Compassionate Inquiry | Defuse Your Emotional Triggers with Dr Gabor Maté

[Music] and that's where freedom actually lies when you when nobody has if nobody had the power to trigger you not because you were closed down and shut down and isolated but because you're totally aware of yourself well that's where liberation actually is something i find fascinating is the idea of triggering or emotional triggering and even more so the idea that society ridicules that side of us when we become triggered yet we all will do at some point each and every week but i look to wonderful teachers and this week i'm going to feature a lot of footage with dr gabon mate and he says about triggering it's nothing to be ashamed of because it's just the acknowledgment that we've suffered pain it's one thing to open up and admit our triggers but dealing with those triggers to diffuse them is a completely different challenge in itself and it comes from very multi-dimensional aspects so looking at the physical emotional energetic and spiritual levels ultimately to diffuse our emotional triggers we have to get to know ourselves there's no way around that and really the path to personal mastery and so one of the most powerful emotional tools to get to know ourselves is dr gabon mate's compassionate inquiry so in this video you're going to learn what getting triggered really means and how that relates to spiritual bypassing the second thing we're going to cover is why our emotional underpinnings cause most of our illnesses the third thing you're going to learn about is dr gabon mate's compassionate inquiry is such a really really profound tool and is really accessible to all of us to do that self work the fourth thing you're going to learn today is you're going to see compassion inquiry in action you're going to see dr gabo mate going through compassionate inquiry with tim ferriss if you're new to my channel please click the subscribe button and the bell so you'll be notified when we release our weekly videos so when you've done that let's dive straight into this fascinating topic with dr gabal mate i'm richard coach speaker and here to support you along your path to personal mastery and one of the most challenging aspects of personal mastery is the idea of shedding those parts of us that get emotionally triggered and so on to part one of today's video what getting triggered really means and how that relates to spiritual bypassing there's a lot discussed isn't there around emotional triggers and how to avoid being triggered how to stop being triggered and to me that brings up connotations of repression of avoidance of not dealing with the real reason of why we're getting emotionally triggered and so for me looking into our triggers is a way to freedom and it's a way to our true self and getting to know oneself and back to our true nature so i want to start off with looking at what getting triggered really is and the definition specifically by dr gaba mate because to me it's a profound definition for the person being triggered you might want to consider what a trigger actually is so the metaphor comes somewhat it comes from weaponry and the trigger actually is a very small part of the mechanism in the gun or the rifle or the pistol or the revolver machine gun there's a whole mechanism to deliver the ammunition there's the ammunition itself there's something explosive that will propel the ammunition to its target then there's a trigger which is this big whenever you get triggered somebody pulled that trigger perhaps but who's the one carrying the ammunition who's the one with the mechanism to deliver the ammunition who's the one with the explosive material inside them and where do you want to put your attention you want to put your attention on the trigger purely or are you curious about what ammunition what explosive material you're carrying inside so triggers are really great to work with if you want to get to know yourself if you don't know who dr gabriel matteos he's a world-renowned physician in a specialist in trauma and addiction and so that definition of triggered is has empowered me so much the idea that that spark that's caused the reaction is just the small part behind a bigger mechanism at play and the idea of that mechanism i am the one that's holding the explosive and the idea that if we want to get to know ourself then we can get to know that explosive nature now there's another option to that if we don't want to get to know ourself we don't have to but there are repercussions to that and if you don't get to know yourself then what we usually do is we just resent whoever did the triggering and that we think they did this to us and the idea then if we don't apply that inquiry within ourself that's getting to know ourself we're just always going to remain in victimhood we're always going to look exteriorly to the other people the blaming other people being on a victim and there's there's never going to be a solution because that explosive nature is still within us that explosive compound that's causing causing the effect of being triggered is going to maintain and stay within us you gain so much liberation if you find out what those what that ammunition is and how you got it and whether you can really diffuse it like the you defuse a bomb you can actually defuse that ammunition inside you through getting to know yourself and that's where freedom actually lies when you when nobody has if nobody had the power to trigger you not because you were closed down and shut down and isolated but because