top of page
Writer's pictureLeslie Quigless

Adventures in Being Triggered Post #6: I know what I need to do. And I can't do it. (Or, what to do when you are emotionally triggered.)

As I type, I know what I need to do.


I need to reach out to groups for whom IM would be a great fit.


I need to put in the final and last edits  of my novel audiobook.


I need to do my pleasure practices.


As I type, I can feel in my fingers how much I want to do these things. I’m excited to do them, even. For months—for months and months, even—I’ve been great about doing all these things.


Now it’s not happening.


The reason might be what author Steven Pressfield terms “Resistance”—an impersonal force one must continually fight that stops you from growing. Religiously, it might be called The Enemy. Hell, maybe I’m just being lazy.


I'm definitely emotionally triggered.


This I know for sure, because the urge in my fingers is to DO something. To push. To push through.


This is where trusting the body gets tricky.


Will I push now, when my body doesn’t want to do what I want her to do, when she won’t do what I know is good for me?


I’m gonna take my daily risk vitamin and say…no. No, I will not push.


As a matter of fact, I will approve her. Actively. Deeply. Today’s vitamin is not small.


I bow low to my  “need to’s,” my Resistance, even The Enemy, even my knowing what is good for me. I am plumping pillows for my “not great-ness” and laziness.


Pushing is a highly effective way of getting things done, yes.


And I am risking that deeply, profoundly smiled upon nonpushing is even better.


I know in my bones that this is true. It's what I teach the meditators with whom I practice.


I tell them, "It's the worthiest risk you can take."


I tell them, "See what happens."


Still, in this moment, in this heat of my own triggering: I wonder if I am wrong. I wonder if I actually am epically self-sabotaging. I must do something. That is the urgent, life-or-death feeling in my fingers.


I take a deep, tremulous breath. And I risk.


To the urgent feeling in my fingers, which flimsily covers marrow-level fright that I’ll never publish my book or succeed greatly with IM, I say:


"You. Are. Marked. Approved! And I am holding you so sweetly, my love."


It hears me, and it softens. Which softens--and emboldens--me. I go on:


"I will take your hand—and since we’re doubling down, let’s grab hands, too, with all that I bowed to and pillow’d, and come thru, possible epic self-sabotage, you’ll not be left out, darling—and all together, all holding hands, all of you very very loved w no hope (read: no agenda) of you going away: let’s see what happens."

Comments


bottom of page