5. Triggers, Numbing and Grounding Exercises

Hello, my beautiful friend, and welcome to the Mind Body Alignment podcast. I'm your host, Tessa Romero, and also your coach. I'm here to help teach you all the skills, tools and encouragement that you need to not only know who you are, but how to become exactly who you want to be while going through a healing journey that allows you to build a mindset that finally supports you. I'm so glad that you're here. Let's get started. My, oh my. Welcome back, my beautiful friend. I'm so glad that you're here and I really hope that you had a chance to listen to Monday's episode of those three experiences that showed me I really needed healing with myself. Especially that third one where I was reading you that three page journal entry. I mean, I was crying on the podcast because I was like, oh, wow. I'm like really proud of myself for the healing that I've done. And I just, it just took me back to that moment, everything that I was feeling. So I hope that you have a chance to listen to the last episode that I posted. I, um, and that it can serve you. But today is very special because we are talking about triggers and numbing. And of course I'm going to help you with how to better handle and cope with those triggers and what to do instead of numbing. Because guess what? I'm here to serve you. Regardless. If you ever do my coaching program, I want to know that I helped you be better in some way. So everything that I, that I coach you through and everything that I share here is to serve you. I, I hope that you come into my coaching program because we put it all together and we put it into that roadmap where you take it step by step by step. You have all of my material and video modules and coaching from me to help you through this process where you don't have to feel like, wait, what was that thing that she told me to try? You have more help and guidance from that. So anyway, let's talk about triggers. Triggers can be a whole range of things. Now, I'm not necessarily talking about triggers. If you've had something traumatizing happen to you in your life and your nervous system is still kind of like stuck in fight or flight, that's a really. That's one way to think about triggers. What I'm talking about when I refer to triggers. And just by the way, if you've had trauma happen to you and your nervous system is stuck in fight or flight and it kind of just gets kicked back there every time you get triggered by something. These practices that I'm going to talk about are still very helpful, but please, please, please seek out more help for, for you with that trauma. I mean, go to counseling and resources and therapy and medication if you need it. Like, do what you need to do. Find the, the things that support you best and just use what I'm saying as more skills and tools in your toolbox. Okay, so just wanted to clear that up. But with triggers, what I'm referring to here, regardless if it's trauma or shame or something that you're struggling with, like feeling a sensory overload type, these are really helpful for you. So when I were talking about triggers, what I'm referring to is emotions that come up that feel very difficult for you to handle. I know that seems like a pretty broad definition, but I want it to be broad because, you know, it doesn't always come from anxiety. It doesn't always come from sensory overload. It doesn't always come from a past experience kicking us back into fight or flight. Like, it's. It's not always those things. So I like to keep it a little bit more general. With any emotion that comes up that you feel is difficult to handle, apply one of these practices instead of numbing. Instead of numbing. So triggers can sound like your kids are screaming at you and they're whining and crying and that feels really triggering. Or they're not listening to you and that feels really triggering. Or if your spouse isn't listening to you and it takes you back to a time in your life where you felt like you were alone and nobody listened to you or cared about what you had to say day, and it just like kicks you back there. Another trigger can be totally like, maybe you're in a social setting and you feel super anxious, or you're in a social setting that has to do with food and you've struggled with disordered eating for a while. Like, you can be triggered by so many different wide range of things. I know a big trigger for me kind of like kicks my body into that fight or flight and I just get that surge of adrenaline is when I receive, like, negative comments on social media. And I know that sounds so, like, what. Why do you care? When people say a hurtful comment? It's hurtful. Even when I know it's not true, it's still just like, hurtful. Like, why did you go out of your way to say these things like they're not true? You haven't spent more than two seconds on my account, obviously. And it's hurtful, but I have to walk myself through that. And it's okay that I feel hurt by it. It's okay that you feel overwhelmed, it's okay that you feel anxious. What's most important is helping ourself