In my last blog post, I share a deeply triggering encounter of me – with Milagro, an injured donkey. My desire to save her went beyond mere helpfulness; it was a mirror reflecting my own pain and yearning for healing.

Reading Time: 10 Minutes

This time, I invite you to look at yourself and let your inner triggers serve as valuable guides to self-healing. I will share impulses that help you understand and dissolve emotional blocks so that you don’t repress trigger situations but instead transform them over time. This journey requires courage but holds the potential for a profound, healing connection with yourself.

Identifying and Exploring Emotional Triggers

The Analogy of the "Trigger Cup“

Before diving into practical impulses, it’s important to grasp the foundational concept of a trigger through a simple analogy:

Imagine someone bumps into you and you spill your coffee. Why did you spill the coffee?

Not because someone bumped into you – but because there was coffee in your cup.

If your cup had contained water, tea, or nothing at all, you would have spilled something different – or nothing.

Life works the same way – when it "bumps" into us and we react strongly, what comes out is what was already inside us.

Trigger moments reveal what is hidden deep within – whether joy, peace, anger, or pain.

Are you satisfied with what spills over when you’re triggered? Or do you want to learn how to transform it?

If so, keep reading.

Understanding and Recognizing Triggers in Real-Life Situations

A trigger is a stimulus that provokes a strong emotional response, often during conflicts or challenging situations.

It can evoke intensely uncomfortable emotions like anger, fear, or sadness and may also manifest as physical - and very individual- sensations such as tension, a lump in the throat, or a racing heart.

These reactions point to deeper, unresolved issues – the "contents of your cup" – that call for healing and attention. But before we can reach the contents, we must first confront resistance.

Recognizing Resistance and the Ego’s Role

When we’re triggered, we often enter a state of resistance. Our ego steps in to protect us by generating beliefs and thoughts that amplify feelings of helplessness and inaction. This keeps our attention in our heads and away from our bodies.

3 Types of Resistance to Be Aware Of:

• Playing the Victim:
  The ego asks questions like, "Why me?", "Why am I treated this way?", "What did I do wrong?" "Why doesn't anyone see me?", "No one likes me", "I’ll neer find someone that loves me," or "I can't do this."

• Projecting Blame on Others:
  The ego shifts responsibility by devaluing others: "They acted wrongly," "What a terrible person," or "They’re idiots/mean/dumb…"

• Self-Criticism and Taking Blame:
  The ego takes on guilt through self-criticism: "I should have acted differently", "I said something stupid", "I just don't learn", or "I’ll never learn."

Recognizing these resistances is the first step to breaking the cycle.

Compassion and Curiosity as Tools for Self-Connection

We can’t address the contents of our inner “cup” alone, we need compassion on our side!

Compassion can be reached byacknowledging that each of your reactions (whether behavioral or emotional) is valid – they express your inner world and are trying to tell you something.

Approach these reactions with the same patience and gentleness you would offer a close friend or a child. Only when you meet yourself with compassion does space open for our second important companion: Curiosity!

Now, with an open heart and open mind, we can genuinely explore our inner cup and ask ourselves:

What triggered this strong reaction within me? What old wounds might be touched by this?

With this attitude, you can begin to understand yourself better and explore your internal patterns.

Practical Impulses for Self-Connection

• Focusing on the Body

Your body is the gateway to your emotions – it’s constantly communicating with you, even if you aren’t always consciously aware of it.

Giving it your full attention can help you access sensations and emotions that your mind usually suppresses or that you distract yourself from.

This practice is especially effective when you’re currently triggered. If you’d like to try it without currently being triggered, imagine a past situation that deeply moved you – such as a disagreement with your partner, boss, or a family member and try to re-feel it as best as possible.

For beginners, it’s often easier to do this exercise in a quiet space since it can be harder to manage in the midst of conflict.

Sit or lie down and focus all your attention on your bodily sensations. Notice what you feel in your body:

Where is there tension or pain? Do you feel warmth or cold? Tingling or numbness? Pressure?

Perhaps you sense something in your lower belly, stomach, chest, throat, or face.

Some people experience cold hands, hot feet, a burning face – or even a feeling of numbness. This, too, is an awareness that can change and become clearer over time. This is where curiosity will help you!

• Identifying Your Emotional & Sensational Signature for Each Trigger

Different triggers cause different bodily sensations – not just between individuals but even within the same person at different times.

Find the “fingerprint” or signature of your specific trigger moments. Observe these sensations with an open and compassionate attitude.

As you continue to practice — during and after conflicts, your Emotional and Sensational Signature will become increasingly clear.

Over time, you will become an expert at recognizing your patterns, enabling you to respond differently in future conflicts.

You will perceive these triggers earlier and with much less intensity, allowing you to notice and anticipate potential emotional “explosions.”

This will not happen immediately. But with practice, you will learn to either disengage from old behaviors or create space for yourself to regain your center.

This process can be challenging and stressful, but consistent effort will bring transformation. There will come a moment when you find yourself in the midst of conflict, fully aware—and yet, you are okay. ❤️

Probable Obstacles – The Mind’s Carousel

As you observe your body sensations, resistant thoughts (3 Types of Resistance, see above) will often emerge that draw your attention away from the body.

This is entirely normal, as we learned that thoughts are typically protective strategies designed to keep you from feeling uncomfortable sensations in the body.

