WEBVTT
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Have you ever wondered why people do the stupid things that they do?
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How about yourself?
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Have you ever wondered why you do the stupid things that you do?
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I want to tell you a little story that happened about three weeks, or excuse me, three months before my great awakening that I talked about in the last episode.
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My wife and I were attending ministry school, California, as I mentioned, and we were back home for the summer.
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And we had to drive back to California for the fall session.
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And that's a 30-hour drive.
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So if you've ever been in a long car ride with your family, you know that all kinds of interesting things can happen.
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Well, um, I'm a planner and I strongly believe when you're traveling that you should make as few of stops as possible.
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Because if you made all the stops that my family would like to make, you would simply never arrive at your destination.
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You would just be driving forever and you would never get there.
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In fact, that trip that we made all those years ago, we'd still probably be driving if we made all the stops that my family would like to make.
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I'm being a little over the top here, but that's actually what we're talking about today.
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Those times in our lives when we get a little bit over the top.
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So my wife wanted to stop at a Starbucks.
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And I said, you know, if we wait like 60, 70 miles and stop at this other Starbucks further down the road, it'll time up better for when we need gas so that we won't have to stop and get gas any more times than is absolutely necessary.
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And she kind of like begrudgingly went along with it.
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However, as we passed the exit to the Starbucks in question, I quickly learned that she was not okay with passing that Starbucks.
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And this Starbucks became the root of an argument that was very, very, very big.
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Very big.
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So big that at one point I thought divorce attorney would have to get involved.
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And I'm not joking.
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I'm very, very thankful that my children had headphones on and were asleep in the backseat and did not have to hear their parents arguing like five-year-olds in the front seat.
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So eventually things calmed down a bit.
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I think the next Starbucks stop helped pacify that.
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But why do sometimes things get so big?
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Things that are little.
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If we get in our right mind, we can step back and look at it and be like, gosh, why did I get so bent out of shape about that?
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That was just silly.
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What was I thinking?
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That's probably happened to you.
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If it hasn't, well, you're fortunate because it feels like it happens to me all the time.
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It happens to me a lot less now because I'm much more aware of what's happening inside of myself in those moments.
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So when I first met Laura, one of the things that I was introduced to was uh some brain science.
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And it was actually this discussion that Laura had around brain science that was incredibly impactful to me because my logical brain looked at some of the things Laura did, and I thought they were a little weird, to be honest.
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I didn't relate.
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You know, learning to speak compassion to yourself, learning to love yourself, um, getting to know yourself, it just all sounded kind of strange to me.
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But when she started talking to me, or actually it was a seminar that I was in as a workshop, when she was speaking at that workshop and she spoke about brain science and what was going on in your brain in the moments like I had in the car uh over the Starbucks incident, when she started talking about the brain science, what was happening, it really, really made a lot of sense.
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And as I mentioned, I had before I met Laura, I had pursued a lot of other or several other counseling options.
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Uh, because that was one thing when I had got to go on to the ER that they were very adamant that I do was pursue counseling options.
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So I had pursued some and and nothing was really landing.
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It all kind of just sounded like mumbo jumbo.
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Now that's not a slight on any of those people, it's just where I was at, because in a different frame, perhaps they could have been very helpful to me.
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But in the frame I was in, it wasn't.
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But I recognized when I met Laura and she started talking to me from a scientific standpoint, that really resonated.
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And Laura being so difficult to get into, um, she did say I had to wait a while to meet with her one-on-one.
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But I was able to go to one of these workshops.
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And at that workshop, she taught me um the brain science behind what happens to me when I'm triggered.
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So let's start off talking about what a trigger is.
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So I'm gonna read from uh from above all else, and I'm just gonna read what I wrote about a trigger.
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So, according to the compassion method, which is the method that Laura uh devised, a trigger is an irrational response to a rational or irrational person, situation, or circumstance.
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It's that disorienting space of time when we're not fully present with ourselves, when we're not okay.
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Clear-minded, tender-hearted, or at peace.
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That's how the compassion method defines being okay.
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When you're clear-minded, tender-hearted, or at peace.
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That definitely described both my wife and I in that incredibly triggered moment regarding the Starbucks.
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And a lot of times, these triggered moments, you look back at them and you laugh, because I can totally laugh about that.
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Like that was so silly.
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But man, at the time, it's anything but silly.
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It is so, so high stakes.
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And when you can learn to start recognizing your triggers, that's one of the dead giveaways.
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When something feels so high stakes that if it doesn't happen, like life on earth is gonna end.
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And that's what that Starbucks incident was for my wife and I.
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So I'm gonna read on.
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When Laura first taught me this concept, her explanation of the brain science being a triggered reaction spoke directly to my logical mind.
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When we're triggered, we're operating from our primal brain, the survival-wired part of us where our fight or flight mechanism lives, centered in the amygdala.
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Humans develop this part of their brain first, which is why it's called the primal brain.
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And uh other people in the science world also call it the child brain for that reason.
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And it's not just because when we're there, we're acting like a child.
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Uh, it's also just because it was the first to be formed.
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And then the frontal lobe, which is up here, your primal brain's more at the base of your head, your frontal lobe is up here.
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Uh, this is where more complex behaviors are.
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So behaviors like planning and decision making, uh, and it develops much later.
