Stop Letting People Control Your Emotions

let's talk today about you not letting other people affect you negatively at least not nearly as often because what happens with a lot of us is that someone will do something or say something and then it will trigger something in us it will bring up something in us and then we will have this like big intense emotional reaction not necessarily meaning that we act out on it that we are like screaming and yelling although sometimes that happens but that we're just having this big intense emotion that comes up that's extremely uncomfortable that does not feel good and then often that feeling kind of stays or we go around and around in our head about it for the day or maybe even longer and it can ruin an entire day someone else doing or saying something that brings up something in us can ruin our entire day and then it doesn't feel good and it can also cause other problems in our lives meaning that we start to try and avoid everyone or everything that's going to bring up an uncomfortable emotion and that's also not a great strategy just as an aside when i say the word trigger i'm not talking about like the clinical ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder sense of the word trigger i'm talking more about sort of the everyday triggers that a lot of us have maybe not all of us every day but often enough where some something is happening on the outside of us someone is doing something or saying something or something is going on and then it hits something in us it hits a wound it hits a sore spot it hits a sensitive spot and then we have an intense emotional reaction to it usually a disproportionate reaction to it right usually um our our feeling that we have from it is bigger than the thing that happened itself and usually in hindsight we're like wow i don't know why i got so upset about that i don't know why that you know i found that so difficult but in the moment it feels really huge and so we're going to talk about that sense of the word trigger if you're new here welcome to our incredible little corner on the internet take a second introduce yourself in the comment section below if you're back again say hello i love being able to connect with all of you here um and if you haven't already subscribe to the channel the button is about right down there and then you get notified when my new videos come out um either way my name is julia christina and i am a registered clinical therapist a researcher a coach and the creator of my incredible membership community the shift society that you can get more information about in the description below i help heart center go-getter men and women break through the crap that is holding them back so that they can like themselves and their lives more every day and dealing with these triggers dealing with not letting other people impact us so negatively is going to help us like ourselves and our lives more every day it's pretty self-explanatory and i think that it's so important that we learn how to deal with things people words actions that impact us negatively that doesn't involve just never being around anything that impacts us negatively because i've heard a lot of advice out there in the personal development space in the mental wellness space that says just cut out any kind of negative person any kind of difficult person cut out any kind of quote unquote toxic person which you know i kind of take issue with that term in the first place but that's a whole other topic for a whole other day but this idea that we have to remove everything from our lives that isn't lovely or pleasant or delightful or easy and in a perfect world maybe that would be great but that's just not the reality for most of us and it's not actually even good for all of us because for only ever doing things that are simple straightforward and easy then we don't get to grow we don't get to learn we don't get to expand and as human beings that is part of our dna it's part of what we are designed for is for learning for growing for expanding for taking on challenges for dealing with things and getting through things and now i'm not saying that you should go out and only ever be around people that you find difficult that trigger your stuff and that bring up all these things i'm not saying that by no means we absolutely need people in our lives that are 100 on our side that are supportive that are loving that are encouraging that are safe we need those people in our lives we need that kind of safe landing but we also need to be venturing out we also need to be taking things on that are more challenging which means taking on ourselves taking on our own emotions when we are around people who do things and say things that we don't like and just as an aside here i think we know i'm not talking about people that are like harmful and abusive not saying go and put yourself in harm's way and saying go and put yourself in situations that push you to grow to learn and i've talked about this story before how um i have several offices that i rent out to other counselors and i've had several counselors in the years i've been doing this um you know i read these offices out part time to them as they're starting their private practices and most of them are easy and lovely and it's straightforward and you know we sign our lease and i hardly ever hear from them but every once in a while there's someone that's a little in my my idea challenging and i remember the first time this happened there was a counselor that i was renting to that i found some of her requests some of her ideas challenging and i remember talking to my husband about it and saying oh my gosh this person is totally pushing my buttons what she's saying i think is unreasonable um like i don't want to deal with this and he's like no no this is good this is good julia there are going to be people that you come across in your life that are going to push your buttons that are going to be difficult and if you don't learn how to deal with them if you don't learn how to deal with yourself when you're with them then it's going to make your life a lot harder than it needs to be this is good there's people in our lives that push us so that we can grow that when something is triggering to us instead of running away which again that's our natural human tendency when we are feeling triggered right triggered is just something is coming up for us something has happened and then we have a very intense thoughts about what that is that's happening not always consciously right we often think like oh this thing happened this person said this and now all of a sudden i feel awful but it's because on in like this split second my brain has interpreted what they were saying in a certain way my brain has made that mean something about me maybe my brain has like brought up other times so if someone's like oh you're an idiot and then we have this big trigger we're like oh my gosh