Latest / Adult Child of Dysfunction / E 380 : Tammys Takes #50 Why Your Emotional Triggers Feel So Intense _ Childhood Trauma & the Nervous System

Transcript

E 380 : Tammys Takes #50 Why Your Emotional Triggers Feel So Intense _ Childhood Trauma & the Nervous System · Adult Child of Dysfunction

• 0:14
  Well, hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Tammy's Takes, where we take powerful conversations and turn them into practical strategies, honestly, that you can use right here, right now.
• 0:24
  So today I wanna go a little bit deeper into the conversation I had with Megan DiMatteo.
• 0:29
  And it really got me thinking about something I see all the time, not only with the people that I work with, but something that I've learned to live with in my own life too.
• 0:39
  And that is the difference between feeling an emotion and allowing that emotion to decide what something means, because those are two totally different things.
• 0:48
  So Megan used the term emotional sobriety, and I love the way she explained it.
• 0:52
  If you haven't listened to the episode, go back to yesterday's episode.
• 0:56
  She does a very, very good job at explaining what emotional sobriety is.
• 1:00
  And when you grow up around alcoholism, addiction, dysfunction, unpredictability, or other kinds of trauma, you can become really good at reacting.
• 1:10
  So you're watching what's happening around you, you're putting out fires, you're preparing for disappointment, and you're always ready to protect yourself.
• 1:17
  And when you think about it, that honestly makes complete sense.
• 1:20
  So as a child, you didn't have a lot of control over what was happening.
• 1:24
  If the adults around you were unpredictable, you had to learn how to read them.
• 1:28
  You learned to watch their face, listen to the tone of voice, feel the energy in the room even, and figure out what you needed to do next.
• 1:35
  So you became a very good reactor.
• 1:39
  The problem is, when you grow up, leave the house, build an entirely different life, that ability to react comes right along with you, like all these other great things when you grow up in dysfunction.
• 1:51
  So sometimes things that are Really small feel really big because you're still living in that childlike state.
• 2:01
  Have you ever had something relatively small happen and your reaction felt completely out of proportion to what actually happened?
• 2:07
  Maybe somebody didn't text you back right away, or maybe you're talking to your partner and his tone just changes a tiny bit.
• 2:15
  Maybe somebody asks you for something when you're already overwhelmed, or your boss sends you that dreaded message, "Can we talk?"
• 2:23
  Or somebody cuts you off in traffic.
• 2:25
  I mean, a million different things can be so small, but s- you would think they would be relatively insignificant, and your reaction would be maybe mildly irritated, but instead, your entire body is activated.
• 2:40
  Now your brain starts writing a story.
• 2:43
  "They're mad at me.
• 2:44
  I'm being taken advantage of again.
• 2:46
  Nobody appreciates me.
• 2:47
  I did something wrong.
• 2:48
  What the hell is wrong with these people?"
• 2:49
  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:51
  But it always ends up being the same thing.
• 2:52
  Something bad is about to happen.
• 2:55
  That's the part I want you to notice because honestly, in your body, that feeling is real.
• 3:01
  It is 100% real.
• 3:03
  But the story that your brain attaches it to might not be.
• 3:09
  Megan gave a great example of this.
• 3:10
  She talked about one day when she was walking through Central Park in New York when she was in a period of her life where she was really feeling kind of depleted and overwhelmed already, right?
• 3:20
  So a woman walked up to her, simply approached her and asked for directions, but inside, Megan had this huge reaction.
• 3:28
  Her story became, "Everybody always needs something from me.
• 3:32
  I never get time for myself."
• 3:34
  Literally, from just a simple comment of somebody saying, "How do I get to X, Y, and Z?"
• 3:38
  So the woman, the woman, sorry, that asked the question wasn't really the issue.
• 3:44
  She had bumped into an old belief, and I think that's where we can learn so much about ourselves because often these triggers, they're clues.
• 3:54
  I say this a lot when your reaction is much bigger than the situation in front of you.
• 3:59
  Get curious.
• 4:00
  Don't immediately shame yourself and say, "Oh my gosh, Tammy, I'm ridiculous.
• 4:04
  Why am I so upset about this?"
• 4:06
  But don't also immediately assume that everything your mind is telling you is true.
• 4:12
  There's gotta be kind of a middle ground here, right?
• 4:15
  Something in you got activated, so find out what it is.
• 4:18
  This is where something that I talk about all the time comes in.
• 4:23
  It's the body before story approach, and I'm sure if you've listened to any of my podcasts, especially my Tammy Takes, that you have heard it before.
• 4:30
  Because what you need to do is this.
• 4:32
  Before you start deciding what the other person's intentions were, before you send back a text, before you react and, and really do something or say something that you probably will regret, or before you shut down, before you start
• 4:46
  rehearsing that story in your head over and over again, just come back to your body.
