Learning how to manage emotional triggers may be one of the most important things we ever do here as humans.
To be triggered means that someone or something has pulled us out of our center.
It might be being expected to show up, even when the relationship feels one-sided.
It might be a backhanded comment at a family gathering.
It might be giving emotional support without receiving any in return.
It might be feeling misunderstood, dismissed, or treated as though our needs do not matter.
And the list goes on.
Suddenly, our chest tightens, our face gets hot, and an old story begins to play in our mind.
Empathy is our purpose here.
When we get triggered, the deeper issue is that we can’t see deep enough into the illusion of their suffering, and even our own.
So first we work on our own suffering.
Then we learn to tune into others, so we can pierce the veil of the illusion that comes up in the matrix as a trigger and see it for what it really is.
A wounded soul needing empathy.
What Are Emotional Triggers Really Showing Us?
Emotional triggers are not random.
They show us exactly where we have not yet seen deep enough.
The person who triggers you, if their actions are not warranted, would never be doing this from a fully healed state.
They have deep wounds and issues that keep them acting out this way.
The sharp remark or the drama that seems to follow them everywhere.
That is the wound speaking, not the soul.
And here is the part most of us miss.
It is when we don’t heal ourselves and remain triggered that we can’t get out of this stuck life.
The same kinds of people keep showing up.
The same feelings keep rising.
The trigger is the doorway, and empathy is the way through it.
When someone is deeply healed, they tend to live from a more expanded state of awareness.
From that place, they may be able to recognize old karmic patterns more quickly, release what no longer serves them, and return to a more neutral, peaceful energy.
Free Yourself: A Guided Meditation to Release Emotional Triggers
For the moments when a trigger has you in its grip, this meditation with theta binaural beats helps you soften and come back to center. Listen here.
Why Does Self Empathy Come First?
We heal ourselves first.
We feel deep empathy for ourselves in our past, our present and the situations that affect us.
We love ourselves unconditionally through that pain until we feel whole.
Until that child inside feels held and listened to.
Now, then and only then can we pierce the veil into another’s sadness or wound genuinely.
Only then can we see exactly through their triggering remarks and actions and have empathy for another soul.
The inner child is at the heart of this whole thing.
Carl Jung described the eternal child, the one still playing out an old wound in an adult body, and the integrated child, who brings courage and innocence into adult life.
Self empathy is how one becomes the other.
How Does Self Worth Make Empathy Possible?
The self respect we have for ourselves is congruent with the empathy teaching.
When we build self worth, we do not allow ourselves to disrespect our peace by causing too much drama or waves.
Instead, we look at the painful situation.
Hold It, Feel It, Name It, Let It Dissolve
We hold it.
We feel it in the vessel of the body.
Then we name it and allow it to dissolve back to the nothing.
The more we stabilize and sit with these painful things, the more we see they are not anything but projections and lessons.
We own it and move on.
The Subconscious Wants to Clear
The subconscious wants it.
It starts to clear out and will reveal to you your true essence in its beauty and its wonder and its safety and abundance, but you have to sit long enough to be the observer, the witness, of even the painful things.
If you are not ready, then perhaps a trusted therapist can help.
The subconscious is a key piece to this whole thing, which is ultimately the inner child growing up and evolving.
Journey of Wonder: Rediscovering Your Inner Child’s Magic
Step into a serene garden and meet your inner child with reassurance and unconditional love, so they feel safe, seen and cherished. Begin the meditation here.
How Do We Identify Emotional Triggers in the Body?
The body knows before the mind does.
A trigger often shows up first as heat in the face, a knot in the stomach or a tight throat.
That is the moment to pause and ask one simple question.
Am I safe right now?
Most of the time the answer is yes.
The body is responding to an old wound, not a present danger.
When the nervous system is stuck in fight or flight, there is no room yet to sit as the observer.
So we come back to safety first, through the breath and the body, and then we can witness what is rising.
If this feels hard to reach, these tools for nervous system regulation can help you find your way back to your safe haven.
How Do We Become More Empathetic, Step by Step?
Some of the best ways to cultivate empathy start with the easiest love we know.
- Begin with your pet or a child. Look at them and notice the warmth that rises in your heart. Send that feeling out through the heart.
- Identify the state. This helps you know what empathy and unconditional love actually feel like in your body.
- Turn it toward yourself, even for a short burst at first. Most people can’t sit with it for long in the beginning, and that is natural. As you can handle more, you can sit longer with empathy toward yourself.
- Offer empathy to an easier trigger. Try someone you don’t have deep emotional attachment to, like the person taking forever in the checkout line.
- Progress to deeper relationships. Then extend it out to the people it may feel more difficult to love.
The Empathy Path
A gentle practice to feel empathy in the body and carry it, step by step, from yourself out to others.
Step 1
Find Your Anchor
Look first at something that brings you easily into the feeling of empathy.
A dog, a cat, a baby or a picture of yourself as a baby. Anything that helps you get into that empathy feeling.
Choose what is easiest for you.
This is your anchor. You can come back to it any time you lose the feeling.
Step 2
Feel It in the Body
Look at your anchor and let the warmth rise.
Feel it really in the body.
Where does it live? Your heart, your chest, your belly, your face?
Rest there and let it grow.
Stay here as long as you need. There is no rush.
Step 3
Transfer It to Your Adult Self
Now hold that feeling long enough to transfer it to your adult self.
Even a short burst is enough at first. Most people can't sit with it for long in the beginning, and that is natural.
As you can handle more, you can sit longer.
If you lose the feeling, that is okay. Come back to your anchor, feel it in the body again, then return to yourself.
Step 4
Extend It to Nature
As you are ready, and this could be days or weeks, extend it to nature.
The beauty of nature. The empathy you feel for what the birds, the bees and the trees are going through.
