How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think

I was watching Eckhart Tolle respond to a question from a 46-year old who had cut contact from his mother three years before because of the relentless criticism she had directed at him over the years. But he had found he was still exhausted with pain, fear and hatred about the whole dynamic.

Eckhart’s response pointed to the mother’s criticism as her conditioned mind playing the same old record over and over, perhaps played by her own mother before her and so on, when there is actually no meaning or significance in it; it’s just the noise of her mind. He felt it makes no difference unless you listen to your own mind telling you it’s dreadfully important that your own mother should understand you.

It’s a rather entertaining video as Eckhart goes on to relate his experience of his own mother, who made it very clear she was unhappy with the choices he’d made in his life. At one point, he was already 45-years old, she said “Oh you could have done so much, you had so many chances, and with your intelligence you could have had done so much, but you threw it away. Oh well let’s not talk about it”.

Of course, as humans we are relationally wired and need validation (which is the recognition and acceptance that our thoughts and feelings are real to us regardless of logic or whether it makes sense to anyone else). But there is a difference between caring what another person thinks and letting our whole self concept ride on it.

As Teal Swan explains “when we are children, validation from our parents helps us feel and express our emotions, develop a secure sense of self, gain confidence, feel more connected to our parents and have better relationships in adulthood. But parents who are concerned with approval and disapproval, right and wrong, punishment and reward, are not concerned with validation. Our parents (in their lack of self awareness) really did a lot of damage and now it is up to us to validate ourselves.”

In my own example this week, about a school camp dilemma, I had two things going on that related to this. One was around whether to seek another opinion about my dilemma, the other was about getting highly triggered by a response when I did.

With my eldest child going off to her first camp I had a few concerns. The biggest concern, I decided, was around her difficult relationship with food. This goes right back to weaning and was reinforced by regular stand off’s at preschool around being made to eat certain foods before being allowed what else was on offer.

I remember arriving to pick her up from kindergarten one afternoon and she was still sitting at the lunch table not having eaten anything; she wasn’t allowed any corn bread until she had eaten her soup.

I wondered if the school camp leader would take a similar approach and had visions of her hardly eating a thing, not getting enough sleep or downtime and, as a result, completely zoning out and getting into strife. Actually I’m underplaying this, I had visions of my daughter regressing a few years, traumatized by the experience and refusing to take parts any future events.

Saying that I also realised this is precisely the kind of experience that could build her resilience. So, my dilemma (knowing that the school have, at times, been fairly unresponsive to parent questions or feedback) was whether to broach this topic beforehand or just pack a three-day supply of sandwiches.

I then wondered about floating my thoughts past a couple of trusted friends, my instinct was not to bother but my mind got the better of me. I started to wonder if I was just being an over protective mum, in short, I started to doubt myself.

This falls beautifully under the umbrella of one of those self-limiting thought patterns I talked about in You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. The particular thought pattern I’m referring to is “I’m crazy”.

Being a child of the aforementioned approval/disapproval, right/wrong and punishment/reward upbringing, there are many times I don’t trust my own knowing and can be chronically indecisive as a result. There is an ongoing tussle between heart and mind that often sends me into a spin.

I love Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas’s whole definition of these self limiting thought patterns. It outlines typical behaviours and how these affect other people (for example, others might be frustrated with me because I can’t make up my own mind, or dismiss my knowing and tell me what I’m perceiving is not real).

It also suggests what my beliefs about others/life might be, skills to cultivate to move beyond that false identity, gifts, deeper truth statements and my true identity. The true identity of someone with a self-limiting “I’m crazy” thought pattern is “I can trust my knowing. I value my capacity for seeing things differently, recognising my perspectives are to the well being of all”.

So having ignored my own knowing I started up a text conversation with my friends. Now, given the amount of inner work I’ve done, I’d say this underlying “I am crazy” was more of a “am I crazy?” beacon emitting to the energy around me looking for its match. As a result, while the main response was supportive, my little doubts invited a reflective wobble.

Now here is the interesting part. Inner me knows that I know, so there was a part of me that was angry at myself for having gone down this road of explaining/defending my thoughts on this issue, which subconsciously triggered a deep and powerful tap root to childhood.

