Understanding Stress Triggers: Proven Techniques for Calm

Melanie Mishler: 00:01

Welcome to the Magnetic Creator podcast. I'm your host, Melanie Mishler, and each week we have intimate conversations about the things that matter most in life. My superpower is helping you remember who you truly are. A powerful, magical creator. I give you proven tools to help you get unstuck and manifest a life that sets your heart on fucking fire. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello, friend. Today we're going to dive into the topic that is

a game changer for dealing with stress. We're chatting about knowing your triggers. And this is all about understanding what pushes your buttons and figuring out how to respond when you're triggered. Now, this is important because as it turns out, the people that we love most are the ones that can most easily push our buttons. So for me, my daughter, my husband, and my mom are the three people closest to me and it seems they know exactly.

how to push my buttons and get a reaction out of me, which can be really, really frustrating. But here's the thing, if we know what triggers us and we practice our responses in advance, then we can transform our relationships and our lives. So let me give you a real life example. Last week, my adult daughter and I had a situation where we both got massively, massively triggered. It was not pretty and neither of us responded in a way we could have.

And so this got me thinking about the importance of rehearsing these situations in advance. We need to practice holding our boundaries and responding to these triggers in a calm and grounded fashion instead of just knee jerk reactions and just reacting in the moment. So for those of you who might not know, I'm an integrative somatic therapist. And yes, somatic sounds a bit woo woo, but it's not. It simply means relating to the whole person. And in somatic,

therapy, we focus on the body's response to stress. And let me tell you, life is full of stressors and assholes and stressful situations. This is a given. The goal isn't to eliminate these stressors, but to be able to respond to them in a way that doesn't derail us and leave us with feelings of shame, guilt, and regret. The goal is to respond to our stressors and to our triggers in a way that leaves us feeling empowered. Now, I'm not

Melanie Mishler: 02:27

saying we're always going to hit the mark, but having that guided principle, like that North Star of how we want to respond is crucial because it's about knowing how we want our interactions to be and striving for that, even if we fall short sometimes. And we will fall short sometimes. That's just life. But without this guiding principle, we're kind of just flailing around with no way to measure how we're doing and how our relationships are progressing. Right. Okay. So before we dive deeper, I want to share something funny with you.

because for those of you who know me, you know that my guilty pleasure is true crime podcast and shows. I love them. But when it comes to reading, I'm usually like into more serious stuff. I'm reading business stuff, marketing, self -improvement, and everything's kind of a little bit more serious. Now, that wasn't until about six months ago when I was chatting with my cousin and she told me about these steamy muddy books she was reading. And steamy is an understatement because each of these books has like,

two full pages of trigger warnings in front of the books. And we were laughing because some people would never read a book based on all these trigger warnings. My friend was like, how can you read this? There's so many warnings. But for her and I, we say the more trigger warnings, the better the buck. The reason I tell you this is because triggers are so personal. Just because something is stressful to one person doesn't mean it's going to be stressful to you. I also think about like driving, for instance.

When my husband drives, he gets so triggered by idiot drivers and he gets stressed and he's all reactive. I hate driving with him. But on the other hand, when I'm driving, I could care less. I just mind my own business. I go about my driving. I let people in front of me. I just kind of mind my own business listening to my audiobooks. Idiot drivers are not a stress or trigger at all for me. So the point here is,

Take some time to really think about and identify the things that are triggering you, the things that push your specific buttons. Another way to say it is to identify the things that like regularly irritate you or the things that regularly causes stress response and look for patterns and know that this is a natural reaction to stress. But just because the patterns are normal,

Melanie Mishler: 04:49

doesn't mean we have to live with them and be ruled by them, right? We can train ourselves to respond differently. Okay, and since you know I'm equal parts woo woo neuroscience and strategy, let's talk a little bit about the brain science behind triggers and how to shift this so that instead of having that knee jerk reaction the next time your kid or your partner pushes your buttons, you can respond in a more calm and conscientious way. So let's get into some brain science 101.

When we get triggered, what happens is our brain goes into a fight or flight mode. Now, remember, part of our brain hasn't evolved much since the caveman days. So this old fight or flight mode comes from the quote old brain or the reptilian brain. And this is the part that's responsible for our basic survival instinct. Think of it as like our ancient alarm system, right? It's very quick. It's reactive. It's emotional. And it's constantly, constantly all the time looking out for danger.

scanning for danger and trying to keep us alive. So if you imagine you're a caveman strolling through the forest and you see a tiger, your old brain immediately kicks into high gear. It doesn't waste time thinking like, hmm, like should I run? Should I fight? Or like maybe I can like reason with this tiger. Maybe we can get along. No, it doesn't do that shit. It sends immediate SOS to your body. Your adrenaline surges, your heart races, your muscles tense.

This rapid response is what keeps you alive. And so when this old brain is activated, it can hijack your rational thinking. This is why we might say or do things in the heat of the moment when we're under stress that we regret later. Our old brain isn't thinking about consequences or long -term effects. It's only thinking about immediate survival. Now, here's the kicker. Our old brain, it cannot tell the difference between the threat of a tiger eating us,

or the threat of our triggers, like the trigger of my husband just pushing my buttons in a regular argument. It views all threats the same. However, our new brain, which is in the front of our brain, handles decision -making and self -control. So this is a part of our brain that's more evolved. It's slower, it's more thoughtful, and it helps us navigate complex situations calmly. This part of the brain might analyze the situation, it will...

Melanie Mishler: 07:13

weigh the pros and cons and think about the best course of action. But in a crisis, what happens is old brain often just takes over and it like shuts down the new part of our brain. So today we're not usually running from tigers, but our old brain still reacts to stressors the same way. So whether this is a heated argument with your loved one, a stressful situation at work,

Our old brain can simply jump into action and it triggers that fight or flight response. And this is why we might snap at our partner or make impulsive decisions. And this is also why last week with my daughter was a complete shit show because my old brain was a hundred percent in charge, completely hijacked. And let me tell you, friend, that does not feel good when you come out of it and you're able to reflect and look back.

Often we're left with like feelings of shame or guilt or regret, and that is not a good way to live our lives. The good news is that we can train our brains to respond differently. By knowing what triggers us, we can rehearse our responses in advance. Now, this is the most basic technique that I teach with all manifestation. We have to rehearse the experience we want before we can live it. Just like, for instance, if you were in a Broadway show,

You would never ever go to opening night without full multiple run throughs, right? And not just a rehearsal, but you would do a full on hair and makeup and costumes, the whole deal, like it's a real show. And this is what we wanna do when we're manifesting and when we're practicing for how we want our life to be. We wanna practice responding to our triggers in our mind, but we have to make that visual very, very vivid.

Not only do we have to just imagine ourselves going through the process, but we also have to engage our emotions. So for instance, if one of your triggers is maybe something, a fight with your partner, like the same old fight with your partner, you have to imagine yourself navigating through that argument in a new way and engaging your new emotional responses. By practicing, we can engage our brains more effectively, and this helps us to respond to triggers in a calm and thoughtful way instead of just flying off the handle.

Melanie Mishler: 09:33

and reacting on impulse. Okay, so the next time you feel that familiar rise of anger or frustration, I want you to just take a deep breath. Remind yourself that you actually have tools to handle this differently. This pattern doesn't have to keep going. It's all about practice and knowing that you're not gonna get it right all the time, but with practice, you can train yourself to respond to the same old stressors in life in a new and empowering way.

So you're not left with those constant feelings of like guilt or regret or shame. Okay, friend. All right. I know again, it was short, but I hope it was helpful and I will see you next week.