Breaking this mental carousel can be challenging at first. Automatically recurring thoughts can’t simply be “switched off” or repressed. That’s okay!

It requires patience and compassion – much like dealing with a small child. Criticizing yourself for not succeeding immediately will only increase resistance.

This is what helps me:

If you can remember that you are not trapped in your thoughts and that you can observe them rather than fully identifying with them, it will ease their grip.

The goal is not to rush into feeling but simply to acknowledge resistant thoughts and recognize that they are there.

Practice this until you can easfully redirect your attention back to the body. Some days it works; some days it doesn’t.

Finding peace instead of seeking justice

Even if someone truly wronged, hurt, or abandoned you, deep healing in your body won’t come from holding onto that fact alone. Even if the person faced the penalty your mind believes they deserve, it would not resolve the pain within you.

As long as you are entangled in thoughts and focused on how others should change, react differently, or be punished, the access to your own feelings remains blocked.

The goal is to reach a state of being where you’re able detach from thoughts about yourself and others, to feel, accept, and allow healing.

Origins Of The Mind’s Carousel

As you learned earlier, embracing your inner world is far from easy. It takes a lot of practice in awareness and mindfulness to recognize when and how we think – and that our thoughts don’t always align with reality.

Why is this so, and how can we gradually let them go? Read on to find out.

Where Do Our Thought Patterns Come From?

Many of our thought patterns stem from childhood experiences and act as protective mechanisms to shield us from overwhelming bodily feelings during threatening situations.

Often, these patterns redirect our attention outward—away from intense physical sensations. Experiencing strong emotions in the body is only safe for a child when supported by a loving, patient, and curious environment from caregivers.

When such a space isn’t fully available, the child learns to retreat into their mind, distancing themselves from bodily experiences to cope.

These suppressed bodily sensations often remain stuck into adulthood - waiting to be triggered - for us to finally acknowledge and feel them.

Why Is It So Hard to Stop Thinking and Start Feeling?

To perceive and feel your body sensations, you need the same loving, patient, and curious attitude you might have wished for from your parents as a child.

To perceive and truly feel your body’s sensations, you need the same loving, patient, and curious attitude you might have longed for from your parents as a child.

This is not about blaming our parents; it’s about acknowledging what was missing so that we can meet these unmet needs for safety and connection within ourselves.

If your parents struggled to provide this nurturing attitude— because they didn’t receive it from their own parents—it makes sense that you would find it challenging as well. It’s a logical consequence of generational patterns.

The encouraging news is that our generation is becoming increasingly aware of this. We can learn and grow by consistently practicing mindful awareness and acceptance of our feelings. Only you, yourself, have the power to fully feel and transform these deep, hidden needs.

How Long Does Healing Take?

It often takes multiple attempts, and sometimes we spend a long time in resistance before our system feels safe enough to allow hidden painful sensations to surface. Again, resistance is part of your process and that’s okay!

In my experience, this process cannot be forced – you can only repeatedly invite the painful sensations.

Healing happens naturally when you feel safe enough to direct unconditional attention to the body.

Any expectations about how or when healing should occur will block the process.

Body, mind, and especially heart perception must become soft and unconditional before we can feel pain without the desire to change it.

Is Healing Always This Exhausting?

I won’t sugarcoat it: yes, healing can be exhausting – perhaps that’s the nature of growth.

But when the peak of suffering is reached and consciousness is invited, healing happens naturally and unstoppably. As we fully surrender to the experience of the pain.

In the end, it feels like climbing Mount Everest. The clarity, serenity, and inner freedom that follow are unparalleled.

How Do I Know If I’m Healing?

Healing often manifests as the birth or rebirth of a part of your inner strength and self-confidence. The unconscious suppression and escape from pain often carry the belief: “I can’t endure this.”

But when you finally surrender and feel the pain, you realize that you were wrong and that you actually can hold your pain.

At first, it may feel as if you are losing yourself in the pain – as though it will never end, overwhelming and relentless.

Yet, precisely in the space where you allow the pain to exist unconditionally for the first time, you see yourself in a way you always wanted to be seen by others.

That’s when healing occurs.

Summary: Step-by-Step Guide to Working with Triggers

1. Recognize and Name the Trigger: The first step is to consciously notice the triggering moment and acknowledge that it involves an old wound being called forth.

2. Meet with Compassion and Curiosity: Instead of judging your reaction, meet yourself with compassion. Ask: “What triggered this reaction?”

3. Feel Bodily Sensations: Direct your attention to your body sensations. Where do you feel tension, pain, or other sensations? Observe without judgment.

4. Identify Dysfunctional Thought Patterns: Many thoughts that arise during trigger moments are protective mechanisms. Question whether they reflect reality or old patterns. Either way, let all thoughts pass.

5. Allow the Pain Consciously: Permit yourself to feel the pain unconditionally. This can be the key.

6. Cultivate Patience and Persistence: Healing is a process that requires patience and persistence. It’s about taking small steps and meeting yourself with compassion repeatedly.

Closing Thoughts

The process requires patience and dedication – sometimes, it feels like a mountain. But every step towards self-awareness and self-acceptance brings you closer to inner peace and healing.

Even when the pain feels overwhelming or you’re stuck in old patterns, remember: that you can hold your feelings and live through them with love. It’s not about defeating the pain but giving it space and feeling it as you’ve always wished your parents did.

May this approach encourage you to be more loving and patient with yourself and guide you closer to your authentic, healing self.