Breathe, I tell myself, breath deep: the chair, the black-haired man, and the little girl running through the halls. I'm walking through the crowded Newark Airport, just having landed from a blissful vacation with my children. When I turn on my cellphone, and like a box of firecrackers lit simultaneously, I see a set of text messages. They come in rapid, and with each ping, I become more and more infuriated. I stop to read one and then the other. I want to stop reading, but like a feen, I can't put the phone down. Breath, I repeat over and over, trying to calm myself. I continue observing my surroundings, attempting to bring myself to the present. As I continue reading, I go from happiness to rage in a matter of seconds. I think to myself. I was fine a minute before receiving the text from the one person who knows how to get a rise out of me. There go years and years of therapy all out the window with just a few words on the white screen with a blue background.
I realize that I'm allowing these words to be so impactful. I'm giving them so much importance. I'm getting angrier and angrier. The "A" shoots at me like a dagger through my heart, and the "D" well is just a bomb exploding into my heart, and I lose all sense of reality. My hands are shaking, and my heart is beating furiously out of my body. The tightness in my chest flares into full-blown anxiety as I cannot control my senses.
I'm trying to bring myself back to the airport. The voice inside tells me I must calm myself down as I have children in tow, and we need to get to a resting place. I hear my son calling out that he is hungry, and I notice the look on my daughter's face of utter confusion as she stares at my facial expressions. I take a deep breath, and at that moment, I reason and recognize that I am the one giving these letters that form words so much importance. They are just part of the alphabet with zero power, I tell myself, and just as I convince my inner rage to calm and my breathing slow, I hear another series of pings, each one longer than the previous.
These new messages set me off into a spiraling tangent. I feel like I'm flaring out of control and want everything to end. My first reaction is to type faster and launch my own set of nasty words at the other end of the phone. I type each word intending to hit the bullseye on the other end breaking down the sole of the soleless individual receiving it. As I push send, my breathing stops. I have no satisfaction, and my thoughts rush in different directions. I feel hopeless and want to crawl into a ball and die. By now, I'm paralyzed and have stopped walking. I'm sickened by my behavior and angry that I've allowed this individual to get under my skin. I take a moment in silence and absorb the feelings. I must push through.
We have reached the lounge and are waiting for our connecting flight, which is now delayed. Great, I tell myself. I feel crazy and sick, and I'm stuck in a room with a bunch of strangers. I'm lashing out in anger at the wrong person. My daughter asks me a question, and I yell at her to leave me alone. "Give me some time to settle down," I say to her. I reflect, and I finally reach a compromise with myself and let the messages go in exchange for sanity. After a while, I recovered, apologized to my daughter, and I moved on, and eventually let go of the feelings and forgot why I was so mad.
Looking back, I question my sanity. I conclude my "triggers" buried deep within me surfaced and got the best of me. I lost all sense of reality. The sender of the message was my ex-husband. During our marriage, there was a lot of badgering, sarcasm, and non-friendly teasing. I silently absorbed it, avoiding arguments while burring my feelings and focusing on other tasks, such as being a mother, wife, daughter, business partner, friend, and any number of roles I could assign myself. Now divorced, we continue to communicate in the same manner, and I am not only angry about this particular conversation but all the ones before it. It's a tidal wave of arguments and unresolved situations that hits me all at once.
I thought that without his presence, I would be free from negative emotions. But I realized I only felt my feelings remained buried forever. My emotions came out from the grave in full force when the spark triggered my brain, and just like that, I was back in the moment of every argument observing every gesture of disrespect. The fact is that negative emotions always surface. They may take a year or ten years, but they come out eventually, secretly without warning and often overlooked.
The text I received was simply sarcastic rhetoric about the assumed vacation in which he did not participate. The bubbled messages were his way of lashing out for his loss, and my reaction was to immediately go back to the place I thought I had left behind. My spark flared into a raging fire, and boy, my emotions surfaced. They rushed out until I quickly realized I was fighting against myself. At one point, I could not even remember what I was angry about, but I was angry. Not only did my anger affect me, but it also affected everyone around me, spreading negative energy as if I was the zombie flower girl tossing poison petals down the aisle. I was hoping that my evil glare would set everyone on fire. Only nothing was resolved that day. I only felt worse, not better, from my behavior. Once I gave myself the time to settle down, I realized I was triggered and reacted.
I have many built-up emotions, each buried in its own bucket that often occupies too much space in my mind. When situations like this arise, I try and catch myself. Recognize what is happening and attempt to let go of the memory or emotion. It is hard, but once I do, I feel free. I let myself breathe and replace the anxiety and anger with positive emotions. With more and more space opening, I grow stronger and healthier.
So, if your triggers get the best of you, give yourself time to breathe and reflect. Breathing brings you back to reality. It's essential to recognize what you are going through and allow yourself the moments of craziness. More significant is acknowledging where the emotions are coming from and forgiving yourself for losing your composure. Reflect on your feelings and try to assign them a purpose. Dig deep into the emotions, how they make you feel, the smells, the memories. By acknowledging them, hopefully, you can become free of them. Burying emotions is a temporary fix. Our minds have the remarkable capability of gifting us the ability to forget and move on from bad situations. But certain words, smells, or sights can bring all the emotions back with a flood.
When your flood of emotions returns, try focusing on the feeling and from where they stem. Later analyze the feelings and find the patterns. You'll recognize that the same words or situations always set you off.
When you become aware of the keywords or actions that cause you pain, assign them an intention. Acknowledging and giving it the importance it deserves tends to allow you to shed and rid yourself of that trigger. Next time your "person" triggers you think about the why. Embrace the anger, the horrible flood of feelings, and let it pass through you. While in the rage and fight, your mind may play a picture of the root cause. Look for flashes that come in and out.
Take the time to remember the pictures and feelings you see so you can move on from them. Don't allow your emotions to take control of your life. Keep a journal. Be specific. Write as much down as you can. Smells, feelings, the emotions you experience, and the associated stress factors.
Do everything you can to promote your own healthy well-being—making room for a calmer, more pleasant journey.
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