front of you and how much of it just needs to be processed from the past.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Once you've acknowledged to yourself that, okay, like I did this morning.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, anxiety, this is what we're feeling right now.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Let's figure out what needs to be processed.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: The next choice I made was to do a series of butterfly taps.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Now, if you've been around for a minute, you've heard me talk about this before and we're going to dig into that a lot today.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so a butterfly tap is just imagine having your arms crossed, maybe over your chest or off your, over your midsection or even over your knees, it kind of doesn't matter.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: And just being able to left right tap, like picturing a butterfly's wings, would just kind of tap left right, left right, and what that's creating is a bilateral, a two-sided stimulation in your body.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And we know that painful experiences are stored in the body energetically And this little left right tapping is going to help stimulate whatever needs to move through you.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: So again, if you've been around, you know we rely a lot on tapping around here.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: We talk about EFT tapping, emotional freedom technique.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: We talk a lot about energy moving through the body.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: This is a particular technique that I love.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: That doesn't take a lot of thought, that when I'm triggered, i'm anxious, angry or triggered, i can just drop into very quickly.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's called a butterfly tap.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So here's what I did.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: I started tapping Don't worry about how fast or how slow, it just doesn't matter for the sake of being triggered right, found my breath and just started tapping and would do that for maybe 30 seconds a minute, and then I would pause and I still had my eye mask on and it was still dark in the room and it was still quiet, right, but I would pause and I would just wait a few minutes to see what came to me next, what came up in my body, what physically I was feeling, what mentally I was thinking or noticing, what picture images maybe came to mind.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I did this, probably on and off, for about an hour, i would guess, and I may have even dozed a little bit in between, who knows.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: But what started to unfold for me and it took many rounds of tapping and pausing, but what came to me was a lot of, a whole big, long string of memories of major health stressors that caused financial stressors throughout the course of my life.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Now, this was a very appropriate thing that was calling to me this morning, because I'm tackling health stuff right And there's this old, old fear that some problem with my health is going to cause me to not be able to financially provide for myself.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Now, one of those strings of memories that came up was absolutely during my divorce, because at that time I had horrible cluster headaches.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I was in and out of the emergency room as a single woman, super tough.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: My friends from Alenon would take me to the emergency room and sit with me and bring me home and sit with me.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: It was wild, and I was also, you know, from a financial standpoint that was an issue.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Right, i struggled to get to work and take care of myself.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I struggled to take care of myself, period, let alone do all the adulting that is required when you're in a divorce situation.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: But I managed to do it right.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: But it was very scary, and it was very financially scary, because you know what if you can't get to work right, and so this is what was calling to be processed today, and so for, like I said, for about an hour I breathed, i tapped, i paused and I allowed it to move through And after about an hour it doesn't always have to take you that long.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I had that time right, i was already in bed, i didn't have anywhere to be, so I took the time right.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to take that amount of time when you're triggered.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: But what I do want you to get really clear about is this type of tool, like butterfly tapping, that doesn't take a lot of thought, that you can use, is highly effective.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Now it may cause more big feelings to come, and that's okay, and no, you haven't heard a lot about butterfly tapping.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It is out there, but that's because there are people out there, you know.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Have you?
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: have you seen me talk about being a rebel healer at all lately?
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: I really am standing in that kind of title because there are a lot of people out there who will say that, um, that butterfly tapping needs to be overseen by a therapist or somebody like that.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: And while that's valuable, that's very, very valuable, right, we can't heal in a vacuum just by ourselves.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Um, but you can use this tool on your own also, and you can make more progress and and learn how to regulate your nervous system and learn how to move through these triggers in real time, because you can't wait.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine if I you know, i don't even have a therapist appointment scheduled right now or if I woke up anxious this morning and didn't have this tool and had to wait for therapy in order to process it?
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: that's not useful, right.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: It's not the way to really own our power and our healing.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, i have relied heavily over the years on healers to help guide me and to help facilitate transformation, and that matters.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: But what also matters is saying I can do this, i can, i can and I will, And so I want you to.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: When you start using this butterfly tapping technique, i really want you to rely heavily on your breath and heavily on journaling also.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, now again, i was in bed in the dark and I didn't need to pull out my journal, but a lot of times what's going to happen is you're going to be so flooded with your trigger that One of the tools you have to use in addition to butterfly tapping is grounding into something more steady than you are in that moment right, because in these moments where we're anxious, angry and triggered, we're not steady.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: We're like berserk energy, and so when you grab a pen and a notebook and you start writing, it starts refining that berserk energy that's inside of you and filtering it into the page right Through the pen, out your brain, through your arm, through the pen and onto the page Starts refining that energy.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Now, i love combining the butterfly tap with journaling And, in fact, inside of my communities over the years, i've taught this technique where you tap, you journal, you pause, you tap, you journal, you pause.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: And so when you especially need to get grounded during a trigger because you're so flooded, adding that piece is going to help you move through the trigger more smoothly And taking that if you can picture that berserk energy and streamlining it and starting to quiet it down so that it starts to make sense to you.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Now, if you could do all of this outside or next to a plant, even better.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Right, because part of grounding is being connected to something, again more steady than yourself And when we can be outside, feet in the grass or wherever right With nature, there is a, there is a frequency that happens in nature that is a very soothing grounding, energetic frequency that automatically helps sooth so much of what we're feeling, right, and then and then, from that grounded place, it's a lot easier to process and make sense of what's coming up and what's going on.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's recap Anxious, angry, triggered using a butterfly, tap your breath, a journal and nature to move through and determine what is coming up for you, that needs, that is calling to you to be processed and refined in that moment so that you can make sense of it.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Now, by the end of my hour, what action was there for me to take?
