From Triggered To Tranquil with Dr. Susan Campbell

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today you're in for a treat because we have a conversation with a master therapist, coach, counselor, teacher and leader in the field of authenticity, realness, real communication. She is a clinical psychologist who has been since 1967, been doing couples work, a relationship coach, a speaker, a workshop leader. She has been part of the radical honesty movement. She has her own book called Getting Real, which we've talked about in this podcast previously and actually interviewed her about previously, Truth and Dating. Dating is another book that she's written. She has trained therapists and counselors all over the world on how to be more authentic in their communication with clients, help couples with sex and their authenticity and honesty in that area which we all know can be challenging and uncomfortable. And she is here today to talk to us about a topic which is fascinating, which her work has led her towards, which is about emotional triggers and what causes people to get reactive and have a very hard time being authentic and honest and how to unwind those so you can be more real and have more success in all of your relationships. It's a real treat to have her for the show. Welcome Dr. Susan Campbell.

Thank you, Dr. Aziz.

So I am excited to talk with you about being triggered, what that means and how do we work with that. How you know you have a new book which we're going to talk about, which is all about this subject and longtime listeners of the show will remember you because we had some conversations about other books that you've written that have all been in the realm of authenticity and communication and being honest and skillful at it. And I found your book Getting Real and Truth and Dating to those books to be very life changing for me and bringing that into my life and I share them with my clients and we practice some of the exercises within. Very, very powerful. And you have a new book dedicated entirely to for when people are triggered, how to work with that and then how to communicate more effectively. And I'm curious, having worked with people for so many years about honesty and communication, why a book on being triggered?

Well, learning about people's trigger reactions or learning about our own trigger reactions is kind of the next level of depth of self awareness that I think everybody needs if they're going to live an authentic life. Because once we start studying our own ability or inability to express our true feelings and needs in the moment, because that's what I mean by authenticity once we start taking a deeper look at that. And what I noticed and what motivated me to write this book was so many people inhibit their genuine self expression for the fear of being judged, fear of looking foolish, fear of rejection, that sort of thing. And all of these fears are the territory of trigger reactions. And trigger reactions are very, very powerful. And they'll cause somebody to not ask for a date out of fear of rejection, or not tell your partner that that remark they made upset you because you don't want to rock the boat. And these are important conversations that people need to have. And what's really getting in the way? So what's really getting in the way is our subconscious fears of things like being rejected, being judged, fear of looking foolish, those sorts of things. And all of those are the motivators for triggers. Because the triggers are going into a fight, flight, freeze type of reaction, which is motivated by the amygdala part of the brain. And that's very close to the reptile part of the brain that we know just kind of instinctively acts without any kind of reflection. And so the area of trigger work, because that's what I call it, like studying and learning how to heal your own triggers. The area of trigger work is still in line with that theme of how to live an authentic life. It's just the next layer of awareness down that maybe after reading my book Getting Real, okay, you got motivated to be more authentic, but then you still ran into blocks that you couldn't figure out what they were. Why do I freeze when I get that pause? I asked for something, somebody pauses and I think they're, they're going to reject me or they wish I didn't say that. So we make up these fear stories and once we learn a little bit more about how to do this trigger work, we can take those fear stories of those fear reactions and pause and inquire more deeply into those. And there's a tremendous amount of knowledge about how to heal ourselves and heal our childhood wounds if we are able to pause and look within.

Yes, yes. And I'm excited to go further into that. And just to clarify, I think most people have heard the word triggered yet I think we would want to clarify. So we're all on the same page. When. When you say triggered, what. How would you define that?

