How to Break the Cycle of Reactions and Feelings – A Simple Way to Help Ourselves

Reactions and feelings about seemingly innocuous information can sometimes last for days.  A simple way to help ourselves is by becoming aware of our reactions and accompanying feelings.  This creates space for us to choose new responses when triggered. 

Recently someone’s behavior unleashed a reaction that seemed to spill over into my whole week.  

I was fully aware that my reaction stemmed in large part from my childhood trauma of abandonment. 

And although I can easily share this, it doesn’t mean my reactions to triggers don’t happen anymore or that their duration is lessened.  If anything, the greater awareness I’ve brought to my reactivity and accompanying feelings, the more I notice it occurring just about everywhere – with various intensities and durations.

Given our unique histories, it’s confusing to know what’s a “normal” reaction and what’s an “over”-reaction.  That’s okay.  Most things aren’t necessarily all black or all white.  Surprise!  You’re human and all humans react in a variety of ways.  We don’t have to have our reactions be “perfect,” so let’s not grade our performance on them. But what to do about all those accompanying feelings and how they affect us?

Feelings from being triggered can last multiple days and spill onto our every-day experiences.  For me, they provide a negative lens on how I view everything along with feelings of irritability and frustration.  This can play out in a myriad of ways but one of my favorites is to pick little fights with people and see problems in everyday situations.  

Although it may take days for our feelings to settle, like a scab that wants to be picked at, we can pay attention to the dynamic at work in us and refrain from engaging in those behaviors that only keep the wound open longer.

We’ve done a lot of hard work to understand and regulate our reactions when triggered.  We feel entitled to no longer have this “problem.”  (Didn’t we already deal with this stuff the last time we were triggered?)  We tell ourselves, it should already be fully managed, folded and neatly stored away.  Yet frustratingly, we may still feel our reactivity awaken with a jolt.  We’re reminded that old wounds are alive and well – and, alas, that there is still more work to be done. 

Awareness to what’s happening inside us is a huge step in working through our reactions to old wounds.  Now we aren’t quite as caught up in them. 

With awareness we’ve created a little space to reflect while triggered.  Whereas before we may have been on autopilot, now we practice making different responses, or none at all. 

Although feelings may still linger for days, we see how our feelings color our experiences, we’re starting to choose not to indulge them.

We are learning to help ourselves in these situations that feel out of our control.   In short, we are modifying (or even breaking) our cycle.  It’s not a clean or easy process but we are on the path to becoming more healed than we were before.