Show Notes
[00:00:00] Charna Cassell: Welcome back to Laid Open Podcast.
[00:00:04] Charna Cassell: During the hiatus, I finally finished my highly anticipated course, Pathways to Peace, Mindful Practices for Transformative and Vibrant Living. Even as I've been working on creating this course, I've used these exact tools to guide myself through situations that reactivated my childhood PTSD. I will teach you these skills along with how to understand your nervous system and reactions.
[00:00:30] Charna Cassell: How to think more clearly and gain perspective. How to translate the ways your body communicates through physical sensations. How to identify emotions, where they come from, and what they are telling you. How to discover why you react in ways that produce shame and learn tools to manage these reactions.
[00:00:48] Charna Cassell: How to reduce your anxiety and destructive impulses, and how to diminish self-hatred when you are not your best self. The early bird offer starts July 1st, so mark your calendar because it will only be offered for a limited time. If you wanna learn more before then, and I hope you do, you can go to my courses page, which is courses dot charna cael, that's C-A-S-S-E-L l.com for more information.
[00:01:18] Charna Cassell: and today's guest is Susan Campbell. Susan's an author, a teacher, a trainer, a psychologist, and a relationship coach. Welcome Susan.
[00:01:29] music: Learn how to live embodied If it's about to unwind Uncover new tools and start healing Leave trauma and tension behind Isn't it great laid open Let all your desires come true How can you live laid open Imagine yourself brand new. Imagine yourself brand new.
[00:02:14] Susan Campbell: Thank you, Charna.
[00:02:16] Charna Cassell: So I was saying a minute ago that I'm really excited to have you on. I, um you have 45 years of experience in this field.
[00:02:26] Charna Cassell: So I feel like I'm getting to sit with a master and I feel like we could talk for hours and that today what I'm really hoping to dive into is the focus of your latest book and talking about, your, your life's work and what you've discovered around the essentials of being with people, helping them learn how to slow down enough to see.
[00:02:55] Charna Cassell: their trigger style and and how that can impact their own relationship to themselves, but also to all the people in their lives. Yeah, I'm just, I'm really like, yeah, I'm excited. I also wanted to say, so I know you taught at UMass. I went to Hampshire College and I
[00:03:12] Susan Campbell: taught there too a little bit.
[00:03:13] Charna Cassell: Yeah. And so I took probably you, you may have even taught there when it was first founded.
[00:03:18] Susan Campbell: Yeah. I was part of the founding team.
[00:03:21] Charna Cassell: Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, I got to take some classes at UMass as well. Yeah, just to give people perspective, that was in, that was what, 67, that was in the seventies.
[00:03:32] Susan Campbell: Yeah. The late sixties, early seventies. Yeah.
[00:03:35] Charna Cassell: It's, what's always tricky when you have someone who has so much life experience and hands on experience is there's a lot to cover, you've boiled it down. And the name of your recent book from Triggered to Tranquil, How Self Compassion and Mindful Presence Can Transform Relationship Conflicts and Heal Childhood Wounds.
[00:03:59] Susan Campbell: Yep. That's my mission right now. And that actually is the focus that's grown out of all these disparate experiences, working with organizations, teaching in a college, training managers, and doing a lot of one on one and couples coaching over the years. It seems to All boiled down to humans fear emotional pain, and that's not a bad thing, but we can expand our capacity for discomfort, because in this time, in this world, we need to expand our capacity to experience what's really going on, and that's a lot, a a lot of stressors.
[00:04:43] Susan Campbell: When emotional pain comes up. It's an opportunity to look into what needs healing. So that's we're afraid of emotional pain, i. e. getting triggered is one symptom of that, but the emotional pain can lead us to where the healing is needed.
[00:05:01] Charna Cassell: Absolutely. And you, you speak about moving from a security and control mindset to a learning and discovery mindset.
[00:05:13] Charna Cassell: And if you could speak to how that can shift your reality and your relationships, that would be great.
[00:05:19] Susan Campbell: Good. One of my little buzz phrases too is that our culture is addicted to control. And there's a paradigm of control. We see it in management. We see it in parenting. But what that means is, We're trying to manage the outcome of our communications to fall within a comfort zone, call it within our own comfort zone, just that tendency to want to manage and control, but that's not the way the world really is.
[00:05:56] Susan Campbell: I think, so the learning discovery or what I now call relating, the relating mindset, controlling versus relating. It's my new terminology. It's more like a surfer, surfing an ever changing reality, the ever changing now, and That's that paradigm is just emerging, and it's what I see as the new human, like we have to, we have to really develop intentionally develop new human capacities to be able to manage constant change and people who are different from ourselves.
[00:06:32] Susan Campbell: Those are the. Those are the big world stressors right now.
[00:06:36] Charna Cassell: What's interesting, it's, I'm curious, given how long you've been doing this work, and this is, there's a point in time that we're existing in right now where there is certain change. I mean, There's so much devastation um, on so many levels, whether it's climate, whether it's uh, social justice related.
[00:06:57] Charna Cassell: Power dynamics and systems that place that really need to grumble before they can reform. And then that works on an, it's like what works on a systemic level works on an individual level. And I've seen so much, I've experienced personally with clients, like so much success on an individual level.
[00:07:16] Charna Cassell: And then I get overwhelmed when I think of how can we apply this on a systems level. And I think what you're saying is, is absolutely. Essential.
[00:07:28] Susan Campbell: Yes. And let me make a link between the individual and the systems level to the extent that a healthy system, one of the definitions of a healthy system based on systems theory is good communication between all subparts so in a human organism, a lot of our, we call 'em subparts or our parts Yes. Are repressed. Because of early childhood trauma, they're fragmented off, and we don't have access to the energy of our full being. And so there's a lot of rejected parts, let's just say, in a human, and that's parallel to society.
[00:08:09] Susan Campbell: There are a lot of rejected parts, or we're canceling the people who don't think like us, or we just are uncomfortable with differences. Plus, there's religious wars, territorial wars, and then, of course, trying to figure out what to do with the climate. That's, a lot of us are in denial about that, too.
[00:08:30] Susan Campbell: So these are all kind of pushed away, rejected, or actually repressed parts. So, The work of, Looking into your trigger reactions that's, that's, that's like a knee jerk reaction, stop controlling me or you're abandoning me. So just to bring a little humanness into the picture here, those kinds of examples the work there is beginning to get to know those rejected parts that little inner wounded child who's four years old and learned to stop asking for what she wanted because it was so frustrating and painful to not get it.
[00:09:09] Susan Campbell: And so there's a lot of those shutdowns in humans, but as we look into our trigger reactions and really in a slow, careful way, listen to what's going on in our bodies, what memories are ready to come up and kind of embrace those rejected parts through emotional relating in the here and now, often with a guide, like a coach or therapist, like you and me.
