Holiday Triggers and Emotional Healing

Holidays can be a minefield of emotions, especially when past traumas resurface. In this episode, I delve into the complexities of holiday triggers and how they amplify everything.  We explore understanding why holidays can trigger past trauma and ways to manage it, strategies for grounding yourself in the present moment amidst emotional upheaval, the importance of setting new traditions that prioritize your well-being.

The Spiritually Curious Therapist
Redefining therapy at the intersection of mental health, spirituality and healing.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Chapters

• 9:44 [Ad] The Spiritually Curious Therapist
• 10:29 (Cont.) Holiday Triggers and Emotional Healing

Transcript

Welcome to the You're not crazy podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others. And heal the relationship with yourself, so you can learn to love in a healthy way. You can connect with Jessica and find additional resources, content and coaching at emotional abuse coach dot com. Hello, and welcome back.

I appreciate being here today. This episode is gonna come out on Christmas. And so if you are listening to this on Christmas or around the holidays. I'm I'm sorry. I know it's really hard to be dealing with.

This around the holidays, holidays you to amplify everything. And I remember that for me, I absolutely felt like the holidays were a bit of a breaking point, and I could've have just been the time of year, it was about a year into my daughter being alive but holidays have always been really challenging. For me personally. And, you know, some of that has to do with my history. Some of that has to do with the relationships that I found myself in, and so I wanna talk a little bit about, like, how past triggers can come up in the present.

But before I dive in, there are are just 2 things I wanna touch on. First, that the around this time of year, a lot of people actually feel like maybe, they shouldn't reach out or maybe it's not a good time to book something, but I've actually had a lot of people recently reach out for clarity, calls because I think they're just feeling like, they need a change going into the New Year, and that at the very least, they wanna un unveil and understand what's going on. And I, you know, I totally support that. And I'm here for it. He And I think it's actually really wise because at least at the very least, you can tell yourself that you're, like, working through a plan, and you're also having some support through these really tough times.

And so if you find yourself in that place, please, you know, do book a clarity call or reach out to me. I am really happy to speak now. I do have times open. I will have times open in December, and, I opened a bunch for early January. If you, are feeling that you need some hope.

Now. The second thing I want to touch on is that, you know, this episode is gonna talk a bit about holiday triggers and how they do really have a way of, like, amplifying things. But because we go through so much as, you know, kids and that we bring that into later years, we have traditions with various partners, you know, we have good memories. We have bad memories. Holidays can just be...

They can just be really rough, and I've never actually enjoyed them. So, just getting, like theory as I say that. Well, it didn't expect this little wave of emotion, but since it's here, I'll just go with it. Holidays for me just to be personal about it, I guess is that they were, like, actually really magical for, like, a short time in my life, and then they got really bad and really toxic. And it is because my mom married my step who ruined a lot of things for me, but it, like, it stripped me of the joy that I once felt, celebrating Christmas as a little kid with my grandparents instead of my family actually coming together, and it being a good day Kinda of became this like, how can I get her to cry and exit quickly, and I spent a lot of time upstairs in my grandma's house, alone and crying and wishing that that wasn't my reality?

And missing what it once was and knowing that if this 1 person wasn't there. It may not be this way and obviously, like I can look back and know that as an adult that maybe that's not true, but I do think that there's something to that. And that for me, holidays have always been quite triggering. And now as a mom, you know, I want them to capture, like, some sort of magic for my daughter I care so deeply about her experience, but it has traditionally been very hard, and I think that my best days are the ones that I can avoid it, but as a mom, I've tried to really find the parts that I do like, and I've grown. To, of course, have, like, these little traditions with my daughter that seems that I'm kind of letting her guide the ship rather than me.

But regardless around this time of year and my birthday, I always feel this like deep sense of pain. And you know, I like, always feel like, I don't know. Everyone's excited feeling joy in holiday dress looking forward to it, and I'm just, like, kind of waiting for them to be over, and I feel like, for such a long time, I felt, like, a screwed, and I don't feel like a screwed anymore. I feel like, you know, maybe there's a part of me that owns my experience, but it has never not been triggering. And I wonder sometimes like, what do it look like?

