Ever find yourself reacting strongly to certain situations, wondering why you can’t just stay calm and collected?

Perhaps you’ve experienced the frustration of being triggered unexpectedly, throwing off your emotional balance. But what if there’s a way to understand and manage these triggers?

In this episode of Living True by Design Podcast, Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer explores the concept of being triggered and unveils a powerful technique to regain control.

🌟 BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL LEARN:

• Understanding Your Window of Tolerance: Delve into the science behind triggers and discover the concept of the “window of tolerance” where you can thrive emotionally and physiologically.
• The Stop, Drop, and Roll Technique: Learn a practical approach to manage triggers in the moment, allowing you to respond rather than react impulsively.
• Expanding Your Comfort Zone: Explore practices like meditation and intentional time management to widen your window of tolerance, providing space for creativity, connection, and calm.
  
  

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Professional Bio

Are you a high-achieving, ambitious professional working mother, feeling trapped in the whirlwind of your demanding career and family responsibilities? Overwhelmed by stress, busyness, and societal expectations? Drained of energy and struggling to find balance while silently battling guilt and unfulfillment?

Welcome to a transformative journey a certified lifestyle medicine physician, experienced yoga and meditation teacher, and a mother of three. In this immersive podcast, she provides a path to authenticity, purpose, and vitality. Through tailored coaching programs, Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer equips you with the tools and strategies to regain balance and create a life aligned with your true self.

Our listeners, our clients, are high-achieving professional working mothers who have successfully transformed their lives with life design. They’ve overcome stress, found peace within their careers and personal lives, and are thriving.

Discover how to harmoniously balance your professional and personal life, relieve stress, and find your true purpose. Learn time management techniques, prioritize self-care, and regain meaning in life. Join Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer and begin your journey towards a life of ease, vitality, and impact, where authenticity leads the way.


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Podcast Episode Transcript

Welcome, here we are today. We are going to be talking about being triggered. Like what is it and why can’t we just like chill and not be triggered? I remember driving around in Dallas when I used to live up there and I went to yoga and was all blissed out and thinking I would be able to leave and show love and compassion to everyone. And then I start driving and like almost immediately somebody cut me off or something, something that was dangerous, but I just like got really upset talking about being triggered today.

Today we’re talking about what is being triggered. We hear being triggered and people just assume they know what it is, you know, when we get upset, when something happens as being triggered. But what is that? Is that something that we need to just white knuckle and control or is it something that just happens to us that we can eventually practice?

Being less triggered? Are we just set with it for life? We’re gonna talk all about it today.

Being triggered is basically when we get outside of our window of tolerance. And what the heck is a window of tolerance? So think of our nervous system as like layers of a cake. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, I just drew two horizontal lines. So there’s a top blank area, a middle blank area, and a bottom blank area. So we have like three sections, you know?

The window of tolerance is the middle section, like the middle layer of cake. It’s not the top, it’s not the bottom, it’s that middle layer. And that is the layer where we are comfortable, creative, curious, when our state of our body is comfortable, we physiologically and neurologically, like in our mind we feel safe, in our body we feel safe, both.

We can be creative in that area. We can connect with other people. We can be curious. They have, there’s a, let me see. There’s a list in the internal family systems. I talk about eight Cs and I’ve seen a list of seven Cs. Here are the seven Cs that people talk about. Courage, creativity, clarity, calm, compassionate, connected, curious, and confident. Think that might be it. Anyway.

Those are some Cs and that’s about, those are all these great feelings that we have when we are in our window of tolerance. And that means we have the capacity to deal with what’s happening at the moment. So when we get outside of our window of tolerance, so if we get really stressed, like for my example, in the car when someone cut me off, I was scared. And so I got out of my window of tolerance. I had an immediate sympathetic nervous system response and I was boosted out of my window of tolerance into this higher level of arousal, of sympathetic reaction where I’m in a fight or flight. I’m probably like holding the wheels, holding the steering wheel real tightly and probably angry and making a face. This is all tied to our nervous system. Other people pick this up too. So that is a sympathetic response and that is when I’m outside of my physiologic window of tolerance.

Which is great, like I’m protecting myself. I need to have extra attention driving because someone could hurt me, you know, I could be in a wreck. So it’s serving us. But at the same time, we want to have a wide window of tolerance where we can stay in those feelings, the seven, eight C’s, all the C’s of clarity, confidence, creativity. We wanna live in that more. And I don’t want it to come across like we wanna be there all the time because we’re human.

