A call for love means opening yourself up to all life’s experiences, the beautiful highs and challenging lows.

Learn how to ride the waves of overwhelming emotions by practicing patience and loving kindness because other people and experiences are going to trigger your vulnerability and inner pain points.

I share how my triggers to give more when I was struggling to “survive” left me fearful I was disappointing others.

You can create space to feel and heal each trigger, slowly and mindfully.

Start practicing self-compassion with your own FREE copy of,  A 7 Day Journal to Self-Love, to start living from the deep source of love within you.

WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER

•   How feeling activated can send you into a hyperarousal state of fight, flight and freeze.

•   What titration is and how it can help you relate to managing your triggers.

•   How getting activated can stem from unresolved inner wounds from the shadow self.

•   What phrases you can say to yourself to name and acknowledge your emotional triggers.

•   How to honour your needs for self-regulation, when activated in someone’s presence.

About Linda:

Have you ever battled overwhelming anxiety, fear, self-limiting beliefs, soul fatigue or stress? It can leave you feeling so lonely and helpless. We’ve all been taught how to be courageous when we face physical threats but when it comes to matters of the heart and soul we are often left to learn, "the hard way."

As a school teacher for over 30+ years, struggling with these very issues, my doctor suggested anti-anxiety medication but that didn't resonate with me so I sought the healing arts. I expanding my teaching skills and became a yoga, meditation, mindfulness, reiki and sound healer to step into my power and own my impact. 

A Call for Love will teach you how to find the courage to hold space for your fears and tears. To learn how to love and respect yourself and others more deeply.  

My mission is to guide you on your journey. I believe we can help transform the world around us by choosing love. If you don’t love yourself, how can you love anyone else? Join a call for love. 

Website - Global Wellness Education

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Hello and welcome to a call for love. I believe the most powerful gift you can offer yourself is to give and receive love more freely. I'm your host, Linda Orsini meditation guidance spiritual coach. Everyone has the desire to be seen, heard, respected and loved. The journey to becoming more connected to your greater purpose lies within the ability to live from the deep source of love within you. Let's begin.

