Letting It Go

Your current discomfort may be an emotion such as anxiety which is a form of fear, or anger or sadness. Emotions are temporary and change as circumstances change so they do not make good triggers. They do often suggest where to look further to locate your trigger.

Your next question is, “What did you experience (think about, feel, notice) just before you experienced your current discomfort?” Often this is a real or imagined event. A snapshot of the most uncomfortable or stressful part of this remembered or imagined event makes an excellent trigger.

Don’t worry if you have trouble answering these questions now. As you review the following examples, you’ll see how others responded to the questions. You can use their chosen triggers as models for your own.

Trigger: A Stressful Event

This story is about me responding to a stressful event.

Recently I found myself losing my composure during a telephone conversation with the driver of a car that had rear-ended my stopped car earlier in the day. I had made the mistake of not calling the police at the time because the damage was minor.

She had promised to call with the missing insurance information later in the day. She did not call. Instead, she avoided my calls and when she finally did respond she accused me of harassing her. When I asked for her insurance information so I could report the damage she raised her voice and implied that I was trying to get her into trouble.

The answer to the first question seems obvious. I was nearly in tears and desperately wanted to verbally attack her, but I knew that doing so would only make the situation worse.

Fortunately, my husband was there and I asked him to take over the call. He had no reaction at all to her belligerence and calmed her down enough to get the information we needed. The answer to the second question also seems obvious. The unpleasant telephone call triggered my distress.

Using “this telephone call” as the trigger I said the sentences aloud and got a very clear image of an incident that happened when I was 16 years old. The image was me, staring fixedly at a black crack between two white tiles on the floor, feeling guilty and frozen, while my father yelled at me for making a mistake.

The really important trigger was the snapshot of “this image of the crack on the floor” because it represented so much frozen energy from the past. Once I said the sentences with that new trigger I relaxed completely.

Yes, I did file a police report and her insurance did pay to have the damage repaired. And I had no particular emotional response to writing this account of the incident.

Trigger: Replaying a Recent Memory

Here’s another example, a story, of someone replaying a memory of a recent event.

Yvonne invited her daughter and son-in-law to an expensive restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Instead of ordering entrées and desserts as she had expected, they each ordered several expensive appetizers, along with their entrées and desserts. A lot of the extra food was left uneaten, on the table.

She felt angry and taken advantage of, but couldn't figure out what to do about the situation. She replayed it in her mind over and over again, and complained to friends, "I just can't get it out of my head."

Yvonne’s answer to question one was “this scene that is stuck in my head.” Her answer to what happened just before she replayed the scene was that she felt angry because she had been taken advantage of. Feelings are normally temporary and don’t make good triggers. Her trigger was “this belief about how they should have behaved at the restaurant.”

After she completed the sentences with this trigger she said calmly, “I won’t be inviting them to any more meals in expensive restaurants.”

Trigger: A Common Problem: Public Speaking

Here is an example of a common problem.

Tim had just taken a new position as a manager. He was terrified about being required to give a presentation to four people at work. As he struggled to prepare it, he kept thinking about the time he forgot his lines in the school play and how embarrassed he was that day.

Tim knew the answer to the second question and his trigger was “this image of forgetting the lines in the play.” After dissolving this image he was surprised that he actually enjoyed preparing and making his presentation.