now i feel completely terrible that someone called me an idiot it's likely because there's a wound there that you may have been mistreated when you were younger that you may have been told um really mean things about yourself when you were younger and there's some pain there there's some wounds there and it hit that and so you're having this more intense response to it so then what happens when we are feeling triggered is our natural human tendency is to try to get away from the discomfort as quickly as possible right it's a big part of our our our primitive brain its job is to move us away from pain and towards pleasure and so it's going to try to get us out of uncomfortable feelings by running away from it running away from the situation that's creating the uncomfortable feelings as quickly as possible instead of using that as an opportunity to learn and grow to be able to see our triggers as our teachers when something is coming up for me instead of trying to always avoid everything that challenges us get curious about what is being challenged why am i having this big emotional reaction to this what maybe what wound is this hitting what past pain is this touching on what am i making this mean about me why am i having such an intense emotional response to this and then from there we can decide what we want to do about it we can decide how we want to respond to whatever it is that is happening whatever that was said or done so i want to give you a little bit of an example of this one i because i've been doing this work on managing my mind and sort of understanding what's going on in my brain and have been working on this using the exact tools that i teach in the shift society i have been using them on myself to rewire my brain and so i don't get triggered nearly as often anymore but it still comes up sometimes and this was one that kind of surprised me this happened a little while ago where it was on social media which social media um yeah another topic for another day but i came across a post where someone was kind of calling out someone's work or a human being whose work i really value someone who i think is a pretty stand-up human being someone who has contributed really valuable things to the world who i think is doing really incredible work and this person was calling them out on something and when i read what they were calling them out on my personal thought was that it was pretty far-reaching that it was pretty kind of nitpicky that it was not that what this person done was not harmful that this person was almost just trying to find something and i didn't like that and i felt triggered by it i was like how dare they how dare they try to smear this person's name over something that's like i get it if some it doesn't matter how you know famous or or important or whatever you are if you're doing something that's harmful yes you need to be called out for that you need to be you need to take responsibility for that but i didn't think that this was anywhere near anything like that so i was like like almost like how dare you try to smear this person's name and so i made a comment on their post and i you know said something pretty but i just i think i said something like this doesn't seem helpful and then that triggered something in them so then they snapped back at me with a pretty kind of clippy response and then i was taking a second and i was you know like going around and i was like okay what do i want to say back and how do i want to deal with this and it was almost like i needed to prove that i was right and i needed to like get them to see it my way and i was kind of going around in my head like what could i say to them so that i could change how they were thinking right so often we do this we want to change what other people are thinking or doing so that we can feel okay and so i was like what am i going to say to make them realize that what they did was was was wrong or bad and my in my opinion was not right and i actually spent like a few hours kind of going around in my head being like how could i respond to this how could i reply to this and then i realized i don't need to i don't actually need to engage in this conversation i don't need this person to agree with me i don't need this person to see things my way i don't need to change them in order for me to feel okay they are allowed to have their own thoughts and i am allowed to let them and thinking about so often how we get pulled into things how we're trying we get triggered by something and then we're trying to change someone else we're trying to make someone else do something or act in a certain way or see something our way so that we no longer have to feel triggered about it instead of taking a step back and really unpacking why is this bothering me why is this coming up for me and maybe there are going to be situations where someone has actually done something harmful where you do want to speak up speak up about that where you do want to pursue that where you do want to you know not just sort of leave it if it's something that is important but i decided that this person having their own thoughts about this other person was actually not that important not the mountain i wanted to die on not the argument i wanted to get with get into with a stranger on the internet it's not going to be a helpful use of my energy it's not going to be a beneficial way of spending my time just to leave it and to deal with why this was bothering me so much instead of trying to change or control them or just like you know avoid everything altogether that ever brings up any uncomfortable feeling using your triggers as your teachers why is this bothering me what is coming up for me right now and i'll give you another example about another way to handle this from the type of trigger when it's someone closer to you when it's maybe a family member or a partner um where it's not just necessarily you know a stranger on the internet that you can just say like whatever this has nothing to do with me like i'm just going to leave this although there is some crossover but let me explain this is another thing that happened to me recently with someone close to me um we were having a conversation it was starting to get heated and then all of a sudden out of nowhere i actually had this like physical trigger like some this these intense emotions started coming up and it was almost even a little bit unconscious that i wasn't feeling terribly upset in the conversation but my body was having a trauma response it was actually like having a fight-or-flight response i started shaking i started sweating i started having a hard time breathing and i was sitting there and and you know with this person was saying these things to me and i was having these physical reactions and i was i was upset about what they were saying but i wasn't you know terribly like i wasn't like feeling awful about it i wasn't like you know in you know incited