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Question from community member Heather Mason:
“I'm seeking advice on how to not take on my partners emotions/life situation. I am definitely an anxious attachment. He has made a decision to leave a toxic job (toxic for him) and is now in a state of not knowing what to do and is depressed and not on a good place. He has stopped communicating and being present in the relationship. Me being anxious attachment, this sets me off in a panic, wanting to fix the situation and help him. I know its not about me but it makes me extremely anxious. How do I establish the boundary for myself to not take it on myself and still be a supportive partner?”
Welcome to the TriggerProof podcast.
This is the first season of the Podcast which are audio renditions of
Facebook Live Video Transmissions done for the “TriggerProof” Facebook Community.
These were set up by request of our community members who wanted an opportunity to listen
to insights, tools, and strategies to help heal relationship dynamics, deepen intimacy,
and master the fine art of Autonomic Nervous System Regulation so that we can build resilience,
heal from the past, and become active operators of our mind, body, and life.
This first season wasn’t designed to be a podcast, so you’ll notice the audio isn’t
Professional Studio Quality (like it is on season 2 as we’ve upgraded incrementally).
These trainings are designed to introduce and deepen you to the most critical 2 skills we’ve never been taught:
1) The skill and practice of taking our triggers (Nervous System Activations) and turning them into deeper safety and self-love,
2) The skill and practice of taking conflict (that happens in any relationship) and turning them into deeper intimacy between the parties involved.
Not learning these two critical skills at this time in history costs us dearly: Physical and Mental health is on the DECLINE.
Doing this deep level of healing work can break the cycle of Intergenerational Trauma that didn’t start with you.
It didn’t start with you, but it can end with you,
#Cyclebreaker.
______________________________________________________________________
Join my Facebook Group to help you understand yourself, control your triggers, regulate your nervous system and know what's keeping you stuck in these times of crisis:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/triggerproof
[Music]
[Music] what is up my beautiful cycle breakers or
intrigued by the concept of breaking cycles um just want to make sure that everything is working my mic my microphone is working it's all working
i got some new toys here so i might as well you know use them just to kind of up level the production value it's been a while since i've been in here live helping people heal trauma is a little bit challenging for my nervous system and so i find myself wanting to come into the community and answer questions and i have so much to share it's kind of like it's it's tough for me to to keep up with it because the calls that we have uh with our community members who are you know working to break cycles and patterns in their relationships of anxious attachments and um they're so heart opening they're so beautiful and i want to come and share it with this bigger community kind of our our free facebook community but then i find myself uh feeling like i want to uh spend that time uh charging up my batteries with my family and um this is a new concept for me because i never really saw myself as somebody who would prioritize family over my work and i think that's a function of me healing from my from my traumas and healing is an ongoing process
excuse me if this is the first time we're meeting welcome welcome to the uh community this facebook community the you know or my email list or my uh or my youtube channel make sure you are subscribing uh and you get notifications as well so that you don't miss them because they come up at random times uh they're not scheduled i'm trying to make it work with a one-year-old and running a a company that helps people heal from attachment trauma and so i don't have a a predictable time i can come up with these for this and the podcast however if you put on get notifications and subscribe you won't miss them because a lot of these transmissions come from helping this desire to help people solve their challenges that are patterns in relationship dynamics but what i've noticed is that what's personal to certain people is pretty much universal to all of us so if you can resonate with this question then welcome and just maybe even write in the chat box where you where are you signing in from give me a hashtag replay as well my name is dr nima romani and i am a retired chiropractor because i realized that the stress-related problems that people were coming to see me for were actually caused by attachment traumas gone awry not properly healed not complete how do i know because i had them myself and they showed up with really repetitive patterns and cycles that i kept noticing in my relationships myself being an
avoidant constantly finding myself in the same dynamics of push-pull dynamics with relationships after my divorce uh eight or nine kind of failed relationships had to kind of realize that i was falling into these patterns now everybody around me all of my family the people closest to me my friends they could all see it
they could all see it