So we’re gonna go up and down. And the idea is to widen our window of tolerance so we’re comfortable in our body and our life. Because sometimes if it’s too narrow or it feels uncomfortable, then we’re just bouncing around emotionally. Because the other end of the cake or the bottom side of the cake layer. So we have our sympathetic response up at the top. I’m showing my paper if you happen to be able to see it.

You know, that would be a sympathetic response. The middle is our window of tolerance. And then below there is the shutdown or dorsal vagal, if you want to talk about the nervous system, but it’s where we just basically collapse and we’re not participating. And sometimes these responses are deeply, deeply wired into us because they serve us, they protect us, they keep us alive, keep us functioning.

But if we have been in situations, if there’s been trauma or chronic stress, chronic illness, things like that, our body becomes more sensitive. And this is really about awareness because it helped me when I learned about this to say, okay, we have this level of judgment of our feelings, like I should be able to handle this, I should be calmer, I shouldn’t…

React so strongly. And to me, this is my attempt to help me and you have compassion for ourselves in whatever reaction we have because it’s just wired into us, right? So if someone cuts you off in traffic, we can say, thank you, nervous system. It takes care of me. I got upset. And the healthier our body is, our physiology is, our thinking is, our emotions are, the wider

And we can live in those areas of the seas of creativity, curiosity, connection. Because when we’re activated, we’re not, we can’t think with a part of our brain that connects with other people. We can’t think with a part of the brain that is creative. When we are shut down, I don’t know if you’ve ever been upset where you just shut down, I know I have. And we can’t establish close relationships in that state.

And so it’s just, this is for sharing an awareness of what is happening kind of behind the scenes with our physiology and our emotions. So for me, I would like to be more in my window of tolerance and I’d like to expand that. So what are some things that can expand it? Well, meditation, I know, don’t roll your eyes.

But it’s so helpful, it actually helps, I’m hesitant to say build, but it helps with our frontal lobe, which is our thinking part of the brain. And it helps widen the window of tolerance. And we can eventually become calm and all the seas and live there more, which just feels better. I think one of the things for me personally that,

Gets me out of my window of tolerance as a mom and as a physician is time pressure. And time pressure really, really narrows the window of tolerance. So maybe if you’re leaving the house in the morning, there’s time pressure, right? For me, I assume some other people might be like me, maybe it’s just me. But if we’re aware of it, if we’re aware.

Like now that I’m aware that I need some space or else I’m gonna get really, really stressed. I literally go to the gym in the morning because it helps me have more time, which helps me stay in my window of tolerance because I want for my family, I want my kids to go to school and it not be stressful chaos. And I realize I can set that tone.

By first of all getting exercise first thing in the morning and second of all having more time. And these are things that you do over time, but ultimately we can work with nature instead of working against nature. Because when I didn’t have time in the morning to continue explaining about my mornings, but when I didn’t have time, but I still wanted to drop my kids off and be, bye honey, have a great day.

I was fighting nature because I was literally in my sympathetic nervous system like, go, we got to get out of this house. And so like our kids pick up on that, right? And like my poor children have to get out of the car with a mom who’s just, ah, we have to be gone right now, we’re behind. Instead of working intentionally with nature. Because I know for me, I get stressed when I don’t have enough time. So.

So I know for me when I don’t have enough time, I get really stressed and so I can work with nature and work with my nervous system and work with my physiology to get up a little earlier, go to bed a little earlier, get up and exercise so my physiologic state feels good and I have time.

And that way I can stay in that window of tolerance. And I know it’s hard and I don’t wanna say, oh, we’ll just get up earlier, flippantly, because I’ve been there where I literally couldn’t. And if you can’t, that’s okay too. I’m hoping this is a way to give ourselves more compassion of like, wow, I’m stressed because my nervous system is frazzled.

Instead of I’m stressed because I’m such a bad mom, because I live there for a long time. And I would love to share with you that you don’t have to live in this definition of judgment about who you are and what you’re giving to your kids. If you are a mom and you love your kids, that’s what you are. This is another topic for another show, but there’s a saying by Marshall Rosenberg.

There’s no such thing as a good parent. And if you wanna make yourself miserable, try to define that and try to be that because we try to be good. But the point is for a long time, I tried to be a quote good mom. And part of that is having this pleasant atmosphere in the morning and having breakfast and getting out the door and getting to school on time, getting to work on time. And when I wasn’t able to achieve that, I defined myself as bad.

