Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
35. Understanding “Triggered”: What's Happening in Your Brain and Body
The word “triggered” has wandered far from its clinical roots, but we all hear it referenced often. We pull the term back into focus by walking through what actually happens when the brain’s alarm system misfires and how prior wounds teach the amygdala to sprint while the prefrontal “watchtower” is still lacing its shoes.
We break the triune brain into plain English: the thalamus gathers the data, the amygdala hits the siren, and the cortex adds context. In a regulated system, that update quiets the alarm. In a triggered system, chemicals flood too hard or too fast for logic to land. That’s why a whiff of smoke after a neighborhood wildfire can spiral you, or a partner’s micro‑expression can feel like a cliff edge. We connect these patterns to early attachment imprinting and name the hidden role of shame in keeping mind and body at odds. From there, we offer a practical path forward: top‑down tools and bottom‑up approaches (from both Scripture and discoveries made through Psychology) that help the system return more quickly to safety and calm.
We pull from the works of Bessel Van Der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score" and Dr. Dan Siegel's "Mindsight" and Christine Ann Lawson's "Understanding the Borderline Mother" and the Bible: Romans 7,8 &12, and other scripture references.
We close by previewing "Triggers" Part Two, where we’ll dive deeper into healing: bottom‑up practices, understanding unique trigger profiles, and inviting your stories and questions as we keep learning together. If this conversation helped, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs better language for what they feel, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_00:We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_02:We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_00:We're glad you're here. One of the things I like to do is pay attention to words that come out from the therapeutic realm into the modern use or colloquial use. I think one of those words is trigger and triggered. People for many years have said that that triggered this or that. It started to become more popular in counseling and psychology, especially around the realm of trauma. I feel like people are starting to use the word trigger a lot, which is wonderful. Except often I'm hearing it not used correctly. And that's really what we want to talk about in this conversation, kind of reclaiming the intent of that word and more importantly, what it signifies, what's happening in our minds and our bodies when we are triggered.
SPEAKER_02:What do you mean by using it incorrectly? I'd love to know what you mean by that.
SPEAKER_00:The quick overview is the word trigger in the field of trauma is in the area of PTSD. It's suggesting that because of an early wound, an early traumatic event, one or more, our bodies are now predisposed to react or overreact to a stimulus that it doesn't need to react to. We'll probably use this example as we go, but let's say someone fought in one of the wars and then hears a sound or there's a stressor, and then they respond way out of line with that particular stimulus. Upon reflection, they can name that was a trigger. Whatever happened, that event, that moment, that stimulus set into a cascade of mental and physical responses that led the person to overreact. Or to react as if they were at the original. Right.
SPEAKER_02:Like the car backfires, but the person reacts as if a bomb has just hit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they go to the ground, they run or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I have been hearing the term activated in place of triggered around people that have done a little bit more work and they don't want to say triggered because they may not have had a particular thing happen in the past, and yet they still feel their body was activated.
SPEAKER_00:What I like about the word activated is it's less blame shifting. If I say I was activated by something, I'm recognizing something in me can be processed. I'm not suggesting there's nothing wrong out there. There could be a true stimulus, but when we say trigger, we're saying the physiological responses begin to happen and didn't seem like it should have happened. That is actually a trigger. But I do want to say, and we'll reflect on as we go. People are often using the word trigger as if the person or the stimulus itself was the problem. I remember you like an accusation, like you triggered me. That thing you did, that triggers me. Now, to be clear, if I know something triggers me and I'm in a good community, I can name that, and the people that love me will help me there. But often it's used as if you're the problem. Remember when we were in seminary, that story.
SPEAKER_02:I wore an OU sweatshirt to a small group. And a few weeks later, one of the young women in the group called me and said, I'm no longer going to be coming to small group because I don't feel safe. When you wore that OU sweatshirt a few weeks ago, I was triggered because my abuser, my uncle, was a huge OU fan. And now I can't be in the room with you and not think of him. And I'm dumbfounded. I don't, I'm like, whoa. So even if I don't wear an OU shirt, like basically she's saying, I'm no longer safe. What do I do with that kind of comment? Do I repair with her? Do I apologize to her?