they would mention it to me but my ego was blinding me from being able to access it and it takes a lot of courage for you to be here in this conversation i know because i had to face certain things about myself that i wasn't really proud of which i wanted to let you know if you're in this in this space listening to this right now and you are feeling that yourself just know that you're not alone it's actually a part of the process i couldn't heal unless i faced all of the things that i was ashamed of that's why i understand when so many people apply to work with us and then they realize the fear and the shame of their former selves the fear the of of actually facing what they've been running away from is too terrifying and so the obstacles come up and so it takes a concerted effort to heal it's like weight loss if you have ever tried to lose weight you know it's like this and healing our traumas works the same way i realize that we are all addicts in recovery we're all in recovery from something and that is really the addiction to external validation we're all in recovery from that and this addiction to external validation comes for a good reason because biologically we're hardwired to connect and so if you ever had the experience as a child where your primary caregivers kind of withdrew love just by their facial expressions or their body language or even their words that they've said or physically you've been hurt by them the wounded child within us reacts but not by hating our parents but by hating ourselves so that's where we have our initial fragmentation from our true selves happen in childhood because we can't survive without this external belonging so in order to survive we have to abandon ourselves and belong this can come in many forms if you had a religious background you'll understand what i'm saying and they've if they were very you know there was a society so you know a social structure that you were raised in that had specific rules and so there was a punishment of the fear of not belonging if you don't follow the cultural norms and quite frankly who do you know that doesn't have that going on i'm persian i was raised as a baha'i uh oppressed in my um culture uh because i'm not muslim and so oppression is in my dna it's in my nervous system so for me to try to solve it by asking a question and trying to you know what do i do about that without addressing what's going on in my body is really just kind of like rearranging furniture on the titanic you know that's why i really appreciate people who ask these questions because they're very valid you know questions um and they're not wrong you're not wrong for feeling the way that you do and wanting the solution and but i want to point you out uh to how to get the most out of this this group and just you know your healing journey in general is is really learning how to ask great questions and this heather mason asked a really great question so here it is i'm seeking advice on how to not take my partner's emotions slash life situation i'm i'm seeking advice on how to not take on my partner's emotions and life situation i'm definitely anxiously attached he's made a decision to leave a toxic job toxic for him and is now in a state of not knowing what to do and is depressed and not in a good place he has stopped communicating and being present in the relationship me being anxious attachment this sets me off in a panic of course it does heather it's called primal panic what's happening is heather is not you know an adult right now heather has now regressed it's called a regression or a relapse if you are talking in addictions uh talk
it's a trigger uh i know it's not about me but it makes me extremely anxious how do i establish the boundary for myself to not take it on myself and still be a supportive partner hope this makes sense yes it makes perfect sense it's actually an amazing question and some great answers too because it makes sense here's what you do oh let's just you know it's kind of like when you take a friend out for coffee and they have a problem you can easily answer their issue right it's so easy to help somebody else because it's plain as day for somebody who's not having that somatic experience they'll say things like setting up boundaries for yourself of what you can and will do and what you should not great that's great because it's we we're coming up with solutions right so when somebody asks these questions the training that we do with the trigger proof training trigger proof doesn't mean trigger less trigger proof is a concept that i've kind of come up with which is really about getting to know what's coming up for you and what parts of you have been triggered and i'm gonna go over those two different parts of you that will show up when you have your anxious attachment blazing right in that relationship situation um other people are you know giving kind of cognitive advice on what to do um cognitive advice on what to do uh this is what you should do heather do this do this do this do this right the problem is heather you're not making decisions rationally we can give you advice on what you should do but the real question which is why i'm so proud of how you asked it you didn't say what should i do you basically said what can i do in order to because it's not about me but what can i do in this situation and so the answer to your question is we got to go back in time you got to understand why we're in this situation in the first place and the answer is i want you to write down this this this here maybe i can do it here i got another toy i'm gonna move this over and see if this works if it works so cool i want you to write this down this is because of let me see is it on overlay yes perfect there it is it's called an measurement
trauma
that's what this is i can just kind of like move move this over right here like that enmeshment trauma and can you see a picture of lucy back there i lost my lucy a couple weeks ago had to put her down talk about a measurement trauma okay enmeshment trauma is what you want to look into this is the thing in other words enmeshment is the experience where you don't know where your emotions begin and end and you don't know where their emotions begin and end you literally take it on in other words if they're not okay you're not okay enmeshment trauma is the experience of depending your internal state is entirely dependent and enmeshed kind of like a web with somebody else and it's a really shitty feeling because what happens is we become hyper vigilant and if they're happy we're happy and if they have go through a difficult time then we make it about ourselves and it's not a rational thing because heather you can see from your share that you're very conscious that this is going on you just feel powerless and what to do to stop and to answer this question we must have the skills develop the skills to be able to recognize how old we feel and when we get triggered this is what to heal a meshman trauma i created a process called becoming trigger proof and so what that looks like can i go to another one there's two parts to you that get triggered the first part is
