Why Regulation Must Come First

Fast Body-Based Regulation Tools

Valid Feelings Versus Valid Interpretations

Questioning Beliefs And Needs

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Being emotionally intelligent doesn't mean you never get triggered. And getting triggered doesn't mean you're immature overly sensitive or spiritually uninvolved. In this episode, we're attacking emotional intelligence in most emotionally right. Welcome to root subscribe or spiritually short bite-sized episodes. These are tasters of deep dives meant to spark curiosity, help you root deeply, rise freely, and remember who you truly are. Today we are talking about emotional intelligence. Not as a buzzword, but as a real skill related specifically to getting triggered. Before we get to it, let me first say that we are not going to cover everything there is to be covered in regards to getting triggered or emotional intelligence for that matter. This is about sparking curiosity and giving you some place to start. I will give you additional resources in the show notes to go deeper with the experts. The first thing that you want to know about emotional intelligence is that it is not about controlling your emotions. It's not about being calm all the time. It's not about suppressing anger or sadness. It's not about never getting triggered. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize what you're feeling, to regulate your nervous system when emotions run high, and to understand what those emotions are trying to tell you. In practice, it usually shows up as four simple abilities: being able to notice what you feel, regulate when emotions spike, understand what the emotion is about, and repairing when things go wrong. And nothing tests emotional intelligence quite like being triggered. And it's something we've all experienced. Getting triggered is a universal experience. Tone changes. You receive unexpected news. Someone makes an offhand comment that might seem harmless to someone else, but suddenly you feel, you know, the heat in your face, a tightness in your chest, a drop in your stomach, your jaw starts to clench. Suddenly you are not your wisest self. I mean, that's what it feels like to be triggered. And we all know what it feels like within our own bodies. It's not a character flaw, it's a nervous system event. Psychologist Daniel Golman uses the phrase amygdala hijack to describe the moment when the emotional center of the brain detects threat and reacts before the thinking brain has time to evaluate what is actually happening. And this is important to recognize because the nervous system responds to perception, not necessarily reality. It reacts fast, faster than logic, faster than logic or reasoning can catch up. I think about snakes. I um I can tolerate snakes, but they're not my favorite thing, right? I have an immediate fear response to them. But I have the same fear response to seeing a garter snake as I do to seeing a copperhead. Doesn't matter that I understand one is essentially harmless and the other one could actually do real harm. The perceived danger is the same. And when the nervous system perceives danger, even emotional danger, stress chemistry just floods the body. The thinking of the part of the brain, it goes offline. That's why triggers feel so big, because they are not primarily mental experiences. They're physiological ones. And that's why you can't think your way out of a hijack. When you're triggered, your first job is not insight. Your first job is regulation. Insight comes later, after the nervous system settles. Healing does not mean you stop having a nervous system. Spiritual maturity does not remove triggers. It simply shortens the recovery time. It increases your awareness so that sometimes all it takes is a moment for you to realize, oh, I'm getting triggered. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Now I'm regulated. Now I realize I don't need to be triggered right now. The regulation has to come first. That's the first job. So before we analyze the story, before we revisit childhood wounds, before we try to like grow or do better, we regulate because physiology comes first always. And there are a few simple ways to do this. Like I just said, just take a breath, practice the pause. Slow your exhale, make that out breath longer than the in-breath. This one's nice because no one even needs to know you're doing it. Same goes for grounding. Likely your feet are on the ground when this happens. So just notice it. Place your attention on how the earth is coming up to meet you, to support you. This tells your body the threat is not immediate. There's no tiger chasing you. Here's an interesting one. Press your tongue gently to the roof of your mouth. It actually subtly stimulates the vagus nerve, which activates the body's relaxation response. Probably my favorite and most used and most effective is heart centering, which is one of the techniques associated with heart-based meditation, in which you ground your awareness in the heart center and connect with your most aligned, guided, calm self, and then move forward into the interaction from that place. You can do another grounding technique, which is the 54321 process, where you name five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. Of course, this is a little harder to do in the moment, which is why you may need to just walk away. Because let's be real here. Sometimes deep breath in, deep breath out is not going to cut it. That's not going to be enough to regulate you. Sometimes that amygdala hijack, that being triggered, is