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: None, there was nothing.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Well, that's not completely true.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: What I figured out by the end of it was Dawn.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: You need to stay the course right That I just needed to keep moving forward, encourage and faith, and, man, that's a you're in that season.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Right That we need to move forward and do the thing anyways, even though it's scary that this is a season of I can and I will and I'm going to do the thing.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: But sometimes, you know, when we do this work, we may figure out Oh, i need to take a different action, or I need to set this particular boundary, or I need to say this thing to this person, or I need to cancel these plans, or, um, you know, whatever it may be.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So what I came to this morning was I needed to stay the course and, um, i needed to not back down or get busy, to try to distract myself, like that was.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: The very clear thing that I got out of today was not just stay the course, but don't add a bunch of busy work to try to solve a problem that is truly needs to be solved by, for me, having really really great work, life balance and taking really exceptional, exceptionally good care of myself.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And I think probably the similar is true for you right now, even though there's so much temptation to be very, very busy because you're feeling a lot of anxiety and and there's too many feelings and there's so much responsibility on your plate.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: But inevitably, i think my answer probably is often going to be your answer too It's just take, go slower and take exceptional care of yourself.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: But, um, part of what I want you to know is that valuable about this process is you coming up with some clear, with clarity, right, confident answers about what action you need to take, whether or not it is an actual action or your action is to take no action.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: And the thing is is that if you don't move through triggers, anxiety and anger in these types of ways, love, you end up much like I did a couple of weeks ago when I got into the kerfuffle with my ride or die and sent that text message right Now.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Remember, i analyzed and said as best I could being triggered can this relationship tolerate this communication right now?
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, it can.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: This is a safe place for me to practice expressing painful things.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, but for you, love, right now, you are reevaluating a lot of relationships in your circle.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Right now and your ex is never Hear me on this Your ex is never going to be the person where, when triggered, it makes sense for you to send a message.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Also, if you're dating, the person you're dating is probably not the person to send the text message to when you're triggered.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: There may be certain circumstances where that is the case, but truly, truly, truly.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: When we're anxious, angry and triggered, it is our work to process and make sense of and work through and come to terms with what we are feeling.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: So often, many of the ways that we avoid, we bypass our work is by going to the person we're upset with or that has created the trigger and trying to work it out with them, and that's because we're seeking connection and we're seeking clarity and we're seeking security.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Right, and yes, we need all those things as humans.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: However, i think if you look at the culture, historically, we do too much of doing that with other people and not enough of doing it with ourselves.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I was in the car this weekend in this beautiful country road driving and I heard this popular new song and I think it's called I'm going to have to link it in the show notes, but I think it's called your favorite song And it's like an R&B, hip hop song and it's the singer is saying I'm on stage right now and I'm singing your favorite song And in the song he's acknowledging all the things that she wants and needs and craves, all the ways she's tired of being tired, all the ways she's hurting and all the ways that he's there to help her and love her well.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: And the song is beautiful and it's really remarkable how well he gets it.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And I was thinking like, wow, especially in a divorce situation, we are craving that so much.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: The rescue right, the knight in shining armor, that like gets us so well and is like I'm going to come alongside you and I'm going to hold you up and I'm going to do this with you, if not for you.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And I thought that is the drug.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: That is the drug that we all sell ourselves short to when we are faced with having to really, really move through this anxious, angry, triggered space.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: And we don't want to in such a rebellious way, like I don't want to do it.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I want someone to love me well and do it for me, and I love you so much.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I get it.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: It is a climb out.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It is a climb out to saying, yes, connection and security are important, but if I don't learn how to create those inside of me first and also, i will never own own connection and security when shit goes crazy, right, And so this is me saying to you you can, you must learn how to sit with a trigger and breathe and process and ground and get clear before you take action or don't take action.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: We've talked about a number of ways to do that.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: There are so many more love, and I want to encourage you to be on a beautiful journey of discovering what those are for you, right?
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: There are so many that I've used over the years EFT tapping.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I've talked about cold plunging, though women can only cold plunge during three out of four weeks of their cycle, but sometimes because when the trigger is so big, we need a tool that's bigger than the trigger.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: We talk a lot about exercise and moving the body.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: That's something that I also thought to do this morning, but I was so cozy in my bed I was like I don't want to do that.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: But a lot of times when I'm in session with clients and we're doing EMDR, i instruct them in the session.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I say get up and go, take a couple of laps around the room, do a couple of sun salutations, stretch, move, expand, because when we're doing energy work and that's what this is right When we're doing energy work and we can allow it to move through our body and flow more easily.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: We're going to shift faster, right?
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: So that is definitely something I could have done this morning.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: That probably would have improved the flow and maybe sped it up.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: You know how I kept saying it took me an hour and it really only needs to oftentimes take you like 15 minutes That moving your body piece is key to allowing the energy to flow and release, because that's what we're doing here, when we're processing, grounding, releasing.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: That's what it means to really work through an emotional state and allow it to go like a tide comes in and goes out.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Comes in and goes out.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So this is me empowering you to try a technique, this butterfly tap, that you probably I could bet have not tried before, but it doesn't take a lot of thought.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And the next time you are freaking the F out, i want you to just say to yourself screw it.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do the thing Don said, i'm going to try it, and then I'm going to reach out and I'm going to tell her how it went, because I want so badly to know how it went.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, i believe in you.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: You've got this.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's a climb, but you are in the middle, right this moment, of having a shift and a breakthrough, because you are hearing about and considering doing something different than you've ever done before, and that is always the precipice of change.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I love you so much, peace.