the wounded inner child
boom
the wounded inner child is the first part
that's the first part that gets activated and so probably between the ages when i'm guessing what i got from you maybe three to eight you'll probably notice that as he's going through his challenging time with his job loss and you know a man you know this there's covid going on his nervous system is probably quite disregulated feeling dissociated from himself uh he's got you know his own traumas what we call probably he's in a dorsal state where there's that kind of like a shutdown collapse in his nervous system uh yes ideally you want him to go you know this is where can you help him can you do this and this is like weight loss you can't force somebody to do the work this is not you know especially when you're anxiously attached i get a lot of you know he's got to do his work and it's like yes he does everybody's responsible for their own inner healing work it's just inner healing work works a lot like um weight loss everybody says they want to do it but actually very few people actually do i know this because we have so many people apply we had like 50 people apply to work with us over the last month and then when it came down to it their fears took over so it's like there has to come a point where you say i'm ready you know i don't want to like enough like i cannot be run by my wounded inner child anymore i'm sick and tired of showing up in this relationship like an eight-year-old even though i have every it's not it's not him it's me right that's that's that takes a lot to get to that point uh most people aren't there most people like he's got to fix his stuff what's wrong with him right and so when we have a measurement trauma then we can't handle somebody else's uh sad emotions when they're and we don't know how to support them we want them out of it unconsciously because it's about us and the question i want you to ask yourself that's going to be very supportive of you is asking how old did i feel when i needed to make mom or dad's emotions my responsibility you know so i'm guessing there's a rescuer component to you that needs to kind of fix it so that you can then feel safe just understand right now that's what's taken over the wounded child and what happens is if we don't learn how to regulate that we then start to react and start behaving like the next part
called the adapted adolescent
what happens is it's too painful being that child and what'll happen is there's a dance that keeps going back and forth what is it you know what can i do for you why are you so shut down and then all of a sudden the adapted adolescent will show up and it's like fine [ __ ] you i don't need you type of thing and we start to go back and forth betw between the wounded child and the adapted adolescent and these are this is what's happening when our triggers are taking over and so this is where we go to a therapist this is where we go to our friends this is where we go to you know ask a question on facebook and say what can i do tell me what i can do so that i could resolve this because i'm seeing it now and i'm here to tell you that this is your opportunity to heal the reason why this is coming up is because
[Music]
my name is dr nima romani and you've been listening to the trigger proof designed to teach you the most important skill necessary for a dramatically changing world which is nervous system regulation and becoming trigger proof doesn't mean trigger less it means learning how to regulate ourselves to bring us back to center so that we can then be governed by our purpose rather than from our wounds anytime there's reactivity there's a wound and if you're curious and inspired to learn more join us at refwork and badassery or the overview experience there's a difference between listening to a podcast and actually showing up live and doing the work with a badass community who's all about breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma it didn't start with you but it can end with you if you're willing to do the work see you at the next perfect time [Music]
you are being gifted an opportunity to actually heal with parts of yourself that's really what the name of this game is that's the way out of this mess is to learn the skill of becoming trigger proof because when you do you then jump in to becoming number three well let me just see if i can go to the next one here
which is number three which is what
functional adult
you want to be able to have a skillful access to the functional adult within you and that's really our work that is