so intense that you realize you need space in order to come back to self in order to regulate. You might realize that no good can come of staying in the conversation with you in that escalated state. Now, notice with all of these, you are not suppressing the emotion, right? This isn't even really about dealing with the emotion. It's about stabilizing the system so that you can choose a response instead of blindly reacting. And yes, like this is all easier said than done. But like any skill, regulation gets easier with practice. When I first started learning how to do this, I had to walk away a lot. There was hardly any time that I could stay centered while being in that trigger. And it took me time, you know, sometimes uh 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes a day to get back into a place where I could have a conversation without just re-escalating right away. Now I can be in the middle of a conversation, get triggered, take a breath, heart center, and come back to a regulated self in order to move forward, no matter how intense the conversation is. But man, have I practiced it. And, you know, fortunately, unfortunately, I've been put in a lot of positions where I've had the opportunity to practice it. And that's just life. You are always going to have opportunities to practice because, again, emotionally intelligent people are not people who never get upset. Often they feel things very deeply. The difference is awareness, is ability to regulate, is understanding, comfort with being uncomfortable, and faster change over time from reacting to responding. Maybe you have that split-second immediate angry outburst of a response, but then you're able to quickly acknowledge it and say, ooh, hey, I'm sorry, that came out harsher than I intended. Let me start over. Or, whoa, I did not realize how much this means to me. I need a minute to calm down. That's gross. That's emotional intelligence. That's spiritual maturity, as is your ability to get curious. Because we don't want to just perpetually find ourselves having these big outbursts or constantly getting triggered. I mean, eventually we want our sensitivity to diminish so that we only have a big reaction when it is truly warranted. And this is where sometimes there can be confusion. You know, you often hear that all emotions are valid and we should feel our feelings. Uh, and that's true, that's true. But what's also true is that sometimes our feelings aren't actually valid. Feelings are not facts. Sometimes what we're feeling is based on a perception that is not based in reality. For example, imagine a friend is having a party. You told them months in advance you couldn't come because of a work trip. Week at the party comes, they send a reminder text, you respond, wishing them a great time, saying, you know, sorry, I can't be there, and they get angry. You're not coming, you know how important this is to me. I'm I thought you were one of my best friends. I'm really hurt that you're not going to be here. Now, do they have a quote unquote right to be angry? Objectively, no. You were clear way in advance. Their reaction comes from their own perceptions, their own interpretation of the meaning behind your absence. Another example. You've lost a ton of weight and run into someone you haven't seen in a while. They say, Wow, you look great, which is all well and good, but then they keep commenting about how awesome you look. You know, man, just can't get over the change. Wow, you you just look so incredible. And you start feeling triggered. Are they implying you looked that bad before? You know, they're probably not trying to hurt you, right? Most likely they're trying to support you. And how you're interpreting their words comes entirely from your own story about your weight. Granted, there's also like some social awareness element that's there that this person is kind of missing the cues of when enough is enough. Uh, but you know, that's part of emotional intelligence too. Maybe they just don't have it. You know, triggers can be incredibly useful once you're regulated because they reveal what truly matters to you. They invite curiosity, they show that our reactions often reach far beyond the present moment. In fact, they are rarely just about the present moment. They're connected to deeper experiences, beliefs, and values. They are often old pain being activated. The reaction feels bigger than the moment warrants. And that's your clue because it's not just about that present moment. It doesn't mean you're weak or unhealed. It means something in you once learned that this experience wasn't safe and it's still trying to protect you. I know it we were, you know, beating a dead horse. That's a horrible expression. I don't know where that came from. Um, but you know, the the truth, the reality is that early our childhood matter, right? So our early emotional education shapes lifelong patterns. So, you know, it's useful to ask yourself, what kind of emotional education did you receive? Were your feelings welcomed? Were they validated, or were they dismissed, corrected, minimized? I mean, I learned very early that there was a right emotion and a wrong one. The problem is that I never knew which one was right. There was no consistency, you know, not day to day, sometimes not hour to hour. If I was happy, one day or moment, that would be the right, you know, uh emotion to be having. But the next, it could be, well, what right do you have to be happy? If I was sad, then it could be uh, well, what did I possibly have to be sad about? Eventually it felt safer to just shut