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So, like for me, it maybe was going to develop next year, but for most, it's going to develop in their early 20s.
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And so when you think about it, the um, you know, when some of the frustration we have with teenagers and some of those type of things, in some cases, you're just dealing with somebody that does not have their fully developed frontal cortex.
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So you're thinking, why can they not get this?
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Why can this not, why does this not click for them?
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So, as uh the way God designed things with parents, you know, we're supposed to help them and be the adult brain for our children.
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They don't have that part of their brain.
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So we get to be that part of their brain for them as theirs develops.
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We then pull back and we no longer be that need to be that part of their brain.
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Which me having children right now in the range from age 15 to 29 and seeing that gamut, I wish I knew for my poor 29-year-old what I know now.
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I mean, I feel really bad.
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Uh, I feel really bad because she was the test tube dummy, you know, she she was the guinea pig, so to speak.
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And um, my wife and I got to try out all of our parenting hacks on her and learn what worked and what didn't work.
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But it has been really fun as my children age, and now that I'm more aware of this, I can learn to start pulling back.
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Like when they ask me questions that, you know, when a 15-year-old asks a question, I'm gonna answer it a little bit differently than when a 25-year-old answers asks that question.
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Because now that I know more about brain development, I know more how to answer that question and really more of what they're capable of knowing in that moment.
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But anyway, um, so that that part of our brain develops later.
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So um that fight or flight part back here, you know, we absolutely want fight or flight to kick in if a lion is really chasing us.
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That's rational.
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But when it's firing during an argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes, that's irrational.
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The bigger your triggered reaction, the deeper you are in that primal mode, the more you're operating from this part of your brain.
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Or another way to look at it, the younger you are, because you're operating more and more out of that child brain or that primal brain.
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So in that car ride, my wife and I were very, very stuck back here.
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The fact that what we were doing was so illogical and so silly and trivial, which up here knows we had no access to that.
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We were stuck.
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We were five-year-olds.
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It's like our primal brain, or our our it was like our adult brain, our frontal lobe didn't even exist.
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Okay.
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So the more we're stuck in that primal brain, the younger we are, the littler we feel, and kind of like the younger developmentally, you know, we're trapped in that spot.
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And the further removed we are from who we were truly created to be, our true self.
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So shortly after learning all of this, like literally, it felt like it was just a few days after that seminar that I was at, where Laura taught this.
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I found myself in the kitchen with my uh daughter who was at the time probably 18 or 19, I think 18.
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And um this particular daughter, of course, I have several daughters that are this way.
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But anyway, when they go through the kitchen, it's kind of like a tornado just went through.
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So we were having a conversation about the tornado and the results of the tornado, the aftermath of the tornado that went through the kitchen.
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So we're having this argument about picking up after herself.
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And yes, it's good that people pick up after themselves.
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However, this conversation, um, this argument, so to speak, kind of devolved into kind of a bickering match back and forth.
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And all of a sudden it hit me.
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There was no longer a 40-some-year-old adult and a uh teenage daughter, you know, in the kitchen arguing with themselves.
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It was it was two four-year-olds bickering.
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And uh what I said in the book, um, it was convicting and revelatory in equal measure.
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So that argument was both convicting and revelatory in equal measure.
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So I write on, I said, Have you ever thought to yourself after doing something really stupid, how could I have done such a thing?
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I know better than that.
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That's likely true.
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You do know better than that.
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But when you're stuck in your primal brain, you're hijacked.
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You're stuck in that survival-wired part of your brain, you're hijacked, and your access to your adult, sophisticated brain gets cut off.
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I wrote, you may be the utmost authority on emotional health.
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But if your amygdala has taken the wheel, the primal brain, if it's taken the wheel, that wisdom is locked away, useless in the moment.
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This explains why some of the most brilliant people still make tremendously poor choices and messes of their lives.
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So learning that, and and I hope you hear me on this, that learning that is not an excuse for your trigger behaviors.
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It is not an excuse for when you do something stupid.
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But what that understanding brings you is awareness.
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Because I think for a lot of us, myself especially, I saw my trigger behaviors as who I was.
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I'll give you another example from a workshop with Laura.
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And this was the first workshop I took my wife to.
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I shared with her that these workshops were really helpful.
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And she was all on board to help me in whatever way uh she could.
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So she came along with me more as moral support than anything.
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So she comes to the workshop, and I had been to, I think this was probably my third workshop.
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And I, Laura, if you've ever been in any type of a one-on-one session or a group session with Laura, she is going to ask for uh audience participation.
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So she was looking for examples, and uh I agreed to be her uh example for the day.
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So um she was look she was challenging us to identify times where we had uh triggered behavior.
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And I shared a time with the family where I was really grumpy, and I said these words.
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I said, I am just a grumpy person.
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And then I went, I was gonna go on and share the example.
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And she stopped me.
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She didn't let me go any further.
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She stopped me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, You are not a grumpy person.
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That is not who you are.
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You're just hurting.
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And in your pain, you're stuck in that primal part of your brain, and it comes across as being a grumpy, irritable person.
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And I felt like number one, I could just feel the compassion come over me.
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I was just overwhelmed with it, like, oh my god, I thought this is who I was.
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But maybe it's not who I was.