you're totally aware of yourself well that's where liberation actually is so the fact with self-inquiry we can begin to understand that explosive nature within us means we can defuse it and when we diffuse it we become liberated and free and this is something that i've experienced myself firsthand is the idea of we're going to dive into this in more detail but the idea of it's not just a a psychological construct it's for me it's physical it's within my body and so liberation and freedom a huge part of that in my life has been my spiritual practice but i have used it to get to know myself and to begin to shed those parts of me but it's also made me become unstuck and i've not realized why that's happened in the past and dr gabaway explains the idea of spiritual bypassing cancer three times she's the type that just can't say no that is always succumbing to other people's demands and expectations she said well she calls it the tns the terminal niceness syndrome i can't say no for example to my boss's expectations he says i don't understand it i've been chanting two hours a day for 20 years she's been doing spiritual work without which her life might be a lot more difficult might be a lot less balanced nevertheless she's still unable to utter the word no despite 20 years of chanting well that's spiritual bypass that's why you do the spiritual work and you might achieve attain great states of even oneness or peace serenity joy and it may be true for you that it has really transformed your life and it can even be true that it has transformed your life but not in certain areas where the spiritual work has not transformed your life sufficiently it could be for two reasons maybe you haven't practiced well or long enough or maybe there's an emotional side that you haven't dealt with maybe there's some truth that you haven't yet glimpsed or known what to do with so i'm not sure regarding your spiritual practice whether you've got one or not and i think would suggest that if you haven't got a spiritual practice right now then that's okay it's the time to begin to start and look into the common elements of what is a spiritual practice for me it's meditation and breath work and the idea of quieting my mind and getting to know that deeper part of me it's tough when you start because you're going on blind faith in the way you're doing a practice because you've heard it's good when you do begin and you get through that challenging time that's when the doors start to open of perception and you get to do get to see glimpses of yourself that you maybe have lost contact with but the second thing is more true for me the idea that there's an emotional side that i wasn't dealing with and so i would be diving into my spiritual practices i would be in a way trying to avoid those negative aspects to myself or ignore those thoughts that coming in to propressing again repressing repressing or pressing rather than just allowing them to be to allow them to come through and to look at them to allow myself to look at those emotional painful aspects that are at the root of my explosiveness within me or you know behind the mechanism of god i'm getting triggered okay so on to part two of today's video why our emotional underpinnings cause most of our illness this has been one of the biggest areas of interest for me since giving end-of-life care to my mother the idea of the western model of disease just looks at the physical i mean it's disease care not healthcare but it also just looks at the physical elements of disease so looking at chemotherapy radiotherapy looking at the physical elements of what can be done on the physical level and not looking at the emotional level or energetic or spiritual levels but dr gabon mate is a world-renowned specialist in this area and look at the stress disease connection and it's undeniable when you begin to look at it it's undeniable the link and very often the stories we tell ourselves are attempts to get away from the pain i mean i'm talking about the conscious stories to get away from the pain or someone to manage it and those efforts to manage the pain not to feel it then are the basic cause of illness whether physiological illness uh well all illnesses are physiological but whether the obviously identified illnesses like autoimmune disease neurological illness from multiple sclerosis to america lateral sclerosis to fibromyalgia chronic fatigue crohn's disease chronic skin conditions these all have uh unresolved and unrecognized emotional underpinnings and in my view those underpinnings are rooted very strongly in a person's childhood how often have you been asked from your gp or your specialist or any surgeries that you've had what your emotional underpinnings are have you have that been a context to part of that treatment plan so look at the physical look at the emotional because it hasn't been for me and so i have an autoimmune condition of my thyroid and so it's easy to begin to look at the nutrition side and exercise and kind of what the stresses are in my in my life but not looking at the emotional side and so having looking at that and having sensing the release and the freedom i'm not completely free but sensing the freedom of releasing emotional pain that has been locked up within my system has been profound and the research is mind-blowing to when you look at this at the detail level julie and um john gottman and um they study relationships and they just written a new book they've been studying relationships for decades and they told about one study that