How to Recognize Your Triggers

Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be, starts here.

It’s easy to say something triggers us. “Triggered” is essentially a hashtag when it comes our generation these days, and it’s true, many things are triggering, especially with the widespread dispersal of information via social media. But not everyone is triggers by the same things. We are all shaped by our own emotional response and past traumas. 

Why do we all have triggers? In short, some believe it is correlated with when we were children. When we were growing up, we inevitably may have experienced pain or suffering that we could not acknowledge or deal with sufficiently at the time. So as adults, we typically become triggered by experiences that are reminiscent of these old painful feelings. As a result, we typically turn to habitual or addictive ways of trying to manage the painful feelings.

Learning to identify your triggers is an important skill, and even a tool to manage your emotional well-being. Understanding what can set us off into an unproductive spiral can help to eliminate what doesn’t serve us or allow us to be our best.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor E. Franklin

The hardest part is maintaining awareness when we find ourselves in the midst of an emotional episode. It’s important to be very honest with yourself about your triggers and how you react to them. Even if this approach feels harsh initially, it will help you learn to be more compassionate with yourself. Sometimes your emotional responses can be incredibly physical, such as shortness of breath, panic attacks, nausea or indigestion, sweating, and more. It’s key to try and notice when you are triggered by paying attention to when you start to feel that flooding of emotion or identify where you first begin to feel it in your body.

Here at Flourish Health we  encourage you to pause at the first feeling of sadness and anger and take five deep breaths the best way we can, in through our nose, and out through our mouth. This is a great practice of mindfulness – walking away from what we are doing for a moment to take time to gather our thoughts and feelings, identify them and decide how to proceed in a healing way. Thoughtfully communicating our way out of the response, even if that communication is within ourselves is such a powerful way of practice.  

We know it’s not possible to avoid every situation that may emotionally trigger us, and that’s not the goal. We want to be aware of our triggers so that we can be emotionally sound in the face of real-life issues in the future, and to work through the issues, learn, and heal. Recognition is important to take actionable steps and develop true intuition. If we only learn to avoid triggers instead of acknowledging them, we will end up avoiding the real issues that trigger us, which becomes unhealthy suppression.

The goal is to protect our mental health, garner strength from within, and navigate through the muck of life with minimal collateral damage. We must protect our energy at all costs in order to be the best, most powerful, and productive version of ourselves, so we can serve our own joy and others.

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Dates

– High in Disease-Fighting Antioxidants, such as flavonoids, carotenoids, and phenolic acid, which all have anti-inflammatory properties.
 
– High in fiber, which benefits your digestive health and promotes regular bowel movements.
 
-Eating dates helps improve brain function by lowering inflammatory markers, such as interleukin.
 
– Dates have the potential to help with blood sugar regulation due to their low glycemic index, fiber and antioxidants.

Citrus Fruits

Sweet Potatoes

Parsnips

LEMONS & ORANGES

Citrus Fruits

– Rich in vitamin C which is needed to form and maintain healthy skin, bones, blood vessels and connective tissue.
 
-Plays an important role in supporting the immune system and also acts as an antioxidant that might help protect cells against the effects of free radicals and fight inflammation. 
 
-Full of soluble fiber that can help lower LDL cholesterol, consequently reducing cardiovascular disease. 
 
– Abundant in multiple other nutrients, including potassium, folate, calcium, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, magnesium, and copper.
 

Sweet Potatoes

Parsnips

Kale

Parsnips

– Are highly nutritious, and supply many antioxidants, which are health-promoting compounds that help prevent oxidative stress and decrease damage to your cells.
 
– Parsnips are a great source of both soluble and insoluble fiber. Fiber moves through your gastrointestinal tract undigested, helping to get things moving and optimizing digestive health.
 
– Low in calories yet rich in fiber, parsnips make an excellent addition to a healthy weight loss diet.

Garlic

– Garlic is known to boost the function of the immune system and combat sickness, including the common cold.
– The active compounds in garlic reduces blood pressure.
– Contains antioxidants that may help prevent alzheimer’s disease and dementia because oxidative damage from free radicals contributes to the aging process.
– At high doses, the sulfur compounds in garlic have been shown to protect against organ damage from heavy metal toxicity.

Sweet Potatoes

– The fiber and antioidants in sweet potatoes are advantageous to gut health.
 
– Sweet potatoes offer various antioxidants, which may help protect against certain types of cancers.
 
– They are incredibly rich in beta-carotene, the antioxidant responsible for the vegetables bright orange colour.
 
– Full of vitamin A which is critical to a healthy immune system.

Parsnips

Kale

Garlic

Kale

– Kale is loaded with powerful antioxidants like quercetin and kaempferol. Antioxidants are substances that help counteract oxidative damage by free radicals in the body. 
 
– Kale can help lower cholesterol, which may reduce the risk of heart disease.
 
– Kale is among the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet.
 
-Very high in beta-carotene, an antioxidant that the body can turn into vitamin A.
 
– A great plant-based source of calcium, a nutrient that is very important for bone health and plays a role in all sorts of cellular functions.

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