This is post 8 of the “Living Fully Alive” Blog Series. Reading the posts in the order they were posted is recommended for the best reading experience.
Triggers are events or things people do that drag unresolved pain from the past up out of my subconscious being. I may find myself in a situation where someone does something that would deserve maybe a level 2 emotional reaction, but I am having a level 10 emotion. When the magnitude of the emotion does not fit the size of the event, it is highly probable that it is linked to a past pain, or a pain I am not allowing expression of in another area of my life.
We have already looked at past pain with the hooks that get created when we don’t have tools to deal with the painful situation in a healthy way.
I can use the example from the pain growing up and not getting the attention and care I needed because everyone else in the family appeared to be needing it more. The lie I built on that painful memory was that I don’t matter, that it doesn’t matter what I need. This pain got triggered when I was forced to attend this wedding reception of people I had no desire to meet. The feelings I experienced at the reception reminded my subconscious of the past pain and hooked all that pain, dragged it up into the present resulting in a strong emotional experience that others would have just shrugged off.
Triggers can also point to deferred pain. Deferred pain is when I am not aware that I am experiencing pain in one situation, maybe because I’m telling myself a perfect story, and yet that pain is there, looking for a way to come out. Some small situation in a different area of my life may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to speak, and a huge emotion comes out where it makes no sense, because it should be directed at this other place in my life where I’m subconsciously carrying pain but am not aware of it.
Abi gave an example from her chiropractor. She went to see him for back pain. He did something with her hamstrings, and she thought ‘that’s not where the problem is’. But after he was done her back pain was gone. This example is very helpful to me. Deferred pain examples appear to me to be one of the trickiest to catch. It seems like it takes some detective work to figure that one out. It is always important to enter into these self-examinations with God and not alone. I believe he will show me what is going on, but it may take me a while to figure out what he is showing me.
I tried to find an example of deferred pain from my past experience. I am not altogether sure if this is a good example, but unless I get revelation of a better one, I’ll just do my best by sharing what I came up with.
I used to be a teacher in an brick and mortar school before I became a home-school teacher. I taught at two different schools. I liked the principals at both schools very much, but as issues with students, and more importantly, with their parents, came up, I found myself not backed up the way I would have expected to be backed up by my principal, given the code of conduct of the school and the standards that were advertised. It often felt that when I ran out of what I could do from my position as the teacher, and I passed the issue on to the principal, little was done to find a wholesome solution. In both schools, when I began getting attacked by parents for requiring the upholding of standards, I had very strong feelings. It impacted my life after hours tremendously, causing incredible emotional stress and my quality of life was greatly impacted. Each year there would be one or two of these conflicts, which isn’t bad at all out of a whole classroom full of kids. But it was so miserable for me that when I stopped working to raise my own babies, I knew with certainty that I would never want to work in a classroom ever again. It was just too painful. How could one or two instances out of so many good and wonderful relationships with delightful students, cause this much emotion? I wonder now, if the feelings I felt toward the parents who attacked me, were bigger than they warranted, because I was neither aware nor giving voice to my feelings about the principals letting me down.
The main difference with deferred pain is that it involves current pain, but it usually surfaces in a completely unrelated situation. In my situation it was somewhat related, which is why I am not sure if this example qualifies.
What about you? Can you think of an example in your life where you experienced deferred pain?
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