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Maybe it's not who I am.
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Maybe it is just a reaction.
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And I looked at my wife, and she actually kind of had her head down.
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She was being convicted as well.
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Because you see, um, in my grumpy and irritability, my family playfully had developed some names for me.
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And one of them was the fun sucker.
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Um, because when I would walk into a room or get home from work, I would suck all the fun out of the room.
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So they would tell me things like, Dad, put away your straw.
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Because I was just sucking the fun right out of the room.
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And when I was looking at her, I could tell she was getting convicted too of like, oh, I kind of reinforced that, those feelings that he potentially had of that I am a grumpy person.
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But we were all learning, we were all growing, and it was incredibly impactful to think of the fact that no, I'm not a grumpy person.
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That's not who I am.
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That's just where I go to in my triggered reactions.
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So the whole point of this is not to make excuses for what we do.
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One of the things Laura says a lot, and that's really always resonated with me, she says, what you do matters, but who you are matters more.
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So what we do matters.
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If we did something, if we made a mess and we need to apologize or we need to clean up our mess, none of what we're talking about excuses any of that.
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And totally do not hear that from me, because that is not what we're talking about.
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We're not talking about not owning your mistakes.
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But if you do the work of comforting your heart, the work we're going to be talking about in the coming episodes, and then I talk about it above all else, and that Laura's dedicated her life to teaching.
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If you do that work, your request for forgiveness will be real.
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They'll be genuine.
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You won't just be doing it because it's the right thing to do.
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You'll be doing it for the right reasons because you recognize you made a mess, that your triggered self made a mess, and that's not who you are.
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And you'll be able to own it without shame.
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Just be like, hey, I made a mistake, but I'm not a mistake.
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In the past, sometimes my forgiveness was 100% coming from my shame or my request for forgiveness, because I was almost kind of like begging the other person in a way to not look at me and to not reinforce my shame.
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That if I say I'm sorry, you know, I can get like some penance for my shame.
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Um, so really my forgiveness I found was sometimes more about me than about truly, genuinely grieving over the hurt that I caused another.
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Now, when I have to ask for forgiveness, it's from a much clearer space.
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It's from a place of being okay, clear-minded, tender heart, and at peace.
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Because I still make mistakes, I still have triggers, but if there's anything that I've grown in throughout this compassion method process and through my above all else journey of learning to guard and steward my heart, as is talked about in Proverbs 423.
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If there's anything that I have learned, it is, or anything that I've really grown in, it's an awareness of when I'm triggered.
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So, and that helps me tremendously because knowledge is power.
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And this is a case where knowing that can help me start to, okay, I'm not going to just keep feeding this trigger.
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I'm going to start working the process that I learned throughout the compassion method to take care of the trigger.
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As I work through the compassion method that Laura developed and teaches, I broke it down into three simple steps to help me kind of come to help me make sense of it.
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The first one is awareness.
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Learning to become aware when you're in your trigger.
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Learning to become aware when your primal brain has taken over and you no longer have access.
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The second one is uh comfort, learning how to bring comfort to your triggered self.
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Because if you think about it, your triggered self is in that fight or flight, frantic state.
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But if you can bring comfort to it, you can come back to yourself.
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Engage your frontal lobe.
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You can come back to yourself.
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So think about a drowning man.
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And one of the big rules they say if a person's drowning is that you can't.
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Just swim up to them to try to help them because they'll drown you.
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You could be an expert swimmer, and in their franticness, they will drag you right down with them.
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They have to be calm.
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And once they can get calm, if a person that's struggling and drowning can get calm, even if they don't know how to swim, they can find that their body actually floats, that keeping your head above the water is work, but not nearly as much work as when we're stuck in that frantic state.
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And that is exactly the situation with us when we're in our triggered space.
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If we can bring calm, if we can calm down, if we can come back to ourselves, we'll start to connect with that frontal lobe and we'll start to recognize that hey, this argument we just had isn't really about Starbucks.
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It's not really even about the dishes not being done.
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It's about something deeper inside my heart that those things are pressing on.
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And I want to go after the deeper.
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Because at the core, that's learning to steward your heart.
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That's guarding your heart.
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It's about befriending your depths and going deep and seeing what's really under the hood.
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And you're going to learn that there's much more to your story.
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You're not just a grumpy or irritable person.
00:23:57.790 --> 00:24:01.150
You're not someone who's just over the top.
00:24:01.390 --> 00:24:02.910
You're not too much.
00:24:03.310 --> 00:24:07.150
You're not all these things that your triggered behavior presents.
00:24:07.790 --> 00:24:10.590
There's a reason why that behavior is presenting.
00:24:10.830 --> 00:24:12.590
There's something more going on.
00:24:13.390 --> 00:24:15.870
That second step is learning to provide comfort.
00:24:15.950 --> 00:24:20.990
And then the third step that we'll talk about more in the next episode is discovery.
00:24:21.790 --> 00:24:25.070
Learning to discover who you truly are.
00:24:25.470 --> 00:24:28.029
Your triggered self is not who you are.
00:24:28.910 --> 00:24:30.509
They're just behaviors.
00:24:32.269 --> 00:24:36.029
They're just what happens when your pain is running the show.
00:24:36.350 --> 00:24:39.310
Your true self, that's who you are.