SPEAKER_00:And at the time, of course, we had not entered the work of trauma, but everything she says makes total sense and I believe to be true. The question then is, okay, when I'm triggered, what's the work I need to do? I can't only hang out with people who don't wear OU shirts in this world. Was this an invitation for healing? I remember when it happened, it felt more like an accusation to you. It wasn't like I am so sorry.
SPEAKER_02:No, it was an accusation. And I also didn't have any tools, hadn't been in the world of understanding triggers, trauma, PTSD, abuse. I didn't know what to do with it, but it definitely was accusational. Like I should have known somehow that was gonna hurt her, but I I barely knew her.
SPEAKER_00:Interestingly, and as we're gonna unpack, she didn't know as much as she portrayed to know. That's what we're gonna talk about. A lot of times the people using the word are actually not as aware and understanding these concepts as they think they are. In that case, for example, and again, I'll just say what I remember was you were the problem. You became the abuser, but that wasn't named in such a way that was like, I don't, I don't want to think this way. I need help in this area. If you're listening and there's a trigger and you can't go to a certain place or a group, that's understandable as long as you're realizing that's your body carrying the wound, your body's keeping the score in that sense, which is by the way, the book that a lot of this discussion will come from, as well as Dan Siegel. I just want to take a moment to say, okay, what is a trigger? How does it happen? And we'll discuss just a little bit of the physiology behind it, which I think is very intriguing because of how much it actually overlaps, validates so much of scripture.
SPEAKER_02:I would love to hear what you've been researching this week.
SPEAKER_00:And let me just say, too, that I'm aware that even in reading The Body Keeps the Score or looking at anything a lay person who's not a neuroscientist can understand, it's similar to the meteorologists here in Oklahoma. We have very tornadic weather, and meteorologists have learned to dumb it down. And I want to just say that what we're gonna try to do briefly is take the most complex organ on the planet. In fact, it's the only organ that defined itself and named itself.
SPEAKER_02:That's funny.
SPEAKER_00:So when we talk about the brain, it has three parts. It's called the triune brain, three brains and one, so to speak. And the most basic is the brain stem, often called the reptilian brain. But essentially, that's the most functional basic part of the brain in the back of the neck, goes into the spine, and it its job is to keep a breathing heart rate, digest, and all the autonomic things happening without any thought. And then the limbic system is one we talk about a ton, right? This limbic system regulates emotions and social bonding and memory, and it's involved in the feelings of like love and fear and pleasure. And then the third brain is the neocortex. This is what you think about when you see an image of the brain, the large gray, wrinkly part that's kind of covering everything else, and on the front of which you have the prefrontal cortex, which itself has several different elements. But that brain is the rational brain. It gathers all the sensory data and it's trying to make sense of it and use what it knows to make sense of the data coming at it. And so we're gonna just understand that a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:But question the brain stem, I know right where that is. I can picture it on a model. The neocortex, like you described, is what you think of when you see the image. The limbic system, is that more of the inner workings of everything, or is it actually a place of the brain?
SPEAKER_00:The limbic system is the, from what I understand, it's the aspects of their brain, like the thalamus, the hypothalamus, and the amygdala. These regions work without the rationale or input of the cortex.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So it's kind of multi-portions of the brain. That's another thing.
SPEAKER_00:And they're they're definitely linked together, but they're in closer proximity. And the limbic system and the brain stem are often referred to as the emotional brain. And then the cortex is often referred to as the rational brain, which is just interesting when you think about how even in the end of Romans 7, Paul refers to his mind and his body. There's our emotions, what we often call the heart or the kidneys. You know, I feel it, my gut. Often when you talk about the body, we're referring to this part that reaches into our body. And then there's the thinking brain, the part that's actually reasonable and accesses information and helps understand and learn.
