From Emotional Reaction to Life Affirming Response

How can I change an automatic, unconsciously conditioned emotional pattern?

This was one of the really wonderful questions posed by a participant in the most recent Emotional Alchemy Workshop. More specifically, they were curious about how to create enough space (a big enough pause) once a pattern had been recognized, to be able to respond differently. I love this question. So, let’s dive in and take a closer look as we tease apart the many threads that are typically entangled in this experience.

Yes, it is possible to recognize an emotional pattern, bring it into the light of consciousness and to respond rather than react. For this article, I will discuss six aspects of a process for bringing an automatic pattern into conscious awareness so it may be arrested and you may choose a more life affirming response.

1. Recognize being triggered

2. Nurture, nurture, nurture every step of the way

3. Establish present-centered awareness

4. Curiously witness and be with what arises

5. Cultivate the capacity to interrupt

6. Lay down a new functional pattern

#1 Recognize being triggered

Like that first domino that is tapped, something triggers you: a situation, a person, their gesture, words, body posture, tone of voice, behavior, attitude, emotion, belief, and that trigger sets off an emotional reaction within you. It is completely automatic and like dominos falling, you don’t seem to have any ability to stop it from happening or change it once it has begun. When you reflect, you can see that it happens without your will and you don’t like how it plays out or you wouldn’t be reading this.

I’m guessing the results may be quite painful. You get angry and yell at someone you are in intimate relationship with. Maybe you collapse, go silent and withdraw feeling criticized or shamed by a coworker or manager. Or you feel anxious, threatened, unsafe and unable to breathe, so you high tail it out of there as fast as you can. Everyone suffers—you suffer, the other person suffers and the fabric of your relationship is torn. This relationship tear can spiral into more fear and anxiety or other behavior that places even greater distance and separation between you.

While recognizing triggers is important, it is of little use to focus on the triggers themselves. Recognizing them so you can attempt to eliminate them would be an impossible and a never ending game that simply isn’t useful when your goal is to make an unconscious pattern conscious and choose a more life affirming response. In reflection, you may make connections between triggers and early childhood or other impactful experiences. Great, so there happens to be some connection, some meaning for you. To the degree that this helps you unravel and heal any underlying wounds, great! But, it is not essential to trace every trigger back to some specific, previous experience. So, the takeaway here is not to get too hung up on triggers. It is more important to recognize in the moment, “oh, I’ve been triggered.”

#2 Nurture, nurture, nurture

The very next thing after recognizing that you’ve been triggered, is to do what you can to activate your system for caring and compassion. Activating this part of your system effectively turns off the alarm, the fight, flight, freeze response that is triggered when you feel threatened. These two aspects of nervous system activation cannot run simultaneously. When one is “ON,” the other is “OFF”.

When you are giving and receiving nurturing care and compassion, you are calmed and soothed. The part of your nervous system that controls “rest and digest” functions is active and you have access to higher reasoning in the frontal lobes of the brain, your creativity and playfulness. These are some of the resources you can tap into when choosing a new life affirming response to your situation.

What does it look like, sound like to nurture yourself, to activate your system for caring and compassion? It can be as simple as silently saying to yourself, “It’s o.k. You’ve been triggered and I’ve got you, I’m here for you.” You might place a hand on your heart or rest it in your other hand. “Sweet angel, I know this is unpleasant, but you’re going to be alright.” “You are here. You deserve to be here. Stay with this.” “Feel your feet on the ground, my love.” “Now, exhale, breathe gently in, and gently out.”

You get the idea. You’ll want to continue this kind, compassionate, care for yourself throughout the remainder of the process. It will be crucial when you notice yourself slipping into the alarm/threat aspect of your nervous system at any point during this process.

#3 establish present-centered awareness

The nurturing can lead you into present-centered awareness. The statements “Feel your feet on the ground, my love.” “Now, exhale, breathe gently in, and gently out.” These can help to bring your awareness into your body and in the middle of an imaginary tripod. The three legs of the tripod are: Body (breath and body sensations), feelings and thoughts. Sit with your awareness in the center of this imaginary tripod and observe. Be present to and aware of breathing & body sensations, any feelings or thoughts that arise.

#4 Curiously witness and be with what arises

What sensations do you feel? Where is the breath moving your body? Can you direct your breath to an area of contraction and let go of any unnecessary tension with the exhale? When a feeling arises, can you name it or identify where it is in your body? Does it have a color (vibration), or a quality (spiked, hot, dense, cool, etc.). When thoughts arise, notice the quality and nature of the thoughts. Are they defensive, aggressive, worrisome, judgmental, snarky, sarcastic, express an attitude, argumentative, etc. Remember to nurture. Caring and compassionate self-talk can help prevent a slide into the less useful thoughts. Having said this, you’re not trying to stop, avoid or push away anything. This only engages a struggle. Notice and simply name it.

This can be a really difficult place to be. There you are watching yourself do the thing you don’t want to do, the thing you want to change. In the beginning, you may feel quite powerless to stop the pattern. You’re just in it, but you’re watching yourself play it through. This is actually a huge success despite the discomfort and how undesirable the experience may be.

When you are in this stage, acknowledge it. This is H-U-G-E, absolutely celebrate this! You’re likely getting close to being able to jump the tracks into a new pattern, but take your time to really “be” in this stage and notice as many details as you can while you’re in it. Also, be sure to reflect upon it afterward. Note as many aspects of your experience and the situation as you possibly can. This is crucial to perceiving the pattern in its fullness and as it manifests within you and in relationship to another person, the environment, etc.