emotions down entirely. And this is not an experience unique to me. This is a very common kind of emotional pattern. The problem is that when you shut down difficult emotions, you mute joy too. You don't get to choose which emotions you're going to feel and which you aren't. When you turn down sadness, you also turn down happiness. My healing wasn't about becoming less emotional. I already was that. You know, it was about learning how to feel safely without getting overwhelmed or feeling like I was going to drown. And one of the ways to do that is to recognize that emotions are sensations before they're thoughts. And this is especially true of triggers. That's how they get away from us. We're already angry or yelling or crying before we have consciously caught up. So instead of asking, you know, oh, why am I like this? Try asking, where do I feel this in my body? My chest, throat, jaw, belly. And what does it feel like? Is it tight, hot, heavy, numb? Shift the language from I'm anxious, I am anxious, to I am feeling anxiety. I know it sounds like semantics, but it's actually really powerful. Naming things is powerful. I mean, why do you think in the Potter books it was he who must not be named instead of just naming him? Because there's power in it. You know, research shows that naming an emotion actually reduces this intensity because it re-engages that thinking brain. And precision matters. We don't say I'm angry because that leads to identifying as anger. It's saying you are anger, you are anxiety, but you're not. You are experiencing those things. So that's why we want to switch to the I'm feeling irritated, I'm feeling hurt, or I'm feeling frustrated. The more specific you become, the more the brain shifts from that survival mode into clarity, which is important because often when we're triggered, anger or fear is just the surface layer. Underneath, there are likely driving beliefs. Things like, I don't matter, I'm not enough, I'm being abandoned, I'm failing. That story feels very real, but often that story belongs to a reality from 20 years ago that's often not based in actual reality, but in how you were treated as a child, in the limiting beliefs that you adopted because of that treatment. I definitely still notice this in myself. My husband might make a completely neutral comment about how the house needs to get vacuumed because we have guests coming tomorrow. And immediately my mind jumps to, well, I better get to it. I've got to do it. Wait a minute, why am I doing it? He doesn't appreciate all the things to do. He just expects me to do this too. I'm not doing enough. I'm never going to be enough. All of which is just nonsense. It's all in my head. It is not at all how he feels or what he thinks. And I know this rationally, but I have that immediate triggered response. And so when I start to spin out, I first regulate, right? I take that deep breath, I heart center, and then I ask myself one of my favorite questions. I know I've mentioned it a million times before, but it's what am I believing right now? Or another way of saying it is the story I'm making up is either one of those so useful because asking these things, it moves you from certainty to this belief of what the other person is thinking about you, of what you are thinking about yourself, to curiosity. And curiosity is emotional intelligence in action because emotions are feedback. Under almost every trigger is an unmet need, maybe safety, belonging, autonomy, understanding, worth. So ask yourself gently, what might this emotion be protecting? What need might be underneath it? You don't have to get the answer perfectly. Asking the question, being curious is sometimes enough. I also want to mention that if you notice the same trigger repeating over and over again, that's not failure. It doesn't mean you get a D in your spiritual gross coursework or, you know, emotional intelligence. It means you're human. And of course, if it's repeating over and over, it's highlighting some sort of deep wound or a pervasive limiting belief, something that you care very much about. It's giving you information. It is a glaring neon sign saying there is something for you to learn here. Later, not in the middle of being triggered, but later reflect. Okay, wait a minute. What happened? What did I feel? What did I do? What was I believing? When else have I felt this? And that's important to notice the through lines. What experience am I having where I repeatedly feel this trigger? And this isn't self-criticism, it's not judgment, it's learning, it's self-compassion. Your job is not to stop being triggered, it's to shorten the distance between activation and awareness. And that distance gets shorter every time you pause, regulate, and get curious instead of reactive. Remember, you don't have to eliminate your emotions and you don't have to eliminate your triggers. You simply have to meet them with awareness a little sooner. And slowly, steadily, that will change things. Thanks so much for listening. I hope this episode helped you see your triggers through a different lens, not as flaws, but as feedback. If you're a member, there are additional reflection prompts waiting for you over on Patreon to help you take this work a little deeper. And if you're curious about what membership includes, you can listen to the membership episode or click the link in the show notes to explore. You get a week free to check things out. Have a wonderful week, and remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you are meant to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.