About triggers. And boundaries. Or Humanity.
About us... About responsibility.
Triggers.
We all have them.
We don't like them.
We misjudge them.
Triggers are here to help. To draw around us a sweet bubble of ease, safety and peace where we can rest and ground in order to flow through our life joyfully.
Triggers are not here to tell us how flawed other people are! Triggers are here to tell us who we are.
If someone scratches my left hand… it hurts my hand. I need to know about it in order to tell others that it's not okay with my body. Thankfully, most people are aware by the age of 5 that scratches hurt, and that scratching others is not okay. Unfortunately, no matter how old we are, we never learn how to see each other's figurative hearts.
So triggers are here to help us know when someone has scratched our heart. Without them, how would we know? And without us, how will they know?
Triggers are little messengers coming from our inner managers to tell us that something's wrong, something needs our attention, our care, our gentle protection. The system has been breached, love is leaking... we're not safe.
Triggers are not here to tell us that we're victims or weak! Triggers are here to remind us that we're able to take care of ourselves and strong enough to heal our hearts and avoid unnecessary wounds:
If you let a tree shield you from the sun the minute one of its sunbeam starts warming your skin the wrong way, you will be able to spend an entire day rejoicing in the tender arms of mother Nature. If we decide however that our skin shouldn't be bothered -because we're better that any limitation we might have been born with… or, more precisely, because we choose to call facts limitations- we're going to get burned, create a miserable experience for ourselves and have to then spend a lot of time in pain and inside to recover.
Triggers are not a sign that we can't be surrounded by other people; triggers are how we learn how to dance with other people in a way that will allow us to trust them, connect to them, welcome them... Love them. Triggers are not here to make us push people away, triggers are here to teach us how to keep them close. Triggers are not our enemies or faults. They're our boundaries and friends.
Boundaries are not an act of war or defense. Boundaries are a sign of integrity and self-awareness. Boundaries are "the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously" as Prentis Hemphill divinely phrased it. Boundaries are not a barrier to connection; boundaries are the gateways to the land of unconditional love.
Boundaries are so important... and one of the reason we struggle so much with them is because of how rarely we let ourselves inquire about ourselves and how little trust we bestow on our beautiful intuition.
This is the tragedy of our existence. We look for salvation everywhere. Anywhere! But in ourselves. And we then never get to realize that salvation was already here in the one place we never acknowledge. Inside. Under our misinformed beliefs. Under our unconscious conditioning. Under our conceptualized past and hypothetical future. Under our fears, our sorrow, our demands and grievances. Under our armor, our masks, our alibis, our judgements… our roles. Under the thoughts, the emotions, the turmoil, the words, the wind. Under our illusion of what is, and where all suddenly makes sense again.
We easily identify with what we do, how we look and what we see. We fail to realize that who we are is actually what we feel.
Some call our essence our soul, our inner being, our energy. Science calls it our nervous system or our psyche. And I will use all of those words and many others interchangeably, because I don't believe there needs to be a battle between the world of form and the world of spirit.
We call science what we think we understand. We call magic what we think we can't explain. Both of those words are the rulers of the two countries of our reality, and their boundaries are constantly being renegotiated, with Magic welcoming the ambassadors of Science enthusiastically, and with Science trying to convince its constituents that magicians are safe! and distant cousins they can learn to love and trust wholeheartedly.
So whether it rings truer to call it our heart, our mind or our nervous system, that's how we make sense of the world. What decides to open us up to it all or to close everything that can be.
And getting reconnected with this inner compass is the hidden gift of trauma and the rainbow in the clouds of anguish. Because with trauma, triggers become earthquakes, and the whispers which try to guide us all on our way back home are turned into screaming sirens, urging us to make halt before entering a mine field.
When you have PTSD, there is no coping mechanisms which will allow you to keep on with your day with the illusion that nothing happened. Numbing techniques will give you some respite, sure, but in the midst of a hurricane no one can walk outside pretending not be bothered in the way we can through a summer drizzle.
