Bang, bang, you shot me down, bang, bang I hit the ground …
Words can TRIGGER devastating bullets straight to the heart if we have no emotionally protective boundaries in place.
Most of us spend the second half of our lives getting over the first. We have all got emotional wounding in varying degrees. As with any wounding, if we ignore it, it will fester and become infected. If we consistently self-neglect our wounds can become fatal.
The most effective protective boundaries are internal, not external. No amount of financial, intellectual or physical success is able to divert bullets to the heart. When words or actions that leave us feeling shot down and devastated hit home, it is time to do some emotional homework.
TRIGGERS indicate where our emotional wounds are that need attention that is long overdue. For some of us words will TRIGGER deep pain, these bullet-like words wedged deeply in the heart but invisible to the naked eye.
The emotional TRIGGERS I have had to heal from are bullet words like “stupid, liar, difficult, burden” … you get my drift.
A review of TRIGGER words, times and places that bring you to your emotional knees is time well spent.
Do you know yours?
Some of us are TRIGGERED into sadness, anger, remorse, jealousy or guilt whenever certain times of the year arrive. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, a birthdate, anniversary, Mother’s or Father’s Day or even a thunderstorm or rainbow can remind our heart of a time grief hit us hard.
If you are emotionally untouched by others words, events or actions ever, a review may be even more overdue. Are you relying on external distractions to remain disconnected and emotionally unavailable, thus unaffected?
Congratulations if you are emotionally available and your heart is fit, rarely affected by others, that is a great place to be. If so this passage may be helpful if you ever need to support another who feels TRIGGERED and shot down by bullet words. Without emotional healing many people are unable to relax and live life stuck in survival mode as the walking wounded.
Those of us not educated on how to get help when a word bullet hits us as a child grow into adults with unattended heart wounds.
We then begin to form a relationship with this bullet word we carry in our heart. It becomes a part of our inner world that causes pain yet we feel powerless on how to remove it. Many of us also have not only a few key words that TRIGGER us, but also actions. Perhaps the suggestion of violence, like someone slamming their hand on a table or on a wall close to us or another threatening abandonment may TRIGGER old heart wounds.
Regardless of what wounds we carry, the way to create protective internal boundaries seems like a contradiction in and of itself. We need to surrender. Yes, ask for help.
There are some physical wounds that we can fix with a band-aid at home, but critical physical wounding or trauma, requires professional care. The same principle applies to emotional wounding. If we have been given an adequate emotional first-aid education as children, we will be able to dodge any aimed bullets with emotional agility. But bullets that do hit home will cause emotional trauma and need to be removed by a skilled healer without delay.
Efficient and consistent emotional self-care is as essential to our wellbeing as physical self-care. If we have physical wounding on our back or legs when visiting a general practitioner unless we confess then undress they are unable to help us. Many of my clients have sought professional help from emotional healers (therapists, mystics, psychiatrists, psychologists, life coaches, etc.) but if they felt unsafe or unsure they were unable to emotionally confess and emotionally undress, thus their wounding remained unattended.
So when we find we are feeling emotionally TRIGGERED into a state of anger or sadness the person, place or thing TRIGGERING us is not where our focus needs to be. They have simply knocked our internal wound, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally, it matters not.
Avoiding them will only offer us short-term relief.
Our internal wound still remains infected, painful and in need of attention. Anesthetics like booze, drugs, pills, food, sex, spending, excessive exercising are short-term pain minimisation distractions that have a use by date, all the while our infection spreads.
TRIGGERS are our alarm and a gift, not a curse. They are designed to remind us that our home, our heart is in need of overdue compassion, connection and attention. Internal protective barriers are the gift of emotional healing. Raw heart wounds do heal when we surrender to the fact that we need help.
Emotional recovery gifts us with a new freedom from feeling held hostage to external TRIGGERS.
If we or someone we love has emotional TRIGGERS inflaming anger and sadness, let us remember to focus on healing instead of blame and shame.
Doing our emotional homework is an inconvenient truth us grown-ups have gotta embrace, not wag.
Lotsa love Cynthia xxx
© Copyright 2016 Cynthia J. Morton Emotional Fitness™
This Word Vitamin is an excerpt from my latest bookset “The Four Seasons of the Heart”. If you would like to order your own full set of Daily Word Vitamins one for each day of the year, in book form for yourself or as a gift just click on the SHOP tab and place your order.