SPEAKER_02:That's the more complex problem solving.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so now just real quick, we're moving into three things we need to name when it comes to trigger. One is the thalamus, the part of the brain that just gathers all the ingredients. It's often called the cook. That's how Vanderkoek refers to it. It's taking the ingredients and it's making something, right? It's putting together a recipe, let's call it, a cooked meal. And that's important because it's even able to skew things based on its own trauma. But nonetheless, it's trying to be neutral. It's taking the relevant information and it does two things. It sends all that information to the cortex, that's called the high road, but it equally and immediately also sends its information to the amygdala, which is called the low road.
SPEAKER_02:Which is the fire alarm.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, the amygdala is now the alarm. Its job is to go, hey, do we have a problem here? The amygdala is super important because it comes into play with both the high road and the low road. So, in other words, let's say that there's a stimulus. What Vanderko talks about is there's the smell of smoke. For the discussion, let's say it's a steak that's sizzling and maybe overproducing smoke, and you're not the one cooking it. So you kind of smell it and you wonder what's happening. The first thing that happens is the thalamus gathers the smell of smoke and puts it into a format that's here's the data, right? And it sends it to the amygdala and the cortex. The amygdala fires first. It's closer, it's faster, and it has to do like almost like a rough draft. Like, we're having a fire. Let's get it going. The part that goes to the cortex is able to assess, it's called the watchtower, the medial prefrontal cortex, right above the eyes. It's seeing and it's able to quickly assess, oh, it's the stake. And then it sends that info back to the amygdala. The goal would be that the normal situation is the amygdala did send its alarm to the hypothalamus, which then it fires off all your chemicals, cortisol or your adrenaline, different responses, chemical, but it did so as a rough draft. And then when it gets the information from the cortex, it then shuts down, alarms off, turn the alarm off. That's a normal situation, and those chemicals soften and you're back to normal pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, let me recap and make sure I've got it. So you smell smoke. The thalamus, who's the cook, he takes the recipe and just says, You smell smoke, there's smoke. That's the meal. It gets sent two places simultaneously. It gets sent to the amygdala and it gets sent to the cortex. And that's that amygdala is the low road and the high road is the cortex. But the low road gets to the amygdala fastest and it triggers the whole body into fight, flight, grab your belongings. It's readying your body.
SPEAKER_00:But when you're depending on its interpretation, yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, there's fire. Well, then within milliseconds, the message got to the cortex and it says, Oh, it's that stake. You're safe. That message is sent to your amygdala that says, Turn the fire alarm off, we're good. The fire alarm of the brain. Right. Okay. So then the body says, Oh, it's just the stake. And within seconds, it's that feeling. I I think when you were describing, I got it. I was like, I've had many times I was like, oh. Right. Like within that fast. So my body started to get activated, but then it immediately was like, No, we're good.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And so what we're describing there is what we would call a normal or healthy response to that stimulus, right? You don't want to smell smoke and do nothing. You don't want to smell smoke and grab the fire extinguisher and run the steak. So here's the question: were you triggered? And the answer is no. In that sense, because of the integration or the right relationship between the emotional brain, limbic and brainstem, with the rational brain, the cortex, they were able to work together in tandem and see truth. Respond rightly to the stimulus. A trigger, then, is when the information from the cortex doesn't stop the amygdilic response. That is, again, it's hard. And I'm only a novice.
SPEAKER_02:It sends the message, the body doesn't go.
SPEAKER_00:Body's like, I don't care. Now, whether it says I don't care or not, the point is because of prior trauma, the amygdala is hyperactive. And it seems to me that what's happening is it's interpreting the stimulus from the thalamus wrongly. So it's overreacting, not only initially, but faster than the cortex. The amount of response, the cortisol, the adrenaline, or whatever chemicals have been released is so much when the cortex comes back with the truth. My sense is there's a spectrum. Even if it's able to accept that, it's almost like sorry, we we've already kind of hit the, and you said this when we talked about earlier. Sorry, the the water's already going. Like the sprinklers are already firing, and they take they have to run 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_02:It's gonna take a time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's gonna take now that we know there's a fire, our bodies aren't happy.