Triggers will not only try to get your attention to a detail which needs editing in your surroundings... Triggers will turn an heavenly sight into a picture of Hell, a kitten into a vampire, hope into a fallacy, help into a conspiracy, a hug into a weapon and the solace of love into the threat of a killing spree.
Triggers will not compete for your attention, triggers will overcome any attempt you can make to bring intention and intuition back in the control tower. So, pretty quickly, and if you're lucky enough to catch a glimpse of awareness between the constant attacks of your flashbacking past (think Time square), PTSD gets you to make a choice between a ruined lifetime of reactions or dedicating no small amount of time to practices which are now congregated under the name "regulation".
Regulation includes intentional breathing, yoga, journaling, singing, dancing, therapy, nutritious meals, standing clear of numbing behaviors, stepping out of constant stimulation to just be for a second, for a heartbeat... Nature, movement, the right kinds of hugs from the right persons, cuddling with a pet, reading something inspiring, any creative endeavors, Love (when it's Love, and not mislabeled attachment), intentional thoughts, investigated emotions, embodiment, music, the right amount of sleep, water... anything and everything that allows you to feel both grounded and expansive. Protected and free. Safe and excited. Known and developing. Home and unlimited.
Regulation gets you back in integrity. You're able to think, feel, be intentional and care. You feel love, loved and loving. You have time and space to be present and live, instead of suffocating in a permanent rush of reactions you're incapable to understand, analyze or forgive. You see the sky again, the beauty of sunsets, the colors of the birds who sing around us while we go through our days full of wonder, little joys, big surprises and interesting challenges. You feel grateful for everything you get to live, have, touch, give, taste, share and, yes, love. You connect the dots of your own story, you turn chapters into books and books into series which make sense, bring wisdom and faith into your present moment and dreams to build the future around.
Regulation erases the noise, the lies, the smoke, the filters. Regulation colors the clouds into incandescent symbols of resilience and allow us to see the stars we need to wish upon, to hear the promises of silence and to trust that all is well, working in our favor. That there is a solution, an answer, a point... a way home.
Regulation is what self-care is all about... and why self-care is our path to those we love. Why self-care is not, cannot be and will never be selfish, useless or shallow. Self-care gets a bad rep because self-care is misunderstood and misreported. Self-care is not putting ourselves above the needs of others. Self-care is meeting our own needs in order to not overburden others with the task of taking care of us; and self-care is also the only way to be able to show up for others. It is how we can be who we truly are; and who we truly are is who others need us to be. Self-care is therefore how we can care for others.
Self-care is not self-indulgent, it's the opposite. It is our responsibility... And at the same time our antidote. A gift to ourselves which turns us into a gift to the world. The very definition of a gift which keeps on giving. An allegory of abundance, where what is given to one is given to everybody. Self-care is a declaration of love to Humanity. And Humanity is always and by definition BOTH you and me.
I am my way to you. And denying this is indeed self-less... but selflessness shouldn't be glorified! It is not glorious. It's empty.
I am what I can give to you. A plain and simple fact. A truth so obvious… and yet we all seem oblivious of it.
Anyhow the choice is ours really. Who do we want to coexist with? Who do we want to offer to each other? Triggered empty vessels of fear... or radiant and integrated fields of love?
A myriad of small individual choices... An infinitely different world in the making.
A small change of perspective. An endless horizon of possibilities appears…
Understanding that the world starts with me is not narcissistic. It's understanding that the "me" I'm referring to is not a concept but only and also the “me” you have in you and the “me” that is in all of us. That we're in charge, and that we have the power to turn this world into Hell or into Heaven. It's acknowledging how much agency we have, and the mission we have to fulfill.
Understanding that the world starts with "me" is humbling. It's understanding that we are the problems we are trying to defend ourselves from.
AND it's also grasping that we are who we're looking for. The key. The way out. The way through. The way in. We’re “it”!
The search is over…
What a relief…
And again: what a responsibility.