00:24:39.470 --> 00:24:42.110
And that's what we'll talk about in the next episode.
00:24:42.670 --> 00:24:49.390
So a real practical tip on just how to start to begin, and I talk some about some of these in the book, but here's just a few.
00:24:49.550 --> 00:24:54.190
Here's a few things for me that I've learned to recognize when I've fallen into trigger behavior.
00:24:54.430 --> 00:24:58.990
Number one thing I've noticed is that my whole body kind of heats up.
00:24:59.310 --> 00:25:03.390
And I'll even notice some uh sweat starting to trickle down my back.
00:25:04.029 --> 00:25:14.830
And um, I first noticed this, you know, as I was learning all of this, I had a kind of a tense phone call and I got off the phone call and I just kind of recognized that, you know, my back is wet.
00:25:14.990 --> 00:25:16.029
What's going on?
00:25:16.190 --> 00:25:18.990
Like, and I was like, oh, okay.
00:25:19.470 --> 00:25:21.710
I I went into my primal brain.
00:25:21.870 --> 00:25:27.310
I went into fight or flight on that call, and that's one of my indicators.
00:25:27.630 --> 00:25:34.269
Another big one for me is when I can't see any hope in a situation, when I get stuck in hopelessness.
00:25:34.509 --> 00:25:39.790
That is a huge dead giveaway for me that I am uh in my triggered brain.
00:25:40.029 --> 00:25:41.230
That's a big one for me.
00:25:41.390 --> 00:25:46.590
Next week, we're going to talk about the part of you that was never broken, your true self.
00:25:46.830 --> 00:25:48.750
The trigger is just the door.
00:25:49.150 --> 00:25:55.630
The full map, every chapter, every turning point is in above all else.
00:25:56.750 --> 00:26:00.509
The link and to learn more is in the description.
00:26:00.910 --> 00:26:03.310
Until then, thank you.
00:00:29.390 --> 00:00:36.670
Have you ever wondered why people do the stupid things that they do?
00:00:38.269 --> 00:00:39.870
How about yourself?
00:00:40.590 --> 00:00:45.310
Have you ever wondered why you do the stupid things that you do?
00:00:46.510 --> 00:00:58.030
I want to tell you a little story that happened about three weeks, or excuse me, three months before my great awakening that I talked about in the last episode.
00:00:58.829 --> 00:01:06.349
My wife and I were attending ministry school, California, as I mentioned, and we were back home for the summer.
00:01:06.590 --> 00:01:11.709
And we had to drive back to California for the fall session.
00:01:12.030 --> 00:01:14.750
And that's a 30-hour drive.
00:01:15.069 --> 00:01:21.950
So if you've ever been in a long car ride with your family, you know that all kinds of interesting things can happen.
00:01:22.349 --> 00:01:32.989
Well, um, I'm a planner and I strongly believe when you're traveling that you should make as few of stops as possible.
00:01:33.789 --> 00:01:42.829
Because if you made all the stops that my family would like to make, you would simply never arrive at your destination.
00:01:43.069 --> 00:01:47.549
You would just be driving forever and you would never get there.
00:01:47.869 --> 00:01:56.509
In fact, that trip that we made all those years ago, we'd still probably be driving if we made all the stops that my family would like to make.
00:01:58.030 --> 00:02:02.829
I'm being a little over the top here, but that's actually what we're talking about today.
00:02:03.069 --> 00:02:07.789
Those times in our lives when we get a little bit over the top.
00:02:08.590 --> 00:02:12.110
So my wife wanted to stop at a Starbucks.
00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:28.189
And I said, you know, if we wait like 60, 70 miles and stop at this other Starbucks further down the road, it'll time up better for when we need gas so that we won't have to stop and get gas any more times than is absolutely necessary.
00:02:29.950 --> 00:02:34.349
And she kind of like begrudgingly went along with it.
00:02:34.670 --> 00:02:47.310
However, as we passed the exit to the Starbucks in question, I quickly learned that she was not okay with passing that Starbucks.
00:02:47.549 --> 00:02:57.949
And this Starbucks became the root of an argument that was very, very, very big.
00:02:58.669 --> 00:02:59.549
Very big.
00:02:59.710 --> 00:03:04.669
So big that at one point I thought divorce attorney would have to get involved.
00:03:04.909 --> 00:03:06.590
And I'm not joking.
00:03:07.310 --> 00:03:20.109
I'm very, very thankful that my children had headphones on and were asleep in the backseat and did not have to hear their parents arguing like five-year-olds in the front seat.
00:03:21.789 --> 00:03:25.870
So eventually things calmed down a bit.
00:03:26.030 --> 00:03:29.949
I think the next Starbucks stop helped pacify that.
00:03:30.349 --> 00:03:33.629
But why do sometimes things get so big?
00:03:33.870 --> 00:03:35.389
Things that are little.
00:03:36.430 --> 00:03:43.310
If we get in our right mind, we can step back and look at it and be like, gosh, why did I get so bent out of shape about that?
00:03:43.549 --> 00:03:44.990
That was just silly.
00:03:45.310 --> 00:03:46.829
What was I thinking?
00:03:48.590 --> 00:03:50.270
That's probably happened to you.
00:03:50.509 --> 00:03:55.150
If it hasn't, well, you're fortunate because it feels like it happens to me all the time.