• 4:51
  Where do you feel it?
• 4:53
  Again, many of us feel it in many different places.
• 4:56
  Maybe your chest gets tight.
• 4:57
  Maybe your throat closes up.
• 4:58
  Maybe your shoulders go up and you're l- right around your ears.
• 5:02
  Maybe you get that pit in your stomach or you feel your jaw clench.
• 5:06
  Those are all different things that happen to your body, right?
• 5:11
  And Megan and I talked about this a lot.
• 5:13
  Learning to identify where the emotion is showing up in the body, and then name what you're feeling.
• 5:21
  Instead of saying, "Everything is terrible," maybe say, "Ooh, my stomach hurts.
• 5:26
  I'm a little anxious right now."
• 5:28
  Instead of feeling, you know, instead of, like, doing these all or nothing comments, really, like, maybe, you know, I...
• 5:35
  Instead of saying, "Nobody likes me," maybe, "I'm feeling rejected right now."
• 5:42
  So you need to really name how you're feeling, and you can feel it in your body.
• 5:47
  How does that feel?
• 5:48
  Give it a, give it an object.
• 5:50
  Like, if it's in your chest, is it heavy?
• 5:52
  Is it light?
• 5:52
  Is it thick?
• 5:54
  Is it hot?
• 5:54
  Is it cold?
• 5:55
  Give it some dimension, and then name what it is.
• 5:59
  Because you wanna start being able to notice the emotion instead of becoming the emotion Megan used a really good, um, analogy.
• 6:09
  I think it was Megan, or it might have been somebody else on one of my other podcasts, but it was an analogy that kind of really stuck with me.
• 6:15
  So think of your emotions like somebody sitting in the passenger seat of your car.
• 6:20
  They're allowed to be there.
• 6:21
  You've invited them in, right?
• 6:23
  You don't have to throw them out of the car.
• 6:24
  You don't have to kick them out.
• 6:25
  You don't have to tell them to shut up.
• 6:26
  You don't have to pretend they're not there.
• 6:29
  So listen to them.
• 6:31
  Maybe it's, maybe your emotions are it's fear, and it's saying something about this doesn't feel safe.
• 6:37
  Maybe it's saying, "I set a boundary, and it was crossed."
• 6:42
  Maybe you have resentment in you, and it's saying, "I'm giving more than I actually want to give."
• 6:47
  Those are all useful information, but you don't want them to be able to get into the driver's seat and drive the car.
• 6:56
  Does that make sense?
• 6:56
  Is that an analogy that maybe you can put up with?
• 6:59
  So that's really emotional regulation.
• 7:01
  You can have it sitting next to you.
• 7:03
  You can observe it.
• 7:04
  You can see it.
• 7:04
  You can describe it, but you don't let it run the show.
• 7:09
  So it's not I shouldn't ever feel angry.
• 7:12
  It's I'm angry.
• 7:14
  Let me decide what to do with that.
• 7:16
  Because many times when we have these gut reactions, and we react before we can actually take the time to process and respond, we say things we don't want to say.
• 7:26
  We do things we don't want to do.
• 7:27
  We get ourselves into a heap of trouble.
• 7:28
  Let's be honest, right?
• 7:31
  So the, the object here really is to interrupt the pattern.
• 7:37
  So here's something I want you to practice.
• 7:39
  You know, again, practical strategies, tips, tricks.
• 7:43
  This is what I do.
• 7:44
  I wanna...
• 7:45
  You know, and if you like this, subscribe, follow me.
• 7:48
  We get these every other day, and they're things that you can put into practice on a regular basis.
• 7:54
  So the next time you find yourself getting activated, do not exact- like, immediately try to calm yourself down.
• 8:02
  I don't even want calm to be the goal.
• 8:04
  I want space to be the goal.
• 8:07
  Give yourself enough space between what happened and what you do next.
• 8:12
  They say there is power in the pause, and they are not lying.
• 8:16
  But what do you do in that pause?
• 8:18
  Couple things.
• 8:19
  You can put your feet on the ground.
• 8:21
  You can take a slow breath.
• 8:23
  You can notice where you're feeling the activation in your body and name the emotion.
• 8:29
  Then ask yourself a couple questions.
• 8:31
  One, what am I feeling?
• 8:34
  Two, what story am I telling myself about what just happened?
• 8:39
  And then three, what do I actually know to be true?
• 8:44
  Because sometimes the story that you're telling yourself and what is actually true has nothing to do with each other.
• 8:51
  Maybe your friend hasn't texted you, and the story that you tell yourself is, "She's upset with me."
• 8:58
  But what do you actually know?
• 8:59
  All you know is she hasn't texted you.
• 9:01
  There could be a thousand different reasons she didn't text you.
• 9:04
  So don't automatically assume that she's upset with me is the true story.
• 9:10
  That's it.