Otherwise, you know, but this is this is where it is. It's also important to note that, like, my family really celebrated holidays for my grandmother, you know, especially when I got older and was resent to them, but and when she passed it became really hard, and my my daughter has kind of taken that role now, but it doesn't change the fact that, like, for me as a person separate from a mom separate from a coach separate from anything, I really struggle. This time of the year. And also, I hate the cold, and I live in a place that's really cold. And so all of that wasn't part of the episode outline that I put together, but since it came out of my mouth, I'm an let stay I don't talk about my personal abuse a lot and maybe it's something that I'll talk about a bit more in the New year, but I grew up in an abusive home.

And before it was physically abusive. It was emotionally abusive it started when I was really young, like 7 8, and it went on until I was about 16 17, and then, like, continued for a little bit emotionally not physically after that, and I lived a lot of my life like in this little cocoon of just, like, wishing that that stuff didn't happen. And so... But also dealing with it, and I think sometimes when you open up, the cocoon. It's really hard.

And it's, like painful, and then it comes up. And then you can deal with bit and, like, new triggers come and so, like, if you are in that spot or of you're in that place. Like, I see you when I I hear you and I try and give a voice to a lot of things that people don't speak about, but I think it's hard to un your own story in a way that makes sense because for me, I can look at, like, other aspects of my life in relationship to. The abuse I endured, but talking specifically about it, especially when like, you know, if you've been in therapy at all, you know so much is, you know, is in there. And it's all...

It's like an ever ever changing onion. But basically, this episode that I drafted for today is that there's a way of amplifying everything, you know, this time of year amplifies everything. There's so many events and so many to do and so many expectations and holiday parties and this and that and, like, unfortunately, the pain of, like, the past as we move through the season is comes up with a lot of, like, he. And when I was reflecting on it this time of year, and I was specifically reflecting on this 1 around Thanksgiving, it was that this time last year, with my partner, things weren't okay, and I was starting to realize that I couldn't be in the relationship anymore. This is also something I'm gonna be talking on subs.

I'm gonna be talking a lot about that relationship and what I learned because it was, like, a master class and emotional version, but I wanted so badly for this man to be my my person. I believe he was. Sometimes, I'm still trauma bonded and think about it and believe he is. I was engaged to him. I loved him, and he was deeply unhealthy and wouldn't ever stick to a change that he wanted to actually make.

And so around this time of year, when I started to notice it. Because, of course, you know, we don't go into a relationship and think this person is course of abusive it's all these red flags, It's like, you know, we do give people the benefit of the doubt, we don't walk in and say things like... You blood bombed me. You know, we're let, you know, week, we go in and we try and see and her hopeful, and sometimes it's not that. And I remember, like, this time last year, this was actually on the evening of thanksgiving.

I said to him. He don't listen to me anymore. He used to care how I felt. But now it's like just speaking to avoid, and that was true. I used to be able to speak to him and he'd hear me.

And it was like, I would be able to say whatever I wanted to say or needed to say, and he... Even if he didn't agree with me, he'd hear me and think about it. And at the very least, like, we could get... We could sit in the mud of a conversation, which I think is like, all I've ever wanted is to be able to sit in the mud, you know, of a conversation with somebody that I really trusted would get to the other side, when I express this to him, It was, like, you know, like, we... He had a son, I had my daughter, We got the kids to sleep.

I usually I was stay in the room with my daughter, and I was about to, like, go in that space and, like, he got frustrated over something as we were cleaning up, and I just broke down, it was, like, when you're a volcano when you finally burst. That was me. That was this moment. And so I burst. And then I just started to cry, and I I wasn't angry.

I was like, really heartbroken. I was the hollow desperate ache. You know, that when you feel like someone that you love stop showing up for you when you realize they haven't been showing up, you know, for a while. And, like, he hadn't been, and I, like, I kept thinking it was me because there was, so much going on during this time, and so I just kind of continued to think that I was the issue. But that's what we do.

Right? If you're here listening to this most likely, you've spend a lot of time looking at your own behavior thinking that you're the issue or, like, that there is a change or change in perspective or whatever that might be before you realize or somebody point out to you, know you are not. And that, like, what's happening deeply unhealthy, and like, prior this weekend when I had said all this stuff, like, he had said, like, you know, based on where things are this week with you feel like you need, What do you think you can do? And I basically just said, like, I don't... Like, I don't think we're in a place to, like, you know, have a weekend together, but I hope that you, like, I think we need the space and let's plan to, like, you know, really work together to make thanksgiving good, and he got mad at me because I said that and that was, like, a bit of my breaking point because it was, like, I was set up to say, exactly what I wanted to say, and I am going to be someone who says I can't do XYZ if I can't do XYZ, and that's where it went.