SPEAKER_02:I've got two scenarios that would give us a little bit of an insight as to why the amygdala wouldn't immediately calm down in a normal situation. So in the fire example, it was about six months ago that we had wildfires in our area and the winds were so high that they spread everywhere and took out a hundred homes in our three mile radius. Devastating. So when I walked outside the other day and I smelled smoke, the high road sent the message to my amygdala, it's just my next door neighbor's chimney. But I found myself needing reassurance. I literally thought, is there a fire? Like there, there were about maybe three or four more iterations before my body calmed down because of what had just happened six months ago. And it was a freak deal. I think that's an example of okay, you had a real thing happen in your life. That's kind of a PTSD moment, like you were describing earlier.
SPEAKER_00:So, in some ways, what you just described is a type of trigger that we might put in the category of activation. In other words, you were able to name that you were activated, you felt it and you can name it in real time. You're also pretty quickly able to know why. You knew the situation. What makes a trigger challenging is unless you've done work, most people don't even know they've been triggered. Typically, if you study PTSD, even there's behaviors that no one's attributing to the trauma. It's taken a lot of research and work to even get there. And in our own lives, like there'll be all sorts of things that, as you're saying, activate us. We don't know that they're triggering. We know that we're activated, but we might not be aware that we're activated in a unique way. It might just be something like we blame at something else. I was just low blood sugar, I was just hungry. The second aspect is I am aware of my activation and I'm blaming you. You're the reason, or that thing's the reason, or this person. These are, of course, in some ways normal. You're trying to make sense of the activation, but a true trigger is because of particular wounding trauma that has been unresolved or unhealed.
SPEAKER_02:And therefore, it demands like a more thorough message from that cortex for the amygdala to stop. So it's like in a normal situation, like you described with the stake, it was oh, right. It was that quick, so it really wouldn't be considered a trigger. But with something that there is pre-existing trauma, the message that says it's just the stake isn't gonna be enough. We need reassurance.
SPEAKER_00:What's actually interesting, I think that's correct. We need the cortex to have a more thorough understanding. We're gonna get into this when we talk about some of the healing. We need the emotional brain to listen to and take seriously the rational brain for various reasons. Even the trauma itself was broken down. The rational brain needs to embrace and help the emotional side without shame and contempt. Because what often is at the basis of the activation is shame. Shame is I'm gonna fragment and keep the two parts of the mind from working together.
SPEAKER_02:So your body stays dysregulated and your amygdala fire alarm is going off, and yet your cortex is saying, just get over it. Absolutely instead of trying to say, no, really, I understand that you have this feeling, but it really is just the stake.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:The second scenario is what we're getting into. It's this idea of we don't know where the trigger's coming from, and so our amygdala will not stop firing, and it's not convinced by the cortex that we're safe. And here's what I mean we get a look from someone, or we get a facial expression or a tone of voice from someone, and it triggers us. There's that word, right? I feel so triggered when he said that to me, or when she looks at me that way, it triggers me. What are we actually saying? We're saying our emotional brain is not convinced that we're safe. Here's what Christine Ann Lawson has to say. The first thing we must understand in life is our mother. Recognizing her face, the sound of her voice, the meaning of her facial expressions, and the meaning of her moods is so universal, so natural and normal, and so crucial to survival that we scarcely give it a thought. In fact, we forget how much we know about her despite having powerful reactions to a certain gesture, a tone of voice, or a facial expression in someone else, that person, of course, often being our spouse, understanding our mother is the first step to understanding ourselves.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. One of the things I want to say at this juncture is that we've talked about this podcast as being the intersection of psychology and theology. That being said, we come to this realm of trauma. We would even say, because of the fall, you were born through a traumatic moment. We love the quote, we're all born into the world looking for someone, looking for us. That sounds so kind and simple. It's like we are coming out of this womb in a panic. We're wailing and we need comfort and we need someone to see us. And what that quote is saying, and it's kind of following along with attachment theory, that because we're not connected to our Heavenly Father at birth, we come out needing someone who's in his stead, who tends to us, who cares for us. We are relational beings, we are relational souls. Trauma is the way the fall impacts us, right? It's not, we don't just say, well, we were all born fallen. That's true. But then there are particular ways it's transmitted to us. And this is true. Whether you're adopted or raised with your biological mother or your mother has passed, you were coming out of your mother. There is that initial, like, here we are, we're in the world. And then eventually you'll have whomever the caregivers are, and they'll become the person who is the most prominent in your young world. It can be the father who's mothering you as an infant. But what I love about that quote is it's saying that the infant isn't just casually reading the face, having a good old time. It's very survival is linked to the micro expressions of that caregiver. And that is a, in my estimation, a trauma-informed need of that infant. What's coming up for you?