And the other as being good. So this is just a different way to think about defining ourselves, having self-compassion, our nervous system, and working with nature. Because when we fight nature, we lose 100% of the time. So let’s try to work with nature and give ourselves a little space if time is something that causes a lot of stress. And I think with kids and work, time causes a lot of us a lot of stress. And

That’s another reason that planning is so important and helpful and doing it with a soft touch though, because we don’t wanna add things that we have to do. You have to do all these things when we already feel overwhelmed. So things like meditation, rest, and I think a lot of the self-care, it really is helping us get back into our window of tolerance. It’s just called.

Self-care, so we can say self-care, but we’re really showing ourselves some compassion and space. Think about all the things, you know, drinking water, getting rest, getting a massage. These are things that relax our body and our nervous system and our physiology so that we can be in that window of tolerance and then experience these amazing wonderful things in life of connection, creativity, curiosity, all our C’s.

That is how our window of tolerance affects our life, really.

So join us in our Living True by Design. If this is interesting to you, if you have something that gets you out of your window of tolerance and have ideas of ways to work with that, work with our nature, come join our Facebook group, Living True by Design. I’d love to see you there and I’d love to hear how you can work with your own nature or ideas or if you need ideas, come join us over there for a community of like-minded

Women who are on this journey of self-compassion and living true by design.

The window of tolerance work is based on trauma work done by Dr. Peter Levine. And then I have this book, and there’s a book called, Widen the Window by Elizabeth Stanley. I was looking at my bookshelf by Elizabeth Stanley. She wrote a book, yeah, this book called, Widen the Window, and it’s all about the window of tolerance. And it was a really good book. I like to, I like the,

Psycho education, if you will. Like I like to learn about these things. I think for me, my coping mechanism for a long time, well, it is, is just learning about things. And so like learning about this window of tolerance has been really calming and has helped me, you know, when I get upset or when other people get upset, I’m, when I can remember, it’s, you know,

They’re just outside of their window of tolerance. A lot of times when we’re triggered, we can’t think that and that’s okay. I’ll share another technique that I learned. It’s by a lady that did, let me see.

So there’s another author named Laurel Mill, there’s a.

Mellon there’s another author named Laurel Mellon she’s a PhD and she does she started this thing called EBT which is emotional brain training and I’m bringing this up because she has a technique to use when you’re triggered and You know, I don’t think I don’t want to talk about that I’m gonna talk about my technique to use So just scratch that Sorry Rose

And so all this learning about this, all this learning about, I don’t like that tone. So learning about the window of tolerance and how chronic trauma or chronic stress can narrow our window of tolerance, helped me come up with my own technique. And that is where I say stop, drop, and roll. Because when we’re triggered,

We really can’t think. And so it’s one thing to be like, oh, if you get triggered, just remember they’re outside of their window of tolerance. Well, yeah, that’s great. But when you’re triggered, you can’t really think like that. So first of all is just make sure you’re safe. You know, if you’re in the car and someone cuts you off, it’s okay to be triggered. I mean, there is a very important differentiation between our action and our emotion.

And so if you’re triggered, the idea is not never to get triggered, but the idea is to not act and not be controlled by that triggering. Like some people say, well, I was mad, so I yelled. Well, anger doesn’t equal yelling. We can be angry and respond instead of just react by yelling, right? So,

It’s a really important differentiation as we are emotional adults to know that we aren’t driven by our reaction. So if you’re driving and someone cuts you off, that might make you angry and that’s good. That anger serves you so well because it’s keeping you alive. It’s keeping you safe, but…

If you start screaming and yelling and drive up and flip them off, that anger isn’t serving you well, because that’s dangerous. They could probably, I mean, you know, road rage the whole thing. That just goes down a really bad path. So, the less reactive we can be and the more responsive we can be, even if we are outside of our window of tolerance. So, if we’re triggered, we can’t…

Really rationalize, but we can control ourselves to the level where we’re not unsafe to other people. Right? And so for me, what I’ve tried to do when I can remember it is my technique that is called stop, drop, and roll. So do you remember? I don’t want to take out the so. Do you remember in elementary school?

I guess they still teach it, I’m not sure. But they always said, if you get caught on fire, stop, drop, and roll, stop, drop, and roll. And so that’s something kind of from childhood that is like in an emergency, what do you do? Stop, drop, and roll. And I’ve kind of started doing that with being triggered. And so the first thing you can do is stop. And by that, I mean, don’t be driven by your reaction. Like, boy, I was just saying,

Don’t let your anger make you yell. You can be angry and the emotion is fine to feel, but don’t be driven by it as much as you can. No one’s perfect and we’re all human, right? And so if we can just stop, don’t do damage, right? And so the first part of stop is just don’t do damage.

