Listen Now

Episode Transcription

 welcome back to another episode of The Road to Life podcast with Meredith and Craig. We're on location today, special episode coming at you live on location next to a pond with some geese and ducks and all the cool stuff. Oh, hopefully you'll hear some of that. This week, something came up a bunch of times in a couple of different coaching calls and on our mastermind call this week, so we thought we would talk about it with everybody 'cause it's obviously.

It's on people's minds this week. And that is the concept of when you get triggered in a relationship. Triggered meaning, so fun when your partner or the person you're in a relationship with says something to you or does something that creates a really strong reaction.

Probably slightly disproportionately large reaction to what was actually said or done. And. This happens in every kind of relationship, and it happens regularly. We're two humans who spend time together. You are gonna sing and do stuff that is going to create a response from me emotionally. Yeah, of course.

Do tell more, so, no, but it's true. Like you, can't go through life living a life with someone and you know, especially someone that you spend so much time with, like live in the same household with. Mm-hmm. But even business partners, friends, relatives, like, it's just gonna happen. It's inevitable.

Yeah. Humans, they, are going to push your buttons. They can. Yeah. , And it's interesting because, we all have these buttons. We all have these, triggers. Mm-hmm. That. You know, if someone pushes them or rubs up against the trigger, pulls the trigger it sends, us into a, a reaction that's, yeah.

To your point, disproportionate to what the action that pulled that trigger Right. Would normally. Require because it, you're not responding to the thing. No, that was done. The thing that was said. You're responding to the way that thing makes you feel based on something else that happened to you before.

Yeah. So based on something you've experienced in your life, in your childhood, at some point before in your life, whatever was said and done has. Entered that box that you've created in your brain for that particular event that made you feel a certain way. Let's just tell a story. Let's tell the story about the trigger.

, So I'll, I'll start the story and then you tell. Okay. Okay. Okay. So we're going down this mountain in Arizona and we're on this hike. It's a beautiful day and I am quick on a mountain. He's very surefooted like a Billy goat typically. And I like to go a little bit fast. I like to challenge myself.

So we're on our way down the mountain at this point in time. And so sailing's always harder, right? Yeah, it is. It's harder on the knees, and you gotta be careful you're tired because your momentum can carry you forward, off the edge or into a boat. Like you just, you wanna be careful. Anyways, , I'm making my way down the mountain and I think we're smooth sailing.

We are not smooth sailing. , I think it's smooth sailing. I think. Crushing this mountain together? Nope. And just take it from here. Okay. Unbeknownst to him, because he's ahead of me, right? 'cause he's surefooted and not as tired as I am. So he's like heading down the mountain and I am getting really pissed 'cause I can't keep up.

And he has not noticed that I am not keeping up. So I literally, if he had turned around, would have smoke coming out of my ears because I'm so pissed that he hasn't noticed. That I'm not with him and he's continuing to hustle down the mountain and now it's not logical. I'm very well aware even in the moment of how illogical my anger and frustration are in this moment because I know that he is not gonna run down the mountain, jump in the truck, drive away and leave me on the side of a mountain in Arizona.

, I know that's not gonna be the outcome can confirm, but I also am really pissed. Like I just, am and. I tried in that moment to follow advice from someone that we learned. A guy named Brian Bogart, he always says, trace the feeling in your body, so don't just name the feeling like I could name that I was frustrated, angry, pissed off all the things.

I could name those things, but I was trying to identify the sensation of it in my body, which helps sort of ground you and like frees up your mind to figure out why exactly you're so pissed off. And so I was trying to do that. And then at the same time I noticed he is coming up upon a pretty large group of slow moving people.

Now, sometimes on a mountain, the trails are windy and narrow and it can be hard to pass someone from behind. Like they don't notice you. They're not paying attention, they're talking to themselves. So if he gets around these slow movers, I'm gonna be even further behind. So now I'm getting worried. Mind you, , I think you are right there on my hip.

I think you're right there. , I think she's, but he is not confirmed then, so I'm not. Well, like every now and then you glance back, she's ah, she's there. We're good, we're good, we're good. She's gonna, well, when I pass this group of people, mayor's also gonna pass this group of people. Right. Which I'm not, so I pick up the pace 'cause I have to catch him before he catches this group.

And that's when it happened. My foot catches on a rock and I go flying through the air and land. Mostly my shin and my face. Shin and face. Yeah. So broke the fall with your face, basically broke. Don't do that. I've done that a couple times in my life. Don't recommend it. So he hears a commotion. I guess what I hear is the rock yal.