SPEAKER_01:I think I just feel the fragility of life. Like none of us are safe. I don't know who ever thinks trauma's not real, or it's a made-up modern word. All of our brains are miswired to some degree.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm not belittling that there are people that have had significant complex trauma and others that have been raised in more safe, loving homes. But the way I think you just described it made me feel a lot.
SPEAKER_01:And if anything, I think it's a good reminder how much we need the rewiring and reattachment of the triune God to our triune brain, vine and branch.
SPEAKER_02:We're trying to talk about triggers. And my point in reading that portion of her book is that, and I know this has happened with you and I. I don't want to feel childish in the way of being mocked or feeling young or feeling stupid. And if there's ever been an expression on your face that has made me feel that way, so often it isn't really you. Yes, we sin against each other, and you have sinned against me, but the when I'm deeply triggered to where your apology doesn't even land and my brain is not stopping the trigger, I've learned that there was something that I saw on your face that reminded me of something of my mom or dad that made me feel I'm too much.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I love what you're sharing because what we're not saying is that the stimulus is not a problem. When we're triggered, the stimulus may be innocuous, neutral, but it often can be harsh. It can be a look of meanness. It can be a word or a phrase, it can be a rumor we were told about us. And that stimulus is real and deserves to be taken seriously. Part of that taking it seriously is coming back to the place of kind of sober-mindedness, separating out what was trigger and what is real now. I think so often what we've experienced as we've talked to people is because people can't separate the two out, the burden on the aggressor is too much.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, exactly. Like we've talked about repair. You and I have talked through that in other conversations. And I get this question a lot, and I've felt it personally. When is it enough? The person has offended you by something they said in the kitchen. They've apologized, they've even come near to try to have a hug. They've moved towards you, they're repentant, they're kind. Is it time? Does time heal? Or is the person, let's say you've said something to me that hurt my feelings? You've apologized, you've come close. You're doing the good repair because you recognize my feelings were hurt, but I can't shake it. Do I get to give you a silent treatment for 24 hours because I'm just triggered? I think that's a question that comes up a lot. At what point is it no longer the comment that was made and the husband that's the issue, and the wife is just so activated and triggered that she can't get over it. That's where I've really learned something deeper was touched on. If I can know my story and know my particular traumas, I'm gonna call it traumas because it's vandalism of shalom.
SPEAKER_00:It's shalom shattered. No matter how you talk about it, when we try to act like there's a thing called sin or a shattering of shalom that isn't traumatic, we're just fooling ourselves.
SPEAKER_02:I could just say it's the sin of my original family that mocked me in a certain time, and I feel silly. So then later in life, when I'm feeling like an adult, someone made me feel silly. Whether it was a child or my husband, I'm kicked into a place in my life that I don't want to go.
