If you’ve ever been triggered by someone, a situation or the events in the world, you likely experienced how hard it can be sometimes to bring yourself back to calm. These tips may help you in future.
A few tips:
- Pause. Before anything happens, pause gives you time to breathe, start to process and feel before any kind of reaction is returned
- Leave the space. If the situation is too intense, or you feel yourself about to explode, communicate your intentions to leave and think, and really leave and think
- Take a few deep breaths
- If it’s an external source like news or socials, put it away for the rest of the day
- Pause and put yourself in the others place. Ask yourself why they’re reacting the way they are, what’s the real reason behind the behaviour
- Imagine cool colours. I sometimes use this because I’m a visual person. I picture the ocean, a cool place. It brings me back to the present
- If you catch your mind racing into the future, bring it back to the now. What’s happening now, is what needs to be managed and resolved
Bring down your shield of compassion and kindness.
I’m not sure how you picture these in your mind, but for me I imagine holding a massive shield in protection against all of the anger, stress and frustration in the situation. Not to fully block, but to temporarily hold off. To create space for pause and reflection. We all process these situations differently, I often need a minute to figure things out, others are able to react immediately with calm and composure.
Then bring in your two healers, kindness and compassion. I find it easier in the other order, compassion first then kindness. Put yourself to one side, and then into the other person’s place or shoes. This action of compassion will bring some kind of understanding to which you can then apply kindness.
If you practice applying these two first out of anything, they will help you diffuse many situations. I love how powerful they are at resolving my internal state. They don’t always work on the other person! lol. But they help you move forward.
If you find practicing this difficult, observe others or think back to when someone afforded you compassion & kindness in a tough situation. Lived experience is a great teacher, and when you’ve screwed up, over stepped a boundary, triggered someone or said the wrong thing maybe and someone took pause, showed you kindness – it’s a powerful lesson.
Like most skills, this is learnt through practice. Built with experience and reflection, or maybe you’re natural at it. I know I’m improving at it.
if you’d like to hear a story of compassion and kindness, search up the video of Richard “Beebo” Russell. Richard took an aircraft in Alaska when he was struggling mentally and went for a joyride, but the pilots that intercepted and spoke with him over the radio were a shining example of kindness.
So next time you feel yourself losing control, bring in your shield and two healers, compassion & kindness.
You never know if the news is true, or what the other person is managing in their life and these tools may just give you the space and method to resolve things back to a place of peace.
Drop a comment if you found this useful 🩵✨