Walk away, for me walking away helps the best just to remove yourself and it takes about 15 minutes for our cortisol and everything to start to settle down. I believe it takes longer than that for everything to be settled. But at least if you can have 10 or 15 minutes to walk away and regain composure, that’s super helpful. So that’s the stop. The drop for me.

And we can do other episodes about this, but the drop is dropping into your body. And this is part of the somatic experiencing idea of, I guess, psychology therapy, that whole realm, trauma realm, but we stop, so we’re gonna do no harm, do no harm. We drop, drop into our body. What’s going on? And this is more of a thinking thing, and so.

Really the stop is all you have to do till you can start to think again. So the drop is dropping into your body. An example of this would be, I got an email one day, I remember this specifically, cause it was the first time I ever used this kind of a technique. And the email was from someone that I was just kinda anxious about this communication and it made my stomach flip over. And so I was like,

And so the first part was stop. So realize, look around the room. I’m okay. In this moment, everything is okay. Nothing is really dangerous to me. And that was reassuring. It’s grounding, right? You can put your feet on the ground. You can feel your chair on your legs. You can look around and look for different colors. You can touch your skin. Those are, use your senses. Think about what your senses are. So that’s part.

Of stopping to dropping. We’re dropping into our body and grounding, looking around, reassuring ourselves with our brain that we’re safe. By looking around, we’re also reassuring ourselves with our neuroception, our perception of what’s going around us beyond just our thinking brain. We’re reassuring ourselves that we’re safe and we’re okay. And that’s as long as you really are safe and okay.

But in a situation like an email, I was safe and okay. And so dropping into your body saying, wow, my stomach flipped over, what’s that telling me? Is that, you know, and then you can start to dissect what’s going on, but just taking a few deep breaths. Of course, breathing is super helpful in any kind of triggered situation. We know physiologically that settles us down too. You know, the box breathing where you breathe in.

You hold, you breathe out. I guess I kind of like triangle breathing myself. In, hold. Anyway, we’ll do another breathing episode. But that’s the drop. And then the roll is, for me, it’s like letting it go. Like kind of washing your hands. And that’s part of, it’s, you know, the grounding thing to me is like the whole stop, drop, and roll.

Because you just stop, do no harm. You drop into your body, see where we’re thinking, and then the rolling is like letting it go as best we can. And I want to put bake into this, how much compassion I hope is available for you and for me in this, because again, I think we have a lot of judgment, especially the inner critic and…

Externally if something upsets us, you know, we’re supposed to be just kind of happy and contributing, you know, culturally, that’s what we’re supposed to do. Of course, again, we don’t act out of our anger, but if there is anger, we don’t have the skills to deal with it other than acting like we’re not. And so I think learning these things and having compassion for ourselves also gives us a lot of ability that a lot of people frankly don’t have.

To navigate anger in ourselves and other people and this whole idea of being triggered and anxious about things. If we have this understanding, we can work with our nature instead of against it. So the rolling part is letting it go, not being driven by it, processing it however you need. If you wanna just not think about it anymore, if it’s a small thing like traffic, it’s over now and everybody’s okay, let it go.

If it’s something that needs to be taken care of, you can let go of that sudden spurt of triggeredness. And then when you’re letting it go, repair with someone. If it was a situation in a relationship that you want to be healthy and fruitful and connected, letting it go could be like talking to the person and doing repair somehow.

So those are the three steps and I like my stop, drop and roll. Rose, take that out, please. Don’t say I would like my stop, drop and roll.

But, so that’s a brief overview of the stop, drop, and roll technique and the window of tolerance and what being triggered is and how being triggered is really taking us out of our window of tolerance into either our sympathetic nervous system of fight and flight or our dorsal vagal nervous system of shutting down, collapsing, and really not.

Moving and making moves in life. And again, this is nature and this is our body taking care of us. And the more we can work with it, the more it will work.

Join us next time, our next, join us for the next episode where we’ll be talking about boundaries and what are boundaries and how they’re helpful and sometimes unhelpful.

Join us next time when we’re gonna be talking about boundaries and flexibility and upholding boundaries and having boundaries. Yeah, we’ll just join us next time as we talk about boundaries and flexibility with the boundaries. Should we have flexibility with our boundaries? What do you think? We’ll dive into it next time.