00:03:55.389 --> 00:04:04.430
It happens to me a lot less now because I'm much more aware of what's happening inside of myself in those moments.
00:04:05.629 --> 00:04:14.750
So when I first met Laura, one of the things that I was introduced to was uh some brain science.
00:04:15.069 --> 00:04:33.069
And it was actually this discussion that Laura had around brain science that was incredibly impactful to me because my logical brain looked at some of the things Laura did, and I thought they were a little weird, to be honest.
00:04:33.389 --> 00:04:34.829
I didn't relate.
00:04:35.069 --> 00:04:47.390
You know, learning to speak compassion to yourself, learning to love yourself, um, getting to know yourself, it just all sounded kind of strange to me.
00:04:47.870 --> 00:05:14.110
But when she started talking to me, or actually it was a seminar that I was in as a workshop, when she was speaking at that workshop and she spoke about brain science and what was going on in your brain in the moments like I had in the car uh over the Starbucks incident, when she started talking about the brain science, what was happening, it really, really made a lot of sense.
00:05:14.670 --> 00:05:25.150
And as I mentioned, I had before I met Laura, I had pursued a lot of other or several other counseling options.
00:05:25.390 --> 00:05:33.070
Uh, because that was one thing when I had got to go on to the ER that they were very adamant that I do was pursue counseling options.
00:05:33.310 --> 00:05:36.430
So I had pursued some and and nothing was really landing.
00:05:36.510 --> 00:05:39.230
It all kind of just sounded like mumbo jumbo.
00:05:39.390 --> 00:05:49.230
Now that's not a slight on any of those people, it's just where I was at, because in a different frame, perhaps they could have been very helpful to me.
00:05:49.310 --> 00:05:52.189
But in the frame I was in, it wasn't.
00:05:52.670 --> 00:06:01.230
But I recognized when I met Laura and she started talking to me from a scientific standpoint, that really resonated.
00:06:01.630 --> 00:06:08.590
And Laura being so difficult to get into, um, she did say I had to wait a while to meet with her one-on-one.
00:06:09.230 --> 00:06:11.550
But I was able to go to one of these workshops.
00:06:11.630 --> 00:06:18.670
And at that workshop, she taught me um the brain science behind what happens to me when I'm triggered.
00:06:18.990 --> 00:06:22.189
So let's start off talking about what a trigger is.
00:06:22.590 --> 00:06:28.990
So I'm gonna read from uh from above all else, and I'm just gonna read what I wrote about a trigger.
00:06:29.230 --> 00:06:46.990
So, according to the compassion method, which is the method that Laura uh devised, a trigger is an irrational response to a rational or irrational person, situation, or circumstance.
00:06:48.430 --> 00:06:58.189
It's that disorienting space of time when we're not fully present with ourselves, when we're not okay.
00:06:59.070 --> 00:07:02.990
Clear-minded, tender-hearted, or at peace.
00:07:03.470 --> 00:07:06.910
That's how the compassion method defines being okay.
00:07:07.150 --> 00:07:12.110
When you're clear-minded, tender-hearted, or at peace.
00:07:14.510 --> 00:07:22.189
That definitely described both my wife and I in that incredibly triggered moment regarding the Starbucks.
00:07:22.510 --> 00:07:28.590
And a lot of times, these triggered moments, you look back at them and you laugh, because I can totally laugh about that.
00:07:28.750 --> 00:07:31.310
Like that was so silly.
00:07:31.550 --> 00:07:35.390
But man, at the time, it's anything but silly.
00:07:35.790 --> 00:07:38.990
It is so, so high stakes.
00:07:39.710 --> 00:07:45.150
And when you can learn to start recognizing your triggers, that's one of the dead giveaways.
00:07:45.390 --> 00:07:52.510
When something feels so high stakes that if it doesn't happen, like life on earth is gonna end.
00:07:53.070 --> 00:07:57.070
And that's what that Starbucks incident was for my wife and I.
00:07:58.110 --> 00:07:59.150
So I'm gonna read on.
00:07:59.230 --> 00:08:06.910
When Laura first taught me this concept, her explanation of the brain science being a triggered reaction spoke directly to my logical mind.
00:08:07.630 --> 00:08:19.870
When we're triggered, we're operating from our primal brain, the survival-wired part of us where our fight or flight mechanism lives, centered in the amygdala.
00:08:21.150 --> 00:08:26.590
Humans develop this part of their brain first, which is why it's called the primal brain.
00:08:27.150 --> 00:08:34.189
And uh other people in the science world also call it the child brain for that reason.
00:08:34.509 --> 00:08:39.149
And it's not just because when we're there, we're acting like a child.
00:08:39.230 --> 00:08:42.590
Uh, it's also just because it was the first to be formed.
00:08:43.870 --> 00:08:51.230
And then the frontal lobe, which is up here, your primal brain's more at the base of your head, your frontal lobe is up here.
00:08:51.710 --> 00:08:55.309
Uh, this is where more complex behaviors are.
00:08:55.789 --> 00:09:01.549
So behaviors like planning and decision making, uh, and it develops much later.
00:09:01.870 --> 00:09:11.629
So, like for me, it maybe was going to develop next year, but for most, it's going to develop in their early 20s.