[00:09:39] Susan Campbell: Have a safe enough container so that we can feel feelings that we never felt safe enough to feel at the time, partly because it's a safe container now, but also just because you're an adult now and you do have more capacity to feel pain. So that's what I kind of want to guide people into.
[00:09:58] Susan Campbell: And so as you go through the pain of feeling the unfamiliar, the rejected, the hurting. You're making yourself more whole, you're getting to know all your parts, we could say, and becoming more one. So that whole making process is the same thing that once we learn to do that with ourselves and with our intimate others, like couple, family, so forth, we've got a template now for at least how to begin the problem solving, the collective.
[00:10:33] Susan Campbell: Conversations that we need to have in the world and how to create subsystems, ecologies or architectures, different people use different words for true communal healing. So I think the individual work. Really gives us the muscle and the sort of deep understanding of what life's trying to do here and life's trying to do whole making
[00:11:00] Charna Cassell: well and it's, you know, it's I feel like the more people and this is why this actual this subject is a subject that I've I'm creating a course on because I also I'm right in alignment with you where I feel like the more people who have access to these tools and can develop the capacity to accept all parts of ourself you then have so much more compassion for people outside of you and people who are different than you and the range of right we don't vilify it's like um we become less black and white And it's all
[00:11:34] Susan Campbell: true and less
[00:11:35] Charna Cassell: polarized, right?
[00:11:37] Charna Cassell: And then the part where I get, you know, it's like that I sit with this question of, you know, in terms of healing the collective body, it's like, cause you know, if you can accept all these different parts inside of yourself, right? You're, and you see the disowned parts you're less likely to get triggered.
[00:11:59] Charna Cassell: And so dysregulated or, you know, or overwhelmed that you lash out externally. So then if you think of that on a collective scale, it's like how many of us have to individually do that internal healing so that we become a mass that can affect global or collective change. the people in power, the ones who need to, unless we topple the power.
[00:12:25] Susan Campbell: The mass, the critical mass theory, and there is something to that. And they often say, you know, 30 percent of the population, I don't, I don't know if there's any real research on this, but
[00:12:36] Charna Cassell: yeah.
[00:12:37] Susan Campbell: if 30 percent of us reach this other level of being more integrated as humans and being able to really not just tolerate, but actually be interested in differences, for example, because it's, it's all about increasing our capacity for emotional pain and dissonance between ourselves and others, because that's painful, but increasing our capacity.
[00:13:05] Susan Campbell: So then we're holding it. In a much bigger frame. We're in a we, a we've got a difference. We've got a problem. And the problem is our difference, not you're the problem,
[00:13:15] Charna Cassell: right?
[00:13:16] Susan Campbell: And all, all of those technologies are available now for individuals and small groups, translating them into larger systems, the whole world and, and the politics of relationships between parties or countries.
[00:13:32] Susan Campbell: Well, um, We've got a ways to go, but there are a lot of visionaries working at this level now.
[00:13:39] Charna Cassell: Well, I'm going to bring it back. I know it's hard. It's, I was excited to, and I would love to maybe offline have a, a bigger conversation about how we can relate this globally. And then let's just come back down to the individual and the couples because it's, your work is so necessary.
[00:13:56] Charna Cassell: And one of the things that we just started to touch on is You emphasize in your book, and it's the beginning point of being able to accept like, getting triggered is a universal experience.
[00:14:09] Susan Campbell: Yeah.
[00:14:10] Charna Cassell: And if you can't accept that or see that about yourself, it makes it really hard to change it.
[00:14:14] Susan Campbell: Yeah, there's too much shame in our culture about not having All together, you know, where I don't react so we need a critical mass of us who admit that we do get triggered sometimes, especially by the people we love and depend on the most.
[00:14:32] Susan Campbell: And that acceptance is still that, that's what a lot of people have the hardest time with actually.
[00:14:38] Charna Cassell: And this is one of your, I think you outline like five Steps. Yeah. For, For shifting and understanding how to move through a trigger. And so this is the first step.
[00:14:51] Susan Campbell: First step is acceptance. Yeah. acceptance is simply knowing though that there's something in your nervous system that's actually wired. To scan for danger, and there was real danger to your healthy development at times, or lack, some kind of a lack in getting your early needs met, like the need for co regulation, somebody to run to when you're scared, who will hug you and reassure you and show you how to calm your nervous system down.
[00:15:25] Susan Campbell: We all have that. reactive part of our brains that's looking for danger seeking reassurance and coming back to equilibrium. But almost all of us also have many situations in our childhood where our parents just didn't realize what we needed. And so we're all stuck with a certain amount of what we call developmental trauma.
[00:15:52] Susan Campbell: You might not have been beaten, or you might not have lived in a war zone, but certain needs, just like I was mentioning earlier, just the need for loving attention or co regulation wasn't met enough, and what's enough for different people is different, but it leaves you with this Tendency to be afraid that's going to happen again in your adult relationship and just understanding the psychology of that and how it's built into being human that you're going to get triggered because something in your present, especially if you're in an intimate relationship, there's going to be something that's going to.
[00:16:32] Susan Campbell: Your partner is going to do, that's going to be frustrating and that's going to bring back like flashbacks or almost like repressed memories, but the reactions are there of not getting that same need met when you were four or three or when it really was more of a survival issue. Understanding the, the brain science and the psychology can help with acceptance.
[00:16:55] Susan Campbell: And then I'll go to the next, the next. Of the five steps of trigger work. So the next one is, so now you get I accept it. So now I get curious about this thing called getting triggered and I want to have more mastery over it and more awareness about when it's happening. And we really can learn to do that.
[00:17:19] Susan Campbell: So we learn, what's your unique trigger signature? When you get triggered, you're going to have some kind of bodily reaction, you're going to have some kind of feeling, like bodily reaction of feeling like you got punched in the gut or something, and a feeling of like anger, or wanting to leave the room and get the heck out of there.
[00:17:41] Susan Campbell: Those are typical things that tell you're triggered. So people learn to reflect on, okay, the last time I was triggered. That was my body sensation, that was my feeling, and we also have stories that come up in our minds like that person doesn't like me anymore, or they don't like me as much as I like them.
[00:18:03] Susan Campbell: And so those stories are just something to learn to watch for. So if I have any of those reactions, body sensation, that feeling, or that story, time to slow down, time to check in with myself. I must be triggered. So you can learn what your unique trigger signature is. And you can talk to your partner about it.
[00:18:30] Susan Campbell: If you have a partner or friend, or I like to have people find a practice partner to do this, these practices with, because this book is really a series of practices to grow into that next level of human. So then. The next stage.
[00:18:49] Charna Cassell: So before we go there, I would like to go a little deeper into this.
