Dear SantaFe, Our triggers are always lurking, and once we react and the emotions get involved, we then know a trigger has been triggered, so don’t beat yourself up over these reactions, as they will always be there. It is just a matter of being aware that you have been triggered, and the responding in a calm manner, or if you can’t do that, just walk away. The most important thing to NOT do, is get angry with yourself, which most of us seem to do when the dust has settled and we start over thinking. Again, all perfectly normal. From what I have read, you are certainly aware of why you feel like you feel, and you are keeping calm under the pressure, but you are blaming yourself for not doing better……..and who says you haven’t done better?….YOU, which means you are being too hard on yourself. It takes a huge amount of strength to keep quiet when triggered, so well done you.  I find when this happens to me, I too still react just like you have, but when I’m calm and settle down the mind from over thinking I can see that it’s just another trigger being triggered by someone who isn’t aware of THEIR learned behaviours. Because that is all it is in most cases…..learned behaviours from their past. You are the one trying to break the cycle, so you are the strongest one and well on your way to a new life. WE all get annoyed when we think we have slipped backwards, it’s just normal. The most important thing to remember is that you are AWARE of what has happened, so you are able to then turn it around, and get back to your happy place and move on. Many in life will never understand learned behaviour, so they continue on in life doing what they were taught, and in some cases, no amount of talking and explaining will change their programming, which means we eventually need to walk our own path and let them be. I had to do this painful thins 12 years ago. I had to walk away from my toxic family and their programmed beliefs. I use to try to contact them to see if things were changing, but as I was the only one that changed, I had to eventually walk for good to heal and get peace. I hope  something I have said makes sense and is of help. Just keep on being you, being aware and healing. x

I’m not a fan of affirmations, as often they just create unrealistic pressure within our minds.

It’s like people saying always be positive……well, that isn’t normal, as by doing that, we don’t deal with our emotions and work through them.

Lowering our expectations is a good place to start to retrain the mind to live in reality.

By this I mean, train the mind to be prepared for anything to happen, be it good, or not so good, because if we always expect the best to happen every time we do something, then when, and if things don’t turn out the way we thought, our emotions take hold in a negative way, because we didn’t prepare in the first place to accept reality.

Learn to accept what will be, will be, and stop being so hard on ourselves by trying to always be perfect.