with anger or anything like that i was just like yeah i'm kind of annoyed with what you're saying right now and i don't like this um but i was having this physiological response and so then because i was having this heightened physiological response it was increasing my irritation about what the person was saying and i was starting to get kind of prepared to just like you know um and like fight back with what they were saying but then instead i caught it and i took a step back and i took a deep breath and i got curious what's coming up for me right now why am i having this fight or flight basically trauma response what is going on this is so interesting and i had to take a lot of deep breaths to kind of like slow my body down and to just sort of get back into my body as i was having this physiological response i couldn't think very clearly that just what happens when we're having fight-or-flight responses all of the blood is going to our limbs to get ready to like run away or fight you know our heart rate is increasing to kind of give us that adrenaline that energy to be able to you know deal with the threat or get out of harm's way as quickly quickly as possible which means that we have less um we have less oxygen in our brains which in a you know why it's kind of got cloudy headed in that sort of tunnel vision when you're in fight-or-flight um it's because your body's trying to prepare to protect you and so bringing yourself back to present by taking some deep breaths getting the oxygen like literally or you know intentionally getting the oxygen back into your brain to slow things down so you can access your rational brain again because it has shut down you don't need your rational brain when you're an actual threat you just need to like get out of there or like fight it out and so getting myself back to feeling more grounded more oxygen in and then getting curious what is coming up for me right now why am i having this intense response what this person is saying is annoying me but it's not like you know the most horrible thing in the world and then i realized that my control trigger was being hit that i my interpretation was this person with their words and what they were saying was trying to control me and i have a big control trigger from you know stuff that i went through in my past and just the idea that another human being could be trying to control me brought all these feelings up and so then i got curious i was like okay this is what's going on and that curiosity started giving me clarity and then i was able to consciously remind myself that i'm not in danger this is not a threat and this person cannot control me and as soon as that happened i was able to calm right down and then i was able to decide how i wanted to respond to what was happening instead of you know react out of that intense emotion and then probably end up doing or saying something that i'd regret or then you know maybe even afterwards wanting to avoid that person because i didn't want to get triggered do you see how this works sort of like there's these two benefits to dealing with ourselves when things are impacting us negatively is that first of all we get to learn we get to grow we get to figure out okay what is going on in here what do i need to tend to what i might i need to work on if this is coming up for me then what might i need to do some healing around do some dealing with do some you know moving through some growing through and then also taking a step back allows me to respond and decrease the discomfort of the situation so that i'm not so afraid of it next time meaning if i'm not reacting to something that's happening something someone says or does i'm not having this big reaction to it that then creates a reaction in them that turns into this big terrible like you know really uncomfortable difficult painful thing then yeah i'm probably going to want to avoid ever getting triggered because it's not only going to bring up the uncomfortable feeling in me but then it's gonna i'm gonna react to that and then it's gonna create even more of a mess so i'm gonna be more likely to never wanna deal with you know be around things that affect me negatively because of all of this but if i can take a step back take a breath take a break get clear on what's going on and then i can respond intentionally and mindfully to that then it might be a difficult situation but bad doesn't go from it doesn't go from bad to worse it goes from bad to managed to addressed to dealt with to responded to a lot of that takes building a relationship with ourselves i would not have been able to do this work to get that clarity to be able to connect with myself in that way to know what was happening i make it sound easy this was this was a lot of time and energy and effort over years of doing this work to make this happen so that i could be that connected with myself and part of that came through building trust within myself from being able to trust what i'm thinking and feeling and experiencing so that i can get curious about it so i can sort it out and sort it through if you want to learn how to build self-trust i have a guide for you it's the simple steps to self-trust it's in the description below and it's going to walk you through the steps to start building that more secure confident clear relationship with yourself that more solid relationship with yourself so that you can trust yourself when things are coming up for you can learn to trust your experiences you can learn to trust yourself to be able to handle things to be able to work through things to to to deal with things to make choices that are in alignment with the things that are important to you having a foundational self-trusting foundational relationship with yourself is the foundation for so many other things in our lives you can get that that guide that simple steps to self-trust in the description below also make sure you're on the waitlist for the shift society if you found this helpful let me know what you found helpful in the in the comment section below and then if you liked it take a second hit the like button that's extremely helpful for me for getting this in front of more people and to let me know that you liked it uh subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and until next time take good care you

Channel: Julia Kristina Counselling

Views: 152,780

Keywords: stop giving negative people power over you, stop letting people trigger you, stop letting others control your emotions, Dr. Levry, overreacting, stop reacting, control your emotions, stop overreacting, don't let others control your happiness, don't let others control your emtions, don't let others control you, emotionally strong, emotionally resilient, personal responsibility, Julia Kristina Counselling, Emotional Intelligence, Julia Kristina triggered, Julia Kristina, triggered

Id: gDNXKWvfCtY

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020