A call for love means living fully. It means opening up to all those heartfelt emotions. Yet that is a double edged sword, let me tell you, and that's what today is all about. It's about triggers. It's about opening your heart. And that means becoming vulnerable, opening up to fear of rejection or getting hurt. But what is the alternative when we hold ourselves back? Seriously, holding yourself back gets you nowhere. It's a half live life. What do you really want? Well, I think life is like the ocean, with waves rolling in and waves rolling out just like your thoughts, feelings and emotions. I talk a lot about this in meditation class, that we are the observer of our thoughts, feelings and actions. And Jon Kabat Zinn says, You can't stop the waves in life, but you can learn how to surf. And that's what we do. We're always surfing. We're always feeling through in and out emotions, circumstances, experiences, and we want to do so with more grace, and more groundedness and more light and love. If you want to experience beautiful highs, then you're gonna have to have those expected challenges those lows, that's just the way life is. The law of polarity says that we live in opposites extremes, there's happy, they're sad. There's days, there's night, there's Yin, there's Yang. I talked a lot about this in episode one called Transforming fear into a call for love. But today is all about what happens when we are in the middle of a big wave of overreactions, or petty frustrations, and daily emotional chaos. In other words, triggers. It's all about learning how to self soothe these strong and uncomfortable emotions, we have to take care of our own needs to stay grounded enough to respond and not to react especially not to overreact. What if we think about triggers as treasures. If we thought about triggers as treasures, then the treasure or gift of moving forward would be to release these feelings of being offended or hurt or disturbed. And they can actually help us end that ruminating cycle of being triggered by things that should no longer bother us and perpetually spin us in the dark side. I know when I get activated, I get into this hyper arousal state. And you may feel that to where your whole nervous system goes into this fight, flight and freeze response. Because I'm feeling and I'm sure you as well psychologically threatened in the heat of these strong emotions, it is almost impossible to respond calmly. And so often, we overreact our small self comes out the ego. It's not what we want. I feel and I really truly believe it's so critical to pause to stop to slow down, collect our thoughts and feelings, to let the emotional threat subside, before doing or saying anything that we will have to work so much harder to rectify later, there's so much damage control that will have to be initiated after we react. And that's unnecessary, we're just going to cause yourself more grief. So if you recognize that you're feeling triggered, why don't you decide using the cognitive technique of scaling from zero to 10, where 10 is the highest of emotional upset, deciding where you are on that scale. If you're triggered and you're feeling like you're really close to 10, then you want to proceed slowly. Just take a deep breath. So pause. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Exhale through your mouth. And notice where you're feeling it. Where are you feeling it in your body? I know that when I get really triggered or upset or overactive. My whole stomach clenches my shoulders rise to my I ears, my hands get tight, I squinting my face, my whole body becomes tense and tight, not good. The fastest way to calm down, of course is to take a deep breath. And it's always available to you. But you really need time and space, you really don't want to do or say anything that you will regret. When you make space, your amygdala is allowed to calm down so that your prefrontal cortex can respond with measured and reasonable thinking. We cannot make good decisions when we're highly activated. Because the amygdala shuts down. Let's try to make it a common practice to connect with our mind, body and soul to notice what's going on inside when we feel highly activated, and allow ourselves and give ourselves time to self regulate. Indeed, you may even be feeling triggered from a past in a wound that happened to you when you were really young, let's say eight or 10. And you never processed it may be a moment from your past created a traumatic imprint, that continues to resurface is a little child and new that is coming out unhealed triggers are part of our shadow self. The parts that we are trying to avoid or even suppress a people and incidences that trigger us reveal to us what we do not like about ourselves. They stir the emotional pot of peace because they ask us to dive into the part of of selves that we have been repressing or trying to shove away. I know that these emotions come up for me when they want to come out. You may feel that too. I feel it's stuck energy preventing me from feeling and living lighter and happier. Isn't that how we all want to live? We want to go about our day interact with people we care about and love or even work with, without feeling triggered or getting our buttons pressed. I always love what Dr. Wayne Dyer says. When you squeeze an orange, what do you get? Right, you get orange juice. So when somebody pushes your button, what's coming out? Take a look at that it's a little piece of self examination that's required. Do you think you're able to feel it to heal it? Or does it feel completely overwhelming? I know sometimes it is completely too much. And if your wave of emotion is super strong, then it really is an indication to turn inward, go slow and be kind. One way to think of managing your intense emotions is to think of it as a chemistry project. There is a term called titration. That means that if different substances are mixed too quickly together, a third substance cannot form. The secret is to go slow. include those ingredients very slowly one at a time. Well, that's just like our own selves. When we open up to feeling just enough emotion before it becomes overwhelming, and breathe and move through that before processing further. We can move through to create that third substance which is peace, which is calm, which is healing which is joy which is happy. But if we go too fast from feeling and self soothing to wanting instant success in not being triggered. That's where we cannot create peace. Livia Shapiro in her book, The somatic therapy workbook says that as we practice titration it invites us into finding our own pacing during intensity and giving ourselves room to experience without getting flooded, thereby allowing for real and lasting change. I call this healing. So how do you offer yourself loving kindness, a call for self love when you are feeling highly activated? I would like to use a personal example. I am now retired from teaching but and when I was teaching, I suffered from a lot of adrenal fatigue. I was completely exhausted. And it was very hard for me to have enough energy to do everything I wanted outside of school.