One of my friends unknowingly stepped on the landmine. I’m sure she in no way intended to come across as sanctimonious, but it is how my receiving signals were set in response to the self-limiting transmission my subconscious was making. The feeling within my body in response to her talking about how she would handle it with her child was like being instantly engulfed by the rage of a tsunami.

I literally couldn’t hear any more, my first reaction was to switch off my phone so it could receive no more incoming messages. It was an intense sensation, and it felt dangerous, I felt dangerous, so I held fire and let it wash over. That in itself is a minor miracle, but a necessary step to changing the pattern, to not react and allow myself to fully feel what was happening.

As the rushing sound in my ears began to settle and the ability to reason returned (this was full blown fight or flight and I was ready to fight), I knew that this had little to do with the actual conversation at hand and I immediately jumped to “when did I first feel like this?”

Because I was so triggered into an old trauma state I actually couldn’t get an answer from within as my body had responded by doing what it had done many times before and dissociated from the part of me that felt that bad.

However, the next day I did embark on the healing process I describe in How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present. It took me back to the moment of birth, when I was immediately swept away by a doctor and – wrapped only in a hospital cloth – laid on the metal table top.

Birth itself felt bad enough, these prolonged periods of feeling like the life was being squeezed out of me and my head was going to explode, then that first moment of emerging and those horrid glaring ceiling lights and cold air, I missed my warm and comfy space where I felt held. But the shock to my system as I hit that table was something else.

The whole hospital process was designed for mother and baby to slot into, as though the devisors of it somehow knew what is best for us or did not care. I re-imagined orientating the whole process around what the mother and baby wanted and needed and giving little baby me lots of hugs and attention.

There were many more moments in my life I recalled like this. I found myself asking “why?” a lot: Why do I have to sleep on my own? Why do I have to drink from this disgusting bottle with its rubber teat? Why do I have to wear these scratchy woollen clothes? Why do you have to do my hair? Why do I have to have a bath? Why do I have to eat now? The list goes on, and that was not me even out of babyhood, someone else’s will being forced upon me as though they knew better than me what I needed.

That and numerous examples through life up until the present day, I thought about the kidney stone I had passed in pain in June and the lack of recognition of that pain from those around. The image that kept coming into my head was from a movie I’d seen of a mermaid in tank banging on its walls but no one could hear her.

And, in my regressed state, I am asking over and over “Why? What is the point of being here if I can’t even express myself? If I can’t be seen and held for who I am?”

This gives a glimpse of what kind of memories and experiences lie at the root of these moments of getting triggered. While there are other things that will help stop the way I react to how people think, to stop being triggered by what other people think this emotional healing was necessary.

The crux of all any kind of emotional healing work (I am aware of) deals in exactly this type of exercise; where I re-envisage the scene as one that would make me feel seen, loved and held. This changes the emotional signature of the memory.

As I talked about the “am I crazy?” beacon emitting energy around me looking for its match, this new emotional signature emits a different frequency, attracting kinder experiences.

The other suggestions Teal Swan has on this topic are also fantastic, but that one is the real key. I also liked her suggestions about taking accountability for increasing my self esteem by writing a list of things I approve of in myself and meeting my own needs by asking “what do I need right now?” when I’m feeling wounded by someone’s opinion.

The suggested skills to develop in Claire Zammit’s document are also really useful, I especially resonated with trusting my ability to discern right action based upon the inner guidance I’m receiving, and developing the ability to empower the decisions I make by mentally letting go of paths not taken.

“We learned when we were children that doing something wrong made us wrong. Doing something bad made us bad. So now, we have serious issues with rejection, disapproval and negative criticism because our self esteem was and still is essentially dependant on approval.” Teal Swan

The point is, I cannot just decide to stop taking things so personally, willpower just won’t cut it in this maze of deep emotions within the human psyche. If I care what others think, and try to not care, I’ll only end up feeling guilty or ashamed about feeling bad. Instead I have to work on the reason I care so much in the first place.

Can you imagine a world filled with people who recognise and are working on their self limiting patterns? This would be an evolved world, with grownups making grown up decisions rather than the ones that have been thwarted through life by our earliest experiences. If you want to stop being triggered by what others think, be prepared to get to know yourself in ways that seem uncomfortable and strange, but enjoy the unwinding, it’s a powerful process.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness, How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present, You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough,  and Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.