not didn't surprise me at all but it it was striking they studied parents relationship to one another where there was a working um satisfactory relationship between the two parents or whether it was conflictual and um laden with tension and stress so they studied that in two ways they interviewed the parents into the adults the couple and they also collected for 24 hours the urine of their four-year-old children and they measured over 24 hours the excretion of cortisol the stress from one in the child's urine and they could equally tell from the parents story the parents into you as from the child's urine the cortisol which marriages were unhappy and which one are now that's the degree no i can tell you that the high levels of cortisol are behind a lot of illness it's mind-blowing isn't it the idea that it's not the dynamics between the parents and the child the dynamics between the parents are causing that stress response in the child some unhappy marriage is causing a stress response in the child to higher levels of cortisol and causes a stress hormone so when you're in a stress state your sympathetic strain state cortisol is released heart rate increases blood pressure increases our body bodies in a state of getting ready to take action fight flight freeze when we're relaxed and we're calm we're in a parasympathetic state heart rate decreases blood pressure decreases and our body goes into immune function digestion recovery so looking at that how powerful that is to be aware of one as if you're a parent like me the idea of you know if i'm stressed about something that's going to have effect on my daughter but if that's on a chronic basis the cause of that and this the nature in which that child is learning to operate in learning to be in a stressed situation for their normal is going to have repercussions in there later in their life with regards to disease and disease being as he said autoimmune conditions such as fibromyalgia crohn's hashimoto's all the way up to the big chronic diseases rheumatoid arthritis dementia alzheimer's cancer if you find any of this interesting i'm going to see you towards his book when the body says no and you know if you have had illness yourself if you know someone going through illness right now i highly recommend reading this book it is profound and it has solution to look at with regards to emotional landscape and underpinnings okay on to part three of today's video and we're going to look at what is compassionate inquiry dr gabo mate's technique the more experienced i get the more simple working with people seems to me the essence of trauma which is underneath all human dysfunction addiction affliction disease confusion is separation from the self and when people are manifesting behaviors or symptoms that's what they're manifesting so therefore the essential intention of therapeutic interaction needs to be helping a person reconnect with themselves knowing that as they do their own innate wisdom will guide them in the right direction as i mentioned earlier in the video this process of diffusing emotional triggers is about getting to know oneself personal mastery because as he said we've been disconnected from our self because of that emotional trauma in the past for me that's shown up in in many different ways in my past i've been disconnected from my body so very headstrong pushing my body to the point of breaking and not being in tune with that which is causing more of that stress response that inner feeling of isolation of loneliness of desperation and so that's what that means to me that's how that's shown up in my life that loss of connection to myself and this is why it it needs to be a multi-faceted approach and the spiritual element not being so dogmatic and fixated on one tradition or one practice that you you hear about but the idea of that spiritual nature we are spiritual beings it begins with finding what's in the way of that connection because we were born or at least conceived and spent some months or possibly even years in the uterus and afterwards in some state of connection with ourselves and then as the world's troubles pile onto us we increasingly and gradually and imperceptibly disconnect and then we suffer so the first question in the process of compassion compassionate inquiry is how does that disconnection show up at this present moment so when i'm working with people whether in a group setting or an individual basis i don't spend a lot of time with pr with story about the past the past is important only insofar as it illuminates what's happening in the present other than that the past has no importance i think that's such a powerful point to he he goes into regarding the present moment and the past and why the past is only relevant because it's informing our present moment and i've come to understand that we're only ever in three places we're either in the past we're either in the future or in the present deep now and so if you're in the past we're in the painful past or the perfect past painful past being the traumas that are informing the behaviors now or that perfect past we're wishing we were back where we were because it was more comfortable or the perception of that is more comfortable in the past we're in the future the fearful future or the fantastical future so fearful future being we're worried about moving away from this comfort we're fearful of what may happen even though it hasn't happened yet or the fantastical future is we're in current pain and discomfort now we cannot wait to get to that future