So, we get triggered. It's totally normal, there are times in our lives when we get triggered a ton. It feels like we're all day triggered and other times when we feel pretty peaceful and chill and there's no stress in our life but it happens to everybody and the process is this something occurs, it triggers us and then we do a thing where we make a judgment about it.
We spin a story about it, we create a narrative about it, we can spend a short period of time or a long period of time. Time in our reaction to the trigger, right?. Something as small as you walk into the kitchen and there are dishes in the sink that someone whoever had a midnight snack didn't clean up.
I can move on from that trigger within a minute or i can spend two hours, spinning a story about it. Telling myself how disrespectful it is, and don't they know better and i've asked so many times. At the end of my story, i'm going to end up with options.
I'm going to have the option to let it go, to decide. “Oh this is mostly about me, i should probably let it go or this is really not that big of a deal ,i'm gonna let it go”.
Another option i have is to speak up. Say something, make a request, make an observation. Let the other person know that it's important to me to come out to a clean kitchen in the morning. So, i can make a request.
That's the the second option, third option if it's a deal breaker you put in a boundary.
So,I guess dishes is not the best example for this but if somebody you're at a party, and your partner makes a joke at your expense, kind of pokes fun at you and you're embarrassed. So, you're triggered and you do the whole like trigger dance and you're gonna get to a point where you're gonna have three options.
You're gonna have to let it go, you're gonna have to speak up, or you're gonna have to put in a boundary and a boundary is “i won't tolerate that happening again, it is not okay with me”, and the next time that you make a joke at my expense i'm going to leave and you'll have to find another ride home. You put in a boundary.
you're going to end up with those three options and you can end up with them five minutes later, two hours later, two days later or you can play this little game called How Fast Can I ?.
How fast can i move through my trigger and make a choice and i'm gonna have to make those choices anyway. So ,how fast can i get myself to do i let it go?, do i speak up?, do i put in a boundary?.
You can play this game all across your life and all of your relationships whenever you're dealing with a trigger. Because you are in control of your response to the trigger. The thing is going to happen, people are going to do things, and you're going to naturally be triggered by it. that's all like not avoidable, that's just a part of life.
It's that period of time between when you're triggered and when you act, that you have control over. That response time, and when we can close that gap, we have a much more comfortable life. We have much more peaceful conflict-free relationships.
So, that's your game. You're only playing against yourself, you're only trying to improve your time, you get to celebrate when you got over the dishes thing in a minute when last week it took you two hours, last week it took you all day.
So, you can play this game with yourself called and get myself to, should i let it go?, should i speak up?, do i need a boundary?.
When you get through, when you speed yourself through how fast can you get to that choice and you end up with boundary, a little bit of help for that. You can save yourself so much headache, heartache, and internal turmoil just by playing this game against yourself.
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