[00:18:52] Charna Cassell: Yeah, it's really important. And you also just you just said the magic word, which is practice. Yeah. And I think I love the idea of having a practice partner because it's a more neutral being than your partner, right? And often for instance, a little off topic, I'll give a client masturbation homework and they're working on a certain thing that they then can bring into their relationship.
[00:19:19] Charna Cassell: It's but really you want to practice a certain amount before you try to start practicing with your partner because there's all sorts of emotions and all things that get so, so much more complex when it's with your most tender relationship. And so it's great when you can't practice some of this stuff.
[00:19:34] Charna Cassell: Some you can practice on your own, but it is really useful to have a practice partner that is lower stakes. Yes. And One of the things that I think is useful and interesting that you were talking about in your book is how your Trigner signature can be connected to your attachment style.
[00:19:53] Susan Campbell: Absolutely. It's just a short, short version of that is if you feel like running out of the room or kind of wishing the other person would would shut up. You're probably an avoidant attachment style, and if you want to run after the partner, what did you mean by that? You know, We got to keep talking. You're probably what they call either
[00:20:15] Susan Campbell: preoccupied slash anxious attachment. Those are just terms, but they do often help couples particularly Accept that, wow, you're wired differently than me, you're walking away because you're overwhelmed, not because you're abandoning me. And that's really hard for the more preoccupied person can tolerate a lot more uh, excitation and, and they want.
[00:20:43] Susan Campbell: verbal connection when they're triggered. That's reassuring, but for the more avoidant, it simply means you, your nervous system is actually a bit more sensitive. And you look like an insensitive person, but you're actually a bit more sensitive to the potential overwhelm of staying in contact when it doesn't, when it doesn't feel safe for you.
[00:21:05] Susan Campbell: So this idea about attachment styles that helps partners have empathy for one another.
[00:21:10] Charna Cassell: That example. It was just illustrated in a session I was doing with a couple um, and I use martial arts based practices and so I was doing something where I was walking towards one of the people and just for, for her husband to start to see what, Her reaction wasn't me pointing out like, look, I'm a neutral person that hasn't, you know, harmed her in a variety of ways.
[00:21:37] Charna Cassell: And there's no history here. And look at how her nervous system is responding, right? This is not personal. So it's hard to depersonalize it. It's just seeing like two psychobiologies interacting and what automatically occurs.
[00:21:51] Susan Campbell: that's great intervention. Yeah.
[00:21:53] Charna Cassell: Yeah. I love, I love the physical, I love physical practices that help people depersonalize what's occurring and and then they can have more compassion because it's not personal.
[00:22:03] Charna Cassell: The other thing that I thought was, that's really important because I, people who are more avoidant can often, sometimes there can even be a superior attitude of like, well, I don't get triggered. all, It's all her fault. It's all his fault. Yeah. And so like blaming the other person or feeling like well, you know, I wouldn't get triggered if you don't get triggered.
[00:22:21] Charna Cassell: , but then just recognizing the beginning judgements as even a sign of trigger. Right.
[00:22:29] Susan Campbell: Exactly.
[00:22:29] Susan Campbell: Exactly. There's a whole section, you know, just to avoid. Personality styles in my book because it's a little harder for those of us who are avoidant to see our reactivity and judgmental thoughts are one, one of those reactive stories that's part of your trigger signature, perhaps.
[00:22:51] Susan Campbell: Or a superior attitude, and how that shows up in some kind of mental story about yourself versus the other that means I'm triggered, even though I'm not even aware of anything going on in my nervous system. I feel, I feel, I feel calm.
[00:23:06] Charna Cassell: Yes, Yes. Well, And that piece is so important because, you know, when someone's like more numb or they can't, they, you know, they're just like I'm able to stay in my, my window of capacity to be with sensation.
[00:23:16] Charna Cassell: Like I can, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's. It's that person over there. It's harder to get in touch with. It's less externalized and visible, right? Not visibly escalated. So it's, I just thought that was a really important part of your book.
[00:23:32] Susan Campbell: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:23:34] Susan Campbell: And I try to encourage the more avoidant type to be curious and be interested, because a lot of them are very mentally smart.
[00:23:45] Susan Campbell: That's been the main defense. So, I mean, Isn't this interesting, how somewhere down there, if we follow that feeling of wanting to run out of the room, whoa, if I stay with, and see, that's the, the trigger work that, you know, I try to help people learn to do and do it with them. It's just. Your partner said something, you had a judgment or urge to leave, stay with the feelings, stay with the sensation and so forth.
[00:24:18] Susan Campbell: And after a while, memories might emerge. And then this person's like, well, that little thing where I, I dropped the pizza that the family had bought for the group. And I was like shamed for that. that little tiny thing, that was no trauma. No, they don't even have to be traumas to create these trigger reactions.
[00:24:47] Susan Campbell: They can be just unfortunate incidents where you felt like you weren't good enough or that sort of thing.
[00:24:55] Charna Cassell: And that also, that's, it's really important because so often if you're, if you're working with a couple and one person has had, you know, they've been sexually assaulted or they've had. Intense developmental trauma.
[00:25:10] Charna Cassell: The other person will often look to them and go like they're the ones who need to do the work.
[00:25:15] Susan Campbell: There's
[00:25:15] Charna Cassell: not something for me to do.
[00:25:17] Susan Campbell: Yes, I wouldn't ever get triggered if my partner wasn't unhappy with me or my partner got triggered. And so what? That's actually true for a lot of partners, but what you still got the trigger now, and the trigger is actually a gift to know yourself more deeply and your part, you had to have a partner.
[00:25:39] Susan Campbell: Kind of an over, over expressive partner, at least over expressive in your world, to, to trigger you. If you were to bed with another overly reasonable type like you wouldn't be able to know yourself as deep. That's right. So you must be on a growth path, you know, sometimes. Right.
[00:25:56] Charna Cassell: You must be on a
[00:25:57] Susan Campbell: growth path or you wouldn't have picked this, you know
[00:25:59] Charna Cassell: You're lighting each other up in just the perfect way, like you, your soul picked this person to evolve with, right?
[00:26:06] Susan Campbell: Yes, and not everybody is on a growth path, and I don't assume that they are, but, they're just operating at a less sensitive level of their humanity. But an awful lot of us are, and of course, anybody who'd be listening to your podcast is on the, on the growth path I'll, I'll assume.
[00:26:27] Charna Cassell: Yes, I think that's hopefully a good assumption. If they're making it this far, and they're paying attention, then yeah. Great. And so you were gonna say, so the next.
[00:26:38] Susan Campbell: So, Yeah, so you've got acceptance and knowing your trigger signature. And now. Once you know your trigger signature, learning to pause to regulate your nervous system when you notice any one of those early warning signs that you found in your trigger signature.