when we have those feelings so that we don't get stuck there. I'm not trying to get stuck with hurtful comments. No, I want to help regulate myself, get back to the present moment and remain my own best friend in my mind. And that's what I want for you, too. So if you're feeling triggered by your kids whining, for example, your thoughts are probably saying, I can't do this anymore. This is so frustrating. All you do is whine, I can't handle this. I never have enough help. I'm the only one that has to put up with this. On and on and on it goes. And how do you feel when those are your thoughts? Well, you're going to feel overwhelmed, you're going to feel exhausted, you're going to feel depleted and defeated and frustrated and irritated. And you know the feelings that associate those thoughts. Like, doesn't that make sense how thoughts create feelings and then actions follow? So whenever you're feeling triggered, the first thing that you can do that will help you so much is to figure out what are the thoughts. And sometimes that's a really hard question, like, what are you thinking? Obviously, if you knew exactly what you're thinking and you're listening to this podcast, you could just go change all your thoughts and then you'd feel better, right? Well, not necessarily because you have deep blood beliefs rooted with those thoughts. It's not just the idea of changing thoughts, it's like the whole inner healing work that has to happen and like self discovery that happens with it. But when you don't know what your thoughts are in any given moment, like you're not even feeling triggered, you're just feeling pretty mindless in your day and you're just feeling down, not triggered, just down. And you're not sure why. And if I were to ask you, well, what are you thinking about? And you're like, I don't know. That's pretty common. People don't always know what they're thinking. So a really great way to know what you're thinking is to ask yourself, how do I feel? How do I feel? Well, I feel just irritable, I feel agitated, I feel frustrated. Why do you feel frustrated? Oh, because my husband didn't do XYZ like he said he would, or I just Thought that my kids were going to do the things that they know they should be doing. And then you're feeling frustrated and it's like, oh, okay. So the feelings really just give you some great insight as to like, what are the thoughts? If you're not able to just answer the question, what are you thinking? Start with feelings and then see where they take you. You are not your feelings. But feelings can be very good little like mile markers. And they can give us good insight to ourselves. They're not wrong, they're not wrong. We need to validate them. We need to accept them and nurture them and heal them. But when you over identify with a feeling like I am frustrated, well, then you're probably going to be lashing out more. You're going to feel a bit more out of control. The whole day is going to go in a direction that you never wanted it to and you're not even going to like, do things for yourself because you feel too frustrated to do so. So this is why I always, always, always put your identity first. You are not frustrated. You feel frustrated. It's valid to feel frustrated. Validate yourself and then work on helping yourself. So if you're feeling triggered and the thoughts thing is a part of that, but what happens is when people feel triggered, they don't like the feeling. So then we want to go to numbing. And I mean, that makes a lot of sense, right? Have you ever felt something that you didn't want to feel anymore? Like maybe you felt embarrassment or lonely or angry and agitated, you just didn't want to feel it anymore. So you reach for something to numb with. I mean, so common, even with myself, to pick up the phone and scroll and just to like, do nothing on the phone to try and numb the emotion that we're feeling. And maybe it's not phone use for you. Okay, so it's not social media for you, or email or news, whatever. Maybe it's tv, maybe it's food, maybe it's alcohol. Maybe it's lashing out and shutting down and avoiding and procrastination. Those are all forms of numbing. Now if you say, well, Tess, I procrastinated this morning, was I numbing? No, not necessarily. All of this is like there's a bunch of moving parts. So I want you to feel empowered through the information that I'm sharing with you to acknowledge when you are numbing. Not all procrastination is numbing, but we have to understand, like when we procrastinate, then we're going to start Feeling anxious because we're not doing the thing that's going to help us feel better. Like, we're not doing the thing that we know we need to do. So. So we start feeling anxious and down. So numbing can look like a lot of different things. But the idea with numbing is you're trying to escape something. So ask yourself right now, kind of, if you have a pen and paper, get it out and just write down the question, how do I numb? And if you're not quite sure how to answer that question, here's another way to word it. Ask yourself, when I feel emotions