point or the deep now and i don't mean a deep now is where you're listening to me taking in the deep now is presence absolute presence crystal clear presence which is easier said than done isn't it which is why it requires if you want to call it spiritual practice to begin to nurture that ability to bring ourselves back into the present moment even though our mind is moving forwards and backwards every single moment of the day if we allow it so if i'm working with somebody my intention is to as quickly as possible have them see how they're not connected to themselves at that moment and so what i call compassionate inquiry to somebody from the outside may not seem compassionate because i'm interrupting people and i'm asking them to stop and check in with themselves and i will not make room for a lot of story and history telling and that may seem uncompassionate but i'm very convinced and i have a teacher who puts it in his terms that real compassion doesn't have to do with helping somebody feel good it has to do with guiding them to the truth because it's the truth that will liberate them another aspect of our human nature is to rescue to be the rescuer and i don't know if you've been caught up in that but the idea of seeing someone in discomfort or someone's been doing it to you they're trying to say things to make you feel better or to rescue you they'll do this and do that or you've been the rescuer and you've been taken advantage of because you feel it's the nice thing to do all the compassionate thing to do but that's why i love dr gabba may say in general but like his approach is compassion is not about helping someone feel better it's about leading them to the truth because the truth will set them free if they choose to look at it so when i talk about compassion and inquiry i'm talking about a fierce compassion that is not afraid to guide people to some painful places not in the past but in the present so not in the past but in the present moment and some other thing he said was about pain and i think that's where the avoidance comes in of how do we avoid emotional triggers how do we avoid that those painful parts of us and again tying into back into practices why daily practices are so crucial breath work meditation being aware of what's going on within our body because when we're aware of what's going on within our body we can begin to ground ourselves we can begin to we're having that physiological reaction when we're getting triggered we have a physiological reaction for me it's in my body an example was the other day i my daughter spilt something on the table honest you know an event that is meaningless is pointless but to be aware that within my body it's here it's a physical sensation that's causing me to feel that i can let it go if it's not there i can let anything go but if it's if i have pain discomfort in my body that's where my reaction is stemming from so to understand my body to spot that in the moment i can control that i can take action against that rather than it just coming out and so one other trick one of the the pattern interrupts i like to use is does this inform me or does it affect me is it affecting my physiology and if it's affecting me i could like i said i can bring my attention into my body in not today's video but someone else i'm gonna look at in detail is dr joe dispenza and he says feelings are the language of the body thoughts are the language of the mind and our body is a home for all of our experiences within our life and so we may think something may think we are happy we're trying to say positive internal talk but it's held within our body that emotional signature is within our body so we have to be able to learn how to free that from within ourselves to be able to let it go and so this is where compassionate inquiry is one of the wonderful tools with that because it's not suppressing it it's allowing it to come up in the present moment so first of all there's nothing wrong if something if you get triggered that's perfectly all right i get a sense of freedom when he says that it's okay to be triggered it's all right it's an acknowledgement of the pain that you've been through again the suppression of society like we shouldn't be getting triggered we should be putting our emotions away don't let that come out of course there are levels to that you know violence and insult and abuse is not acceptable but the idea that we're all gonna we all get triggered we all feel that and to allow that is important because it's beginning to highlight what's within us so let's just develop or or lay out some strategies as to what to do if that happens then one thing you can do is uh just sit where you are and take some breaths and ground yourself in your body if it makes you restless enough you're really welcome to just to get up and leave and i don't mean leave permanently i just mean step outside the room and do whatever you need to do to to grind yourself until you feel comfortable coming back in then there's nothing wrong you're just a person actually taking care of themselves you're just a person taking care of yourself by controlling your breath by using your breath to ground yourself and your body by taking yourself away from that situation for a moment to ground yourself to allow yourself to come back to yourself come back to your body maybe do some intervention to control and lower your physiological response to that so then you can come back and address the situation and this just requires us to do the practices to do the work to