00:09:12.029 --> 00:09:27.149
And so when you think about it, the um, you know, when some of the frustration we have with teenagers and some of those type of things, in some cases, you're just dealing with somebody that does not have their fully developed frontal cortex.
00:09:27.309 --> 00:09:29.069
So you're thinking, why can they not get this?
00:09:29.230 --> 00:09:32.029
Why can this not, why does this not click for them?
00:09:32.509 --> 00:09:42.909
So, as uh the way God designed things with parents, you know, we're supposed to help them and be the adult brain for our children.
00:09:43.149 --> 00:09:45.309
They don't have that part of their brain.
00:09:45.549 --> 00:09:50.829
So we get to be that part of their brain for them as theirs develops.
00:09:51.149 --> 00:09:56.669
We then pull back and we no longer be that need to be that part of their brain.
00:09:56.990 --> 00:10:09.149
Which me having children right now in the range from age 15 to 29 and seeing that gamut, I wish I knew for my poor 29-year-old what I know now.
00:10:09.309 --> 00:10:10.829
I mean, I feel really bad.
00:10:10.990 --> 00:10:17.549
Uh, I feel really bad because she was the test tube dummy, you know, she she was the guinea pig, so to speak.
00:10:17.870 --> 00:10:24.750
And um, my wife and I got to try out all of our parenting hacks on her and learn what worked and what didn't work.
00:10:25.069 --> 00:10:33.870
But it has been really fun as my children age, and now that I'm more aware of this, I can learn to start pulling back.
00:10:34.110 --> 00:10:45.149
Like when they ask me questions that, you know, when a 15-year-old asks a question, I'm gonna answer it a little bit differently than when a 25-year-old answers asks that question.
00:10:45.469 --> 00:10:54.189
Because now that I know more about brain development, I know more how to answer that question and really more of what they're capable of knowing in that moment.
00:10:54.669 --> 00:10:58.909
But anyway, um, so that that part of our brain develops later.
00:10:59.870 --> 00:11:09.549
So um that fight or flight part back here, you know, we absolutely want fight or flight to kick in if a lion is really chasing us.
00:11:09.709 --> 00:11:10.829
That's rational.
00:11:11.629 --> 00:11:18.269
But when it's firing during an argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes, that's irrational.
00:11:20.189 --> 00:11:28.350
The bigger your triggered reaction, the deeper you are in that primal mode, the more you're operating from this part of your brain.
00:11:28.509 --> 00:11:37.870
Or another way to look at it, the younger you are, because you're operating more and more out of that child brain or that primal brain.
00:11:38.189 --> 00:11:43.870
So in that car ride, my wife and I were very, very stuck back here.
00:11:45.230 --> 00:11:55.549
The fact that what we were doing was so illogical and so silly and trivial, which up here knows we had no access to that.
00:11:55.789 --> 00:11:56.990
We were stuck.
00:11:57.230 --> 00:11:58.669
We were five-year-olds.
00:11:58.829 --> 00:12:04.269
It's like our primal brain, or our our it was like our adult brain, our frontal lobe didn't even exist.
00:12:05.389 --> 00:12:05.709
Okay.
00:12:06.829 --> 00:12:19.469
So the more we're stuck in that primal brain, the younger we are, the littler we feel, and kind of like the younger developmentally, you know, we're trapped in that spot.
00:12:21.469 --> 00:12:27.870
And the further removed we are from who we were truly created to be, our true self.
00:12:28.269 --> 00:12:38.669
So shortly after learning all of this, like literally, it felt like it was just a few days after that seminar that I was at, where Laura taught this.
00:12:38.909 --> 00:12:48.350
I found myself in the kitchen with my uh daughter who was at the time probably 18 or 19, I think 18.
00:12:49.069 --> 00:12:55.629
And um this particular daughter, of course, I have several daughters that are this way.
00:12:55.789 --> 00:12:59.870
But anyway, when they go through the kitchen, it's kind of like a tornado just went through.
00:13:00.029 --> 00:13:07.230
So we were having a conversation about the tornado and the results of the tornado, the aftermath of the tornado that went through the kitchen.
00:13:07.469 --> 00:13:10.669
So we're having this argument about picking up after herself.
00:13:11.230 --> 00:13:16.429
And yes, it's good that people pick up after themselves.
00:13:16.589 --> 00:13:28.189
However, this conversation, um, this argument, so to speak, kind of devolved into kind of a bickering match back and forth.
00:13:28.429 --> 00:13:30.429
And all of a sudden it hit me.
00:13:31.230 --> 00:13:41.870
There was no longer a 40-some-year-old adult and a uh teenage daughter, you know, in the kitchen arguing with themselves.
00:13:42.029 --> 00:13:45.149
It was it was two four-year-olds bickering.
00:13:46.669 --> 00:13:54.350
And uh what I said in the book, um, it was convicting and revelatory in equal measure.
00:13:54.990 --> 00:13:59.949
So that argument was both convicting and revelatory in equal measure.
00:14:01.549 --> 00:14:08.829
So I write on, I said, Have you ever thought to yourself after doing something really stupid, how could I have done such a thing?
00:14:09.149 --> 00:14:10.829
I know better than that.
00:14:11.309 --> 00:14:12.909
That's likely true.
