Hi {{first_name | Reader}},

I have been speaking for a while about how I believe health is a product of a balanced body, mind, and spirit. While I have discussed some mental aspects in terms of mindsets and our ability to make conscious choices that support who we would like to be, I have so far steered clear of the shadows. Talking about this feels like dangerous territory, but it also holds potential for deep healing and transformation. It can also be one of the reasons people feel stuck in repetitive patterns, which impacts mental health.

I am not a psychologist or therapist, and this is not medical advice. These are observations and lessons formed through years of study, clinical experience, personal struggle, experimentation, and a deep curiosity about what helps human beings heal and grow.

I still have wounds to heal too, and writing about them is part of my process of letting go. I hope this can help inspire at least one of you to free yourself from emotional triggers. This piece could be upsetting, but I am sharing it because I think it can help someone.

Let’s jump in.

Emotions, when they’re ignored, unprocessed, or unintegrated, don’t just disappear.

They quietly simmer beneath the surface, but they aren’t inert. They can express themselves in daily life as illogical reactions to situations or show up in your body as a tension, heaviness, fatigue, or any number of other sensations. When an emotion is unprocessed for a long time, these consistent reactions create habits and behaviors, and eventually, this can become part of a personality or self-identity.

Over time, these reactions can develop into chronic tension patterns, fatigue, and more.

Emotional injuries, just like any other wound, are going to keep affecting you if they do not heal. The wounds we cannot see or measure are easy to minimize. We tell ourselves it’s all in our head and try to just suck it up and move on. And that can get us through quite a lot. But if we don’t face these issues they will not go away on their own. If there’s a rock in your shoe you can be good vibes all you want, you can suck it up and keep marching, you can say it’s not real, but the pain it causes is going to be there until you take off your shoe and remove the rock. Emotional injuries change you over time, just like how you walk differently with that rock in your shoe. The influence is typically quiet at first, but it ends up slowly shaping how you think, how you feel, and how you react, and this is often in ways you don’t even see and are unconscious of.

This is a difficult thing to talk about because you can’t measure it. You can’t scan it, quantify it, or track it the way we track progress in health. I can measure range of motion, but not the impact of emotional wounds.

Just because something is subjective doesn’t mean it isn’t significant.

In fact, I would argue the opposite. Some of the most intangible parts of the human experience end up impacting us the most.

You’ve probably felt this before. When you’re in a good space, everything flows smoothly and you feel light and energetic. Minor nuisances and inconveniences roll off your back, and when the train is delayed, it’s no big deal. 

But sometimes, and likely more often, you’re not there. Something is off internally and when the train stops in the middle of the tunnel, you spiral into despair or rage. I’m sure we’ve all witnessed people shouting colorful profanities when the train stops. Maybe you have done that yourself. You can be both of these people on back to back days, or even on the same day.

Sometimes we can behave in opposite ways in the exact same circumstances.

So, here’s my story about triggers.

About a year ago, someone left a very negative review about my practice. The review felt deeply unfair to me and triggered a much bigger reaction than I expected.

The lesson from this that I want to share is about the aftermath from this review. When I first read it, I felt like I was punched in the gut. Every word cut my spirit like a knife, and to say that I was devastated would be an understatement. 

My next thoughts were that what was written was unfair and not true, and I was upset that there was a stain on my reputation. It hurt that someone would misrepresent me after dedicating my life to serving others and putting in so much time, effort, and sacrifice to earn my credentials. I worried that this review could ruin everything I had built through years of hard work, sacrifice, and uncertainty, just as I was starting to gain some traction.

It was a completely emotional reaction that took me into an intense spiral. I’m sure every reader here has been through that before.

I calmed down and tried to handle it the proper way and spent months trying to remove it through the official channels, but there was no response.

Then I shifted strategies (because I knew it was still bothering me). I tried telling a better story about what happened, and that one review doesn’t define me and isn’t that big of a deal. I thought that people who are a good fit would see it was an outlier among other reviews that are telling a different story. I told myself that the review wouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone else and that it would help filter out people who are looking for a different kind of practitioner. These thoughts were much more logical than my story.

These are good strategies, even if they didn’t totally help me in this case. If you find yourself feeling terrible after something happens, it is best to go to a safe space and use breathwork or gentle movement or relaxing music to calm yourself down before doing anything. That way you have more choice over how you respond. And it is also helpful to find a better story to tell. When negative things happen, there is often a silver lining to be found in the situation, and focusing on the positive piece of the story is helpful. Sometimes doing that is enough for you to let go.  