that are difficult to handle, how do I escape them? Maybe you're in a conversation with a family member, extended family, and you're just feeling, like, very irritable, agitated in the conversation. What do you do? Do you avoid the conversation? Do you pull out your phone? Do you act distracted and busy over here? Like, what do you do to escape? That is what we want to be aware of. Or do you hit up the snack bar or pour yourself a glass of wine? Like, when you know what, not only what you do, but why you do it, you can then focus on changing behaviors and patterns. Because you're understanding why you do it, you can validate yourself. It's going to strengthen the relationship that you have with yourself and your self. Love. Because you're no longer looking at yourself, shaming yourself, what's wrong with me? Why am I like this? I'm a terrible person. I'll never be able to get together. On and on and on it goes, shaming yourself. And when you shame yourself, you don't even feel like you're worthy of change. You don't even feel like you're capable of change because you believe this bad person. When you're not, you're not. There's just been things in your past that you're still working to recover from. There's parts of yourself that you're still learning about and healing. Like, there's so many different moving parts here. You're not a bad person because you reached for numbing. You're not. You probably didn't even know that you were triggered, honestly. But my. The point in this podcast episode is to help you see, like, if you feel triggered in. We're talking about emotions that feel difficult to process in a given moment. What do you do when you feel triggered? How do you numb? Okay, so get your answers there. Asking yourself, what triggers me? What brings up emotions that are difficult for me to process? And then moving on from there, okay, the Questions that I just asked prior is, I mean, when I feel the emotions that are difficult to handle, how do I try to escape them? And just get super honest with yourself. Be your own best friend, be the great listening ear that you need. Validate yourself and say, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. This makes so much sense why I try to escape it. And all you've needed to do was try to make sense of things so that you're not attacking yourself. Shame is a huge part of triggers and numbing. We feel the shame and then we want to go numb because that feels feeling of shame. Remember, shame's a natural human emotion. When you feel ashamed, like you don't want to feel that, it's very intense, it's very powerful. So yeah, you're going to go reach for numbing. So think about, think about those questions for you. What are your triggers and how do you numb? Empower yourself, become do the self discovery work right now and then you can focus more on the healing. That's what I'm all about here, self discovery and self healing. Everything that I provide is just information that I have found to be extremely helpful. For me, it's your personal development, it's the work on yourself, right. And whatever other resources, tools, skills that you want to build outside of this. More power to you, sister. Keep going. And I just hope that I can help encourage you through it. So what are your triggers? How do you numb? Now let's talk about what you can be doing instead of numbing. So here's an example. Your kids are just kind of like losing their minds throughout the day and you're feeling super worked up about it and you just keep walking back to your pantry and you're like, why am I back in the pantry? I'm not hungry, but I need a snack. I need a snack, I need a snack. So you just keep grabbing snacks and then you're probably shaming yourself at the same time. What's wrong with me? I'm never consistent. This is why I'm not going to reach my goals. Because I'm worthless and I'm fat and I'm lazy. You see how this is all connected? Everything that I just said, like those attacks on self were shaming comments. So then you feel worse about yourself, but the whole underlying issue was a trigger not being addressed. And then you're just reaching for numbing, which makes a lot of sense, right? So you're not a terrible person. You're not lazy, you're not fat, you're not worthless, you're doing the best you can. You're doing the best you can to your mental and physical capacity in that moment. So give yourself some love and grace because you absolutely deserve it. So let's say going back to the story, though, you're feeling triggered and you're noticing the behaviors and patterns of like, constantly going back to the pantry. And that would be your numbing. Okay, so in this example, if you are able to catch the trigger before you go to the numbing patterns of like, I just need a snack, a snack, a snack, a snack, a snack. If you're able to catch the trigger, like, wow, I'm feeling really worked up right now. How can I help bring myself back down? Very conscious thoughts, growth, mindset, focusing on not feeling like stuck or fixed on any given circumstance. It's I'm feeling rent now, but I can