Ow. Ha ha. So he turns around, comes back, helps me up. My leg is bleeding, my face is sore. , It's a bit of a scene. So he helps me up and we proceed the rest of the way down the mountain. Slowly , at my pace, which I appreciated. We did get around those people. We did manage to get down, but I'm still working on that tracing, that feeling thing.

And so I'm feeling like my heart is pounding, my stomach is tight. , I have this like. A lot of tension in places in my body, and that's what I noticed. And when I was in those feelings in my body, that's when it like ting popped into my head that I have a fear of abandonment. Did not know I had a fear of abandonment.

That was a new learning for me in that moment, and that I can make sense of that when I trace my life back over time. I can make sense of why I would have that feeling. It came as a surprise to me, but I could figure it out. I tried to deny it for a second at first, like, no, I don't, and it was like my body's like, yep, you do.

And that's why you were so illogically, irrationally pissed off at him. My reaction to him being, you know, quick down the mountain was disproportionate to the actual situation, like the actual situation was not call cause for me to be so pissed off at him. But I was, and I kept it all inside as I was processing all my feelings and my fear of abandonment and all the things.

And so then fast forward to the next day, we're out for a walk along the canal in Arizona and. I'm like, I gotta tell him sort of this whole soap opera that I went through in my head yesterday because , let's scale back for a second. Like, we're both experiencing this hike. Completely different. I know nothing about any of this that she's just explained.

I know nothing about the, smoke coming out of her ears. I know nothing about. The internal processing that she's doing and the feelings that she's feeling and all of the reminders of her past and the fear of abandonment. I know none of this. No. I think we had a great hike. We did. Whoops. With a, whoops.

With one big thing with one, whoops. That she fell and like that was unfortunate. But we got up and we moved down and we're no worse for wear. She got a little couple scrapes, but other than that, I think life is ticking along just fine. Yep. So I decide I gotta tell him this because it's kind of a big awareness that I've had and I think he needs to know how triggered I was yesterday on the hike, why I was triggered so that he can help support me through what's going on.

Now keep in mind, I'm not looking to tell him all this 'cause like I'm not. I'm proud of it. I'm not proud of the whole situation. I don't feel good about this fear of abandonment that I've uncovered. It's not something I want to shout from the rooftops and tell everyone on a podcast about evidently, but I decide I gotta tell him this.

So I'm on the walk, I'm scared, but I just bite the bullet, get super vulnerable, and tell him that I have this fear of abandonment and that it was triggered, discovered slash triggered yesterday on the walk because you were going so fast. Now, the whole moral of this story is to say that. I have the fear of abandonment.

I was the one triggered. My buttons were the ones that got pushed by him just doing his own thing going down the mountain. So I have a responsibility in this 200% marriage that we are living. My responsibility is to deal with my triggers, my reactions, my emotions, my buttons. They're my buttons. If I don't want them pushed, I have to get rid of them, and it's my responsibility as her spouse.

Now that she has told me that this is something that's going on with her when we're on a hike or anywhere in the future, that I am not trying to push those buttons, I am doing the best I can to avoid triggering those situations for her. Mm-hmm. And so she has the bigger responsibility of making sure that, you know, she's dealing with her stuff.

But now that I know that that's a thing for her. I don't want to go and, make sure that I'm triggering that I want to do the opposite. I wanna make sure that I'm putting us in situations where we're not triggering those emotions. So I'm not gonna speed down the mountain because I know that that's something that she doesn't love.

And to what end. I'll, I do a couple more double checks just to make sure that she actually is on my hip and that we're making our way down the hill. I think I've done a pretty good job of that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Since when do we do high fives? I dunno. Yeah, you have, , that experience has not replicated itself at all.

So like , the point is in a 200% relationship of any kind, we each have a hundred percent responsibility for whatever's going on. So I am a hundred percent responsible for my triggers, how I process them, how I work through them, how they come out of me, how I express them, how they're manifested. I am.

Solely responsible. And our friend Jim says, if you have buttons, if someone pushes your buttons, it's your responsibility to get rid of your buttons. So that's the responsibility I am living in right now. You are living in the responsibility of not pushing my buttons. While you're in the process of figuring out how to get rid of your buttons, I am not gonna push them.

Right. The other thing that's really important to remember is, is as we're going through our experience, our life, , we see it through our lens, and so it just seems that everyone would see it our way. Right. Why does that not happen? When you look back on the example that we just showed, we just spoke about MA's experience that she went through that day.