It's. First of all, it's a bodily reaction, a nervous system reaction where the organism perceives some kind of a threat. And of course, you have to filter that and define that as a threat. And then your nervous system goes into some kind of a shutdown, blow up, try to get the other person to stop talking to you that way. So we have these automatic protective reactions or ways to push something out of the way. So it's like either freezing, fighting, or trying to convince the other person of your good intentions, those kind of things. So those are what are called trigger reactions. And the trigger sensitivity is based on an unhealed childhood wound that had something to do with your core developmental needs not being fully met. So let me just say something about childhood developmental needs. Everyone needs to feel loved, valued, like their voice matters. So they need to feel heard. They need to feel like they're not all alone when something scary happens, that there's somebody they can turn to for comfort. So these are the needs of little people between the ages of like, 0 and 5 years old especially. And those of us who had, like, perfect parents, maybe we got all those needs met, but I don't. And then we grow up into adulthood, and we don't have that sensitivity to misperceiving somebody's silence as disapproval, for example. But so many of us, and I think most of us didn't get all those developmental needs met. So when we talk about triggers, they're based on what psychologists call developmental trauma. That is like an insult to your normal developmental process. But honestly, parents can't be perfect. They have their own lives, they have their own problems. They have, many of them, too much to do, and they can't always attend to every need of the child. So almost every kid is going to have some kind of insecurity that's just lodged down there in your subconscious where you wanted something from the parent. The parent wasn't available, let's say. And you made that mean that you weren't important or your needs weren't important or that sort of thing. And then you develop, you know, you develop these personality habits to protect yourself. Like, I'll always be nice. That's your book. You know, I'll always be nice so that I'll never have conflict. And you can develop these patterns but if we are able to admit that these patterns are a protection against getting triggered and we're willing to feel those subtle things that tell us we're triggered. Because being triggered doesn't just mean freezing or slamming doors. It's not those two ends of the continuum that most people think of as being a trauma response. There's all kinds of subtle things like having a judgmental thought about somebody thinking boy that person, if they only could have said it this way, I would have responded with a better response. So those kind of if only the other person or why didn't he judgmental thoughts, those are all signs that one of these old insecurities has been triggered in you.

Yeah. So there's levels of which our fight or flight system gets activated and when it's extremely activated we might be more likely to do the acting out kind of stuff you were describing or totally freeze and then it maybe if it's less, less intensely activated we might be experiencing more of the subtle things like judgmental thoughts. And so we have these insecurities that form from unmet needs and then we will we go about our life trying to not feel the triggered and not not bump up against those insecurities. And inevitably though it doesn't work. Because my sense is that we're getting like most people are getting triggered a lot of the time. It's like it's rare to make it through an afternoon or a day. Not to say extreme trigger, but still some constriction, some fear, some sense of I'm not enough or something. So we're kind of bumping into these things all day long. So try to get away from it. Try to move all the pieces around in life so that I don't feel anything. Doesn't work. And so what you're suggesting is a new way in which I'm imagining that we're going to embrace the trigger and maybe what's underneath it. So I know you have a process in your book. Five step process of so what do we do with this? And I think illuminating that will help us start to see. Well, how might we work with triggers in a different way? How about we touched on that process at the 30,000 foot view. And of course if people want to go deeper, highly recommend the book. It is called get the official subtitle here From Triggered to Tranquil How Self Compassion and Mindful Presence Can Transform Relationship Conflicts and Heal Childhood Wounds. So obviously this is going to be a. We can't get into the whole book today, but I think a 30,000 foot view could be really helpful to show the way a new way of being really that can. That can create more peace here. So how about we go through that five step process? Good.

