So, how do you own your thoughts and stop feeling like a failure or out of control? While it’s true that we all experience triggers in one way or the other, it is also true that WE hold the power over these reactive behaviors.

show notes:

In this episode, Heidi talks about triggers and how if not controlled, can master your life by keeping your mindset stuck. She explains how you can start eating healthy by changing your thoughts, behaviors, and habitual patterns.

Be sure to listen until the end to also learn how to use essential oils to help foster readiness to get rid of negative self-talk and capture positive thoughts of yourself.

“If you’re consistently finding yourself acting on a certain behavioral trigger, now is the time to put alternative behaviors in place.”

Top Takeaways:

• How you can create thoughts and perceptions about a particular thing that perceive food as a trigger.
• The importance of writing down your thoughts and capturing them to own your life and exercise your choices.
• How to journal your progress to capture your thoughts and shift how shame and guilt keep your issues hidden.

What you will learn:

• [4:30] Common things that can trigger us; emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and environmental.
• [6:56] Understanding how thoughts and restrictions create food triggers.
• [9:25] How to identify obsessive food thoughts by writing down your thoughts to become aware of patterns.
• [11:35] Examples of thoughts and behaviors that keep you stuck in your destructive patterns and possible alternative responses.
• [16:40] How situations of conflicts trigger us and the power we hold to stop that negativity.
• [18:35] How to apply Cypress and Green Mandarin essential oils to help you release negative thoughts and capture positive ones.
• [20:10] Essential Oils Made Easy Virtual Workshop invite + emotions and essential oil testimonials
• [22:20] A closing prayer.

Relevant Links:

• ESSENTIAL OILS MADE EASY VIRTUAL WORKSHOP >>> bit.ly/oilsmadeeasyworkshop

“The grounding blend twice a day on the bottoms of me feet have helped me reduce anxiety and panic attacks. And the adaptation capsules dissipated my chronic and persistent feelings of sadness. Melissa essential oil on my thumb and held on the roof of my mouth works within seconds to dispel overwhelming panic attacks. The joyful blend has been my daily perfume and stress relief oil for years and smells delish. I still use it but now because I just love the smell!” ~Elaine F

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GOOD LUCK!!!

Detailed Transcript:

Are you familiar with the term trigger?

It’s that moment when you are at a crossroads… and you could either go down a well-trod road of ‘old’ ways of thinking, behaving, and reacting which then triggers an undesirable emotional response such as anger, jealousy, or unworthiness OR you could in that moment choose a “new” pathway of thinking, behaving and reacting and use the triggered moment as an opportunity to grow and change your thoughts and behaviors. I’m not a psychologist or even an expert on this topic, but I do have experience and would like to share a few of my personal ah-ha moments with triggers. I believe Beloved, that if you are experiencing a trigger today that is no longer serving you, then your trigger is truly a test and that you will find treasure at the end if you choose to step outside of yourself in this particular moment regardless of what any other person is choosing to do. The question becomes what path are you going to choose? Let’s dig in!

Different things can trigger us and you may experience one or several of these, but some common ones include emotional, cognitive, environmental, or behavioral triggers. In other words, how we think, feel, act, or live can trigger us. Basically, just being human qualifies you for ALL of these!

With an emotional trigger, a person responds to any type of emotion (usually negative) with an unhealthy behavior. Loneliness, rejection and insecurity are common emotional triggers for me personally, but some other examples are anger, fear, or sadness. And the unhealthy behavior is usually finding myself at the bottom of a bag of chocolate chips.

A cognitive trigger is a thought or belief that keeps the person feeling stuck. For example, “I will never lose weight” or “I always have to do things myself” or “I don’t have time to work out.” We will go through what to do with these triggers in a bit but I just want to go through some more types of triggers. So far we have emotional and cognitive, next we have behavioral.

A behavioral trigger is any behavior that repeatedly causes a person to fall into an unwanted pattern of destruction. Examples might include driving a certain route home past a fast food place and eating junk food in the car alone on the way home or scrolling through social media to numb out while your kids are in the other room, or starting to drink after work and carrying that through until bedtime as a way to handle stress.