help myself. I'm going to do these grounding exercises that I'm going to tell you right now. So get out a pen and piece of paper if you're using the same one from the questions that I asked prior. Remember the first two questions that you really need to get crystal clear on are what are my triggers? Or what emotions feel difficult for me to handle? Triggers. And then the second question is going to be, how do I numb or how do I try to escape the emotions that feel difficult to handle? Those are the first two questions that I want you to answer. And now write some notes down about these grounding exercises. They can be such game changers for you. And just getting back to conscious thoughts throughout the day. Because let's be honest, once you're in that mode of like, overwhelmed, overstimulated, just really feeling it all, it's harder to get back to conscious thought of, wow, my kids are really doing the best they can. And yes, he spilled the cup of water, but he was trying to be independent. And wow, you just broke that. But I can see that your intentions were to fix it. It's really difficult to do that when you're already in your feelings and over identifying with them and very mindless with the thoughts. Like you're not even sure what you're thinking anymore. These grounding exercises can help. So after you answer those first two questions, now write these out to better help yourself. The first thing that I want to share with you are grounding statements. I love grounding statements. They're so easy, they're so good. And here's a simple rule to keep in mind with grounding statements. You want them short, sweet, and effective. That's it. We are not trying to gain conscious thought and have this big long story when you're already battling the negativity. You're already stuck in your feelings and your thoughts. Like I just said, it's going to feel really difficult to like, spin everything to a positive or acceptance or growth mindset. However you want to word that, it's going to feel really hard to do so if you're not in that conscious thought already. So. So grounding statements are just like a back pocket statement that help you tremendously to get back to the present moment with your thoughts. Now, the other exercises that I'm going to talk with you about are really good for your nervous system, but I love, like, pairing it with these grounding statements because again, it just gets back in control of the thoughts. And normally the thoughts are the source of our own suffering and issues because they're just saying everything that we don't need to hear. So this first one, grounding statements, short, sweet and effective. I'm going to share four of my top favorite ones with you. Number one is Reset. I love this one. It's so good. Reset. Number two is Come back. This is my personal favorite. I use it multiple times a day and I'll say it over and over and over until I feel like, okay, I'm back. Come back was the second one. The third one is be here now. So we have reset. Come back, Be here now. And then the last I want to share with you is try again. So you see how all four of those are very short, but they have very powerful meanings like, oh, we didn't do that the way that we wanted to. Let's try again. Oh, my mind is wandering. Come back. And it can mean so many different things, like wandering to the future, wandering to the past, overanalyzing what's happening right in front of me. Just come back. Not feeling conscious. Come back, reset, try again, Be here now. I love those. So anytime you're feeling triggered, try just a slow, simple, conscious grounding statement. Short, sweet, and effective. The second exercise that I want to share with you is really awesome for, again, regulating yourself down, regulating through your breath. Really, really powerful stuff. So this one's called box breathing. I hope that you're writing these down. So how about that Pen and paper or take notes on your phone, I don't care. But box breathing is really amazing. If you're ever feeling like, anxious or again, triggered, and any emotion that's difficult for you to handle, get back in control of your breathing. So with box breathing, you're going to do it all through your nose. No, breathing through your mouth. Breathe through your nose. And what you're going to do is visualize a box in your mind. And you're going to go four seconds of an inhale, the top of the box. Then you're going to go down the right side of the box by holding the inhale for four seconds. Now you're drawing the bottom line of the box by exhaling for four seconds. And then you're going to go back up to the top line by holding that exhale for four seconds. And. And now you have a complete box. Do that three or four times with the box breathing. So very intentional breath work. Super good for down regulating yourself and getting back into that conscious thought and feeling in control again of yourself. So those are the first two. We've got grounding statements and we've got box breathing. Now we're moving into how you can make like if it's your body that you're feeling, like, my