The first half of the book describes these five steps to trigger work. And the first step is the hardest for a lot of people. It's accepting that sometimes I do get triggered. There's still a lot of shame in people when they behave in a way that later they go, oh, no, I was completely on automatic. I said things that I didn't mean. Maybe I caused damage to the relationship, or maybe I acted cool and the person thought I didn't like them and I was just acting cool because I was afraid of them rejecting me. So we'll see after the fact the behaviors that interrupt our intimacy and our connection with people. So acceptance is the first skill. And I give people all kinds of both logical things and then experiential things in the book to help you realize that getting triggered is a normal part of being a human being, especially at this stage in human evolution. I suppose if we mastered all these tools in my book, we could uplevel our evolution. If all humans on the planet did that, maybe there would not even be the need for war. That's my dream, but I might not live that long. So that's the first step anyway, the acceptance. And then the next step is learning what your unique trigger signature is. Which means there are some early warning signs. Like for some of us, it happens in the mind. Oh, that person is not for me. They're kind of against me. Thoughts like that, or they're not giving me the attention that I was hoping for. So some people will see thoughts like that as early warning signs. Other people will feel this tightness in their chest or their fists will. They'll make a fist and they'll start feeling sort of the aggressive energy moving through their body. Other people will just feel like heavy dread feeling. So you know, that's the body sensation level to pay attention to. And then people might feel feelings like, like anger. That's the most obvious one. By the way, Aziz, my book From Triggered to Tranquil is now number one in anger management under new releases on Amazon. So that's a delight. And I didn't even think, I didn't even think of this as an anger management book. But you know, there's all sorts of things that need to be worked with. And anger has a lot of subtle disguises too. Yes, the anger is. I don't like what's happening. And I think we all feel that at least once a day somewhere. So learning how to notice the subtler versions of anger and find appropriate outlets for appropriate anger. Yes. So it's not like people say, anger management. Sometimes there's a bias against anger. I'm not coming from that place I'm coming from. Once you notice that anger. So that's part of your trigger signature. Let's say it's one of those early warning signs. Once you notice that, you can go to the next step, which is pause and breathe and get centered. And I have a number of grounding and centering activities. And people sometimes have their own activities to help them calm their nervous system and just get back to being present with kind of like all your parts online versus being stuck in that amygdala response, which happens fast. When you're in your amygdala response, you see only a couple of options, or maybe only one option. Win, lose. You don't see the creative possibilities in a situation. Pausing. Once you can pause your nerve, pause your actual nervous system in your body. Then your higher brain, your prefrontal cortex, comes back online, and you can make better decisions and then decide what's the right course for this particular reality that you're in. So we've got the acceptance. We've got knowing your unique trigger signature, which is like the early warning signs that say, whoops, something's starting to go into the amygdala area. I'm losing my ability to reason. See, because the prefrontal cortex is where you can reason, where you can cooperate, where you can see the other person's point of view, where you can see options in your amygdala. You're just on automatic. You see your trigger signature, then you pause. Now we're on step four. After pausing, you sit with the feeling or the sensation or the thought. You sit with it and you go, okay, let me feel this a little more. Or if it's a thought, let me see what I'm actually experiencing more in my feeling center or in my somatic parts. What's it like when that person doesn't say anything to me and I've just shared something that's very dear to my heart? I get no feedback. See, it's. It's such subtle things. Like you and I are saying. It's not the. I mean, there are many obvious things like. Like somebody interrupting you or calling you stupid or something. Yeah, I mean, those are the obvious things, but there's so many of these little subtle things, like just a lack of response or lack of the response that you were hoping for. So you sort of go back to that moment when you didn't get that response or when there was an insult or a criticism coming at you. And you breathe to make more space. And so there's a number of techniques to bring more of a spacious presence to your being. Of course you have to be already calm now. You have to have already done the pausing and the grounding and breathing practices. And then you're more available, there's more of you to make space for emotional pain. See, the big issue here is humans fear of emotional pain. It is painful. When we make this spacious presence, we're activating empathy, we're activating self compassion, we're activating a. I can hold more of a charge, I can hold more intensity than I thought I could. When you're triggered, you're just kind of, your energy is going in a chaotic way, it's going all over the place. You're not able to behave in a self supporting way. But when you've gotten yourself centered and focused, your energy's a lot more coherent and you can actually comfort that emotional pain. You can be with yourself. And there's like exercises in the book that I guide people through, but that's something that they can guide themselves through every time they get triggered. If they really want to master their triggers, they guide themselves through these self awareness, self compassion exercises until they're able to really be with pain in a more relaxed way. So then you get to know that feeling of oh, here, here, this is again, I know this place, I can be here. I don't have to run away. And very often when you're in that self compassion holding space for your pain, a lot more information bubbles up from the subconscious about what you actually need. Or maybe there's a neglected part of you that you've been trying to deny, but you can hear the messages and the cries from those lost parts of yourself. So it's a quiet time. And that's, that's called being with yourself. So that's the next step of trigger work. And once you've come to a completion of that stage, then it's time, if there was another person involved in the trigger reaction, to go back and repair with this person. And I give a number of tools and scripts to people for how to deliver a repair that says, when this happened, when I did this thing that I now wish I hadn't done or said I was triggered. So your own responsibility. And then you say something like, I think it was probably my fear of abandonment acting up and then you maybe tell a little bit more about what you discovered in your inner inquiry. And then you ask for what you need, like ask for reassurance, for example, that you are important, that sort of thing. So those are the five steps and there's a lot about how to do each of those steps in the first half of the book. Then the second half of the book goes into applications to child rearing and parenting, to friendships, to groups, if you're a group leader or a group member at work and so forth. And then the final chapter is what to do if you're triggered by the world situation.