let me just that is the work and how do we do that well it takes awareness it takes awareness to notice the fact that you reached out and you were like wow this is what's going on that's huge because most people in your situation would point the finger tell the other person they need to go see a therapist and what's happening is he's disconnected he's dissociated he's now gone through an attachment trauma he left a toxic situation that means there was conflict there his heart is broken he's going through an attachment trauma and so the question you want to ask is how old do you feel when this is coming up there will be an adapted there will be a wounded child or an adapted adolescent every time we get triggered or a little bit of a combination of both because we have many parts to ourselves we just don't have we haven't learned the skills in school to become able to be to be able to navigate when that happens we get flooded our autonomic state regresses back and we turn eight years old six years old or however old you feel and when you are in an avoidant attachment like i was our work and avoid an attachment is to lean into co-regulation your work as an anxious attach type of person is to lean into self-regulation learning how to integrate these shadows that have popped up that have been triggered which shadows your adapted adolescent and your wounded child and so becoming trigger proof is the art of identifying where who you know what's come up for you and being able to drop in and release emotions you've been stuffing away from years look at how and observe all of the efforts you make to try to avoid feeling these things and that just makes us more anxious and the answer is to go into the burning building and you're not going to want to do it there is no quick shortcut answer to your question everybody wants that quick fix right whereas healing our traumas is a slow and steady process so it's wiser to get a guide find a community and a guide that walks you through the process of taking what he triggers within you because he's also there's another caveat to this not only are you being regressed and there's a transference of a younger self with dad who was maybe dissociated or going through a depression or checked out or maybe mom was and you're now reliving it you know the whole role of a relationship is to help you relive your past so that you can then break that cycle if we don't learn how to heal with those younger parts of us and show them safety and to resource ourselves and to create secure relationships with ourselves we then keep repeating these patterns again and again and again he might find another job and then feel a little bit better and and kind of get back into himself but that doesn't actually solve the root cause of the problem and and that means there is this background alarm going on and you haven't yet learned how to address it that's the first part the second part also is that whatever you're triggered by in him is also kind of like a reflection of a younger part of yourself so this becomes a huge opportunity to find to integrate to surrender and do the inner work to be able to feel more connected to those parts of yourself so that you can now show up as a queen rather than a wounded child divine feminine energy rather than wounded child energy you know they call they call it wounded feminine divine feminine wounded masculine divine masculine so there's no shortcut for that and so our work is to break these cycles and peter levine my my um mentor says you can't do it alone and no one can do it for you so what i'm really thrilled about is giving people the opportunity to actually do the work you know there's talking about it they're scrolling through social media and even videos like this are helpful you know i'd rather you watch content that wakes you up then keeps putting you back to sleep that's my or listen to content if you're listening to my podcast that's what my commitment is is that this stuff even though it might be triggering it's designed to wake you up and so nothing happens without taking action and for for those who are actually committed to taking action and not just talking about it that's what the overview experience is about it's this weekend is coming up on saturday 2 p.m pacific time that's 5 p.m eastern and it's a 5-6 hour event so saturday night or if you're in australia sunday morning and i teach you how to take a trigger and become better at autonomically regulating it so that you can become the active operator of your nervous system and stop the cycle of showing up in relationships being controlled by somebody else's emotions this is a measurement trauma you asked a question about how to heal developmental trauma that happened long before maybe even before you were even born you know who knows we discover all of this in breath work but our work is to actually be the one to solve it ourselves otherwise we're always going to be looking outside of us and our insecurities continue so the answer to your question is the answer to everybody's question that they don't even know that they're asking which is the answer is i must learn a process to heal my developmental trauma the end and if you're actually watching this and you want your life to be different 90 days from now
i urge you to follow the link and join us this weekend and learn how to unpack all of this or
take zero action read some books listen to some podcasts and really not do the actual work and be exactly where you are in 90 days the choice is yours my friend my commitment is to show up each time and those of you who are coming what you're going to get is pretty spectacular because it's a journey it's kind of like a story on a magic carpet ride where you go back in time and find these younger parts and find exactly the source of what's triggering you so that you can then be the one to shift what's happening inside it's a practice why is it important for you to learn now well because we have a culture war going on right now society is divided politically with you know religious uh you know there's racial stuff going on and now obviously with all of this um the choices we have for our you know what we put in our bodies and and then there's a huge kind of cultural war between two different factions and so everybody's kind of jacked up and amped up and dysregulated and so i want to help break the cycle because if we don't we're just going to keep this narrative going and we're just going to our species is going to destroy itself so if you're wanting to be a cycle breaker jump in join us and see you at the next perfect time big love
[Music]