Well, when I was asked to go to a special event or do something for somebody that I really wanted to do, I would get highly triggered because I knew that I was going to fail. I knew that I was going to disappoint them. I felt like I couldn't do it. And it just left me feeling so overwhelmed and triggered I didn't know how to respond. I would get so upset because I was just trying to survive, I was just trying to stay healthy, and really be present for my own little family that to do anything more was completely overwhelming. So when those strong emotions came up to me that I felt like I couldn't do it that I was going to let people down when I wasn't enough, all those things of being inadequate or not liked would surface. Well, there are certain statements that I could have used, I didn't know then that I do now, which would have helped. So I would like to share them with you here today. Because when you feel like your emotions are tipping you over the edge of normalcy, to activation, try holding some of these phrases into your own heart center, and allow the softness of this self soothing, comforting, inner dialogue to really guide you through the process of realizing that you can respond with truth, authenticity, and move through the experience so that everyone understands, and everyone is satisfied and happy. The next time you feel triggered, you can say, Wow, I feel really activated. So when somebody asked me something that I knew I could not complete, I could say, Wow, I feel really activated. I feel so sad that I'm put in this position that I can't give and be what they want and what they need. Because I really want to give that to them. But I just don't have the energy, I'm stretched too far. I could have also said, Whoa, these are really big emotions, I do not have to feel like I'm gonna let people down, or they're going to be upset with me. I can express to them, once I self soothe myself, once I tell myself, you know, it's okay. This is normal, you have a lot on your plate, maybe you can explain it to them kindly. point here is that we want to acknowledge and name to claim the emotions that are going through us when we're triggered, or activated by what somebody wants from us what something said, or an experience. We want to really be present to how we're feeling and offer ourselves self compassion. What does self compassion look like in these circumstances? Well, I would say the first thing and I said it before, take a deep breath in. And a long breath out, create some space between you and the circumstance. Maybe get a glass of water, step outside, go for a walk, give somebody a hug. Even smile at yourself in the mirror. Laughing is great medicine. I even like shaking, I shake my body. Of course in in the animal kingdom, they always shake to shake off energy, excess energy, I think shaking is great medicine. And I even do jumping jacks. I love doing jumping jacks, a creates that energy release. And it just moves my body and gets me out of my head. I always tell my students, it's really good idea to write down a list of what helps you move through big emotions. Because when you're caught in that wave, the current is too much you can't think straight and to have that visual of what to do when you're in that state is very, very helpful. Now what do you do when you're experiencing a challenging conversation face to face with somebody that's different, you're really on the line here because you are in direct contact with the person who's really triggering you. And you want to be very careful. Of course, if you're at work, it's extra delicate, and at home, we should be as careful to with those we love. Sometimes we are just too abrupt with the people that are closest to us. I think it's really a great idea to decide with the people who you're closest to, when you're not in a triggered state to sit down and come to an agreement of what each person or member in the family or the unit needs in order to feel safe when they are triggered. Because if you do this, when you're not activated, you can come to a conclusion that everyone understands like, listen, when I get upset when I'm feeling triggered, I need to walk away. Please do not take take it personally, please know that I will come back when I've calmed down so that we can discuss it rationally. When you discuss this and make these general guidelines when you're not triggered. You get way more success. Let me tell you, I used to call it interventions. Each person in the unit can go and share what they need in order to remain calm. I'm in the heat of a moment. So I know for me, I like to walk away for a moment, I like to take a deep breath. And I said, I really, really connect with my body, I need to move my body, sitting in front of a person without being able to move really agitates me twice as much, I need to move my body, I need to move that adrenaline out. So that I can come back to myself more grounded and more able to respond with loving kindness. Maybe you want to decide what you need. If you are talking with somebody and you're getting triggered, you do not want to say or do anything that's going to upset them, or yourself. Maybe you decide ahead of time, what you could do, of course, each place that you're in is going to be very different. If you're at work versus at home. As I said before, or maybe at a family gathering, we have so many family gatherings in our world, I hear all the time that Christmas or Thanksgiving can be very triggering for people will have a plan in place before you go to the event. If you know you're having a staff meeting, and there's something that's going to come up that is really going to cause you some emotional grief and take you on that serve. Come up with a plan first. Maybe bring that cup of tea, maybe stand up, prepare yourself and give yourself tools for success. These are some tips, tools and strategies I use when I feel triggered, I hope that you have found some of them useful. I just would like to summarize again, notice what you're feeling. Name your feelings. offer yourself Self Compassion by doing something that allows you to become more calm, and more responsive, reduce, causing suffering by overreacting. And finally, meditating, journaling, talking over with a friend to help you process because we all want to live better. We all want to express ourselves better. And this is what a call for love is, is noticing once again, where you're standing, are you in a place of love? And that doesn't mean just for yourself? It means for others as well. So are you in a place of love? Or are you in a place of angst, emotion, frustration, darkness, anger, whatever those emotions are noticing, and really making a conscious effort of deciding what you need to come back into balance to come back into kindness to come back into love. Because what else matters. We want to really live with grace. Ride those waves and not drown in emotional turmoil. I hope this resonated with you if you have anything to share with me, please reach out. Always sending you grace. From my heart to yours. Namaste