Yes. Oh man, there's so. There's so much in there. Let's go into a few, few questions around that process. One major obstacle I, I've seen both to myself and just people is when we are triggered there can be a. There's maybe there's a fair amount of shame and then there's kind of a counter compensation of blame and can get charged and almost, almost to try to get away from that uncomfortable feeling is like well wait a minute, I'm. No, I'm kind of the secondary emotion of anger and blame. And, and in that there can be this sort of perception worldview distorting that's like no, I'm upset because so and so did why or because this happened or because that happened. And you know, we'll grab for anything, we'll grab for what happened in that moment. We'll GR what happened when we were kids. We'll grab for whatever story we can. And then there's this kind of hardening inside. And what advice do you have for people with that? How to catch that when the stories of blame and the cause being something or someone else circumstance are so convincing.

Well, the first step, let's say that you are a blamer when you get triggered like you suggested. Aziz, the shame inside of you is too much to accept, too much to even let yourself see. So you go into, well this other person did something wrong, it's their fault. And obviously that's super common. And so let's see. How would even, how would a person who's let's let's say has a blaming as a pattern, how would they even be motivated to do this trigger work? Well, it's going to cause some kind of disruption in some of your relationships. See, I mean so the first question that I'm kind of thinking from the question you asked is how would a, how would a person who maybe should be doing this work would even know they needed to and so I think one thing would be they notice that people are not their friend anymore, or that there's a contentious tone or there's a defensiveness in their partner because they're kind of always on the offense. So the other person takes the position of being on the defense, and that's frustrating. And so you're going to just build up. If you are a blamer, a lot of things are not going to actually make sense. You're not going to get your needs met. You're going to do things that are counterproductive to getting your needs met. Because when you're a blamer, people are going to be afraid of you, and they're going to put up their defenses, like over explaining or being defensive or maybe blaming back. You know, well, you do it too, and you do it even more than I do. You know how that goes in dyad relationships. So if you ever find yourself in kind of recurring themes of frustration in your attempt to connect with somebody, there's probably one of your own triggers underneath there somewhere. So if we just take the blaming one, what's going to trigger you is the thing that you blamed that person for. And we can start right there. That's a good entry point for doing trigger work. Like, why didn't they ask for what they wanted directly? I mean, this is like a thing that a lot of us fairly evolved people might find ourselves saying, why didn't they ask for what they want directly? Instead of expecting me to be a mind reader? Okay, that's a form of blame. So, but it could be anything. It could be much more of a primitive type of blame, which is like, you're always against me. You never listen to me. But whatever it is, start with the thought. Just, you never listen to me as a thought. Or why didn't they ask directly? And. And you've learned to just enter the territory of spaciousness first. So you have to learn some of those steps in order to then let the blaming story enter your awareness. Notice how you feel. Notice what goes on in your body when you're having this blaming story. And if you really can do that, you're going to learn so much about yourself that you might become a convert to being more curious about yourself instead of just having that simplistic answer, which is, it's the other person's fault. Because as long as it's the other person's fault, you're never going to learn anything. I know you and I and many teachers are trying to help people get curious about themselves because it's really enjoyable and interesting to be more of a master of your own reactivity and your emotions. You just feel more confident. You're center for social confidence. Confidence is something we all want and that means, ah, I can relax and trust myself in this moment. I don't have to be afraid I'm going to fly off the handle because I've learned what some of the early warning signs are of my trigger reaction. You know, let's say it's the reaction would be blaming. But I start to see those thoughts creeping in and I learned to go through those other steps of trigger work, bring myself back to the present moment and I just feel better when I'm more present, more empowered and more self aware.