[00:26:56] Susan Campbell: So being able to go, oh, there's that judgmental thought. Oh, and there's actually a kind of a tight feeling about that. Let me pause. Let me feel into that some more. And you can actually do a little bit of the inner trigger work just through that pausing and knowing there's a trigger there somewhere, but you're not trying to get into it yet.
[00:27:21] Susan Campbell: You're just, let me calm my nervous system because I need to be well resourced. If I'm going to dig into what this is all about for me, and so breathing techniques, grounding techniques, like just feeling the chair holding you feeling your feet on the ground, or for some people, there'll be other kinds of tools that will work better for you, like just walking a certain path around your yard can be calming.
[00:27:52] Susan Campbell: Turning on music. So different people have different ways to calm their nervous system. But the breath is always available. So I like to encourage that. Try that and see if that works. And I have a number of different breath work practices in the, in the book.
[00:28:07] Charna Cassell: Yeah, such a such an essential and direct way to shift our state.
[00:28:12] Susan Campbell: Yes, it's a gift nature gives us because nature really gives us all the tools we need for our healing.
[00:28:19] Charna Cassell: It's pretty profound.
[00:28:20] Susan Campbell: Yeah.
[00:28:21] Charna Cassell: That piece I, I want to emphasize for listeners, there's pauses that we need to take when we're in, we're relating, we may need to take a pause and and you even talk about a pause agreement, right?
[00:28:34] Charna Cassell: So in advance, establishing. That this is something we're going to do. I'm not abandoning you letting the person know I may need to take 20 minutes. I'm going to take a longer time before I'm ready to jump back in. And you, you talk about, which we can get into later, but just in terms of, the repair process like, the pause may take may need to be longer.
[00:28:58] Charna Cassell: one person may need a longer pause than the other. That's right. And how we can manage that.
[00:29:03] Susan Campbell: And in a partnership,
[00:29:05] Susan Campbell: Especially an intimate couple type relationship, it's really good to have an agreement. Okay, we've stepped in this vicious cycle together all too often.
[00:29:21] Susan Campbell: Let's make a pause when we see ourselves doing that. Or let's make a pause when I see myself. Sometimes you don't even know it. Yes. But when I see myself. Amping up my nervous system and, you know, I want to bite your head off. We have to kind of agree that there's a rationale for that, that this is good for us not just one person, but as you were alluding to sometime that person who feels safer when there's verbal connection going on, you know, talk to me, talk to me.
[00:29:51] Susan Campbell: That's hard because the other person often is the one who needs more of a longer pause. And so we, there's techniques in the uh, in the book to short circuit the decision making process, the decision of. How long is this pause going to be?
[00:30:09] Charna Cassell: And, And the, the, another piece I think is, is useful.
[00:30:14] Charna Cassell: It's there are people who may push themselves, right. and especially in our culture, it's like override their trigger, try to keep pushing through it. so for, you know, like for me, I do a, a pause with myself. Right. So I'm actually, when I'm working out, I've been working a particular part of my back holds a lot of, you know, unfelt material, right?
[00:30:39] Charna Cassell: It's like in that, it's like crunchy in my rhomboids. in the behind my shoulder blades. And so as something I can feel like part of my trigger signature is my heart starts to beat faster. And I can start to feel this emotion welling up. And when that starts to happen, I tell my, my trainer knows at this point, I've just paused.
[00:30:58] Charna Cassell: And I just want to be with. And then there might be a memory that, that I see in my mind's eye, or there's just emotion that needs to move through. And I let myself, you know, sometimes cry and then go back to working out. But so just an encouragement for people to, you might be driving, you might, it might come out of nowhere.
[00:31:17] Charna Cassell: Take that pause because. You don't want to keep overriding and do to yourself what maybe others did to you, which is not create room for the emotion to surface.
[00:31:28] Susan Campbell: That's right. Even in a work relationship, sometimes I'll encourage people to just at least say, I need a moment. And you don't do the whole process, but you feel, if you do the I need a moment for it to really work well, right?
[00:31:46] Susan Campbell: You probably need to have done the longer version of the inner exploration of that feeling. But um, I need a moment or take a bathroom break.
[00:31:56] Charna Cassell: Exactly.
[00:31:58] Susan Campbell: Take your, take care of yourself because otherwise you're on automatic. You might not know it, but it's affecting your relationships.
[00:32:07] Charna Cassell: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Absolutely.
[00:32:11] Susan Campbell: So, Pausing is one of the biggest gifts you can give to yourself and to your partner.
[00:32:21] Charna Cassell: And so then from pause,
[00:32:23] Susan Campbell: The next thing is staying with some of those sensations and emotions. Learn to be with the body. The feelings, the body sensations, and the feeling tone of the story, because there often is some kind of unfortunate learning that you came away with, you know, I call it learning the wrong thing.
[00:32:46] Susan Campbell: Like, you know, nothing I ever do is done right. You maybe had an overly critical parent or something. So I can't do anything right. So that's your story. Or people are against me when you notice that, as well as any feeling or sensation, and then you pause, then you stay with it, because you're kind of like now on pause, you're not engaging, you could do the work, if partner and you are both together.
[00:33:14] Susan Campbell: You could do the work side by side, but you got to go inside for a while and feel safe enough. There has to be an environment of safety. So a lot of times you don't want to be sitting in the same room with the person where you just got triggered with each other. She's usually your little, although the person who, like we said, the more preoccupied person, it really is important to like, maybe if you could, if you have a partner, just maybe put your hand somewhere on the person's body and say, I know we'll get through this.
[00:33:48] Charna Cassell: Yeah.
[00:33:48] Susan Campbell: That's that sort of thing. Or, we'll check back in 20 minutes. Okay. And then in 20 minutes, I might not be quite ready to go to the next step. Okay. Bye. Bye. But at least we're going to check in so then that being with sensations and emotions can take maybe 15 minutes generally in my experience to really sit with yourself and just be curious and let your feelings come up and there's step by step guidance in the book from Trigger to Tranquil that you can just guide yourself.
[00:34:25] Susan Campbell: through this. Or I've got a lot of YouTube videos that are free on the web with it where I guide people and you can find those.
[00:34:34] Charna Cassell: Yeah, that's great. One of the phrases that I find really helpful with couples, it's like with the, with if somebody needs more space and because of their history and then also it gets repeated in their relationship, you can take all the space you need
[00:34:50] Charna Cassell: And I'm still here.
[00:34:52] Charna Cassell: I'm not going anywhere and you can take all the space you need. If the person who has more of the kind of come towards and engage can actually give the other person some space, that, you know, creates a certain level of safety that person may never have had.
[00:35:08] Susan Campbell: That's a beautiful suggestion to the person who's Got the urge to quit quickly close the gap there.
[00:35:16] Susan Campbell: It's hard. It'll be hard for most of the people who are who are more like call it preoccupied anxious but it can also give them a empowered place to come from what you're saying okay, I'm not. helpless. I'm actually being generous here by giving my partner a little more space.
