HELLO, hello everyone. I hope you’re doing so well. Spring is kicking off here in Austin and I am soaking up all of the beautiful 70 degree days before it turns obnoxiously hot. I am one of those people that prefers cooler temps and well, that’s pretty incongruent with life in Texas. Around May’ish it will start heating up to the 90’s and then June through the first part of October it’s basically like Hell’s front porch. I’m never really emotionally ready for the heat, but that’s ok. I’ve got a nearly 37 year track record for handling it even if I stomp and pout about it. 

I wanted to share some more listener love- This was a review from Audible (one of the many platforms you can find this podcast. Anonymous wrote “Perfect timing!

This podcast was found at the most perfect time of my life and I didn't know how much I needed this until I started listening. The topics hit home in more ways than one. And as a bonus, Ms Ginn speaks from personal experience and examples, and with verbiage and tone that makes it 100% human and personable. Extremely glad I found this and I have already shared with several other people. People who have also instantly commented on how thankful they are to have this podcast to listen to.”

Thank you for writing this and sharing the podcast with others. Taking the time to rate and review it is amazing but taking that next step and sharing it with people, that’s extraordinary! Thank you so much. Keep these reviews coming. I would love to read some more on the podcast. You can make the reviews anonymous, if that is more comfortable for you. Also, feel free to email me at any time: hello@ivfthiscoaching.com – if you have a question you would like answered, a topic you would like covered, or you just want to connect- I’m here!

Ok, so lets dive into today’s topic. 

Per usual, I have a lot of opinions about this but I am also acutely aware of the sensitivity of this topic. So, for that reason, I will not be spending time talking about specific things that are said or specific triggers. I do have an upcoming podcast that talks about how to navigate the comments that people make, I think that will come out in a few weeks but for now I want to maybe shed some light on triggers and do a little myth busting ‘cause ya’ll know that’s something I really enjoy. 

Ok, first things first, this episode is NOT about PTSD or complex PTSD and PTSD triggers associated with that. I’m not talking about triggering in the PTSD sense. I do want to take a second and remind people that PTSD is a diagnosis, a mental health diagnosis that is diagnosed after eight subsection diagnostic criterion are met, based on the current DSM classification and diagnostic criteria. That means that not everyone that experiences trauma develops PTSD. It’s not 1:1 like that. With PTSD, your brain doesn’t process the trauma the right way. It doesn’t file the memory of the event as being in the past. The result: You feel stressed and frightened even when you know you’re safe. The brain attaches details, like sights or smells, to that memory. These become triggers. They act like buttons that turn on your body’s alarm system. When one of them is pushed, your brain switches to danger mode. This may cause you to become frightened and your heart to start racing. The sights, sounds, and feelings of the trauma may come rushing back. This is called a flashback. So, if you have PTSD, there are certain things that can trigger your trauma response to activate. Now, people are also very confused about this because a lot of people assume and talk about triggers as though they are very predictable. But one of the hallmarks of trauma reactivation is that triggers can be unpredictable. So some might be predictable. I’m not saying they never are. But some are very unpredictable. That’s why PTSD can be so challenging for people. 

Today, I want to address some of the misinformation around triggers and the misuse of these terms, especially in the world of faux-empowerment and influencers. When I use the word “triggers” in this episode, it does NOT pertain to PTSD triggers and trauma activation. I want to make that absolutely clear on this. 

“Triggering” in this episode I want you to think of it in quotes. What I am referring to is the tendency that some of us have to use this word to describe any strong emotions that we feel when you experience something, hear something, see something, or even think something that creates a negative emotion for us. So conflating this with actual PTSD and post-traumatic triggers is not really helpful. That’s why I am trying to be super clear about this. 

Now, I’m not saying that if you have PTSD and experience triggers, this episode won’t be helpful to you. Even those who have PTSD will still experience strong, negative emotions not related to your PTSD because you’re, ya know, a human, and this episode totally applies to those. 

What I’m really talking about is the way we misuse and misappropriate these terms and apply it anytime we have a strong emotion and you want to get away from it. 

Sometimes we use it to meant that something has sort of been “activated”- sensitive points or touchy areas for us. Maybe it hits on a thought or feeling patterns that we have from previous experiences. 

The reason I am hammering this home is because it is so important to not invent too many categories for your thoughts and feelings because it mystified your own brain to you. Your brain likes to do this, your brain like to categorize things because that’s how your brain makes sense of things, right? It loves the yes-no, black, white, right, wrong, good bad. But when you boil it down, it’s just thoughts and feelings; that’s it. 