That's really helpful and around. You know, you mentioned it's in the title of the book too. And as sort of this. One of the sources of the insecurities is these unmet needs. And there is a school of thought and definitely something that I've worked with in background as a therapist in training, which is, you know, people kind of, they call inner child work or people that start to want to grow begin to investigate some of their experiences when they're young and some of these sources of maybe these pains and then they're with those feelings or unmet needs and learn how to become more whole, more present. Now I've also seen a lot of pitfalls that people can fall into with that work. One of them is there's a say two that I've seen. One might fall into the blaming category. And it's not like oh, I hate my parents so much kind of overt blaming. But it is this sort of perception that's like something that was supposed to be given was not given. And now I'm incomplete. I'm lacking the love that I needed, I'm lacking the attention that I needed. And that kind of messed me up. And, and then that's also combined with some sense of like I need something from them now or other people now to make me more whole. And they're not walking around saying these things. But that's kind of the. And they're very earnest, they're very sincere, they want to heal, they want to change. Then they're trying all these techniques and tactics to like kind of fill the hole, fill the void. And maybe sometimes they're trying to have a conversation with their parents and then it doesn't go the way they want. They're like, I'm still frustrated with them and they're never going to be the way that I need them to be. And I kind of obviously went on my own journey with all that. And as time has gone on, I've had my own children, now they're five and seven. My approach, it definitely my own work and my own life has shifted quite significantly from. And perhaps seeing that my parents aren't the source of those things that I was kind of trying to get from them. Like it doesn't, it's not there. And so sort of releasing them from that demand, whether I said it or not. And I'm really curious your perspective on this because people start to say, okay, I'm doing this trigger work, I'm healing this, you know, these inner childhood wounds. Any tips you have about how to go through that process in the most skillful and effective way that really liberates us rather than mires us down and trying to get something that we might never have gotten?

Yeah, I agree with you that there are pitfalls to focusing on the inner child where you kind of justify being stuck with this. Like I'm stuck with this personality because my parents did this or that First. I just want to say, and that's a kind of blame, you know, blaming the past, blaming the lacks that you have and just kind of using them as an excuse. So that's one of the pitfalls. And what you can do is let yourself feel what really happened back then and come to terms with what really happened. And I always try to help people come to terms with some of the unfortunate things that happened. But that is your life. Whatever happened in your life, it's now yours. Nope. No. I mean, blame is. Blaming is based on some kind of an illusion that everybody should treat you some certain way. And that, that's not realistic. That's not life. So knowing what happened without that, it's, you know, it shouldn't have happened. I mean, it did and so it's yours to deal with. But then softening around how it felt for that youngster to have that deprivation. And once you start soften around it, the pain isn't so intense that you need to use these defense mechanisms like blaming. You know, if you can get more used to a certain amount of frustration in your daily life and emotional pain when old, old childhood wounds get re stimulated. If you can soften around that, you won't be as rigidly afraid and needing to attack somebody if they do the wrong thing in relationship to you. So that's the blaming thing and then the over dependence on others to heal your wounds. I try to help people accept what I call the Normal pains of adult relationship. And I just like to use that phrase so people will realize, you know, it's. It's not always supposed to be painless. There will be frustrations. And this. It's great to ask for what you want and to ask to be held and, you know, cry in somebody's arms. That's wonderful. But when that's not available, you have yourself. And these tools in the book that I just came out with, these tools help you learn how to be a good parent to yourself when there's nobody else around. And so that frees you from being so overly dependent on people. Because when you do come across as you got to say, yes, that's the only right answer. You've got to come over and hold me and listen to me right now. That makes it really hard for other people to respond to you in, in a nurturing way. So, you know, you take the pressure off other people and they're more apt to be there for you in a sincere way some of the time, but not all the time. Right. We have to be there for ourselves. And so self regulation and self nurturing and self soothing. It's the responsibility of every adult.