And so, you know, that moment was, like, really heavy, but, like, when I look back, I really see it still as, like, at this active courage. Like, I spoke up when I felt, like, you know, sort of not saying anything or just being frustrated, and it wasn't a reflection to me asking too much. It was actually a reflection on, like, how much he was willing to give, but I was really being honest of, like, I can no longer speak to you and I don't know what happened. But around this time around thanksgiving. I started to feel like this like wave of anxiety, and it was coming in a lot and, like, of course, there's things that were making the anxious out in the world, but then I was also reflecting back is, like, what is this?

And I started to realize that, like, maybe it is just this time of year. Historically, how it was last year and that, I was being triggered by old things because I'm so used to being triggered this time of year. I'm so used to things going wrong. And, like, I've so many stories at that. I don't have that many stories despite my best efforts on having it go well.

Gave a lot of stories about it not. And, you know, I realized that they don't have to pull me back into the past, and I really tried to short circuit it this year and really stay focused on what I you know, what I needed to do and what maybe I was, like, really looking forward to. And so that's what this episode is about now that I'm 15 minutes in is that it's, like, how can you kind of navigate those triggers and why they hit hard, And so triggers are really sneaky. And I really feel like, for me, they come up on, like, the smallest things. It could be a song.

It could be the weather, it could be somebody's comment, it... But it's, like, during the holidays when everything is, like, in tradition. And their sensory cues. I just feel like it's a land mine for, like, my brain to be affected by things. And for me, it wasn't just the holidays itself that were triggering.

It was like, the way that he had extra expectations on them, and I guess I did too. Right? Like, if Mom this kid that grew up in this abusive of home, and I wanted something to be special with somebody I loved. I clearly had an expectation, even if it was, like, a really low expectation. Right?

Even if it was, like, just a calm day. It's still an expectation. I just felt like I was, like, walking through tension and walking on egg shells. And even though he's no longer in my life, it's just like the emotional imprint was really lingering this year. And I realized something that just because the triggers don't show up doesn't mean that I'm trapped by them.

So, like, even though I'm getting triggered, I kinda use it as a way to look at what was going on rather than actually, like, letting myself be triggered in sitting in the anxiety, and I can look back and say that, you know, I'm not the person I was when those memories with that person were made. And 1 of the most powerful tools that I have in my toolbox, is, like, the ability to ask myself what's happening right now. When that trigger happens, this has taken years and years and years, but, like, I literally just had to get trigger right before this podcast, and not buy something that has to do with this with something else. And I just literally like, let myself sit down on the ground and has myself what is going on? Because that can really help.

What is actually going on right now? Because sometimes it's nothing. And sometimes it is something. And sometimes it is something there. I always try and ground by, like, sitting down on the floor, A hear a laughter, you know, from my daughter or even just thinking like, the absence of the tension in the air.

That actually is a pretty big 1 for me. Like, I'll reflect on how it's so much less tense than it once was, and it's, like, these moments that remind me that I'm not in that painful place anymore, because triggers try convince us that we're still in danger, but starting to notice how you are not actually does help interrupt the pathways and bringing back to the here and the now because they're there and you're peeling it, but it doesn't have to continue to spiral. And so if you feel like you're experiencing the weight of the triggers the season, I really do encourage you to journal and to like, write down what those triggers are, so you can be aware of them. Like, if you just are not in space, like, be around certain things and don't be around it. The last 2 episodes I did, the last 2 weeks are about holiday triggers, and a lot of them are are with, like, not having your kids and the holidays are managing this with the high conflict person.

However, there are some things that I mentioned there that, like, you really need to try and focus on making the holiday for you. And doing what is best for you. And thinking about what that looks like, my cat is meow Up a storm right here. But, like, my cat's also doing what's best for him in this moment. But 1 of the things that I mentioned in there is that, like, there was this 1 holiday and was actually Last Christmas.

I did not have my daughter for Christmas, but... And I also didn't feel good enough to go on a trip. My partner at the time was really pushing for us to go on this trip, and I was like, I don't think that's practical. I need to be back by the 20 sixth this to get my daughter. I'm worried about travel delays.

