I GOT REALLY TRIGGERED AND FREAKED OUT…

I recently received an email and immediately my heart started racing, I felt sick in my stomach and I started to spiral into a mild-not-so-mild panic.

It had been a while since I actually felt triggered/activated quite like that. Since doing some intense, beautiful work with a good friend of mine (@purejaguar 🙏🏻) life has looked and felt so different, including a definite lack of panicky-lose-my-personal-power episodes.

So this caught me by surprise, and I couldn’t help but think “really!? I thought I was past these feelings” *cue a little disappointment/shame heaped onto the giant soup of feeling I was already experiencing*

Urgently I got up and decided to brush my teeth and brush my hair, maybe now was a good time to cook something? To clean? Watch something funny on my phone?

Catching myself, I recognised that I was falling back into old activated patterns- distract, numb etc.

So instead, I put my phone down and sat on the floor. I took a couple of deep breaths and consciously came back to the email, to what it said, to how it made me feel. A couple more deep breaths in this uncomfortable space, I asked myself what I most needed in this moment. So I started tapping (EFT) and as I moved through the motions I started unravelling what was at the core of my reaction to the email.

I felt judged. I felt like the sender had picked a side in the fight and it wasn’t mine, without properly talking to me first. I felt inadequate and scared- did this mean I wasn’t worthy of love? That I’d done something terribly wrong and horrible?

The wounds were deep and old, fundamental parts of my lifelong people-pleaser persona.

By the end of two rounds, I felt a surge of a very different feeling to what I’d started with. I felt PISSED. How dare this situation/person pull me out of my personal power? How dare I let it send me into a spiral and forget all of the beautiful and amazing people in my life and the love I’m surrounded by every day? How dare I forget how much I love MYSELF and that no matter what, I’ve always got my own back?

Less than 10min after I first read the email and there I am, laughing out loud at the insanity of it all. At the giddy feeling of power as my self love and self respect and fucking self WORTH come flooding back to me. I drop my hands to my Heart and start praying (I pray errryday- best practice ever) with a fervent passion. Then I put on some big, intense music and danced out any remaining stuckness or unworthiness and I felt the joy and relief reach every cell in my body.

I felt called to share this with you as a reminder that the path of healing is never straight or predictable. It is rarely easy but it can be ease-ful- if you keep bringing yourself back to the present moment and feel your feelings and honour what you most need in that moment, always with a shit-tonne of self-compassion. This being human thing can be HARD, it’s such a blessing to do it in the company of beautiful people. Thanks for reading xx 🌹