Dear Katrine,

Exactly, I would feel so guilty if I didn’t critisize myself then I wouldn’t move forward.

OK, so now that you realize that criticizing yourself won’t really help, maybe you can stop yourself when you notice it. Just notice it and tell yourself something like: “This is my inner critic, I am not listening to him. He thinks he is helpful but he is not, he only makes me feel worse. My inner critic doesn’t help me change. Loving and accepting myself does.”

I am learning to identify triggers. If I am reacting to something in the past or present. Trying to stop myself from self sabotaging, putting up walls, isolating myself.

Also trying to learn healthy coping mechanisms and self soothing so I don’t end up reacting instead of responding. It’s hard work and sometimes you just new to go out and not focus about healing but also living.

It is hard work because you want to be mindful of yourself and not just react from your wounds. I think the most important is to remain mindful as much as possible, i.e. to observe yourself as you go about your day. If you notice you react to something strongly, you can make a mental note of it that it’s your trigger. You can then later explore it (or share it here on the forum): what is it that you reacted to so strongly, what feelings came up, and what is the negative core belief behind it.

I know it’s hard to be mindful all the time, and specially to remain relatively calm (or rather, not too reactive) when we are triggered. Because that’s when our thinking brain shuts down….

I’ve recently been watching Dr. Nicole Lepera’s youtube videos, and she has a really great video on the topic of triggers. The title is “Here’s what to do when you’re triggered“.

She gives 3 key steps: (1) Breathe deeply, (2) Observe yourself as you are getting upset/”freaking out”, (3) Don’t judge yourself for the strong emotions you’re feeling, i.e. practice self-acceptance.

If you do that, a part of your thinking brain (the observer) will remain active, and it will help you not to be completely overwhelmed by the strong emotions you’re experiencing. I don’t know if you’ve tried this technique already?

It’s hard work and sometimes you just new to go out and not focus about healing but also living.

Right… Well, living involves triggers, and triggers cause us pain because they take us back into our childhood wounds. So if you just “live”, you’ll experience a lot of pain, until you heal that pain. But if you are mindful of yourself (i.e. observing yourself and noticing your triggers, e.g. as shown in Nicole Lepera’s video), you’ll experience less pain. So I think that being mindful while living/going about our day is actually well worth it…