00:14:13.230 --> 00:14:15.069
You do know better than that.
00:14:15.389 --> 00:14:19.789
But when you're stuck in your primal brain, you're hijacked.
00:14:19.949 --> 00:14:29.789
You're stuck in that survival-wired part of your brain, you're hijacked, and your access to your adult, sophisticated brain gets cut off.
00:14:32.029 --> 00:14:36.429
I wrote, you may be the utmost authority on emotional health.
00:14:37.230 --> 00:14:46.350
But if your amygdala has taken the wheel, the primal brain, if it's taken the wheel, that wisdom is locked away, useless in the moment.
00:14:47.149 --> 00:14:55.789
This explains why some of the most brilliant people still make tremendously poor choices and messes of their lives.
00:14:57.949 --> 00:15:07.789
So learning that, and and I hope you hear me on this, that learning that is not an excuse for your trigger behaviors.
00:15:07.949 --> 00:15:13.309
It is not an excuse for when you do something stupid.
00:15:13.709 --> 00:15:17.389
But what that understanding brings you is awareness.
00:15:17.789 --> 00:15:26.029
Because I think for a lot of us, myself especially, I saw my trigger behaviors as who I was.
00:15:27.069 --> 00:15:30.829
I'll give you another example from a workshop with Laura.
00:15:31.629 --> 00:15:34.669
And this was the first workshop I took my wife to.
00:15:34.829 --> 00:15:38.029
I shared with her that these workshops were really helpful.
00:15:38.429 --> 00:15:43.069
And she was all on board to help me in whatever way uh she could.
00:15:43.230 --> 00:15:47.549
So she came along with me more as moral support than anything.
00:15:47.870 --> 00:15:53.389
So she comes to the workshop, and I had been to, I think this was probably my third workshop.
00:15:53.709 --> 00:16:05.230
And I, Laura, if you've ever been in any type of a one-on-one session or a group session with Laura, she is going to ask for uh audience participation.
00:16:05.469 --> 00:16:12.029
So she was looking for examples, and uh I agreed to be her uh example for the day.
00:16:12.189 --> 00:16:18.429
So um she was look she was challenging us to identify times where we had uh triggered behavior.
00:16:18.509 --> 00:16:23.549
And I shared a time with the family where I was really grumpy, and I said these words.
00:16:23.789 --> 00:16:27.309
I said, I am just a grumpy person.
00:16:27.469 --> 00:16:30.750
And then I went, I was gonna go on and share the example.
00:16:30.990 --> 00:16:32.669
And she stopped me.
00:16:33.149 --> 00:16:35.149
She didn't let me go any further.
00:16:35.469 --> 00:16:42.350
She stopped me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, You are not a grumpy person.
00:16:43.309 --> 00:16:45.549
That is not who you are.
00:16:47.149 --> 00:16:48.189
You're just hurting.
00:16:50.750 --> 00:17:01.230
And in your pain, you're stuck in that primal part of your brain, and it comes across as being a grumpy, irritable person.
00:17:05.069 --> 00:17:11.870
And I felt like number one, I could just feel the compassion come over me.
00:17:12.029 --> 00:17:17.390
I was just overwhelmed with it, like, oh my god, I thought this is who I was.
00:17:18.110 --> 00:17:20.190
But maybe it's not who I was.
00:17:20.509 --> 00:17:22.269
Maybe it's not who I am.
00:17:23.069 --> 00:17:25.390
Maybe it is just a reaction.
00:17:27.230 --> 00:17:34.670
And I looked at my wife, and she actually kind of had her head down.
00:17:35.150 --> 00:17:37.390
She was being convicted as well.
00:17:37.790 --> 00:17:46.269
Because you see, um, in my grumpy and irritability, my family playfully had developed some names for me.
00:17:46.830 --> 00:17:49.630
And one of them was the fun sucker.
00:17:50.509 --> 00:17:57.150
Um, because when I would walk into a room or get home from work, I would suck all the fun out of the room.
00:17:57.390 --> 00:18:01.230
So they would tell me things like, Dad, put away your straw.
00:18:01.790 --> 00:18:05.070
Because I was just sucking the fun right out of the room.
00:18:05.390 --> 00:18:17.070
And when I was looking at her, I could tell she was getting convicted too of like, oh, I kind of reinforced that, those feelings that he potentially had of that I am a grumpy person.
00:18:17.390 --> 00:18:29.150
But we were all learning, we were all growing, and it was incredibly impactful to think of the fact that no, I'm not a grumpy person.
00:18:29.390 --> 00:18:30.910
That's not who I am.
00:18:31.550 --> 00:18:34.590
That's just where I go to in my triggered reactions.
00:18:34.990 --> 00:18:39.310
So the whole point of this is not to make excuses for what we do.
00:18:39.550 --> 00:18:49.470
One of the things Laura says a lot, and that's really always resonated with me, she says, what you do matters, but who you are matters more.
00:18:49.710 --> 00:18:51.390
So what we do matters.
00:18:51.710 --> 00:19:04.110
If we did something, if we made a mess and we need to apologize or we need to clean up our mess, none of what we're talking about excuses any of that.
00:19:04.910 --> 00:19:09.550
And totally do not hear that from me, because that is not what we're talking about.