Sense what you feel from nature, or what you hear.
It may just be a sense of deep peace with the cycle of life.
Days or weeks at each step is perfectly fine. Let it become natural before you move on.
Step 5
Someone Easier in Your Life
Now extend it to someone easier, someone you don't have deep emotional attachment to.
The market worker. The person taking forever in the checkout line.
Feel the warmth in your body, then offer it to them silently.
See the soul behind the moment.
Step 6
The Harder Ones
Then move into the harder ones.
The person who triggers you would never be doing this from a fully healed state. They have deep wounds that keep them acting out this way.
Hold your anchor feeling, and see through to the wounded soul.
Healthy boundaries are part of empathy. If a situation is unsafe, the first act of self love is protecting yourself.
To go deeper, meet your inner child in Journey of Wonder, or soften a fresh trigger with Free Yourself.
Come back to your anchor.
Picture it clearly. Let the warmth rise again in your heart.
When you feel it in your body, return to where you were.
The short bursts matter.
Research suggests that even a few minutes of loving kindness meditation increased feelings of social connection and positivity toward strangers, compared with a closely matched control task (Hutcherson, Seppala and Gross, 2008).
A little at a time is enough to begin.
Why Is Empathy Without Boundaries Self Destruction?
Empathy does not mean taking on everyone’s pain.
We must have healthy boundaries at times, especially if a pattern persists or a situation is unsafe.
If a situation is unsafe, the first act of self love is protecting yourself.
As we rise into empathy, we no longer connect with them in the same way.
We may not see them anymore.
Or if we do, we learn to be stable in our true nature.
We have self respect.
Or we create a safe boundary for ourselves and move into relationships that are reciprocal and endearing.
Research suggests why this matters.
In one study, training people only to resonate with others’ suffering increased their negative feelings, while compassion training that followed reversed that rise and increased positive feelings (Klimecki, Leiberg, Ricard and Singer, 2014).
Sharing someone’s pain without a stable center drains us and may even cause imbalances in our health.
Meet it with warmth from a healed place, since the observer does not get hurt.
What Happens When We Align With Our Soul Family?
Think of the events you once felt guilty about not attending, or the gatherings that felt awkward to let go of.
When we resonate with our soul family in this life, that guilt and awkwardness begin to soften.
When you are aligned to your true timeline, the one that suits you, you outgrow that triggering level energy and move into joy and fulfillment in your relations.
What once felt tense becomes more of a peaceful mutuality.
It won’t affect you in ways that hurt.
People sense honestly that you are living your life.
And they feel that too, as just someone living their life fulfilled.
You become an example.
Some of the best ways to do that are simply getting clear on what you want in your life.Â
Focus on your mission and purpose and let things unfold.
Your Highest Timeline: A Guided Meditation
For aligning with the timeline that truly suits your soul. Listen here.
What Might Sorrow Be Asking Us to Become Aware Of?
Every human emotion is warranted.
Sorrow, sadness and anger are part of the human experience, and they deserve to be felt.
But when you may have had enough of sorrow and sadness or anger, pause and ask.
What might it be asking you to become aware of?
Often the answer is your greatest gift.
Empathy and unconditional love for yourself, and then another.
The Unconditional Love of a Child or a Pet
Think of the unconditional love people feel toward a child or a pet.
This is due in part to the unconditional love these beings put off.
They do not judge you.
They are present.
We are remembering this in ourselves, slowly but surely, to raise the vibration on the planet.
Why Empathy May Be Humanity’s Most Precious Gift
This part may be controversial, but consider it with an open heart.
For decades, hypnotherapist Yvonne Smith, founder of the Close Encounter Resource Organization, has listened to people describe terrifying encounters with non-human beings (Smith and Lough, Chosen).
Some of these accounts describe beings harvesting sperm or eggs to create hybrids.
And for what?
In these accounts, the beings ask people to look at hybrid babies in containers and to feel love for their child, so it will grow and evolve.
Why would they do this?
The message within these stories is that we humans have the gift they don’t.
We have deep emotions and empathy built in, and that is wanted by these beings.
At least that is my take.
Whatever you make of these accounts, the message points somewhere true.
Our soul is precious.
We have something that is very magical.
So don’t waste it.
Rise up and cultivate your greatest asset.
Who Do We Become When Empathy Is the New Set Point?
Once we have held the pain, named it and let it dissolve, we ask a new question.
What do I want?
What does someone with self worth, self respect and empathy feel like, and act from?
If that is your new set point, things change in you and in your reality.
The inner child grows up and evolves.
The old triggers lose their grip.
This is the way to empathic living, to rise above the drama and the sorrow.
It is one of the highest paths to take, and it takes something to get there.
But every short burst of empathy and every pause before reacting brings you closer.
And that is how to manage emotional triggers: by seeing through them to the wounded soul, and meeting it with empathy.
A Final Note
Cultivating empathy may come very easily to some and not so easy to others.
If we have rage and anger built up inside it will be very difficult to cultivate empathy right away.
I recommend learning how to safely release anger and rage.
I teach this in my course Emotional Freedom.
But just know there are so many ways you can utilize your body to let go of rage and anger safely.
I invite you to consider exploring that first. Take care, dear Soul.
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References
- Hutcherson, C. A., Seppala, E. M., and Gross, J. J. (2008). Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion, 8(5), 720-724.
- Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., and Singer, T. (2014). Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(6), 873-879.
- Smith, Y., and Lough, J. (2023). Chosen: From the Alien Hybrid Program to the Fate of the Planet. 3rd ed. Ledge Media.
Disclaimer: The information in this article is shared for educational and inspirational purposes only and does not replace the guidance of a licensed mental health professional. If old wounds feel too heavy to sit with alone, please reach out to a trusted therapist for support.