Yes. And I think that comes back to that step of being able to pause and be with yourself and regulate and. And then also the next step being with sensations and emotions. Like those skills are absolutely essential for, for communication, for relationship. Because so much of our communicating is to try to get away from feelings or I'm trying to get you to do something so I don't have to feel that, or I'm trying to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right so I don't have to feel this. And it's all coming out of this fundamental incapacity or unwillingness, maybe both, to simply be with these unpleasant, uncomfortable sensations.

Being with emotional pain is incredibly. Learning to do that is incredibly empowering.

Yes. And it can be. I mean, I would say one of my teachers had a phrase that I really liked which was all of our fears are fears of feelings. And it's. There's this something about just being with, especially if it's a developmental trauma. And so there's going to be some level at that age for that little child that that's overwhelming or scary or painful. And there's this. At that time there might have been a sensation or a perception of like, this is too much. And I see that happen sometimes with, with. With strong emotion is as the emotion starts to arise, there's a mental story, whether it's clearly verbally stated in our heads or just a perception that we lock into that's like, this is too much. This, I can't deal with this. And then that creates almost like a panic response. So what I've seen sometimes with is people try to be with feelings directly. You know, they sit there, they, they try to focus on the body sensations, they try to calm their breath. There can be this intensity of sensation at first, especially if someone's been running from the feelings for a long time. That can be, that can feel panicky or overwhelming. And I'm sure you have many techniques in the book about how to work with this, but any tips for people who are wanting to speak with their feelings? They're on board with it and they're like, yeah, I get bowled over being with certain feelings. Maybe it's when a certain kind of trigger, maybe it's abandonment or someone's upset with them, they've done something, quote, wrong and they feel guilty. How to be with those stronger feelings.

Yeah, people need to dip into the territory of emotional pain little by little. So I do have tools in the book where you would start out with doing an exercise where you're not currently triggered, where you just remember something from the distant past that wasn't too triggering. And you learn to work with that. But even then, once you get into it, it can start to get too intense. And so I give people plenty of practice, like going in a little ways and then coming back out, going in, coming out. Because you really need to respect that there is a too much place for all of us. There are certain situations in life that would be too much for me. And when I think of what that would be for me, it's living in a war zone. Now I watch these documentaries to help myself realize that there are people. And this is a different, this is not the kind of triggering that I'm, that I'm teaching about, you know, when bombs are going off in your neighborhood. But, you know, they're really, you know, there really are very intense things that some people would not be able to handle. And I actually think my nervous system would not be able to handle that. And I think it's important for people who were highly traumatized as youngsters to realize that you, you're going to have to mark boundaries with some people and say, whoops, you're starting to get into talking about sexual violence and joking around about that. And I've got some early trauma around that subject. And I request that either we don't talk about that or I'M going to go. So I also talk a lot about how to protect yourself appropriately by marking your boundaries or even by sometimes cutting off certain relationships where your boundaries, the other person just not able to respect your boundaries. So yeah, there's ways for you to tune in to when it's too much just working with yourself. And there's also some suggestions for how to monitor other people's communication with you or how to set some boundaries in what, what you will be able to sit with.