[00:35:38] Susan Campbell: So that can trick their mind into feeling safer about, about being out of contact.
[00:35:43] Charna Cassell: Yeah. It's definitely, it's the first place that I learned how to use that was more in a somatic and trauma environment doing physical practices and like really establishing a quality of safety.
[00:36:00] Charna Cassell: Sometimes there's contact there and sometimes there's just like, I'm all the way across the room from my client and having a partner be in the room and participate in that kind of a practice or witness that again, it comes back to this, not taking it personally and realizing there's a four year old or six year old part of that client.
[00:36:20] Charna Cassell: It's not about them, and it just happens to keep showing up because it's so old, or so young.
[00:36:26] Susan Campbell: Yeah,
[00:36:27] Susan Campbell: I see what you mean. You, You were first talking about it as, you know, you're, you're, The therapist and modeling that and doing work with one client. I mean, One of the partners,
[00:36:39] Charna Cassell: but then
[00:36:40] Susan Campbell: while the other witnesses I do that all the time and people seem fine with that,
[00:36:44] Charna Cassell: and I've, you know, I've had feedback from, it's like that, then that partner who's also participating in saying those things and getting that kind of like that new tape established in their mind, in their, in their head. the listener's mind, but also in the speaker's mind, it's like, oh, you now have facility and can speak it from a place that's not like from their wounded kid, right?
[00:37:04] Charna Cassell: Yes. Yeah. Then also an attachment piece, right? It is, it's totally a little bit of an attachment trick. It's like, if the person who tends to be more anxious can take responsibility for the boundary, then the person who's more avoidant is like, oh, and they can have the freedom to move towards you.
[00:37:20] Susan Campbell: That's right. Yeah, people have to learn this from actual experience because us telling you that, you know, it's not, it's not going to sink in, but uh, you could, if you, if any of our listeners want to try that as an experiment please go ahead.
[00:37:38] Charna Cassell: Yeah, it's all in theory. It's much, it's easier. It's like reading a book first about learning how to ride a bike versus actually physically putting your body into it.
[00:37:47] Susan Campbell: But people can learn from books and podcasts. They can. I get mail all the time. So isn't, and you do too, right? It's just wonderful that some people are motivated enough. to just read the book and learn the practices and especially couples together. That's one of the hardest things to find a partner who's a match for you on both wanting to do these practices.
[00:38:12] Susan Campbell: And if your partner's not a match and you're in a intimate couple do your best to enroll them in a way that expresses your feelings and needs versus a criticism of them.
[00:38:28] Charna Cassell: I've actually since reading your book, I've referred it to a lot of my clients and it was very validating for me because I was like, Oh, here's this master.
[00:38:34] Charna Cassell: And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Okay, check. Like, I'm like, yeah, I'm, I will always practice this for the rest of my life. And I've had to come to these things. piecemeal, and I love that it's all in one book, and it's like, where was this book 30 years ago for me? So, Yes.
[00:38:53] Susan Campbell: I was teaching this stuff 30 years ago.
[00:38:54] Susan Campbell: Oh, I'm sure you were. But I hadn't codified it. Well enough yet for
[00:38:59] Charna Cassell: well, but it's like what you what you said people around the world I mean my people listen to this podcast Surprisingly and like all these countries around the world and now they'll have this book as an access point It's all you know in one place Versus figuring it out through life, right?
[00:39:16] Charna Cassell: Well, you know, We're always figuring it out, but So you're so sitting with the feeling that's the step we're on Yeah being with it
[00:39:27] Susan Campbell: and And if You've done a thing with a partner where you took a pause, you did some self calming, and then you each went into your individual being with and exploring the sensations and emotions.
[00:39:43] Susan Campbell: That's, so that's where we are in the process now. The fifth stage is repair, where now you come back together and you talk about what you saw about yourself and reveal the deeper feelings and needs that the trigger reaction was trying to get met, but they were doing it in, from the survival brain rather than the part of the brain that can collaborate and can empathize.
[00:40:10] Susan Campbell: So now you've got your, higher brain back online because you've done your calming and you've shown compassion for that tender feeling whether you've gotten a memory or not. So there's a, and the practice I use, I call it compassionate self inquiry. So you eventually do, once you feel this and keep breathing and being with, you develop a witness consciousness that feels for yourself.
[00:40:40] Susan Campbell: You feel tender towards yourself or empathy for yourself. Ideally, there are exceptions to people's ability to do this and, you know, I will talk about that in a separate part of the book, but if all goes well, you've connected with, oh, this core fear of not being good enough. It's somehow linked to a few times, nothing horrible, when my father criticized me for being a failure um, but, you know, he also was a great dad in so many other ways, so why am I so triggerable?
[00:41:20] Susan Campbell: Well, You connect with that, I'm not, I don't feel good enough, because that needs to be looked into a little more you're, you're left with that unfinished business as an adult. Where, you know, I'm a super achiever. I'm totally good enough, but my wife says something and I, I feel like I'm six years old again.
[00:41:42] Susan Campbell: So you might come in contact with memories and insights like that. And, oh, I judged you being overreactive. Out of my fear of feeling that old feeling of being criticized, you know, your unhappy reaction, like your unhappiness with me, brought back those memories of not good enough. And so I just wanted to obliterate that feeling and I lashed out or I withdrew or I shut down.
[00:42:17] Susan Campbell: So it's, you know, you have a little bit of an explanation and I recommend that people, I have a script for doing a good repair where you're not just going back and reiterating your reasons and what you were trying to say uh, and your excuses for saying it in a way that didn't work for your partner.
[00:42:41] Susan Campbell: You're not doing it that way. You're actually just telling them when this happened, this unfortunate thing, like I walked out on you, I was triggered. So you start with that. You start owning the fact that you were triggered. So this, you, ideally you're going to fill this script out in preparation for delivering it to your partner.
[00:43:06] Susan Campbell: And you're going to each take a turn. And this is with couples with no couple relationship and you just got triggered. A repair may or may not be indicated with the person, or sometimes there is no person. You're triggered by. Your own painful thoughts, like just feeling like a failure, feeling, jeez, I'm not doing anything with my life.
[00:43:28] Susan Campbell: We often just get triggered by our own mind. Yeah. And that deserves compassion too, and that's coming from, that's coming from some place that needs to be held. compassionately held. But let's say you've got a partner, so you've filled out your repair statement so that you can speak on a feeling level.
[00:43:49] Susan Campbell: You're not reasoning with the person or giving excuses. You say, so I was triggered, I am sorry I did that. If there's, if that's needed, you know, you didn't deserve that when I heard you say this, it brought back memories of the ones I just alluded to, but you just try to do it in like one sentence.