I changed the story I was telling myself and I moved on... or so I thought.

You don’t know if you’ve truly let something go until you’re exposed to the same trigger again.

Every time I came back across that review, it felt fresh. Every word hurt me like it was the first time I read it. It would create the same reaction in my mind and my body. I felt the same knot in my stomach, and the same thoughts:

What if people believe this?
What if this damages my reputation?
What if this affects my ability to do the work I care about?
What if this ends my career and then I can’t do what I was meant to do?

This was totally an overreaction on my part. One review is not going to destroy a practice.

And this highlights the nature of triggers – they aren’t logical and they don’t respond to reason. They don’t resolve by pretending they don’t exist and ignoring them. Trying to think my way through it or put a positive spin on it only gave me superficial and temporary relief, but deep down, I knew I hadn’t let go of it yet.

After nearly a year of trying to resolve this inner tension through a combination of positive bypassing and burying my head in the sand, I finally tried something different.

Instead of trying to get rid of the feeling, I started asking:

What does this review mean to me? What is this really about?

It was never really about the review. Sure, the words sting, but it was more that someone wrote something that I believe is false, it’s attached to my name, and I can’t fix it. And my anger was a defensive reaction to what I was perceiving as a threat to my future. And asking and reflecting on those questions wasn’t all that I did to shift things, but I’ll share the rest later.

Fortunately, I can now think about the situation and not feel triggered. I would still love for it to go away, but I have made peace with it. I have been able to learn what I can from the experience and use it to grow myself, my systems, and my business. 

After rambling on about emotions, feelings, triggers, and my story about a bad review, I want to share some lessons and how I believe they can apply to all of you.

The body adapts around wounds, injuries, or vulnerabilities of any variety, physical or otherwise.

Patterns of interference or compensation develop when something isn’t fully processed or integrated. The nervous system does not separate physical and emotional experiences as cleanly as we like to think. Unhealed physical and emotional injuries both have the power to create patterns of tension, alter perception, induce adaptation, and change behavior.

Emotional and physical tension both affect how we feel in our bodies and in our minds. We all have things we would rather not look at. Things we minimize, hide, or push aside. And the more we try to hide them, or hide from them, the more power they have over us. We feel vulnerable and afraid that others will see our darkness. And this gives them power, and the longer they fester, the stronger they get.

The irony in this is that most of the things we want to hide from others are things that most other people wouldn’t think twice about. We care so much about keeping some things buried, but no one else would care. So, we hold onto these heavy thoughts and feelings and over time, they influence how we show up, how we make decisions and impact what we tolerate and avoid. These subconscious programs end up keeping us small, holding us back, or causing us to sabotage ourselves from being who we know we could be.

So how can you deal with triggers?

Working with triggers can be very touchy, please be patient and forgiving with yourself.

It’s okay if you aren’t clear on what your triggers are yet. Figuring them out requires introspection and patience. Be observant and watch for patterns or cycles that repeat in your life.

Spending time in complete silence or stillness is very helpful. I have written about meditating to manage stress and observe yourself and reflect on your life. Regular meditation creates mental space and helps you become more aware of your patterns, cycles, and triggers.

Creative expression is a helpful way to process emotions. This can be a whole article on its own, but I believe that everyone has a soul level need for creative expression. Playing music, painting, working with clay, and other forms of artistic expression are wonderful ways to process emotions. We can channel the emotions behind our triggers into works of art or creation, and sometimes that’s enough to process and heal our emotional wounds.

Physical movement, exercise, and dancing also help process emotions and stress. You can also create or discover other rituals to process emotions. Perhaps you already know what you need to do and just need to act on it.

How I finally moved on

Asking and answering the questions above helped me to realize that despite my efforts, I still needed to express the feelings and I couldn’t intellectualize my way through this.

I came up with a ritual that sounds like it belongs in a movie, but it came from a place of resonance. I wrote a letter to the reviewer and said everything that I would say if there were no consequences. I put all my feelings and emotions into that letter and spared no detail.

Then I walked outside and sat by the water with the letter and my feelings. 

I read it again, one last time. Then I burned the letter to ashes and listened to the waves carry something out of me that I had been holding onto for far too long.

Peace,

- Dr. Josh

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