My Emotional Triggers

It is said that it is not what we hear ourselves thinking, but what we don't hear ourselves thinking is what is at the root of all of our behaviors and reactions.

When I think of a tsunami, I am reminded that a shift at the bottom of the ocean is the cause of the massive destruction that manifests at the waters surface. I can imagine quite clearly the disconnectedness somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, being what is causing all the destruction on land. Truer, the actual disturbance we see manifest through the enormous waves of water, has nothing to do with water at all. Tsunami's are the result of a disturbance in the earths plates. The rushing water is simply what shows up after the earth has cracked a bit.

When I liken a tsunami to areas of my life that have been explosive, I can see how often it was that while reacting in the moment to a certain event, the truth was that I was reacting to something much deeper inside of me that had very little to do with any moment at hand.

Triggers are those places in us that draw us back to painful times in our lives when specific psychological woundings actual took place. They are the points of negative creation within us, that unless we assimilate and somehow make peace with, will draw us back emotionally as if the initial wounding is reoccurring in our present time.

When I was a little girl, my fathers sister suffered a nervous breakdown. She was ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It was a difficult time to navigate through as a child. I was only about 10 or 11 at the time.

My aunt had always been someone I admired. She was attractive, and quite successful for a woman back in the 70's. She lived with a man I believed was my uncle Mike. 10 years into my aunts relationship with this man she discovered he had another life. Mike was actually married and had three children. He worked for a bus company and was somehow able to explain his nights out through overtime and multiple swing shifts.

The realization left my aunt unable to cope. She could not bridge the ten years of deception emotionally through to mental acceptance. Her mind simply could not accept that the man she trusted could have been such a liar. Rather than face that reality, it is my opinion my poor aunts mind split.

There are so many tangents I could go off onto from here. I could draw analogies to the idea that my aunts mother abandoned her when she was 10 through suicide. I could write about how that wound-that sense of abandonment, and betrayal was the unstable groundwork that all of her prior relationships were built, including the relationship with her self, and that instability is what really caused her psychological split, and I would probably be right or pretty damn near close if I did. But these writings are about my souls recovery. And so I choose to connect the dots with a focus on the groundwork that was 'me' instead.

When my mother would find herself frustrated by me for whatever reason, it was not uncommon for her to say cruel things to me like, "You're just like Aunt Eleanor. You're going to end up just like her. You'll never have any friends Lisa. You're a little psycho."

We lived in a tiny little house. My bedroom was on the second floor. Back then only the rich had air conditioners, so we always fell asleep to the sound of crickets, cars passing by, and airplanes taking off and landing in the distance. On one night in particular, I remember my mom talking to one of our neighbors on our front stoop. I overheard her telling our neighbor that she was concerned for me. She told her friend that she thought I was a little crazy like her sister in law. The really fucked up thing for me was, that while my mother was talking to her friend, she made her concerns seem genuine. It confused me, because my mother never acted genuine or considerate of my feelings when ever she did speak to me. In fact my mother seemed to taunt me into frustration.

Her calling me a psycho wounded me. Her telling her friend that I was crazy, cut my emotional Self like a knife. So when my ex husband would not only deliberately frustrate me, or withhold affection, or attention from me, but in addition would refer to me as crazy, or a fruit cake, or flakey, I would react not only to the moment, but through the eyes of that still very wounded little girl I still was.

The Disconnected Self

So many of us seem to be searching for something, but what? At the end of the day, when you close your eyes can you feel peace?  Can you feel joy? Can you feel as if you are satisfied with your life?

All to often, most of us feel as if we are missing something, although we can not name it.  If we are not frantic with worry, or excited at all times, many of us become bored.  Our minds so accustomed to the search, seem to mistake boredom for something that which may be so much more.

Most of us were taught to worry.  As children we worried what the neighbors would think, or what the teachers would say.  We worried about the bullies at school, or about getting good grades.  We were conditioned to worry about what others thought rather than what we thought. The point is we were taught to worry.

Our brains are like computers.  Teach a brain to worry and it will worry even when there is nothing to worry about.  A brain will create an idea out of nothing simply to continue doing what it was taught to do, which is worry.

All of us need to wonder whether we worry because there is something to worry about, or do we worry because we were conditioned to do so.  What your mind does, it does because it has been taught to do so.  Until your awareness of self grows, you can not know why your mind does what it does.

I worried for all of the reasons I mentioned above.  

Because I was born to a mother with a fractured sense of self, she could not help me stay connected to my divine truth.  My divine truth as is your divine truth, is that at your core you are perfect and created by god.  Just as trees, and rivers are a part of this universe, so am I and so are you.  Just as a tree is born and a tree dies, so will you and I.

While in my mothers womb, my being floated in divinity.  Living within my mothers womb, blanketed by all that is good, I knew my truth.  The act of being born, and becoming disconnected from my mothers womb, severed me.  Once my being needed to rely on that of the material world, the connection to my self was lost.

Being born requires that newborns rely completely on their caretakers.  If our caretakers do not know their own truth, they can not possibly help us know our own.  Most of us discover the truth along the path of life, through painful and excruciating experiences.

We all needed to be mirrored.  We all needed to have our goodness reflected back to us by people we knew truly loved us.  When we are not seen by others, it becomes impossible for us to see ourselves.  We learn to do what others do.  We worry, we lie, we obsess, we deny, we manipulate, we hide, we drink, we eat, and we make complete messes of our lives.

Pain is good because it forces the psyche to look at what is causing the discomfort.  Without pain in our lives, why would we need to change?  Without pain, there would be no need to look further  into our own hearts or minds.  A mind that does not know pain, is a mind that may be blind to the self.  The love of self is crucial in order to live a life worth living.  To not love the self, is to not know the experience of joy.  

Many of us were taught to disconnect from our self in order not to upset the apple carts.  This was wrong.  Instead we should have been taught to shake the damn apples from the trees if we had to.  Fear of upsetting others was programmed into us.  It was not our fault. But as adults, we are called to know our minds, to connect with our self, and to give glory to our spirits.