I received an overwhelmingly huge response to the post on Monday about getting triggered by my husband.
So we’re considering doing a few hour workshop teaching how to work with triggers in relationships for rewiring and greater intimacy.
If we receive enough interest, we will proceed with the workshop.
Please email me back if you are interested, and let me know the times that would work best for you. We are considering scheduling it between December 4-8.
I have also invited Eric to join me for our Rewiring Back to Love call tomorrow at 9:30am PT. We’ll be organically chatting and exploring how to use the holidays as a clear path towards greater love and connection with your family.
Join us here. The recording will be available next week.
We Love You! Zoë, Eric xoxo and Fenix xox
Family Conflict is an Evolutionary Gold Mine
Having worked intimately with hundreds of people now, it’s so clear to me that some of our GREATEST turning points in life come when we have the courage to vulnerably face family challenges.
Ram Dass says it best…
Seemingly unnecessary, petty, and trivial family challenges often lead us to undergo significant transformations. These challenges can expose our conditioning. They can help us find those unconscious limitations we’re holding against ourselves. Which makes sense, because our family plays a big role in our conditioning after all.
The Hardest (And Most Helpful) Thing to Do WHEN We’re Triggered
Most simply, it’s moving from our head, into our body and heart.
If we want to use this moment for growth, for love, for greater connection, we need to learn how to let go of the fight and flight in our head, so that we can release what’s been triggered in our body.
But letting go of being in our head: thinking, fixing, figuring, solving, justifying, reasoning, rationalizing, etc… is scary because we want to be in control.
The reason it’s so hard to let go of the ways we cling and control in our head, is because they FEEL so safe, protective and supportive.
I’ll give you an example to really anchor this.
Let’s use the one I’ve been sharing about: Eric walking around the house after doing NOTHING until noon and then loudly exclaiming “I love my life!” And that triggering rage and disgust inside of me.
If He Cared…He Would Do More
For about a year, I proceeded to cling to my projection onto Eric: “He should do more. He should work harder. If he CARED about our family and our life together, he WOULD be ambitious like me.”
It took time, despite my huge education and many degrees, because for me this protection of ‘Working Hard’ is such a core pattern of protection and safety.
When I was little I did not have the external safety and support that I needed. So I created a way I could try to get myself more safety and support. And for me that was: “I’m going to work hard. And I’m gonna make sure you see me and care for me and love me – and the way I know to do that is to work hard and show you I care.” And that worked like a charm.
It worked in my childhood, all through my schooling, into my corporate career, and straight into my first spiritual breakdown breakthrough.
So while I HAVE addressed and rewired this pattern in so many applications, the irrational way I felt triggered around Eric brought me to a whole new, but incredibly nuanced level of freedom inside of me.
Our family and how we feel triggered around them can help us discover the next, and often very subtle, layers of our ongoing rewiring process.
In that moment of ‘I’m triggered! It’s You! You’re the Idiot!…
if you can move from focusing all your energy into your head, and focusing on anyone or anything outside of yourself, and bring your focus on yourself.
Be curious. Be compassionate. Be completely concerned with:
- How do you feel!?
- Where do you feel?!
- What physiological symptoms are going on in your body right now?
- If you had to describe the energy, the sensations in your body right now…?!
If you can do this, you have already done a LOT Of work.
If you’re able to move from your head to your heart, in the midst of a HUGE Inner Trigger… Congratulations. You have developed great self-love and self-compassion. Now let’s keep going.
Next is to be aware of WHAT YOU NEED?!
With Eric’s super loving and patient support, I was overtime, in those moments of profound frustration: able to answer the question: What do I need?
What’s hard to really understand here however is that it’s not you asking your HEAD what do you think you need: it’s asking your feelings: the experience in your body: what do THEY need?! And continuing to let go of your head so your body and your feelings can answer.
So in my trigger of Eric enjoying and relaxing because he did ‘next to nothing’ all day: I began to allow the pain, the pressure, the feelings in my body answer ‘What do I need?!’
The Rock and the Hard Place
When we really show up to release the repressed emotion in our body, we usually find a rock and a hard place. We find an impossible cycle between 2 bad options that’s keeps us stuck. (We can also relate to this experience as the protector and the victim within.)
And while it’s never as black and white as I’m describing, but for ease of understanding consider…
My rock (the protector in me) inside was:
I need to work hard! I need you to work hard. We all need to work hard to make sure we’ll all be ok!!!!
And I found my hard place (victim):
I need to relax! I need downtime! I need a break! I need to get out of this constant push and pressure I’m living in!!! I’m giving up.
The Rock and the Hard Place… leads us to Grace
Finding the rock and the hard place within helps us find the no-win situation we’ve been perpetuating, and (usually) the way forward in love, in grace, in flow is evident.
Because we allowed ourself to be in our body and the energy-in-motion in our body to discover these 2 experiences, there is usually a profound shift in awareness that takes place at this point. An awareness that there is a higher, more loving way forward.
The rewiring in my experience takes place when those parts in us can finally feel that love, safety and security they’ve been seeking all along. And we can do this in a million ways.
What works best for me is to use a magical mix of holding, loving and just being with Little Zoe, and using self-forgiveness to rewire those neural pathways. And also with most of my clients.
For some clients just the loving awareness can clear the pattern. And for others and for deeper conditions greater loving, communication, clearing and forgiveness is needed.
But the bottomline is always the same. How fully can we give ourselves the Love that we needed, and still need?!
An Arc from Trigger to Transformation
I’ll be sharing a brief meditation for moving from a trigger through to love and clearing on today (Thursday) at 9:30am Pacific here.
And here’s the incredibly oversimplified arc we will be following:
- Move from my head to my body, to be aware of what I feel. Whatever I’m thinking WHEN I’m triggered, isn’t going to be helpful, until I’ve resolved the energy in my body.
- Once I’m aware of what I’m feeling (maybe it’s anger, or disappointment, or…) I can then be aware of what I need. Simply ask your feelings: what do you need?
- Be curious about how you are trying to get what you need from others? And be curious about how you can give yourself what you need instead?!
- Give yourself what you need.
Doing these 4 steps does NOT magically heal and resolve all family conflict.
However doing these 4 steps DOES often give me the kind of clarity and compassion I need to know how to address and show up with my family and loved ones in a way that helps us get to know each other more, rather than building more distance or separation.
I hope that helps. And please do email if you’d be interested in a PreHoliday Workshop for truly showing up for family time as one of the truly great blessings that it is, in SO many ways.
xoxo Zoe
PLUS Holiday Special 🍁 🎄
I am offering single sessions over the holidays. This can be an incredibly challenging time, on top of what’s galactically, cosmically and globally also pretty wild right now.
So much is coming UP for EVERY ONE I know.
If you’d like to be supported in a single session so that I can help you rewire a little or a lot of what holds you back… I would be honored. And the wonderful thing about my work is that we do this in a way where you learn how to do it on your own as well.
For NEW 1on1 clients: My session rate is usually $347, but to those that support my work online, I am offering sessions for $277.
Holiday Hours ⏰ 🧑🎄
I do have limited session availability over the next couple of months. Book quickly if you’d like to grab a single session.
PLUS we’ll be traveling all next week so there won’t be any calls next week.
We love you,
Zoë, Eric and Fenix xoxo
🤲🏼 Ready for More Support?
- Our NEW 4-month Program: The Sacred7 Experience. Launches soon. View our preview here.
- We have a Sacred Confidential Whatsapp Group for our free call reminders and sharing loving support with each other. Apply here.
