Embracing Triggers
Triggers serve as emotional flashbacks, urging us to confront unresolved trauma rather than avoid it. By consciously re-experiencing these difficult moments, we can reverse dissociation and empower ourselves through choice, transforming painful memories into opportunities for growth and understanding. This process not only aids in healing but also enriches our daily lives with newfound awareness.In this clip
From this podcast
The Mark Groves Podcast
#430: The Narcissism Epidemic: Reclaiming Connection in a Disconnected World with Teal Swan
Related Questions
In episode #430: The Narcissism Epidemic: Reclaiming Connection in a Disconnected World with Teal Swan and the clip Embracing Triggers, could I say that the nightmares or recounting of traumatic experiences during REM sleep is actually the brain providing continuity to a process of healing the trauma by reprocessing the traumatic experience without the emotional component? If you have a memory but don't have a strong emotion associated with it, are you essentially free of the trauma? Is it like neuroplasticity but for trauma, where the brain is replaying a traumatic experience without the emotional load, creating a new association so that the memory exists without any emotional attachment?
In the episode #430: The Narcissism Epidemic: Reclaiming Connection in a Disconnected World with Teal Swan and the clip Embracing Triggers, Dr. David Anderson discusses a process to erase fear and traumas. He states that first you need to extinguish the fear or trauma by retelling the narrative. The whole point of that is to diminish the physiological response, right? If the goal is to diminish the physiological response, then if a person works to change their physiological response immediately after being triggered, would that over time also diminish the physiological response and therefore break the conditioning?
I have experienced dreams, or nightmares, in which I was processing traumatic experiences. Sometimes the dream closely resembled the real traumatic experience, and other times it was distorted. Occasionally, I would feel an emotional response being triggered, and other times there was none. However, what intrigues me is that I would regain consciousness in the middle of those dreams, sometimes feeling fear and other times feeling nothing, almost proud of myself for not experiencing disturbing emotions. But each time I became conscious inside the dream or just after, I would consciously dissociate or provide my brain with new input, like telling myself, "Hey, this is just a trauma, and it has no real meaning." Why does this happen? What is the purpose of my mind awakening my conscious mind during these experiences? Is it to open a door to new information or a new narrative in which the trauma is just a trauma without an emotion attached?