I've been sick for 3 weeks, Like, this just doesn't make sense, and so we didn't go, but I did sleep like, almost... I don't know. Like, a 7PM on Christmas eve through, like, 9 and Christmas day, which is something I never do but we were in a hotel, and that was our choice and, like, it was what it was. You know, I was actually really sick and I was able to use the time to get better or as better as I could. But also, I think it's important to, like, prepare for the triggers.

And It doesn't mean that you're failing. There are just reminders of things that have happened and anticipating them can help you set yourself up their success. And for me, it looks like stepping outside for fresh air. Taking a deep breath when that anxiety starts to creep sitting down on the ground and journal. I also think that it's important to feel without judgment.

I mentioned I was triggered, like, right before I started recording this, and I did let myself feel the feelings. Like, without judgment and they can bring up sadness or anger or guilt and that's okay. You're allowed to feel this without adding shame to that pile. Meaning, you don't have to shame yourself or having feelings. And feeling doesn't mean your feeling, it means that you are human being who's feeling feelings.

And if certain traditions feel too heavy, you can change them. Like, you do have permission to skip things. You can start a new tradition. You know, you can do things that are, like, acts for you. This year.

My daughter really wanted to ping Christmas tree and I found 1 on Amazon, and I let her get it, and it was, like, like, 11 dollars or something, like ridiculous, and she spent so much time decorating it and put it in her room and felt so good about it and, like, those are the things that I think are important. It's like, we haven't gotten, like, an actual Christmas tree, but, like, we usually don't get a big 1 anyway. We get a Charlie brown tree and take care of it as if it's like, our baby, you know, of, like, where... We take care of the tree that nobody wanted. And then you can also, like, I really think it's helpful to like, continue to ground herself, you know, This is a technique that my daughter's therapist gave her, but I really liked it.

It was finding something for each of the 5 sentence senses. So something you can touch something you can see something you can hear, something that smells something they been taste. And in her therapy session may, like, came up with those tools, but that's something that is really helpful. And this is hard. But if you can do this even after the fact of remembering that triggers are here to convince us that nothing's changed, but that's not true.

It's it... They are here to, like, also show us what's there? In a year ago, I was in thick up something and today, Like, I actually, like, I have so much more peace of mind and I'm not worrying about what somebody is thinking. And all of the time and, like, what he's gonna think after he's done thinking whatever he thinks. So just acknowledging that you're not there.

You might be another place and it might be frustrating, but you're not where it was. And so this year, I'm trying very hard to, like, navigate my own holiday triggers and, like, I want you to remember that you're not backs if you feel like there's a lot of emotion coming up. You're healing and every time you look at those memories and remind yourself, that they don't own you. You are moving forward even if it doesn't feel that way. And when the trigger show up, they don't have to stay.

You can see what they are, you can form a relationship to them, you can act, you know, if it's 1 that's actually keeping you safe if you can keep it around, But I think it's really helpful to say, okay, I am triggered, and this might always be here. You know, like, I might always be a kid, on the inside that hates holidays, and that's okay. I am totally okay with that. If that's... If I put on pretend for most of this time so that my daughter feels the magic of the holidays, then I did my job of what makes me feel proud, and that's really all that matters.

You know, I deeply miss my grandma around any holiday. And even the ones that, like, I really don't understand, like, I'm sorry. To depends anybody, but like Easter. Like, if I really don't... I miss her because she had a likeness to it, but my daughter carries that.

And, like, the holiday is that I do like or like, New Year's eve. I like Halloween. Like, these are the ones that I can kind of get behind and, like, I just hope that as I get older as my brothers get older as my daughter gets older and, like, that the relationship can keep... But I don't have an expectation on myself that it's ever going to be perfect or that I'm ever gonna really really love it. Like I'm never gonna be, like, the Christmas ferry, but I am gonna be myself.

And so if this resonates with you, I really do want you to know today that you're not alone warming I really want you to know today that if you're feeling like you need to leave your relationship that it was on Christmas eve many years ago when I texted 2 of my friends and it asked them to tell me how They got divorced or how they initiated the process, I want you to know that it's okay that you feel this way and that it doesn't matter if it's a holiday or not, you are allowed to feel these feelings. If you do need support, you can find me at emotional abuse coach dot com. And if you want some more of these, like, reflections and strategies and moving forward, You suggest you come to my subs stack, which the link is also in my bio, if you start desk and night coaching, you'll find it. And I just... I really appreciate you joining me today, I really appreciate that you took the time throughout this busy time and came here and that if you do need support, you can always reach reject.