cultivate positive practices within our life it's not about not feeling stress it's not about not being caught up in emotions but it's about having tools to anchor ourselves into our body so then we can begin to diffuse these emotions that arise with us otherwise we're just at the mercy of the reactions that are going to come out within us so on to part four of today's video and i wanted to give you a real life example of compassionate inquiry in action by dr gabo mate and this is a wonderful example with him entering tim ferriss and as you'll see it's very very simple technique but it's very very powerful and for me i've been able to take lessons from it so let's just dive into that i asked people to tell me some recent episode when they're upset with somebody with their lives and something that they're open to sharing so it doesn't have to be anything sorted or something but just something you know whether it's your spouse partner the bus driver i don't care sure a friend okay so are you going to go there anything okay i can share anything just where you're upset with somebody okay yes okay so what happened describe it what happened yeah all right there were a number of uh issues in my home broken uh aspects of the home things that were falling apart or needed to be fixed physically physically yeah right and i had hired someone to do these things right while i was gone okay and i came back and none of them were fixed okay and your emotional reaction was anger rage anger okay anything else besides anger um i think they're close cousins frustration frustration frustration is anger yeah yeah i was disappointed disappointed as sadness yeah it's a different feeling so i was disappointed in myself also because i started to look at how maybe well disappointed is not so much an emotion as a state of mind i'm asking what the emotions were what's inside disappointment something didn't happen i wanted to happen how do i feel isn't there sadness there sure yeah there's sadness i'm not talking into it i'm just asking well yeah i suppose i'm i might be confusing state of mind and states of mind and emotions yes i'm not sure how to do that i'm looking at the raw emotion yeah sadness so there's anger and sadness those are the emotions let's let's go with that okay so i'm gonna ask you a silly question what were you sad and angry about well i suppose the answer which is not the right answer i'm expecting was i was angry that someone had made commitments to me and not fulfilled those commitments okay well that's what happened they had made the commitment of him but that doesn't tell me what you're saying or angry about what what what does that mean that they didn't fulfill their commitments uh meant that they didn't care about me they didn't i have that they didn't respect me so they didn't care about you didn't respect you what kind of person doesn't get carried or respected i might need a lifeline here i don't know someone who doesn't deserve to be cared for or respected exactly somebody unworthy right sure or respect and and care okay now if two other people here which there usually are when i do this exercise i would ask them okay we just listened to uh tim tell us about this experience are there other reasons why this other person might not have done the work that has nothing to do with him or her not caring about him or not respecting him so what other reasons might there be a million in one name one yeah he could have he could be in the hospital it would be awesome or cared one could have been in a car accident exactly uh he had a flight delay and got caught on puerto rico during a hurricane yeah he's got adhd yeah uh he and he can't follow through um he's under stress and he couldn't right okay okay the email that i was supposed to send sitting in drafts and i thought i'd sent it but in fact he never received it i mean okay and any number of possibilities now of all the possibilities that you've just outlined including that they don't care about you or respect you which is the worst one the one i immediately defaulted to right well i mean the worst you know if the guy is dead then it's it's bad no but internally yeah internally the worst assumption is the one that i immediately made exactly so let's notice something a you i should say we because we're all like this we don't respond to what happens we respond to our perception of what happens you know the idea that we all feel and i've felt this myself you know we're the victims this has happened to me i can't believe this person has done that why are they doing that our perception is of it's just a perception it's very unlikely to be the real aspect the stories that we tell ourselves are just the stories based on our past which is how that relates to our past is only relevant because it shows up in the present moment how we're reacting and that pain of not being worthy of not being valid or being ignored shows up in that moment because that's informing our perception right okay that's what the buddha said it's with our minds you create the world so that um if you'd funded adhd or or he was stressed or you know you might have been sad for him but he would not have been angry and you would not have been sad okay uh you might have you know so first of all we don't respond to what happens we respond to our perception of what happens to our interpretation what happens number one number two of all the possible interpretations we choose the worst one yeah number two thirdly what i just said isn't true we didn't choose it it's not like you