Removing Shame and Shedding Limiting Beliefs: Your Helpful Guides: Triggers and Glimmers
As we close out our chapter on removing shame and shedding limiting beliefs, we’ve gotta talk about triggers and glimmers.
We all know what triggers are. Trigger warning! Painful stuff is coming! Triggers are ways we respond– even in ways we can’t control– to things that bring up past pain. It’s a way our body remembers threats, to try to protect us.
Glimmers are similar, except instead of remembering pain, our bodies are remembering joy. They are welcoming back beauty and saying, I see you. I remember you.
The thing is, both triggers and glimmers are good things, because they act as arrows pointing to growth.
Here’s what I mean by that…
If we spend all our time chasing glimmers, that’s a sign of immaturity. We can’t grow but only so much if we’re only doing things that feel good. That’s like a kid who wants to eat candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That’s only fun for so long before your tummy hurts and your teeth rot out.
At the same time, focusing only on overcoming triggers so your old wounds don’t have power over you anymore is equally damaging.
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It’s 100% possible to be a workaholic when it comes to the work of healing.
True growth requires both. Love requires both. Wholehearted living requires both. Both facing the hard and celebrating the good.
Avoiding your triggers only keeps you a slave to the people and situations that have hurt you. It’s an agreement to stay who they made you into. But each trigger is an invitation to take another step towards healing.
This isn’t to say that you can “immersion therapy” your way through all your triggers in a day. “Ripping the bandaid off” of triggers likely won’t produce lasting growth because growth takes time.
Usually there’s a progression that goes something like this: neutrally noticing triggers, digging deeper, making connections, and taking small steps to grow.
Notice you can’t just skip to growth. There are a ton of steps before we even get to growth. But you can’t grow until you do all that underground work first. Don’t rush the process.
You can give yourself time to heal while also refusing to avoid triggers.
But the more you avoid facing the pain, the more power it has over your life.
Triggers are so powerful because feelings are memory making machines. When we feel strongly, we create especially powerful memories.
A while ago, I had an experience that recalled my feelings and core wounds of abandonment so strongly that it stopped me in my tracks.
You can read about it in The Path Back to You course!
MY TELL-ALL MEMOIR
Sleeping with a Stranger is officially available everywhere books are sold, in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Since the book’s launch, I’ve been amazed by how it has been received. From being named a best seller by USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, #1 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble Top Ten to incredibly personal and touching reviews from my amazing readers, it’s been such a wild journey!
To close out this chapter, many of our triggers are rooted in shame and limiting beliefs. We can’t overcome them by ignoring them; we have to face them. We have to meet ourselves with the kind of gentleness and love that we maybe weren’t offered.
You can’t bully yourself into growth. Just like any good rose bush, growth comes with feeding, nurturing, sunlight, and, sometimes, painful pruning.
Think of glimmers like the sunlight and facing triggers like the pruning.
One feeds you, and one helps channel growth.
Both are necessary. Both are good. Both require giving yourself time and space to feel and express. You are worth listening to.
Want to learn how you can practice moving through triggers and toward glimmers? Join The Path Back to You to read more about triggers and glimmers and get more practical tools to help you move towards growth.
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