Mm, yes, I think that's so important because sometimes people, it's like we learn of a medicine, like, oh, be with the feelings. It's like, okay, let me, give me that, give me maximum dose. And yeah, they want the quick fix. Yeah. And it's not like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and feel so hard on this Sunday afternoon that I'm, I'm gonna get it all out, get it all done. And it definitely doesn't work that way. So I'm really curious about that. The final chapter in your book. The you mentioned about being triggered by the world situation. And you know, when someone says the world situation, obviously they're going to be, they're going to be focusing on something, some particular element or aspect of the world as they see it through the perceptions and information sources that they have or view it through. And yet there's all sorts of places we can go to find information that is disturbing or depressing or scary. And how do you invite people or encourage people to work with it when they're triggered by something that they see that seems painful out in the world?

And there's lots of that right now. And it can all, no matter what it is, it can be used as an entry point for getting to know yourself better. So it's very important not just to work with your triggers in your friendships and your intimate relationships, but especially now when there's so, so much kind of like chaos in the world. There's a lot of disorganization in the way decisions are made in the world and the way humans have trouble cooperating with each other. So it's almost like when the world isn't doing well and I'm connected to how well the world is doing, that is going to affect my sense of well being. So let's say you hear something on the news that triggers some fear response or anger response in you, you just start with whatever that is. Like, what did the person say that seemed to be angering? Okay. So I tune into that. I do some of my breath practices and some of my grounding practices to make a curious open space. And it's amazing. I'll give you an example in a minute of specific. But just in general, it's just amazing how much information about your own self, your own psycho history, or your own values or your own, even your own, like, life purpose, your, your passions that can, can be fueled by some, some of this, like, like righteous anger at what's going on in the world. But it has to be. You have to be able to be with that and understand where that comes from in your own motivational system. Let's, let's say it's anger. Anger about a authority figure who is not held accountable for his actions. And you grew up in an alcoholic family where nobody could criticize the father because everybody was tiptoeing around trying to manage uproars and keep things within a certain degree of calmness. And you became this invisible little child, let's say. But now you're reading the news and you get agitated and that. You can already see that that could lead you to having some memories about what it was like when your father would come home wasted and the parents would start fighting and you'd go in your closet and hide. I mean, these. You may not need the world situation to trigger that kind of inquiry, but there's so many things in the world that are really human issues. Like power differential is a, you know, is a huge one, and your relationship to authority. So people who have authority, what we call it authority issues in psychology, will have some kind of an ambivalent or antagonistic relationship to authority. Authority, they're going to find a lot of fodder for self growth by starting with something that angers you and then feeling it all the way down and bringing more loving attention to that kid who was hiding in the closet. Let's say that. But I'll give you a specific example. I tell the story in the book of a woman of Mexican heritage who reported to me that she would get completely frozen and tongue tied when polarized conversations would happen within her earshot. You know, her friends and neighbors would start labeling this other side as stupid or worse. And those. It was a polarization in her world between the red states and the blue states, how people voted in the last presidential election. And so she would find herself privy to these conversations, but she wouldn't. And she didn't like it, but she wouldn't be able to say anything. So she did an inquiry, she did several inquiries on, starting with, gee, there's name calling and there's labels and as she tuned into some of the things in her own background that were similar to this, she realized, well, growing up Mexican American in a mostly Anglo community, she was on the receiving end of a lot of pejorative labels back when she was 10, 11, 12. And so once she did some inner healing work and just self soothing around that and got clear and got more with like, it's like you bring that lost part into the rest of you so that that lost part can now be supported by the rest of your beingness. Once she was able to do that integration work of the old memories, she actually became kind of a champion for respectful dialogue. She reported to me that she would say to people in her community when they'd start finger pointing and name calling, she'd say, wait, I want to say something here. I get really upset when people call names to each other, when I don't even really know what this other person did that offends you or that bothers you. I would rather hear you talk about your feelings and what the specifics are rather than just name calling and finger pointing. She would take leadership in a group. That's become a theme for her now because she still lives in that neighborhood. There's still those polarizing conversations going on, but in a way she's kind of found a new meaning in her, in her life just as a community leader.