Finally, we have environmental. An environmental trigger is an event that has taken place in a person’s environment and is creating undesired emotions for example a high-stress environment at the office or being at a particular person’s house or maybe even being in your own home and the stress of it after you get home from work. For me, being in certain social situations is an environmental trigger for me.

Most triggers fall into one of these four types but this certainly isn’t an exhaustive list. Some people may say that a food is also a trigger and while that may be true for some, for many it’s not because of the food item itself, but because of the perceptions and thoughts created about that particular food item – usually in the form of an “if/then” statement. For example, “If I eat a piece of chocolate, I will binge” or “If I have one glass of wine, then I won’t be able to stop” are examples.

And restriction can often be a precursor to food triggers. For example, if you believe that when you eat sugar you binge and that no amount of sugar is “safe” for you, then you have created a very rigid thought about your ability to eat sugar normally. I have done this! I believe I am over this and I have come SO far with being able to feel like I can eat a little bit of sugar and be ok, but by believing this thought that “no amount of sugar is safe for me”, we find ourselves obsessing about how much sugar we have eaten and then beating ourselves up when we “fail” by eating even the smallest amount of sugar. It is the thought that is keeping you captive to this trigger. When you have a thought that is black-and-white like this, that leaves absolutely no room for a middle-of-the-road approach, so for example if you ate a cookie, you cannot simply acknowledge that you ate a cookie and move on with your day, with this thought, the only thing you can do is punish yourself, which tends to look like further restriction or bingeing if you are someone that has an unhealthy or distorted relationship with food.

If you feel that a particular food is a trigger, then you must look at what the thinking is behind the food and the obsessive thoughts circling around it. It is usually very clear if you pause and notice your thoughts and write them down. Even if you choose to still eat the food, no worries, but write down your thoughts so you can start to become aware of any patterns. This is how you begin to take your thoughts captive and find freedom in your life by exercising your choice.

This is the time to get really honest and clear about what is showing up in your life. Because our thoughts create our emotions which create our actions which create our beliefs which create our results. So in short – our thoughts create our results. Writing down your thoughts and listing your triggers no matter the behavior or outcome, is your next step in owning your life and exercising your choices. If you aren’t in the habit of writing down your thoughts or this is new for you, I want you to do this for at least ten days.

Once you’ve identified your triggers and listed them, you can include any maintaining factors which are the thoughts and behaviors that keep you stuck in your destructive patterns, as well as possible alternatives. Again awareness is a super power and this is how we do that. This is how we create the “pause” that we need to decide not to go down the old path and take the new one.

Let’s go through some examples of possible EXAMPLES of what this looks like:

Trigger: Loneliness

Maintaining Factor: Stay home.
Alternative: Go to a friend (plan).
In other words, staying home when you are lonely is a trigger, so an alternative is to plan to visit a friend.

If you are struggling with eating and eating alone is your predominant trigger, look at why you need to use food as comfort. Are you reaching out to other people in your life, or do you isolate yourself? Do you talk about your feelings with others, or is food your only friend? What can you do to change this dynamic, starting now? What alternative will you put in place? Are you living in guilt and shame, which are two emotions that keep you isolated? How will you shift this tendency? One thing you can do is recognize the foods you tend to run to as a source of comfort and not buy them or start buying them less.

Trigger: Caretaking

Maintaining Factor: Being self-sacrificing (put yourself last).
Alternative: Be self-caring.
If you have a “people-pleasing” mindset you may be ignoring your own needs, feelings, and emotions when you look after those of another. As moms and wives, I think we all do this at some point. Do you feel like there’s no room for your own feelings because you’re carrying everyone else’s? Do you wait for days to take a shower because you are too busy getting things done for everyone else? How will you start to be more self-caring?

Trigger: Food (chocolate)

Maintaining Factor: Interpretation of the food; all-or-nothing thinking
Alternative: Food diary
In the beginning, it is certainly helpful to stay away from binge-triggering foods to keep appetite under control. But it could be a mistake to assume that food is the trigger. In my opinion, food is the outward symptom. It’s what we can control – even if we act out of control we are in control of that behavior. It’s the extreme black-and-white thinking that is usually at the root of a trigger-food problem; therefore, to heal for good, one must look at the thoughts behind food binges or feeling out of control with food. The difference between restricting the foods that seem problematic for you and consciously choosing not to eat them are very different things. One is empowering and the other leads to destruction.As you continue with this process, you will begin to understand this important difference.