went through all these possibilities and you said it wasn't multiple choices i chose option oh no he doesn't care about me you know he doesn't respect him you didn't do that your brain jumped there automatically right the question is why yeah now here's the learning first time in your life that you felt hurt and angry that you when you perceived somebody didn't care about you or didn't respect you or has it happened before this is where the exercise might might might go sideways i'm going to hit pause on that i think that's probably for more of a conversation over wine but you'd probably agree it's not the first time it's not the first time very good and most people i talk to um it goes back way back yeah this goes way back into childhood okay and that's what trauma is we don't respond to the present moment we respond to the past now but along the lines of our discussion it's a beautiful learning opportunity now you get to know now what if you assumed for a moment that you're the most lovable most worthy of care most worthy of respect person in the history of the universe and this guy doesn't do your home what's your response any number of the other options which does not trigger yeah an intense negative emotional state yeah some of those other options would trigger that so something in use i would argue still believes that you're not worthy of care and respect and that's what gets triggered so who's the one that doesn't care about you and who's the one that doesn't think you really respect no it'd be me it'd be you yeah so that's a learning notice and this is exactly what you're talking about you're saying how these difficult things how these uh problems are always teaching opportunities and that's the beauty of healing is that when you reframe things and you and you actually see the source within ourselves all of a sudden that's liberating because guess what if you're feeling that way because this guy did this or didn't do that that makes you a victim yep but if you see that you're the source yeah now you're powerful fair play to tim ferriss for doing that interview and for releasing that in public it's an uncomfortable situation to go through that and i think it's important to honour that and to expect that however there's freedom that comes from that because if we don't go through it it's just going to stay low it's just going to stay within our body and continue to inform our daily life the trick is i suppose is well how do you then summon up the ability to feel worthy or to feel the positive emotions that we feel are lacking and i've found particularly dr joe de spencer's work has been extremely powerful for that a combination of meditation and visualization and it's not i think something really important to say it's not about the thought i am worthy i am worthy you have to feel it and feeling it to me is is where is the the doorway the link between the mind and the body because they're one unit but we get separated from our body from various different things that we explained and so connecting that link and it has to feel for me when i feel worthy i feel a lightness i feel expansion i feel calm i feel light when i'm telling myself i am worthy and it's not within my body i still feel gripping i still feel a contraction i feel uh limited and so nurturing that ability how do i feel it the best way to start in my experience has been a gratitude practice feeling grateful great gratitude changes our heart coherence it changes the energetic layers within our body and it's just a practice of doing that it's a practice of sitting down and practicing feeling those emotions it is a challenge but it's a challenge worth taking because as you've seen the alternative is to remain in victimhood to remain blaming other people for the for our internal triggering i would say just be kind be kind be compassionate to yourself when you're going through this process there are resources below for you to check out to look into this in deeper dr gabriel mate's work it's also looking at dr joe spencer there's a few links below there's also a guided meditation just here that's the energy centers of the body and so that's the start point for you to begin to practice this if this is new for you also there's a free download our four simple steps to self-care which is a really wonderful on-ramp into the path to personal mastery if you're new to this it looks at how to develop a growth mindset how to use your breath to manage your resiliency it also looks at movement how to use movement to ease chronic pain and how to look at your nutrition to improve your health and also looking at sleep how to get the best night's sleep you've had in ages so just follow the instructions download and you can get started straight away thank you so much for joining this week i hope you found it interesting and please join us on another episode next week

Channel: The Conscious Life Collective

Views: 170,368

Rating: 4.8646693 out of 5

Keywords: compassionate inquiry, compassionate inquiry method, my healing from dr gabor mates approach, heal yourself, drgabormate, recovery, trauma, childhoodtrauma, compassionate inquiry gabor mate, healing therapy, trauma restricts the authentic self, mental health, emotional health, overcoming addiction, autoimmune disease diagnosis, healing, healing journey, compassionate inquiry my healing, compassionate inquiry training gabor mate, the conscious life collective, richard husseiny

Id: 65LtmYvht8Y

Length: 36min 56sec (2216 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021