Unconscious Triggers - FUSE

That you infuse the unique components of communication stands for unconscious triggers. Now, for triggers to be unconscious, they need to be out of our awareness. So the unconscious is that part of the mind that where we put everything that we don't want to deal with because it's too painful or we just want to forget about it. Well, unconscious triggers are unconscious because we're not aware of them. Now, part of the deal here is for us to learn how to become aware of them and bring them to our consciousness so that we can be better at communication and in relating to other people that are significant in our lives. But what are unconscious triggers? Unconscious triggers are those buttons, those unconscious buttons that when people push them, they create an intense, irrational, emotional expression or reaction in us. So whenever somebody pushes a button and you cannot get over it, cannot get over it, and how could you do that? And you have all these emotions that no matter how you try, you still can't stop feeling the way that you do. A trigger was pushed. Now, these are vulnerabilities that we have that are informed or that came from experiences in our history with our family of origin, maybe even in your same. Let's say you're in a relationship and you've been in that relationship for 20 years, and things happen early on in the relationship or in the middle of it. Those are enough to have created a trigger in the present. So you may have triggers of insecurities, of trust. You know, you may have so many things that you react to because of past experiences that may be triggers. So let me explain a little bit with examples, because this one can be tricky. I grew up with three siblings, and my oldest sister had severe mental retardation. So when I was born and she would take away the milk bottle and the pacifier from me, my parents would always say, you have to understand her. She's little. She doesn't get it. She doesn't understand herself. So you have to cater to her, and you have to understand her. So I grew up thinking when I was a little baby that I really needed people to understand me. Even then, I grew up thinking that I had to understand others and cater to others and be okay with what others did to me and be okay if they didn't consider me because they didn't know any better. Or so I learned. No wonder I'm a psychologist, because now I understand people. I empathize with people. I cater to others. So it was a good thing after all. But because of it, I created this vulnerability of wanting to be heard, of wanting to be Taken into account of wanting to be considered. So when I grew up and I started engaging in relationships with friendships, with boyfriends, my poor husband, and whenever they would do something that I filtered as, oh, he's not considering me, I would react in a crazy way. My husband would look at me and be like, are you crazy? Or is every woman around here like you? And they just don't talk about it. But the thing is that I would react in a way that it just didn't make sense. The crime didn't fit the punishment. And that's usually how you know you're being triggered because the other person looks at you weird, like, where did you get that from? Or why are you reacting this way? What I did wasn't that bad. Well, it wasn't that bad for them, but it was really bad for you because it was a button of yours that was pushed. So unconscious triggers are things such as not feeling considered. Let's say mine is not feeling considered. I know clients of mine whose triggers are not feeling understood or not. Not. Not being told everything so that they can trust. So they have buttons that have to do with trust because in the past they had gone through experiences of infidelity or maybe, you know, they were in an abusive relationship. And there's this client of mine, for example, that was the pain. He. He was being abused, and the mom didn't do anything or say anything. So then there's that trust issue of, man, you're not going to take care of me, you're not going to look out for me, you're not going to get my back. So this person is now in a relationship, and whenever the wife doesn't agree with him, he feels that she's not getting his back, that she's not looking out for him, that she's not considering him, and then he reacts. But again, our unconscious triggers are going to define and are going to overlap with our filters. So if we interpret things through our filter in a certain way based on our past experiences, then we're going to react to that filtered information or to that interpretation in an irrational way, because our buttons are going to be pushed based on how we see things. So it's complex. The filter allows you to interpret the information, and then the reaction is the unconscious trigger is based on the unconscious trigger. So if somebody pushes your button of, oh, I'm not considering you, I'm not taking into account, oh, I did this behind your back, trust issue, trust trigger, then you're going to react to that. So the unconscious triggers are intense, intense Vulnerabilities. And we tend to overreact because what we're reacting to is not the behavior that took place. It's not what they did to us. It's how we felt it based on how we interpreted it. So I always say that the heart has a memory, and the unconscious triggers are how we react to those memories. So, for example, if I have a teenager that went through. The parents, went through a divorce, and the divorce was very, very, very difficult, very painful. And this person, every time there's conflict, she remembers what she experienced when her parents were going through a divorce. There was screaming, there was tension, and she was uneasy and very nervous and anxious. So whenever there's conflict at school or with her peers or the teacher says something or they're screaming, she reacts in a very anxious way. And sometimes it's something minimal, but it still makes her feel overwhelmingly anxious and nervous, because what she's reacting to is not what the teacher or the peer or the people around her said, but rather to that feeling of. Of, oh, my God, you know, there's going to be violence here, there's going to be aggression, there's going to be screaming. I don't want to go through that again. So then, in an effort to protect us, our unconscious reacts like this to scare people off and for them to stop doing whatever it is that they're doing. So everything in our fuse has to do with our experiences in the past and the way we, you know, we've experienced life. But it's also a way of protecting us, which is why conversations end before they start. Because maybe a conversation in and of itself is threatening or scary. You know, we feel that we're going to go to that vulnerable place, that emotional place that we don't want to go to, and then we stop it with our unconscious triggers and our irrational reactions. But what I want you to get from this is that we have the possibility, number one, of making this aware, of understanding how we tend to react or what those vulnerabilities are. It took me a while to realize that mine was not feeling considered. And now when my husband tells me, when I find out through someone else that my husband made plans to go out as a family somewhere and I didn't find out through him, instead of being like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe he didn't even think about me, he didn't consider me, he didn't tell me, I have to find out through other people, I think, well, maybe he didn't have time or, you know, I know we haven't had a chance to talk these days because it's been so hectic. So let me just go to him. Whereas before maybe I would have thought all these things, I would have filtered the information that way and I would react like, you never take me into consideration and why do I have to find out through other people and all these things? So I think it's really important to become aware of what comes from you so that you can avoid having irrational reactions. Now, this Matthew Kelly says that we have the possibility, unlike animals, to be response able, responsible. So we have the ability to respond rather than react. Animals react. And when we have an unconscious trigger pushed, we react just like animals. So we need to become aware of them so that we can respond. Instead, we can respond in a different way. And we should also train the people around us that are significant in our lives in terms of our triggers so that they know not to push them. And by that I mean your kids, your parents, your spouse, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whomever, your best friends, whomever you're surrounded with. You should teach them or explain to them how you tend to interpret things or how you tend to be triggered so that they can help you in the process. But it's up to you to figure out what your triggers are. And this is really important and powerful because unless you learn how to become aware of your triggers and then develop tools that are going to help you respond, you're never going to really have important, significant, healthy relationships that may be fulfilling because you're always going to be reacting. You're going to be enslaved. You're gonna be a slave to your triggers. So unconscious triggers we need to bring to our consciousness, and we know that they're unconscious triggers when we react irrationally and crazily and when the crime doesn't fit the punishment, and when, even if you try to get over it and you're like, let's say there was an argument with your partner or something, ticked you off, and you know, you can't get over it. And there's, you know, you really want to postpone and you really want to be like, you know what? Let me just maybe, okay, right now. And you just can't. You can't. No matter how much you try, that's an unconscious trigger. And if you do that with your spouse and your parents have told you that you do the same thing with them, and your best friends may have mentioned it, then you know, you are the common denominator that would help you understand what your unconscious trigger is. So get to it. And make those unconscious triggers conscious so that we can start fighting them.