00:19:09.790 --> 00:19:12.990
We're not talking about not owning your mistakes.
00:19:13.710 --> 00:19:26.110
But if you do the work of comforting your heart, the work we're going to be talking about in the coming episodes, and then I talk about it above all else, and that Laura's dedicated her life to teaching.
00:19:26.430 --> 00:19:33.070
If you do that work, your request for forgiveness will be real.
00:19:34.029 --> 00:19:35.310
They'll be genuine.
00:19:35.470 --> 00:19:38.750
You won't just be doing it because it's the right thing to do.
00:19:39.310 --> 00:19:50.350
You'll be doing it for the right reasons because you recognize you made a mess, that your triggered self made a mess, and that's not who you are.
00:19:51.470 --> 00:19:54.190
And you'll be able to own it without shame.
00:19:54.750 --> 00:19:59.310
Just be like, hey, I made a mistake, but I'm not a mistake.
00:19:59.790 --> 00:20:14.590
In the past, sometimes my forgiveness was 100% coming from my shame or my request for forgiveness, because I was almost kind of like begging the other person in a way to not look at me and to not reinforce my shame.
00:20:14.910 --> 00:20:20.350
That if I say I'm sorry, you know, I can get like some penance for my shame.
00:20:20.590 --> 00:20:31.390
Um, so really my forgiveness I found was sometimes more about me than about truly, genuinely grieving over the hurt that I caused another.
00:20:31.950 --> 00:20:36.910
Now, when I have to ask for forgiveness, it's from a much clearer space.
00:20:37.070 --> 00:20:41.790
It's from a place of being okay, clear-minded, tender heart, and at peace.
00:20:42.029 --> 00:21:00.670
Because I still make mistakes, I still have triggers, but if there's anything that I've grown in throughout this compassion method process and through my above all else journey of learning to guard and steward my heart, as is talked about in Proverbs 423.
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If there's anything that I have learned, it is, or anything that I've really grown in, it's an awareness of when I'm triggered.
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So, and that helps me tremendously because knowledge is power.
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And this is a case where knowing that can help me start to, okay, I'm not going to just keep feeding this trigger.
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I'm going to start working the process that I learned throughout the compassion method to take care of the trigger.
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As I work through the compassion method that Laura developed and teaches, I broke it down into three simple steps to help me kind of come to help me make sense of it.
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The first one is awareness.
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Learning to become aware when you're in your trigger.
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Learning to become aware when your primal brain has taken over and you no longer have access.
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The second one is uh comfort, learning how to bring comfort to your triggered self.
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Because if you think about it, your triggered self is in that fight or flight, frantic state.
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But if you can bring comfort to it, you can come back to yourself.
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Engage your frontal lobe.
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You can come back to yourself.
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So think about a drowning man.
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And one of the big rules they say if a person's drowning is that you can't.
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Just swim up to them to try to help them because they'll drown you.
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You could be an expert swimmer, and in their franticness, they will drag you right down with them.
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They have to be calm.
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And once they can get calm, if a person that's struggling and drowning can get calm, even if they don't know how to swim, they can find that their body actually floats, that keeping your head above the water is work, but not nearly as much work as when we're stuck in that frantic state.
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And that is exactly the situation with us when we're in our triggered space.
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If we can bring calm, if we can calm down, if we can come back to ourselves, we'll start to connect with that frontal lobe and we'll start to recognize that hey, this argument we just had isn't really about Starbucks.
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It's not really even about the dishes not being done.
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It's about something deeper inside my heart that those things are pressing on.
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And I want to go after the deeper.
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Because at the core, that's learning to steward your heart.
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That's guarding your heart.
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It's about befriending your depths and going deep and seeing what's really under the hood.
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And you're going to learn that there's much more to your story.
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You're not just a grumpy or irritable person.
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You're not someone who's just over the top.
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You're not too much.
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You're not all these things that your triggered behavior presents.
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There's a reason why that behavior is presenting.
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There's something more going on.
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That second step is learning to provide comfort.
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And then the third step that we'll talk about more in the next episode is discovery.
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Learning to discover who you truly are.
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Your triggered self is not who you are.
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They're just behaviors.
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They're just what happens when your pain is running the show.
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Your true self, that's who you are.
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And that's what we'll talk about in the next episode.
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So a real practical tip on just how to start to begin, and I talk some about some of these in the book, but here's just a few.
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Here's a few things for me that I've learned to recognize when I've fallen into trigger behavior.
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Number one thing I've noticed is that my whole body kind of heats up.
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And I'll even notice some uh sweat starting to trickle down my back.
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And um, I first noticed this, you know, as I was learning all of this, I had a kind of a tense phone call and I got off the phone call and I just kind of recognized that, you know, my back is wet.
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What's going on?
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Like, and I was like, oh, okay.
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I I went into my primal brain.
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I went into fight or flight on that call, and that's one of my indicators.
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Another big one for me is when I can't see any hope in a situation, when I get stuck in hopelessness.
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That is a huge dead giveaway for me that I am uh in my triggered brain.
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That's a big one for me.
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Next week, we're going to talk about the part of you that was never broken, your true self.
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The trigger is just the door.
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The full map, every chapter, every turning point is in above all else.
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The link and to learn more is in the description.
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Until then, thank you.