Trigger: Behavior (go to the drive-through)

Maintaining Factor: Unconsciously eating alone
Alternative: Get conscious
If you consistently find yourself acting on a certain behavioral trigger, now is the time to put alternative behaviors in place. Become conscious before you act on the triggers! In other words, if eating in the car is a trigger when you buy groceries, be sure to keep the food in the trunk until you get home. If taking a certain route home leads you to the drive through, take another route. This way you are conscious of your habits, and in this process you will break them down until they aren’t an issue.

Lots of things can trigger us; however, usually it’s in situations of conflict – whether internally or externally, physically or emotionally, and believe it or not we have control over our reaction to the situation or the expression of our feelings. I know it’s doesn’t seem like it in the moment that you have the choice to let the emotion progress to negative and potentially harmful behavior or not, but you do have control over that and just need first, to be aware, second – understand where they come from, and third – learn how to reframe!

Here are some questions to keep in mind:)

• How was your week as you were conscious and aware?
• What can you do differently this week?
• Are there any places you want to avoid?
• If you could only pin-point one thing, what would you say is the real challenge coming up for you in this situation?

Again there are many triggers, but they all come down to thoughts that can be changed; therefore, destructive behaviors can be eliminated. This week, track your triggers and notice possible alternatives. Without judging, continue to log everything you are experiencing and the feelings, thoughts, and triggers associated with each event.

“If you’re consistently finding yourself acting on a certain behavioral trigger, now is the time to put alternative behaviors in place.”

Start to implement the alternatives and journal your progress so you can take captive your thoughts and not be mastered by triggers! You will feel so amazing. I know you can do it!

You know I love essential oils and although they can’t do our emotional work for us, they can assist our bodies on a chemical level and better position us by fostering an environment of change. Just like weeding a garden is easier when you first water the soil, so it is with releasing negative thinking. So if you have high-quality essential oils and want to layer them into this process, you can try placing a couple drops of Cypress in your hands, rubbing them together, cupping your hands over your nose and inhaling for 3-5 deep inhalations. Topically, you can apply 1-3 drops of Cypress over your heart, along your spine or on the bottoms of your feet. Cypress is the oil of Motion & Flow and works in the heart and mind, creating flexibility. It encourages us to release controlling, fearful, perfectionistic, rigid, stuck or tense thinking and ushers in space for flexible, trusting, flowing, and adaptive thinking. And then you can also do the same with Green Manarin by breathing in the same way you did with Cypress, and then applying topically around the navel, over the heart or on the wrists. We call this capping where we address a negative with an oil and then cap over that with an oil that addresses a positive desired result. Green Mandarin is the oil of Pure Potential and encourages all to experience joy in the journey and to never stop becoming. It encourages us to release limited, trapped, fearful, doubtful, or burdened thinking and ushers in space for excitement, wonder, hopefulness, fearlessness, innocence, and delightfulness.

“The comforting blend helped me with dealing the death of my 29 year old daughter. I thought I had been doing good but did not realize how much I was depressed still. 2 and 1/2 years later. I started using it and was able to work through my grief outbursts. Would love to have been able to have the adaptation system that is out now as I use it all the time to help with my anxiety when trigger memories come up. My oils have been a life saver for me!​” ~Karen T

So check out the link in the show notes to take the first steps towards getting access. This just helps me learn a little bit more about you and your needs, and you can opt to receive a free sample to go along with the workshop to make it more of an interactive experience which is always fun. We love our oils. They have become our go-to for almost the last decade as a first-line of defense in our home and I want to make sure that everyone knows they exist as a safer, cheaper and more effective option!

Let’s end today with a prayer.“Father we thank you that you are making all things new. That you have given us a new heart and put a new spirit in us. Thank you that you’ve removed our hearts of stone and given us a heart of flesh. Holy spirit guide us and help us take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. Let a boldness rise up in use that says we will no longer live by the standards of this world. That with your divine power we break strongholds of negative thinking and destructive patterns that keep us from our callings. We boast not in our strength Father but that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. For you have not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen”