Day 84: How to Break Free from Emotional Triggers and Negative Thought Patterns

We’ve been discussing many lower frequency emotions, which we need to understand so we can free ourselves from their gravitational pull.

We also need to remember that the opposite of those emotions is always right there, waiting for us to turn our attention toward it.

The benefit of paying attention to our emotions is sovereignty.

Our ability to live a self-led life.

This morning something brought my thoughts back to the day I wrote about my dark night of the soul and how I couldn’t use all the knowledge and tools I used to help others for myself.

It was like they had been locked away, and the Universe was telling me to go deeper and find another way out.

I was thinking about how writing these emails/blog posts has helped me uncover even more of what was behind how I was feeling, even all these years later.

I would say one of the most important things I learned was that how I felt emotionally affected everything.

It affected how I felt physically, mentally, and even how deeply I felt that ache in my soul.

When my emotions were trending down the emotional scale, my mind didn’t function clearly either.

When something shifted and my emotions became more positive, it was like a break in the clouds.

It was a roller coaster that was completely controlled by my thoughts, beliefs, and habits.

They determined how I felt, and it was either a vicious cycle or a way out.

I needed to remember that well-being is our natural state.

We can step into that flow and let it carry us.

Or we can resist it and, consciously or unconsciously, cut ourselves off.

When you allow well-being, which includes every form of abundance, health, love, passion, money, and joy, you feel well.

It’s what you’re being.

Well-being.

When you resist or cut yourself off, often because of feeling unworthy of it, you feel the opposite.

That may show up physically, or it may show up in your thoughts as anger, fear, frustration, defeat, or hopelessness.

As you begin to understand this more intentionally, you start to see how much of this is actually within your control.

You can see it in how different people respond to the exact same situation.

That’s where you begin to recognize the difference between being in the flow of well-being or resisting it.

When I read something or have an interaction that triggers me, I can feel it in my body.

It’s like the temperature rises.

My heart rate increases.

It feels like my blood pressure is going up.

That feeling people describe as their blood boiling.

Then the internal conversation starts, where the other person or situation becomes wrong.

I do my best to stop it right there.

All of that happens in a split second.

And when you become more in tune with your emotional well-being, you know immediately when something is taking you off track.

It doesn’t feel good.

So I stop and ask myself:

What button is this pushing in me?

Is this really meant to be personal?

If not, what is this bringing up from my past that makes it feel personal?

That alone can be enough to stop it.

And then you start to see how strange some of these triggers really are, and how strong you can be in choosing not to drop into those lower emotional states.

You save yourself from losing five minutes of your day, or five hours, or even five years.

Because when this goes unchecked, it’s how someone shifts from being generally happy to feeling stuck, sad, or lost.

Something happens in your life.

You create a story around it that goes far beyond the facts.

Even when the facts are painful enough on their own.

That story gives the event meaning that you don’t question.

And the negative emotions take over.

To stop that spiral, you don’t have to challenge the facts.

Just the story you built around them.

When you look at your story, especially with someone you trust, you can begin to let go of the parts that no longer feel true or helpful.

That’s what I had to do during my dark night of the soul.

I could have kept digging a deeper hole for myself.

And at the time, it already felt like I was at the bottom.

But there was a point where I chose to find a way out from hope instead of begging for one from hopelessness.

Those are very different emotional places.

From there, I was able to look at my story and realize that so much of what I had been telling myself wasn’t actually true.

The trauma was real.

I was devastated.

But others had been through similar things and hadn’t been taken down in the same way.

So I had to ask myself why I had given it the meaning I did, and why I allowed it to take me so far from my well-being.

Once I began to understand that, through a kind and honest conversation with myself, I was able to move out of that phase of my life.

I crossed The Truth Threshold into a new beginning.

And so can you.

Today’s Gentle Practice

Take a moment today and notice when something triggers a reaction in you.

Pause before the story fully forms.

Gently ask yourself:

Is this about what’s happening right now, or something it’s reminding me of?

Just notice.

You don’t have to solve it.

Awareness alone can begin to shift the direction you’re heading.

If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you.

What’s one moment today where you noticed a shift in how you responded?

With you,
Lynn