Last week I experienced a very intense trigger brought on by an online game me and my husband started to play. In case you were wondering, the game in question is World of Warcraft Classic.
That evening began rather pleasantly. We sat up the game, chose our characters, waited in queue and when it was our turn, started our journey from level 1 to level 60.
All well and good. At first we were playing solo and then my husband started playing with some friends. I continued on solo as I was in a different area. I had a lot of fun and was about 3 levels ahead of my husband.
Next thing I knew my husband had caught up to me in record speed. That’s when the trigger hit me out of the blue. I suddenly felt worthless, like a failure, as if no matter what I tried, I always failed. Whoa! Where did that came from? I was literally sitting there bawling my eyes out.
The funny thing is that this is not a game of competition, there are no winners or losers. So, feeling the way I did especially to such an extreme made no sense at all. I was not jealous of my husband for being better than me. He had decades of experience that I did not have, so no wonder. Yet, I felt so low and worthless and just like a complete failure.
That night, I woke up around 5 in the morning, feeling so sad and hurting so much, my heart was aching. I got up, as sleep was not an option anymore and as soon as I sat down on the couch, I started to cry. Tears just kept on pouring out of me for a good two hours straight.
I knew that what I was experiencing was some major emotional release. I also knew, that what had happened the day before, was a trigger. Neither my husband nor that game was the problem. It was just a trigger. So, I began to look within myself to try and find the actual root cause of the issue. Where have I felt this low and insignificant before? I came across a couple incidences in my childhood and teenage years, where I had felt the same way. It was nothing major, nothing that would classify as trauma in any way, but it made me feel pretty worthless.
The more I brought those incidences back into my conscious mind, the more came up. And at the same time, the easier it became to understand what had happened. I had felt that I was not good enough, that no matter how hard I tried, I would always fail. I used to feel like that every now and then as a child/teenager.
And I guess right now was the time for these emotions to come to the surface and be released. Triggers can be very scary and nerve wrecking. We try to understand why we suddenly feel the way we feel, but are too afraid to lean into the triggers to learn what they want to show us.
I felt so bad for my husband as he did not know how to make sense of my emotional outbursts or how to help me. Once I explained to him what had happened and talked a bit about the memories that came up, he began to understand. He understood that this was something I had to go through by myself.
And for the past couple of days we played side by side with lots of fun and no tears. 🙂
An emotional trigger is not the enemy, rather it is a guiding light towards what requires attention and healing within ourselves.
I am honestly so glad that this trigger came up, as it allowed me to release some of my self-sabotaging behavioral patterns. Feeling not worthy or not good enough was holding me back from truly embracing my dreams and my purpose…… until now!
Sandra
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