Something happens, you have a thought about it, then you have a feeling. You might not be aware of the thought. Totally fine. You might just notice that you’re experiencing a strong feeling. But the thought is always there and that’s all that’s happening. And that’s where we can get into trouble when we incorrectly use those words, and we don’t have PTSD and we’re describing intense thoughts and powerful feelings for us is that we co-opt the real meaning of that term and we turn our own thoughts and feelings that we can learn to change, into a syndrome that is beyond our control. 

It makes us this thing that is outside of ourselves- something that we treat with kid gloves and we think we need to build our lives around avoiding things when we have a strong emotion come up. 

If you’ve listened to my episode on Trauma (episode #5) I give you a list of things that I call compounding events. These are things that a lot of us might label as triggers, things like baby showers, well I won’t list them all. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I would strongly encourage you to do so. Infertility trauma is a real thing and it’s not talked about nearly enough. It’s not normalized nearly enough. But I was very intentional with my use of my term “compounding event” for this very reason. 

Ok, so we have a very strong emotional response to something, it is totally natural to want to blame the things and get away from it. Your brain thinks the threat is outside of you, so it tells you that you need to protect yourself from whatever’s outside of you. Your brain almost immediately goes into blame and avoid mode. Blame the things that’s outside of you and try your damndest to avoid it. 

Now this is super tricky because it can almost feel like self-care. You don’t have to look very hard to find memes about cutting out toxic people and situations from your life to better take care of yourself. But when you avoid something or someone just because you’re experiencing a strong emotion, I don’t really believe that is truly caring for yourself. It’s like when you use food, alcohol, social media, or anything else to numb yourself as a way of caring for yourself. 

It doesn’t work. It can help in certain ways, otherwise we wouldn’t keep doing it. But that’s not what true self-care looks like because it is, in essence, avoiding the problem or drowning out the thoughts rather than working on them. 

And the same is true when you avoid something that you think triggers you or you try to change it so you will feel differently because when that happens when you do that is you miss an amazing opportunity to learn. 

As I was preparing this episode I thought a lot about a couple of recent experiences I had, one in which I was “triggered” and one where I was the one “triggering”.

Several weeks ago, I was texting with a friend of mine. She is also and IVF warrior. She has gone through 2 rounds of IVF, experienced 4 transfers and has had a different outcome each time. 

We were talking about the possibility of my husband and I going through another IVF round. 

I wrote a response to a question that she had (kind of in the vein of, but you already have two kids” and then what had been a flurry of text messages stopped suddenly. This “triggered” a lot of anxiety for me. I knew it was a neutral circumstance, two people exchanging text messages, I was asked something, I responded, and I had yet to hear a response back from her. 

Guys, I am a coach. I know that her response or lack of response is neutral. I teach this to my clients everyday. Yet, my brain WENT TO TOWN on all of the potential non-verbal, non-text communication this gap in communication could mean. Maybe I offended her, I can be quite abrupt in my communication style, I can be very direct in my communication style. Then I went to judge myself for what I wrote to her. Re-thinking it, crafting a mental apology for what I expected to be what came next. Then I started to get frustrated at her for NOT responding. So I had judgment of myself and judgement of my friend. But really the ONLY thing that was happening was that I texted this person something, and she did not respond in the time I had subconsciously decided I should get one and my brain lost it’s shit. 

My brain was going crazy and having so much anxiety. I had such a strong urge to “fix” what had happened by sending a carefully crafted apology to this person. I was so sure of two things, I had been insensitive with what I had said and she was being petty with not responding. From that place, there were a couple of actions that I could take, either the carefully crafted apology or texting again to put her on the spot so that I wouldn’t feel ignored any longer. 

Hilariously, she texted me back later that evening saying that she got dragged into meetings and then had to pick up her daughter from daycare and that the first moment she had to sit down, she resumed the conversation. And then I shared with her my little freak out and she was like, “of course I would’ve responded” and “I’ve known you a long time so I didn’t think you were being insensitive” and “if you were so worried, why didn’t you just text me again?” 

And the reason I didn’t was because I was “triggered”. Was because I was having such an intense reaction to the situation, based on my thinking. 

I’ve gotten to a place where when I notice that I want to act urgently on something, I know there is work for me to do there. So, I didn’t just want to “fix” it by sending another text. And most of us think that by doing that it would have “fixed” that feeling for us, depending on how the course of the rest of the conversation went for us- but I don’t want my emotional state to be dependent on things like that. I want to intentionally decide and not be at the whim of someone else’s emotions or someone else’s actions. So, I didn’t text back, on purpose. I went for a walk, I did some paper thinking, I paid attention to my thoughts. I used that to work more deeply on the issues and obvious need for control that the situation brought up for me. 

