Triggers

We all experience them with either a lot of awareness or none at all.   Those feelings that take our breath away or simply keep us in a state of worry.    Sometimes you may not know what the root of it is, and other times it is staring back at you.  Yesterday was one of those days.

There are two major triggers in my life – financial fear and cutting the mother cord with Bailey.  Let’s go with the financial fear aspect first.    Daisy, one of our beloved Basset hounds was scheduled to have surgery to remove a large cyst.  While we are comfortable in the area of money, I have old tapes running in my head that we simply don’t have enough and the cost will be too much.  It is the kind of fear that used to paralyze me.  Today, I can work with those feelings because I have the awareness that this is what is making me anxious.   Plus, mixing it with an emotional component – Daisy’s surgery – you have a recipe for lots of feelings.  Fortunately, I can rein those feelings in and not allow myself to get caught up in a frenzy that would have ruined my attitude of gratitude.

Bailey had his work party yesterday.  Sounds simple.  And it would be if my triggers weren’t involved.   Dropping him off at a public venue causes me to have tremendous fear.  It sounds off alarms that someone might take advantage of him or that he might not be able to communicate his needs.  Some annoyance rises up when he tells me, “Mom, I know what I am doing.”   I believe he does, but there is that lingering protection because of his special needs that make it harder to release him.   I conveniently forget that the people he is with know him well and love him, so he will be fine.

So, I don’t enjoy my triggers, but I accept that they are apart of my makeup.   They don’t define me anymore nor do they take up as much space as they used to.   It has been a long process walking through both.  I own them, welcome them in, but am able to ask them to leave when their purpose is no longer needed.  Sometimes those triggers are good reminders on how far I have come in the process of practicing being human.