SPEAKER_00:What I love about this aspect is this is why we're really passionate about this work. I'm a pastor in a denomination that's very head-strong, very rational. Often we can minimize the emotional as if it's wrong or bad or doesn't count. Listen to what Vanderkoch says. He says, When our emotional and rational brains are in conflict, he adds the parenthetical statement, as when we're enraged with someone we love, frightened by someone we depend on, or lust after someone who is off limits. End of the parenthetical phrase. He says, a tug of war ensues. Now, if that doesn't sound like Romans 7 from an atheist, I don't know what is religious. You know, like think about that. Science is finally going, wait a minute, there's this tug of war, or Galatians, the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit. Like, we have within us parts, these places that are real. And here's the key when you're triggered, actual physiological things are taking place in your body. When those things are released, like the water sprinkler example, you don't just turn them off. When the effects linger, by being able to name it as a trigger, you're not blame shifting, and you're also not saying, hey, don't worry about you did nothing wrong, but you are able to acknowledge that there's something now that's going to take some time. My body has to recover. And what we're inviting you to do, listeners, is don't shame yourself. Oftentimes, and Vanderkote makes this point, and we've seen it too. People are responding to trauma. Often we almost hate the feeling more than the thing itself, right? It's like the feeling of anxiety. And we get so angry at that or so mad at that, that becomes its own sort of thing. And if it's not going away in five seconds because someone made a quick apology, then we can almost start to question ourselves either by placing more blame on the person or the stimulus or just what's wrong with me and having shame and feeling overwhelmed by myself. And so what we're inviting you to is go like Paul in Romans 7, right? If you haven't read it lately, go read it. When he says, When the law came to life, I died. What he's naming is I started to notice sensations of coveting, of lusting. And yet it didn't just go away because I noticed it. What he's naming is my body kept going down these pathways. And so at the end of Romans 7, he said, Who will rescue me? And he says, Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus. He now notices that his mind, because he does walk with the Lord, he's a Christ's follower, he's enveloped by the Spirit, has the law of Christ on his mind, which we would probably call his prefrontal cortex, is now more fully developed. And yet his flesh, now that he means sin nature, but he's also the body, that is the emotional brain, often is carrying the effects of our sin, our traumas, etc., the fall. And there's this kind of division. And the reason that's so important is the next phrase from Romans 8.1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus, is we don't have to feel shame when we do feel these emotions. We can actually name, you know what, I do forgive you, but this activated something, and I'm not okay right now. I'm not blaming you. Obviously, you did this thing, but I need to go settle down. I need to regulate. I need some time, whatever it is. And it's not necessarily like get over it right now, or you didn't accept my apology, but nor is it, I accept your apology, but it's going to take me 48 hours to fully forgive you. But a third way is what happened though wrong, and you've apologized. It triggered something else. And I need to do some work to regulate to come back down into our window of tolerance. And then whether right now or the therapist or however we do it, I want to find out where that wound coming from? What are other ways it manifests in my daily life?
SPEAKER_02:That actually is the reason why our emotional brain isn't to be shamed or considered bad. I think as I was listening to you, I thought there was a hint of rational brain being good, emotional brain being bad. He understands he's a Christ follower and his emotional brain is his flesh. But I don't think it's that simple because I did not mean to communicate that. Okay, because I as I was thinking, wait, our emotional brain, which is receiving messages from our polyvagal system, like what's being held in our bodies that's stored, our gut turns over when we hear a certain thing. That is actually more accurate than our thinking brain often is trying to override. Like, I'm good. We're good. Like just kind of almost the shaming big brother, like, shut up and be quiet. But our emotional brain, like you were saying, leads us to hey, I need to do some work around this. What is coming up for me? Asking our body, why are you downcast? Oh my soul, why are you in turmoil within me? That often is the doorway into finding the particular things that need the good shepherds, healing, comfort, and green pastures. We've got to find these spaces, otherwise, we're living blind.
