Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

Unlock Your Power: The Space Between Trigger & Response #shorts

17 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:05

In this short conversational segment, Speaker A outlines a framework for emotional healing centered on the ability to create a mental "space" between a trigger and the subsequent response. The speaker argues that most people lack this pause, leading them to react automatically and become stuck in old patterns. To cultivate this space, five core skills are presented: (1) feeling – recognizing emotions and bodily sensations; (2) shifting state – intentionally moving out of a current emotional state; (3) pacing – limiting how much emotional material is opened at once to stay within safety; (4) tracking – monitoring one’s activation level to anticipate overwhelm; and (5) choosing – deliberately selecting a new response. The discussion references Viktor Frankl’s quote that the stimulus creates a response, but power lies in the space one creates, allowing new programming for the nervous system. Josh Trent interjects to highlight the importance of choosing a different response, reinforcing the central message that pausing and choosing can rewire habitual reactions.

Chapters

My power is in the space that I can create. Most people don't have a space between their trigger and their response. They haven't learned how to sit with that sadness, and so they're not able to move through it, or I would say have it move through them, and they swallow it back in and they go back into the state where they were at before. And so those are the skills that a person needs to learn. I have 5 core skills that a person will need for the healing journey. One is, can I feel? Can I feel? Can I feel my feelings? Can I feel my body? Mm-hmm. Then, can I shift my state? Can I pace? Can I pace the healing journey? Meaning not open up more than what feels safe to open up, because if I do that, I'm back where I begin. It, it's a step back than being able to only say, this is as far as I'm going to go today. Know that there's more to do, but it's not for today, and be okay with that. Can I track? Can I track my own state? Can I notice, oh, I'm entering activation? Can I notice that? Can I notice when I'm approaching that line of overwhelm? Hopefully know then how to shift my state so I can pull myself back and stay out of overwhelm. Finally, choose.
Can I choose a different response?
Requires the pausing that we talked about. Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, has a fantastic quote on this where it says, the stimulus, right, is what creates then that response, but my power is in the space that I can create. Most people don't have a space between their trigger and their response. And so if I can create that space, now have the power to choose a different response than what I would have done before. And that will create new programming, new map for my nervous system to be able to say, well, we did this other response one time. What if we did that again instead of the one that we've done for most of our life?
I think at this point, anytime I ever talk about healing or addressing the human being, it can never come from just one thing anymore.