Noting and becoming familiar with all of the phenomena that are happening simultaneously: body posture, gesture, facial expression, vocal tone, body sensations, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, your age when this behavior may have first appeared, the incident or situation in childhood this harkens back to, beliefs, stories, perspective, perception). This will usually require observing yourself in similar situations a number of times. Be very kind to yourself! I’ve been here and instead of giving myself nurturing and kindness I have judged and treate myself harshly with “You did it again.” This caused me to spiral into a dark place of shame and unworthiness—not useful and painful!

It will likely take several repetitions, so here’s the thing that’s really key: NURTURE yourself as soon as possible and often. Turn on your internal caring and self-compassion system. Speak kindly and with loving support for your process. “It’s O.K., this is the pattern you want to change, it just got triggered and you observed it. The witness observed the whole thing play out. This pattern is no longer operating solely in the unconscious. This is a huge step. You did a great job! Breathe, it’s alright, it isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of the end of this pattern. I know it didn’t feel very good to go through this pattern again, but you have just taken a big leap toward uprooting this pattern. You’ll get there, patience my dear, patience. Soon enough you will be able to replace this pattern with behavior that will give you the chance to have your needs met.”

#5 Cultivate the capacity to interrupt

There is a specific practice in yoga called a krama. A krama is a break or a pause in the movement or breathing. With regular practice of a carefully crafted yoga practice that utilizes krama, we can cultivate the capacity to interrupt our impulses. Practices utilizing krama can be experienced in the Emotional Alchemy workshops. Be sure to sign up for the Gold in The Lotus email to learn about Emotional Alchemy Workshops, classes and other related events.

#6 a new life affirming pattern

Having discovered what is happening, named our feelings, uncovered our unmet needs, provided nurturing and done some healing around this in step 4, and then cultivated the capacity to interrupt in step 5, we are ready to make a request of self or other to meet our needs.

Dial down Your nervous system

For a significant change in a matter of minutes, here are three things you can do to shift your nervous system out of the stress response (the sympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system) and into the rest, digest, growth and repair response (the parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system).

#1: Touch

Kickstart your strategy for dialing down your nervous system with a Massage. Touch is a balm for stress. Touch stimulates your vagus nerve through pressure detectors in the skin. Factors like speed, pressure, and vibration exert physiological and biochemical changes that enhance well-being, sharpen focus, and enhance pain resilience, among other profound effects. Soothing, relaxing touch switches on the ventral vagal or parasympathetic aspect of our nervous system which can counter the secretion of stress hormones like cortisol. You can give yourself a foot or scalp massage or even pet your dog or cat to soothe your nervous system.

#2: Controlled breathing

Breathing is one of the most rapid ways to shift your system to experience greater ease and calm. Breathing is also incredibly effective for making lasting changes in your physiology—the way your body-mind functions at the cellular level.

When you change the dynamics of the breath, you intervene in feedback loops that might otherwise intensify stress. During the inhalation phase of breathing, the heart rate accelerates. When you exhale, the vagus nerve stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system slowing heart rate.

Studies suggest that even brief changes in breathing dynamics can reduce the impacts of stress on the body, changing the way we respond to challenges.

A simple and powerful breathing exercise:

Preparation:
Sit comfortably with your back erect.
Inhale through your nose.
On exhale, make an aspirated “Haaaa” sound as if you were fogging up your sunglasses to clean them.
Repeat several times focusing on the sensations in your throat and the sound of the air moving through.
On your next exhale, close your lips half way through exhale. Repeat this several times until it feels comfortable.

Now, keep your lips closed throughout each phase of the breath cycle while continuing to gently make the aspirated sound in your throat on inhale and exhale. This is the Ujjayi breathing technique. Once this feels comfortable for you, you may begin the sequence below using this breath technique.

The Practice:
On one hand, use the tip of your thumb to slowly slide up the first finger from the base to the tip as you inhale. Pause the movement and the breath slightly at the end of inhale.

As you exhale, slide the tip of your thumb down the first finger to its base pausing the movement and the breath slightly at the end of exhale.

Continue in the same way on the remaining fingers of this hand while comfortably lengthening your exhale. This is the first pass.

On the second pass, you’ll gently lengthen your inhale by 1-2 seconds while you slide the thumb up each of the fingers from the littlest finger to your index finger. Always keep your breath very comfortable and lengthen the breath only as it is truly comfortable for you. This cannot be over emphasized!

On the third and fourth pass try to have your exhale be about twice as long as your inhale.

This is a minimum starting place to experience a shift in your nervous system. As you gain comfort and experience with the practice you may increase the practice duration with additional passes.

#3: Singing, humming, and chanting

The vagus nerve controls the muscles in the larynx (voice box) that allows you to produce sound. Mechanically, the very act of singing requires your exhale to become longer than your inhale. As a result, when you sing, hum, or chant, you create vibrations that automatically stimulate muscles in the throat that stimulate the vagus nerve.

These practices can help you change the state of your nervous system within minutes, empowering you to influence your state of being, create a felt sense of safety and grounding in many situations. When practiced consistently over a long time, your nervous system can function with greater ease and resilience.

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.