[00:44:17] Susan Campbell: times that my father used to criticize me when I was six. And what I was really feeling was the fear that I'm not good enough or that I'm not enough for you. That's so, you can feel there's a vulnerability there. And there's a little bit of an explanation, mentioning the past that isn't always necessary, but it, it, it, I think helps the partner, especially in the beginning of when a couple is starting to do these repairs.
[00:44:48] Susan Campbell: It helps to hear. That. Yeah, that didn't, that, my partner came into our relationship with that trigger. It's not about me, you know, it's, it's, it's, theirs and they're owning it. And just hearing that my partner's owning it and saying, I got triggered and it was really about this painful memory and you didn't deserve that sort of thing.
[00:45:14] Susan Campbell: It's just so reassuring. But then the final step in. The trigger repair is, okay, so I've just confessed that I'm having trouble feeling good enough. I need your help to feel that I really am good enough, or that you really do think I'm good enough. Or some, some asking for reassurance in a very simple way.
[00:45:40] Susan Campbell: And then I recommend certain ways of responding, in an honest way to the partner's bid for reassurance. Sometimes the best you can do, because you haven't had a chance to be heard yet. You haven't delivered your repair statement. Sometimes the best you can do is I hear you, honey, or something kind without.
[00:46:01] Susan Campbell: saying yes, you're the greatest person in the world and so forth. But other times you're really moved to say, you are so enough for me. You know, You'll just be moved to give that reassurance.
[00:46:12] Charna Cassell: Yeah, and I think that one of the things that can be so key there is the language that the like you emphasize that in terms of if you're starting to explain like use the script because otherwise it can come across as a justification.
[00:46:29] Charna Cassell: And when you're justifying it can be like defending, and then when you're defending that's actually a fight response that's how that registered. Yes. That's how it registers for the other person. Yeah. So language, the subtlest difference in language. Can make such a huge difference in terms of someone's capacity to hear you and have compassion versus get defensive too
[00:46:51] Susan Campbell: yeah.
[00:46:51] Susan Campbell: Yeah. People might feel well it's scripted and it's phony because it's scripted. Trust me. Work better. Like, Follow the script at first, because it's just such an automatic tendency to flip in those self justifying words and even. Tone. Yeah. Yeah. And you won't, and it, when you do the script, it won't be completely your words at first, either.
[00:47:22] Susan Campbell: But a lot of times, the words I give people or that I suggest in the book are actually a little truer, you know, it's hard to admit, but they're a little truer than the sugar coated words that you might use if you have like, I have a fear of being bad or wrong. A lot of times people can't get that one because most of those people weren't severely traumatized, it was more things.
[00:47:49] Susan Campbell: Just not getting attention. It was more like being neglected or perhaps criticized in not too, not a violent way. But there's still this desire to be seen as good. And so if you have that one, or if you think you might have that one, just be real curious about your trigger reactions and see what you learn.
[00:48:13] Charna Cassell: Yeah. A little scary to use. more honest language. And a big part of your, just like a side note, radical honesty is a huge part of your background, right?
[00:48:24] Susan Campbell: Yeah. Yes. And I wrote this book called Getting Real because in radical honesty and other honesty frameworks, it's, that's really great. We should all be honest.
[00:48:35] Susan Campbell: But what I was thinking is how many of us have the necessary skills to really be honest? How can we make it safer, to be honest? So that's what my work does in the book, Getting Real. Ten true skills you need to live an authentic life. So it's an, it's another version of how to be the new human that we're evolving toward.
[00:48:57] Susan Campbell: How to be one of those 30 percent.
[00:48:59] Charna Cassell: And what's so important, so my background is in working with trauma, and you need to have that safety piece established before you can have the connection piece. And a lot of people come in and they're like, we want to have better sex. Like I also work with, sex and sexuality.
[00:49:14] Charna Cassell: And so some people want to jump to more connection. Or whatever that means for them, but safety is so essential. And so, you know, these books are really useful for creating more internal and external safety.
[00:49:28] Susan Campbell: Yeah. And self awareness, I think, is really the key to creating safety for other people. Self awareness and self acceptance and all these tools that I teach are really about that.
[00:49:41] Susan Campbell: If you aren't trying to defend yourself, if you're really okay with how you are, warts and all. then that, that defensive layer can fall away. And you can just be curious when somebody gives you feedback. That's not what you were hoping for. Tell me more about what gives you that impression.
[00:50:07] Charna Cassell: Let's come back to repair for a moment.
[00:50:10] Charna Cassell: Cause there's some important distinctions that you made inside of that part of your book. So you're talking about like, sometimes it might be that you, um, That you come to some conclusions on your own, and then, you know, it may not it may not be necessary to always share or to repair, but then so speaking to um, the length of time that some people might need to take before they repair, like premature repair.
[00:50:39] Susan Campbell: Yeah.
[00:50:40] Charna Cassell: Unilateral repair. You want to speak to that?
[00:50:44] Susan Campbell: Let's start with the amount of time if you're in a dyad and you've triggered each other. And most of the time, I'll just say, when one person is triggered, the other person is somewhat triggered too if you're in one of these, intimate, interdependent type relationships.
[00:51:00] Susan Campbell: So both people are triggered, but one person thinks they don't need much time or they don't want to. We have to talk about that not, not right after the trigger, at first, you need a bigger conversation about, yeah, what are we going to do about this pause?
[00:51:20] Susan Campbell: We're going to need to pause agreement, like a safe word, like just the word pause, or one couple use the word pineapple for whatever reason, I don't know, but that, that worked for them. So you get a, a safe word, right? And that means we'll just stop talking and look inward and regulate our nervous systems.
[00:51:41] The length of time, now that's a bit of a issue between us. Because we don't take the same amounts of time. How, what would feel somewhat safe to you even though it's a stretch? So we just talk it out when we're not triggered. I've got a system where it's like short, medium, and long.
[00:52:04] Susan Campbell: So eventually we go well, what's a short pause? Oh, I think short pause is like 20 minutes. What's medium? Maybe an hour. Maybe long is three or four hours. All right. I think it's really unfortunate if people can't repair within 24 hours, because that really means that, that they're not work, in me, in my world, they're not working hard enough.
[00:52:34] Yes, it's very traumatizing what happened. Re traumatizing, but I, I just think that you can learn to do it within a day. So then they figure out what their shorthand is going to be, and what that means is, we'll check in after 20 minutes and see if we're both ready, but if we're not, okay.
[00:52:58] Susan Campbell: We'll wait another 20 minutes and check in again. So that's just the way most couples find that works. And a lot of times in the process people will get re triggered. I'm ready now, and my partner's not. And so, you know, life is messy, folks. I have all these wonderful guidelines and so forth. But they won't always prevent triggering.
[00:53:25] Susan Campbell: You can't prevent triggering with good planning. If it's ready to come up and it needs to come up, that's nature's way of telling you that this can't be denied and I guess you better look at it. What choice do you have? It came up. So that's the one uh, issue around how long to pause and then when to repair.