body just feels so tense with this. And the grounding statements sound nice, but how does that help my body? You can pair it up with this movement. Now you can choose what this movement looks like for you. But what I love to do, and this is like proven with like therapeutic approaches too, but is just shake my arm, shake my arm. I don't know if you guys can hear me shake my arm, but shake your hands out. Shake your arms. Like you're just like wiggling and doing so. Not like aggressively, but you're just like shaking, shaking, shaking, shaking. And that makes so much sense because when you're feeling it physically and it's, it's an emotion that's stuck. Emotions are energy in motion and we feel energy, right? So imagine this like ball of energy is just stuck inside of your chest or in your arms and you can feel that tension. It needs to go somewhere. So you have your grounding statements going in your mind. Come back, and you're just shaking out your arms. Come back, come back, come back. Go into your box breathing after you've done that, like shaking with the grounding statement. So if you're feeling physically charged, shake, shake, shake. You can do it to your legs, you can do your whole frickin body and it will help tremendously. So that was the third one and the last one that I want to share with you is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. This one is such a good one for bringing you back to the present moment because it involves your senses, so getting like sensory involved to prove to your nervous system, hey, we're in the pros, we're in the present moment. We're safe. It's like a rest and digest instead of a fight or flight type of state to be in. But you kind of have to, like, prove this to your mind and body again, very consciously. So I saved this for the last one because you need to be conscious of what's going on if you're going to pull on 5, 4, 3, 2, M. But here's how to do it. So take notes. We're involving the senses. We have five senses. So what you're going to start with is five things that you can see. So I'm in my closet and I'm just going to walk through this with you guys. I can see my blue water bottle. I can see my Adidas slide. I can see my jeans. I can see my bag hanging up. And I can see a suitcase on the top of my shelf. Just things that I wasn't paying attention to before. Five of those four things that I can touch. I can touch my carpet that has a different kind of feel. I can touch my pants. I'm wearing, like, these ribbed pajama pants. So that feels different. I can touch my skin. So I went from something that feels pretty rough to something that feels smooth. And I can touch my water bottle. Like, that's a very different texture than my face or my jeans or my pants. So four things that you can touch and become very, like, aware of how they feel. Now you're going to go into three things that you can hear. So we're going to have to be quiet for this, which is, again, a great way to calm things down. Because if your child's screaming in front of you and you're only listening to your child scream, well, that's only one thing that you hear. So calm and quiet. What other things do you hear? So I'm going to be quiet and I'm going to listen to the three things. So I can hear sunny outside of my door. I can hear my breath, And I just swallowed. So, like, I heard that too. So I'm in a super quiet room, so it took me a little bit longer to, like, find those. But if you hear a car drive by or a factory noise that's near to your home, or if you have an upstairs neighbor or one of your other children is in the home, or your husband's in the home, or some music's playing lightly in the background, like, whatever it is, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell. Now with this, it doesn't have to be crazy. You don't have to go reach for your candles and your essential oils, although I'm sure those will help you feel better. But just smell your hands, smell your sweater, smell your jacket, smell anything. Just the two things that you can smell. And then finally, it's one thing that you can taste. So it's five, four, three, two, one. Five things that you can see, four things that you can touch, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell, and one thing that you can taste. And that's all of your senses. So what that's going to do is when your nervous system is literally feeling like, oh, my God, we're in a past scary environment. Hey, we need to come back to the present moment because we're actually not in danger. You want to do this in a safe environment. And like I said, if it's something with trauma, that you're still working through something, seek out the professional help. It is so worth it and valuable to your healing journey to go through these steps. You will never regret working on yourself ever. So seek it out. And I'm just here to again provide you with more skills and tools for your toolbox. So that's 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We have the box breathing, we have grounding statements. Then we have the movement that you can pair