It was terrible. I’m not gonna BS you. Sitting in that discomfort and uncertainty was terrible. I had stuff on my calendar that I needed to get done, and I did it, but I was uncomfortable most of that time. But I am so glad that I took that time because, in the end, while everything was completely fine, I was able to get to a place where I knew I would be fine either way. I was able to see how my desire to want to know the future and wanted to control what and when someone did something was causing a lot of distress and anxiety for me. And then once the air was totally cleared, I was able to step back and look at the insane temper tantrum my brain had during this time. I gained that much more awareness, which was amazing. If I had shot right back, I wouldv’e missed out on that. 

So, then the second example is when I was the one “triggering” someone else. I got an email from a listener, who also follows me on IG and she said that she really doesn’t like it when I talk about working with me on my podcast or when I include it in my IG posts. She said, “It feels sleazy and like you’re trying to make a buck off of those of us who are already suffering.” Which I think is so fascinating. I don’t take offense to it at all, I’m more curious than anything. Because what happens is that that individual loves my content, which is something else they told me in the email, but that when I make an offer to help they have a negative feeling about it. And they think that coming and telling me about their negative thought and feeling, that they will get to feel better. They thinking if they just get it out- like spewing emotion on to someone they will get to feel better. 

And this is so much of what people do, they think if they can get out of themselves and onto the other person, the person that they believe is causing them a problem, then they get to feel better. We have such a built-in biased towards thinking that taking action will be the path to peace. But all it is is trying to act your way out of a feeling. But when we try to do that, we miss out on such a powerful opportunity to question why we are feeling a certain way.

So for this person that doesn’t like me talking about my coaching program on the podcast or in IG, Why is this so upsetting? If I didn’t make offers on this or IG and I took money from advertisers, which I’ve gotten a few offers to do that, would they have a problem with that? Like IVF This brought to you by Blue Apron- not that they have appraoced me but I swear I hear Blue Apron advertised on podcasts so much. Anyway, if I took advertising, people probably wouldn’t even bat an eye. We all, intellectually, understand that nobody can create and put out free, educational or entertaining content without getting paid- I mean, under the conditions of our capitalistic system. I mean, I did not intend to take advertisement, at all because I would not recommend something to help people that I didn’t 100% believe in, and I don’t believe that anything but my coaching is something that I would ever 100% believe in. 

But it’s such an interesting question, right, “Why does it bother someone to hear me sell my coaching but it wouldn’t bother them to hear me sell something else” 

Just that one question can pop open that person thought processes around:

• Who people should help

• When people should help

• When is it ok to promote yourself and your business

• What are people allowed or entitled 

• And Why are they uncomfortable with me promoting my work

So many interesting thoughts there, all of which get cut off when you try to act from that place of discomfort instead of getting curious as to “why” you’re feeling triggered. 

This person that fastforwards whenever I talk about my coaching practice or make offers, is avoiding the circumstance because they don’t like the feeling they have when they encounter it- which is the opposite of taking responsibility for their thoughts. It’s literally the exact opposite of thought work. 

When I first started on my own journey of thought work, I knew the one thing I was committed to was moving towards emotions, instead of away from them. I’m totally not perfect at it, like at all. But I try to stay focused on what I could learn from this moment and this feeling. Whenever I feel an intsense swing of negative emotion, wether it was something my husband said, something my family or friends did or said, an event that I am dreading, someone on SM sharing an opinion that is different that mine, whatever it is, I always try to remind myself “This might be intense and possibly unpleasant, but whatever else, I am going to learn something about my mind from this experience.” So that’s what happens when I feel triggered, not everytime because I am human but what I try to stay mindful of is leaning in. Getting curious. That I don’t take action until I really understand what Is happening for me, as opposed to what I am presuming or assuming about someone else. 

And that is my hope for you all. When you feel triggered, Get curious. Emotions cannot hurt us. I know they are powerful and can be unpleasant, but they cannot hurt us. In fact, the more comfortable you are with feeling uncomfortable the less and less you become worried about what anyone else is doing or saying- you get to be in charge of that and not at anyones mercy. If you want some help with that, set up a free consult or a mini session. I will be the one person who won’t just validate your painful thougths. Instead, I help guide you so you can learn how to lean in safely and learn things about your life and yourself and how to change your life. 

Alright, that Is what I have for you today. Remember, I adore you and you’ve got this.