[00:53:50] Susan Campbell: The other issue sometimes is, you mentioned the word unilateral repair, and I've got a section in the book where, My partner was triggered and then they made a whole bunch of judgmental thoughts about me and they kind of were cold for half a day or something. But I didn't even notice it. So this was all going on over there.
[00:54:15] Susan Campbell: I thought we were doing fine. And so the person who needs to do the unilateral repair has to know enough and be committed enough to, to the health of the partnership to check in. And know that you're triggered and that's one that could take over 24 hours to even kind of know that you're triggered and that's forgivable.
[00:54:38] Susan Campbell: I'm not saying you're not working hard enough to, to that person. It's like whenever you're aware of being triggered, that's the time to start dealing with it. It could be a few days where you just are feeling kind of off with your partner and then you go. Oh, yeah, she didn't get me the response that I wanted when I asked her if she wanted to walk into town with me and get coffee, she just very kind of coldly said, I'm doing something else.
[00:55:07] Susan Campbell: Ever since then, I've felt like distant from her. I guess I better go do a repair and confess. So a unilateral repair is where you sit your partner down and say, I need to do a repair with you even though you didn't know what was going on inside me for the last, for the last three days. But get used to that, needing to do that.
[00:55:29] Susan Campbell: Some of you especially will find that important. Others. It just, can't hide from yourself, and you're pissy and you go I guess I better go talk about it. So you do the same kind of thing. When this happened, I was triggered. I think it was my fear of, of not being important, not being significant, being invisible to you, whatever words, you know, you find, I've got lots of different choices of words and ways to label these fears in the book, but you might.
[00:56:00] Susan Campbell: Not even have a perfect word and repair doesn't require that you have the perfect word if you're struggling for the word like, Oh, I felt something like unimportant or, or small. It's almost more sincere if you're just struggling for the right word sometimes. So kind of don't worry about that part. But then you need to end it by asking for some kind of reassurance.
[00:56:26] Susan Campbell: So it's basically a confession. This was what got triggered, my fear and my need is to feel that I am important to you. And then you just. Stop there or you wait for some, some reassurance. I sometimes like to suggest the phrasing, I need your help to feel that I'm important to you. Because I'm the one with the issue of not being important.
[00:56:51] Susan Campbell: You don't, I'm not expecting you to be a mind reader about that. But now I'm telling you, I need some help around this. And that's, that's the least controlling way to phrase that. There are other couples where it's really okay to say I need to feel that um, you won't abandon me or something.
[00:57:14] Susan Campbell: I, some people need it to say it and it's okay with the partner to use less correct language in terms of our communication. But it comes sometimes, whatever comes from the heart.
[00:57:29] Charna Cassell: Yeah, it sounds like you're pointing to loosely the nonviolent communication steps.
[00:57:36] Susan Campbell: Right? Like
[00:57:37] Charna Cassell: Identifying what your need is when it's not getting met, what you end up feeling, and the, a memory that's associated with when you didn't get that need and then being able to make some kind of request around support and connection. And I'm curious also about when it goes the, when it's the opposite way where, when there's someone who's often they're, they're triggered.
[00:58:01] Charna Cassell: And maybe it's unilateral. Maybe it's not. In both situations where the person gets triggered and then they're constantly bringing up their triggers, right? And so the other person, maybe initially they're open to processing and then they get worn out. I see this a lot with couples, right? Like one person who's more maybe more anxious or more self aware or has, um, a bigger history of trauma so that there's like, it can feel like a minefield, like there's a lot that's triggering
[00:58:31] Susan Campbell: or
[00:58:31] Charna Cassell: if there's a lack of resolution.
[00:58:33] Charna Cassell: So it's not really getting resolved. And so it's going to keep coming up, right? It's okay, here it is to resolve again. Here it is to resolve again. And the other person is backing away from, and it becomes less willing to process.
[00:58:45] Susan Campbell: Yeah, so that situation probably requires third party help.
[00:58:50] Susan Campbell: Yeah. You know, I mean, Friends who are listening, if you're at all in that situation, it's, there's something going on that's trying to be communicated, not just, I was triggered. You know, It's, there may be. One person needs a little more attention that the partner can't fully give, and they may have to find a way to come to terms with that difference.
[00:59:21] Susan Campbell: It's some needs that you have are never going to be met by this person. And some people, We're so, we're so traumatized that's the hardest thing to accept with an adult partner, and you might need some individual work to come to terms with the reality that need, this is the life you've got kind of thing.
[00:59:49] Susan Campbell: And how do we find a way to make this interesting and growth full. and even pleasurable by the learning that's going to come from this. And that, that requires a little more attention than exactly what's in my book. You might need to hire one of us folks, help you there.
[01:00:14] Charna Cassell: Again, the book it's, it's a, a beautiful starting place to build, start to build that awareness.
[01:00:20] Charna Cassell: And if you find yourself where you go, wait, this is actually not enough. Then, yeah, then you can seek external support and then along those lines, you train other therapists and coaches, you also do intensives with couples and do workshops. Do you want to say any, any more about that?
[01:00:40] Susan Campbell: I'm, 82 years old. So I'm moving into the final stage of my career where I just work a little bit, but I, so I do one in person workshop a year. So then the next one is also the second week in May in 2025. And I'm doing a webinar. I do more webinars now rather than in person events. And I'm my next webinar starts September 19th going through a lot of this material that we've talked about and my website susancampbell.
[01:01:13] Susan Campbell: com is describes what my offerings are. And then I do an ongoing honesty salon weekly. series, a small group, is working with the material in the book, Getting Real, but we also work with what happens when you get triggered in a group and, and there's a real safety there for people to admit they're triggered and sometimes reveal what that seems to be about, but we don't do the whole trigger work sequence in there.
[01:01:43] Susan Campbell: And I, I, I see two clients a day now, five days a week. So it's not like I'm super retired, but compared to the way I used to work, this is like retirement. And I'll, I'll work this way until um, I can't anymore, either physically or mentally. Yeah. So I love my work. It's just who I am.
[01:02:03] Charna Cassell: what is relational freedom? What would you, how would you describe that?
[01:02:08] Susan Campbell: Relational freedom is essentially you not being bound by a. Any ideas of who you should be or what society expects.
[01:02:27] Susan Campbell: It's in each moment, you're aware, it takes a lot of self awareness to not just negotiate, but your inner truth, but also who's with me here? What's the whole context? So I would say relational freedom is the ability to take what's inside of you and craft it in a way that fits the situation. And then ideally, this is a little bit beyond freedom, but this would go into creativity.
[01:03:00] Susan Campbell: You're able to Raise the level of awareness and love in the context so you're able to create the context that feels more harmonious for everybody in the room, let's say, or everybody in your field. But basically, I could say freedom is just another word for nothing left to hide. But hide, there's so many things we hide from what's inside.