Wow. I think it's really interesting because there's such a level of. It's just so much more like functional and proactive than I think, some of the ways that we might react to a world situation. Sort of have a fatalistic or what can I do attitude. This is the way it is and it's terrible. And that, that discovery, that willingness to look within and to get curious led to very actionable steps that she could take that actually were very beneficial for her own growth and leadership. So that's. I love that story. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Yeah, it's like when you get in touch with some of these lost parts, you become a bigger, more healthy, because you're more fully integrated person, you don't have all these little unconscious parts clamoring for attention, but you don't really know what to do. But once you've taken a little time to listen to some of these parts, you integrate them and you become more of a whole human being and then again more effective and more confident.

Yes. I love this. And that is, you mentioned that earlier in the interview. And I think it's absolutely true that that confidence that comes from being able to navigate your emotions. So much of the patterns that lead to a lack of confidence are coming from, from running from a variety of things, from different situations. If this happens, I'm going to feel awful, I'm overwhelmed, I'm going to be triggered. So let me avoid it. And you know, the path to confidence is to lean in to face those things. And this book provides very specific guidance and tools. So it's not just, well, just go do it. It's a much kinder and much more effective approach because it's like, well, here's how to work with the feelings inside so you can go do it. So I highly recommend this book. You can get it in Amazon as it is the number one bestseller for anger management. But one little this is a teacher that I had reminded me when you said that was he said that he didn't think that for anger management people had, quote, anger issues. He thought it was more of emotional managed. Like they didn't know how to work with their emotions overall. And so it just came out as anger. But there's all these other feelings that they're working with, vulnerability, hurt, sadness, and they just, they don't have access or capacity. And so it all just comes out as anger. So I'm not surprised that this book, even though it's not focused specifically on anger, is extremely useful for anger because it's about emotional mastery, really. So for those who are, you know, drawn, obviously check out the book. You can get it on Amazon or Kindle paperback.

Say the name of it again.

Absolutely. The book is called From Triggered to Tranquil and it's by Dr. Susan Campbell. And we'll have a link if you go to shrinkforthshy guy.com and you'll see this episode there. It will call this episode From Triggered to Tranquil as well. With Dr. Susan Campbell. You can click on that as well. And there will be a link down below leading to the Amazon page. And for those who want to go further, I know you have ways that people can learn from you directly. What would be the best place for people to do that and how can they connect with you more?

Well, I'd love it if listeners would go to my website susancampbell.com and sign up for my newsletter. Because in that newsletter only comes out once a month I announce my free Zoom coaching call. So I spend an hour on Zoom for free with people every month. First Tuesday of the month it's usually around 10:10am Pacific time, but sometimes the time changes. But you'll get the Zoom link in there and that's all you need to come on to a interactive, very informative little class. Or sometimes I do, you know, three minute therapy with people and guide you through some of the activities that I describe in the book. So it's a, it's a very lively time. I hope some people will join that community.

Beautiful. I don't doubt that it is that level of realness. It's going to be real, is always interesting. It's fascinating. So, Dr. Campbell, thank you so much for sharing with us today, for writing this book and for continuing to help so many people, including myself and many of my clients, just be more expressive, be more real, be more authentically ourselves.

It's been a wonderful time being with you again, Dr. Aziz. Thanks.

And that brings us to the end of the interview. But before the end of the episode, there's one thing we gotta do, right? Time for action. Action, action. As with any interview, I'm going to leave the action step open. I mean, there's so many things that she shared that I would invite you to pursue. So if you get, you know, you're called to go to her email list and be on one of her live, once a month free coaching calls, which is an awesome opportunity by the way, then that's an action step. If you are drawn to get her book and listen to that or read that, I highly recommend that that's going to another powerful action step or something quicker, easier. Right now you can do is remember that five step process she shared. Pick one of those steps and practice it. Learn some of the tools about regulating emotion, about being with emotion. Some of those tools I teach in this podcast. But you can find more about her work. But apply something though. There's so many things, but if you, you listen to it, it's entertaining, it's interesting. But if you choose something and say, okay, I'm going to apply that, that's when things can really transform for you. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz.

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