up with grounding statements to kind of help get you back to the present. But you know what, my friend? If you're just feeling overstimulated and you're feeling. That was a really weird noise again, the noises. But if you're feeling overstimulated in any given moment, or you're just feeling, like, irritable and frustrated and you're like, what is going on? Think about, like, what is in your. What sensory things are happening in your environment. Like, yeah, the kids might be pretty loud right now, but also there's the TV on, or we have music on, or all the lights are on, like, okay, let's dim the environment. Let's like, I'm going to light my favorite candle or put on the diffuser. I'm going to turn off the tv. I'm going to turn off the music. What do you need to do to kind of, like, bring yourself back down or go outside? Go outside and walk barefoot in the grass. Like, all of these things. It sounds like, you know, oh, you want me to go walk barefoot in the grass? Yes, I want you to go walk barefoot in the grass and exchange your energies with the earth is what I want you to go do to better ground yourself. So anyway, I hope this podcast episode served you in tremendous ways to better understand those triggers and numbing and triggers and numbing is another part of my coaching program and I walk you through it when we go through the shame material. Because like I said, shame is never far behind with triggers and numbing. Because when you don't feel good about yourself, you tend to go for more numbing things just because you don't feel good about yourself. It doesn't even have to be a trigger, right? We're just like numbing. But that's probably happening because again, the negative self talk. What's wrong with me? Why am I like this? Of course I can't handle this and I'm doing everything wrong and I'm never going to be good enough. All of that is shame. So I pair triggers and numbing up when I coach through the shame material in my coaching program, which is in module four. Super wonderful stuff. So like I said my Friends, this week, November 15th through the 19th, is early enrollment for mind body alignment, all 12 spots officially filled about an hour ago, which is so exciting. I'm super pumped for those women that are going to get the additional one on one call with me to use at any point in the course. But remember, there's still tremendous value here. Even if you didn't win the first like get into the first 12 spots. If you're just now finding out about the program, for example, it is 20% off. You still get all the material to keep for life and any updates that I make to Mind Body Alignment will automatically be uploaded to your account so you have access to that. And there's a tremendous value within the coaching portion of this program so you're not on your own. I do multiple live videos a week to connect with you and help you. And every week I select one random student to receive a one on one call with me to use again when they'd like to or in that week's material. And I do that because I want to connect with you, I want to help you through this. And I just make sure that it's a different woman each week so that nobody like accidentally gets like two or three calls. Like I want it to be fair. But yeah, all of this starts on January 3rd. The 20 discount expires on November 19th at 11:59pm so please grab your spot. If you're on the fence about coaching, grab your spot while it's 20% off. Don't wait for December when it goes back to the normal pricing. Like I'm trying to help you, my friend, but that's all I got for you today in terms of triggers and numbing. And if you are listening to this early Wednesday morning, come join me on Instagram. Essaromero underscore. And today I'm gonna be live. I'm not sure exactly what time, but if you check out my Instagram story, I'll have an update there. And we're gonna make pretzels together. If you've ever seen the Joanna Gaines pretzel recipe, it's our favorite in my house. I love to cook. I feel like the more time I spend in my kitchen, that's how I know I'm, like, really thriving in my mental health is when I'm cooking a lot or baking a lot. But I'm gonna make pretzels with you guys on the Live. And again, we're gonna be talking about triggers, numbing, and mindset, so I can answer those mindset questions for you guys while I'm on Live because that's been an incredible way to connect with you guys, and I'm excited to keep doing that forever. So I love you, my friend. I think you're doing a great job. Please be kind to yourself because remember, if you are your own best friend, then you can become anyone that you want to be. And I can't wait to see who. Thank you so much for being here for this week's episode. If this episode serves you, please feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it. I love spreading the message of positivity and healing and how they work together. My goal is to continue serving you, and I can't wait to form more meaningful relationships together here on the podcast and elsewhere, such as Instagram and my email list. We'll talk more soon.