Emotional Buttons, Triggers and Controls -Part 1
"I had no choice!"
"It's their fault I feel this way, not mine!" "It's just the way I was
raised!" “Why do they always make
me feel this way?” “I don’t know why I said it, it just came out.” Do you
identify with any of these comments? If
so, you may want to continue reading.
"I had no choice!"
"It's their fault I feel this way, not mine!" "It's just the way I was
raised!" “Why do they always make
me feel this way?” “I don’t know why I said it, it just came out.” Do you
identify with any of these comments? If
so, you may want to continue reading.
Most of us are familiar with the different sets of
circumstances that we know will really upset us in one way or another. Due to
the memories left behind from other situations and circumstances we have
already been through (old baggage), created when we may not have had the tools we
needed at the time to handle them, this 'baggage' may have left behind trauma
associated with some other similar situation in our past.
The truth is that we ALWAYS have a choice in how we feel
about something. The way our brains work gives us that choice, as our own brain
is what we use to control everything about our physical being. Our brains also
have control over the chemicals it releases that match what we feel and how we
react to what we feel. Many of us for one reason or another are thinking that
we don’t have such a conscious control over these things. Well, I will try to
show you how we do, and what can be done about it.
What is an
emotional button?
It may start out as simple as a pet peeve, and over time
develop into something that really bothers you.
There are many various different degrees of irritation; but once they
activate a reaction, they become “buttons” that once pushed are hard to
control. It’s like an emotion that hides
somewhere in the back of your mind just waiting for a reason to come out and
take over. The reaction also seems to be
programmed, because it almost always seems to be the same.
I hear things like, ‘I have no choice but to react this way
when this happens.’ ‘I can’t change this
problem I have.’ ‘Nothing can fix this.’
These are defeatist and self-sabotaging attitudes, and this
way of thinking will not help you.
What can I
do about it?
Healing such damage can start by knowing the following truth:
“Nothing that is done TO or BY me can affect me traumatically without my
permission!”
You always have the CHOICE about how you react to your own
feelings and situations when they are triggered or caused. Our feelings have
always come naturally to us as children, and throughout most our lives. Most of
the time we learn these emotional reactions by watching someone else react to a
similar trigger. And we learned many of these reactions while we were young.
Any new trauma can also encourage us to plant one of these buttons as a form of
protection against a similar occurrence in our future.
It takes better teachers than most of us have to help ourselves
and others become aware of why human beings were gifted with emotions in the
first place, and how to effectively control them with our choices instead of
being controlled by them.
Example: If
someone puts a gun to your head and demands something of you, what are your
choices? Many may say there isn’t one. Let me help you see them here: (1) Do
what has been demanded of you. (2) Try to find a way to not be at the end of
that barrel (i.e. fight, negotiate, try to disarm them however you can, or you
can choose to get shot - and even if you choose this one you may still be able
to recover from it as long as you didn’t loose your head, and I mean that in multiple
ways.) (3) You can even choose to die if that is your wish (though I highly
DON’T recommend this option.)
Example 2: Say
you are strapped down into a chair fully bound and your eyes pried open while
something is set before you to watch. What choice do you have, right? WRONG!
Our brains are still able to make the choice of whether or not we see what is
right in front of us. I’m sure at this point many of you may know what I mean
by some of this, as this is how we get some of our famous sayings. (i.e. How
did you miss that, it was right in front of your nose?) We can create in our
minds a whole other world (a fantasy) to draw ourselves into and out of at will,
thereby blocking anything else around us. Another option could be to command
your brain to turn off in one way or another (e.i. We can become unconscious, go
to sleep, or some other extreme such as death. Once again I don’t recommend
that one, but it can be done by thought alone.) Hopefully, you get my point
here.
You can even choose to not be afraid if you wish. Or if you
are scared you can still not let that fear control you or prevent you from thinking
of your options. The good news is emotions are all TOOLS so you can use your
fears to release the adrenalin needed to think at super-fast subconscious
speeds. Your mind has a quite incredible
talent for giving you temporarily strengthened abilities in any area you may
need in order to save yourself, or to get you into a better situation.
Example: A child
gets pinned under a car. The emotional reactive chemicals released in the child
from this occurrence kept him from dying instantly. The emotional tools released
in the mother enabled her to flip that car off of her child. How was she able
to do that?
Quicker than thought as we know it consciously, her
subconscious chooses the option and has her body carry out the action necessary
before she really knows consciously what has happened. She didn’t have the time
to figure out all the reasons she couldn’t do it before the reaction was
already done and her child was saved. The conscious part had to catch up later.
I don’t doubt one bit that once caught up, her brain released a bunch of other
emotions for her to deal with.
That kind of example is what I deem as a “good” button;
which is not only possible, but creatable on purpose through either natural
means or with training. For many many years now our military has been training
people to have specifically programmed reactions in their minds and bodies. Ever
hear of the popular reactions of fight, flight, or freeze? When most of us are
faced with something extremely stressful such as in life and death situations,
we make this choice without much thought.
Well, these guys have taught their brains to react
differently from the common ways so that they might increase their chance to
succeed in what they are doing (such as survive). When such a heightened state
of danger has a presence in their minds, they have learned how to behave in a
predetermined manner. Once the danger
has passed, their brain’s chemicals are free to return to another state, freeing
the emotional tools they need for the next objective to succeed or fail, as
they bear the consequences of those choices as they arise. This way their
preprogrammed “buttons” can be triggered or released when they need to be in
order to do what they must to succeed in what they do.
Who can fix a
bad button?
Many of us, sadly, are not taught how to prevent some trauma
buttons from forming from a young enough age to go unscathed in one way or
another, so we are left to learn other ways of coping with certain traumas. But
think for a moment, YOU were the one who created your own buttons and triggers,
so only YOU can fix them within yourself. Just the same, you can create good
buttons to use at a later time. We have no idea what may come across our paths,
but we do know that we have control over what we do and do not pay attention to,
and how we either act or react to what we do.
Where can I
learn more?
To read more ... See the second part of this article, “What can I do about my emotional triggers?”
at:
Emotional Buttons & Triggers - Part 2
With
Love,
Violet Sky
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