[01:03:32] Susan Campbell: What we actually can obviously see in the other, but we hide from it and what our contexts are. So your world is always self, other, and context and don't hide from any of those and um, you'll be free.
[01:03:46] Charna Cassell: I love it. And so now if you would be willing to lead us in a five minute exercise. Yes. That would be so lovely.
[01:03:58] Susan Campbell: I think I'll guide people in the trigger signature exercise.
[01:04:02] Charna Cassell: Great.
[01:04:03] Susan Campbell: So this is that exercise where you get in touch with what are some of the elements, the early warning signs of a trigger reaction.
[01:04:15] Susan Campbell: So those of us who are listening, other than those of us who are driving, that probably wouldn't be a good time to, to do this, but do it later. When you can be in a quiet, private location where you feel safe and just allow your breathing to slow down a little bit
[01:04:40] Susan Campbell: and see if you can feel the sensations of the chair holding you or whatever you're sitting or lying on.
[01:04:51] Susan Campbell: If your feet are on the floor, notice the contact. of your feet with the floor.
[01:05:00] Susan Campbell: And as you continue to breathe slowly and maybe slightly more deeply, it's like you're creating a space inside yourself for some new discoveries to happen about yourself.
[01:05:17] Susan Campbell: I'm going to ask you to take a moment here and bring back a specific memory of you being triggered In the context of an adult relationship,
[01:05:34] Susan Campbell: just open up, see if some image or memory occurs to you.
[01:05:49] Susan Campbell: And if you don't have a specific memory, you may have a vague sense of what was happening that was triggering for you.
[01:06:02] Susan Campbell: So bring back that memory. Who were you with? Where were you?
[01:06:13] Susan Campbell: And can you remember or at least have a sense of what was said or done? Or not said, or not done, that was upsetting, or surprising, or painful.
[01:06:34] Susan Campbell: So what was the triggering stimulus? So that would be the first element of your trigger signature, is what happened actually in the outside world that triggered you.
[01:06:54] Susan Campbell: Could be a tone of voice, or a facial expression too.
[01:07:02] Susan Campbell: So take a moment as that memory gets more clear. And then I'm going to ask you a few other questions about it.
[01:07:16] Susan Campbell: You might even want to jot down some notes if you think that would be helpful. So jot down something about what was the, incident or the triggering stimulus.
[01:07:31] Susan Campbell: Now often, as soon as that triggering event happens, we notice something in our body sensations, or we might notice something more in our feelings, like hurt feelings or angry feelings, or we might feel body sensations like tightness, or it's like your heart drops down,
[01:08:03] Susan Campbell: or you might even be aware of going kind of numb or blank, like deer in the head.
[01:08:08] Susan Campbell: So, What was the feeling, the predominant feeling, and what body sensation seemed to be associated with that feeling?
[01:08:35] Susan Campbell: And perhaps there was a story that played in your mind, inner dialogue, self talk, just words like, she doesn't get me, or I can't do anything right, but just words. Words that illustrate your state of mind and your state of body.
[01:09:12] Susan Campbell: So these elements,
[01:09:18] Susan Campbell: something happening on the outside, Having a feeling reaction, a bodily reaction, perhaps also, and often a story or some mental talk, some meaning you made out of the incident. Those are the elements of your trigger signature in this one case. This gives you data about what your trigger signature is, but this is only one data point.
[01:09:50] Susan Campbell: But let's just get clear on this one. Okay,
[01:09:58] Susan Campbell: somebody talked to me, my partner, let's say, talked to me in a very shrill tone of voice. What I judged as shrill. I felt the urge to run out of the room or get away from it. I know I noticed a feeling of. Almost like overwhelming bewilderment, like maybe the words also came over me what did I do wrong, or something like that.
[01:10:31] Susan Campbell: So this is an example of a composite of feelings, sensations, and stories, and a triggering stimulus. That if you jotted those things down, that would be one data point to begin to recognize. Oh, this is my trigger signature and when I feel or sense or notice any of these things happening in me, that's a signal for me to pause, pause and inquire, calm my nervous system down and not react, pause and stop talking or stop running out of the room or stop that judgmental thought and feel what's really going on for me and relax into a feeling I can breathe.
[01:11:25] Susan Campbell: I can calm my nervous system down. I'm safe again. So that's the purpose of knowing your trigger signature is so you can stop that automatic runaway freight train from taking over your behavior and your nervous system. Now I would suggest That you do this exercise on five different triggering incidents and make the same kind of notes for each one.
[01:12:00] Susan Campbell: And you'll probably see a pattern. There'll probably be one or two types of situations. That generally seem to be triggering for you, maybe like being criticized, or having the other person move away from you. Those are typical situations that trigger people. And you'll probably notice certain familiar body sensations that go along with being triggered.
[01:12:28] Susan Campbell: And there's either some consistency, maybe all five of them are pretty similar, or you can see two different. trigger signature patterns. We don't always just have one, but this gives you, once you've done this exercise with yourself, And it doesn't take much time. You're more prepared to move through life, ready to respond to these inner cues in a way that's going to be more present, more self aware, and is going to ultimately have you be more connected with your actual present time reality.
[01:13:15] Susan Campbell: That's the exercise. And just notice how you feel beginning to do this exploration. And I want you to take away the value. This gives you tremendous power over your triggers once you've really gotten this under your belt and you know how to pause when you see any one of these early warning signs.
[01:13:40] Susan Campbell: It takes some humility, it takes some practice, but I would say, what fun. What fun to know yourself better and to have a little more mastery over your automatic patterns. Okay thanks for your attention in this.
[01:13:58] Charna Cassell: Thank you so much. And how can people who are listening find you if they want to go deeper with your work?
[01:14:09] Susan Campbell: My website is SusanCampbell. com, and if you go there, on the homepage, there's a place to subscribe to my newsletter. And you'll also get a free e book. It's called Getting Real Confidence. But it contains, among other resources, the compassionate self inquiry exercise where you take yourself through an old memory of being triggered and you offer compassion to yourself at the end of it.
[01:14:41] Susan Campbell: We've talked about it here, but you can get it for free. You can also buy my book, but and all my books and some of the books that are out of print are also on my website. And I also, if you do subscribe to my newsletter, I offer a free monthly group coaching call on Tuesday mornings. So at least in Pacific time, Tuesday mornings.
[01:15:04] Susan Campbell: So I urge you to stay in touch with me.
[01:15:08] Charna Cassell: Awesome. That's such a great offer. I love it. Thank you so much for taking this time to have this conversation. I really appreciate it.
[01:15:17] Susan Campbell: Well, I appreciate what you're doing to Charna. This was a lot of fun for me.
[01:15:23] Charna Cassell: Thank you.