I had no idea about the same's true for you and your relationship as you're experiencing different things internally. Your spouse, your partner has no idea that you're going through that. Mm-hmm. So it's really important that if you want them to know about it, you have and support you and not push your buttons and be there to, you have to have that difficult conversation with them and let them know so that they can be there to support you through it.

So if you're having these triggers and not communicating them, but then getting mad at them for pushing the button , or, you know, pulling the trigger. Then let's look inside and say, what responsibility do I have in that situation? Mm-hmm. He's pushing my buttons. Yes, but does he even know it is a button?

Have I ever communicated it to them? Does she even know that that's something that from my past that has hurt me, and that every time she does that, it triggers me, gets me so angry that I blow up. Or so sad or so like, or, or whatever. The trigger doesn't have to be anger. It was for me. Yeah. But it can be a lot of different emotions, usually emotions.

We don't like to feel sadness, anger, those types of things. Totally. But it could be any of them. And so , if you expect them to help by not triggering those feelings, they need to know that those feelings exist. And you may not know exactly why yet. That's part of the work on processing. The feelings and processing the triggers and trying to work through them, , you'll work through and figure out what those things are.

And by the way, the way I did that with the, physical sensations is a great way to try to identify it. 'cause your subconscious knows why you're actually pissed off. It's not that he's going fast down the mountain, it's that I have a fear of abandonment. And your subconscious mind knows the difference, but we don't listen closely enough.

'cause , we stay on the surface by like, ah, I feel pissed off. That's a surface level thing. Letting my body figure out, like trying to understand where in my body I'm feeling the physical sensations that goes deeper so that you actually feel the feelings and your subconscious then will, will then let you know why you're actually feeling the feelings so that you can identify and work through the actual root cause of those triggers instead of just trying to stay on the surface and not be triggered, which is helpful.

Deeper work is, your responsibility and needs to go a level deeper than just, I feel pissed off, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel resentful. I feel frustrated. So those came up. We hit that conversation on at least two coaching calls and on our mastermind call this week. Yeah. And so , I think it's important to understand that in the moment when you feel triggered, it's easy to point the finger and be like, you made me feel like, yeah.

And that finger needs to go back towards you. Why do I feel this way? Have I communicated this to them? , Like it 200% marriage guys, 200% marriage. Mm-hmm. . That's how we identify and deal with our triggers, and I think it's a very helpful framework going forward so that.

These buttons, these triggers, , you're not doing the same, having the same fight, the same argument, the same situation on repeat, like rinse and repeat that in three weeks because the same thing bubbled up again. We, wanna get to the root of these things so they don't continue to present themselves in your relationship and you continue to have these same arguments or same situations over and over and over, because that's really frustrating.

So. What's one thing you can take away is that maybe you communicate the trigger to your partner, your teammate. Mm-hmm. So that they know and are aware and they can do the work to not push those buttons. Maybe it's to understand the trigger and where it's coming from. I was triggered this week and I want to know more about that tracing the feeling in your body like mayor did on the mountain.

Mm-hmm. What is one thing that you can take away from this episode? Maybe it's share this episode with a friend that you know is going through it, you know, dealing with something like this. But take that. What's one thing you can do from this episode? Because we love being able to talk and hang out and share, but we're in this to get better, to grow.

So what can we do right now? One thing that moves our life further along. Mm-hmm. So for that, that's it. We love you. We'll see you next week for episode 100. Woo. What?

Before we wrap up, we just want to remind you about something really special we've created. The Infinite Relationship Mastermind. It's like a VIP backstage pass for anyone looking to level up any and all of their relationships in their life. And we're not just talking about the relationship with your spouse.

Though it does include that one. We're also talking about the relationships with yourself, your friends, your business partners, your family, all the important people in your life. This mastermind is for anyone ready to take all of their relationships to a whole new level. Whether you're thriving and you want to thrive even more, or you're feeling a little stuck and need some extra love and support.

We host exclusive live courses. We create a safe, no judgment space where members can just open up and honestly just have a ton of fun connecting with other amazing people who are, building stronger, relationships. And to be honest, the transformations we've seen are incredible and it's exactly why we do what we do.

It fills our heart like nothing else. Now, we are super protective of this community because it is all about trust, love and support. So it's not for everybody, but if this does sound like it might tickle your fancy, then check out the link in the show notes and reach out to us if you have any questions, we'd love to chat and see if it's a fit for you.

And as always, thank you so much for being a part of our journey on The Road of life. And remember, you've got this, and we're here to help you every step of the way. So we'll see you next week. Bye for now.