• 9:11
  Just facts.
• 9:12
  Let's stick with facts sometimes, because boy, let me tell you, if you grew up in dysfunction, you are a great filler in the blanker, I guess you could say.
• 9:21
  I like to call that.
• 9:22
  We fill in the blanks.
• 9:23
  If we don't know the story, we fill them in.
• 9:25
  And how do we fill them in?
• 9:27
  We fill them in based on our experiences, our past experiences, our perceptions of the world, or the lens that we're looking at the world with.
• 9:35
  We wanna start to change that lens.
• 9:37
  So what we're gonna do here- We're gonna just actually go with what we know.
• 9:43
  So maybe your partner walks through the door one day and he seems irritated, and your nervous system immediately says, "Oh my God, what did I do?"
• 9:51
  What do you actually know?
• 9:52
  You just know they're quiet.
• 9:54
  Do you see the difference?
• 9:55
  What we're doing here is we are separating the event from the story.
• 9:59
  Because when you've spent a lifetime reacting to everything around you, the little space in between what happens and what you do about it is where you start getting your power back.
• 10:11
  So awareness is not the beginning, or awareness is the beginning, sorry.
• 10:16
  Awareness is the beginning, but it is not the end.
• 10:20
  Um, another part of the conversation that I had with Megan that I really loved, because we talked about how awareness is everything, and I said, yes, awareness is absolutely the first step.
• 10:29
  But once you become aware of your patterns, now you have the opportunity to start doing something different, and I mean that with all of my heart.
• 10:38
  You won't do it perfectly at first, but I don't want you to beat yourself up about it.
• 10:43
  You might catch yourself after you've already reacted and thought, "Ugh, there, there it is.
• 10:48
  There I go again."
• 10:49
  That's okay.
• 10:51
  At first you notice it maybe three hours later, then maybe you notice it an hour later, and then within a week of noticing it and paying attention and not shaming yourself, but just being curious, maybe you now you
• 11:02
  notice it 20 minutes later.
• 11:04
  That is progress One day, you might even catch it before the old reaction comes out.
• 11:12
  That is our goal for you, and that is progress.
• 11:15
  So we're not trying to become people who never get angry, who never get triggered, who never get scared, hurt, or overwhelmed.
• 11:22
  We're learning that we can have the emotions without handing them control over what happens next.
• 11:28
  So this week, I want you to catch one reaction.
• 11:32
  Just one.
• 11:33
  When you notice yourself getting disappointed or disproportionately angry, defensive, mad, sad, anxious, hurt, rejected, whatever it is, don't immediately ask, "What is wrong with me?"
• 11:46
  Ask, "What did this just touch in me?"
• 11:50
  Then go to the body.
• 11:51
  Where am I feeling it?
• 11:53
  What am I feeling?
• 11:55
  What story am I telling myself, and what do I actually know right now to be true?
• 12:00
  You will be absolutely amazed at what you discover, I promise you.
• 12:05
  Because sometimes the person staring at you in front of you is not the person the nervous system is actually responding to, right?
• 12:13
  Sometimes you're responding to something you learned 10, 20, 30, 40, even 50 years ago.
• 12:18
  And once you can see that, you can have something you didn't have when you were a little kid.
• 12:24
  You have choice.
• 12:25
  Now you have choice, and we wanna start exercising that choice.
• 12:29
  So if you're sitting there listening to me, thinking, "Oh my God, Tammy, this is exactly what happens to me.
• 12:34
  I think I'm overreacting because in the moment I can't seem to stop it," that's exactly the kind of people I work with.
• 12:41
  In my complimentary Clarity to Calm call we go over that.
• 12:44
  We look at the patterns and we see what keeps showing up, and we see what might be underneath them, and how you can bring them up and start creating that space between reacting and responding, the trigger and the
• 12:58
  response.
• 12:59
  Those are the things.
• 13:00
  We're gonna bridge that gap.
• 13:01
  We're gonna bridge that gap and we're gonna open up, make more space for logical thinking, using the logical side of your brain, the one we all have.
• 13:09
  So if you wanna get one of those calls, it is complimentary, 100% free.
• 13:14
  Just go to the show notes, book a link, and we will chat.
• 13:18
  But until then, I want you to remember this: your feelings are real.
• 13:22
  Listen to them.
• 13:23
  Get curious about them.
• 13:25
  Let them give you information.
• 13:27
  But remember, they don't always tell the whole story, and you need to know that.
• 13:32
  The goal here, my friend, is to not stop feeling.
• 13:35
  We've been doing that our whole lives.
• 13:37
  The goal is to feel and be able to choose what happens next.
• 13:42
  So until next time, love you guys.
• 13:45
  I'm here for you, and come back for the next Tammy's Take.
• 13:48
  Y'all have a blessed day.
• 13:50
  Bye.