SPEAKER_00:This is a great segue into healing. One of the ways we heal is when we go to scripture, we go to the Lord, we're regaining a sense of our being in the presence of God. That is what we do when we worship, pray, engage, when we meditate on his word, when we do any of these practices, if we have the spirit, as Paul says in Romans 8, we are living out the truth of our adoption, right? What that means is that two things have to happen. One is our rational brain is learning truth. It's no longer just taking this chiseled, shallow law, like do not do. It's getting much more fully orbed. It's reordering the loves, as Augustine writes about. And it can do that because it doesn't have to rely on the emotions at this moment. But secondly, the emotions are being uh reordered as well. Like they're becoming more tuned to the truth. So, for example, the goal would be that Paul, in reading the tenth commandment, it comes to life, once he realizes there's no shame, he's not condemned for his struggles and you know, the wounds he's received, his own sin patterns, whatever, he is now free in the spirit to explore the depths of that truth emotionally as well as rationally. The two brains are now coming together into one. And he begins to agree like, I don't want something that's disordered. This is kind of stepping back toward Vanderkoult, is we're beginning to feel and then pay attention to our sensations. He keeps talking about mindfulness, which I'm a big fan of aspects of mindfulness geared toward paying attention to your body, paying attention to your emotions, but also sensations. So if you're familiar with Dan Siegel's Wheel of Awareness, it's a practice where you scan your sensory information first, and then you'll move toward your emotions. You know, I'm angry, I'm sad. And the feeling wheel is often used there to nuance the emotion. But then you move into sensations. And that's very important because depending on your level of trauma and how it was dealt with as a child, we've learned to cope, to survive. One of those ways is. We blocked the brain from the body, right? And that means that we to survive, don't even feel the sensations. We ignore things, which is why so many times what Vander Koelk goes on to say is you can have all sorts of autoimmune disease. He even says asthma and so many different physical manifestations of ignoring the body's attempt to communicate. I think that the flesh affects all aspects of our brain and body, right? Bad theology, bad belief, you know, as well as the old imprinted images and the emotions. But the healing has two aspects, a top-down and a bottoms up. I've already been doing the top-down, but it's starting with I think when the psalmist in like Psalm 119, it's a very interesting thing. It's like, I already read your law, I know your rules, I love them. But then it's like, teach me your way, help me understand them. So there's this awareness that I don't have a full depth of understanding of God's character yet. Like a hunger and thirst for shalom restored. And that is a lifelong process that starts primarily in the top as we learn and study and meditate with the goal of it reaching into the heart or the emotional brain into our affections. So that's one aspect of it. The other, as I've already named, is the practices where you begin to name your emotions bottoms up. I liked what you said earlier about activation to be able to say, you know what, it was activated. That's a lot of maturity to get to that place.
SPEAKER_02:So I think we've done a thorough job of unpacking the term trigger or the cliche, I'm triggered. But I think it gets more complex in that each person has their unique triggers. What may activate me doesn't activate you. And it's because of my story and what's in my past, because of the facial expressions on my mother's face. So I think let's do a to be continued and let's dive in a lot more to how there's some particular stories we see even in scripture of people getting activated. And how can we then heal kind of the bottom-up, top-down approaches, the bodily sensation, things that we do that could train our body, train our brain to be more integrated, that we could have less destructive triggers. It's one thing for the fire alarm to go off, but then quickly get to be turned off. But if we're living in in bodies where the fire alarm is going off and the sprinklers have all gone and they're set for 20 minutes and everything gets ruined, and then it's going to be a few days to recover. We want to help unpack the methods that we have discovered that could help people to I think that sounds like a really good idea.
SPEAKER_00:We'll do a part two because I also want to keep it in the forefront of our listeners' minds. So much of this work is not simply to heal what you already know needs healing, but often to bring back online the things we didn't even know we were missing. So much of what Verna Colt and we'll talk about next week goes into it, people didn't even realize entire sensations, entire aspects of this life that make it worth living were being missed. Again, what we're saying is being able to name that something triggers us is an entry point into doing the deeper work we want to get to.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So if this has been at all anything that you have experienced or the people that you love and live with experience, please tune in to our next conversation. There's a healing and a process of how do we grow and come back to a more integrated brain. Thanks again for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you have any questions or thoughts about the topics today, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached through our website, emails, and social media. Just go to Story Matters Initiative. If you're interested in doing individual or group work, we'd love to discuss that with you as well.