Scrolling through the social media profiles of successful young men, an all too familiar feeling overcomes me: I notice my jaw tighten, a tingling on the top of my tongue, a tightness throughout my body, and a procession of thoughts that bounce between feeling alien and worthless relative to all the perfect individuals I’m witnessing, and a compulsion towards seeing their flaws or weaknesses and being superior to them (two polar responses coming from the same place of insecurity).
It’s been a while since I’ve felt this, as I’ve spent the past year or so not using social media, and have thus avoided the strange dance of comparison, deflation, and competitiveness that so often accompanies it. I forgot just how horrible it is to feel these things - at points in the past, I think I simply accepted them as something inevitable within me to sweep under the rug, to ignore, or to live with. After having taken a decent break from this experience for some time, however, it’s obvious how unpleasant and untrue everything I’m feeling is. It’s obvious that I’m completely triggered, and not seeing anything before me clearly or cleanly. Unresolved emotion and energy are flooding my system and distorting my perception.
There are distinct physiological sensations (my tight jaw and upper body, a burning sensation throughout my head and arms) and thought patterns (feeling a childlike sense of weakness or ugliness, and a compensatory impulse to judge others), that I know all too well are signs that I’ve been triggered.
This is very exciting - because it means that all of the negativity, shame, and general weirdness that I am feeling is a bad dream that I can wake up from. I’m not entirely sure how to wake myself up from it at this moment, but the fact that I’ve acknowledged this is even happening is a massive step in that direction.
A simple way of describing what it means to be triggered:
To have an unresolved emotional experience - which is not connected to the present moment - awakened, altering and distorting one’s perception of the present moment.
After many months of being in an incredibly positive place - working on a book I love, deepening my connections with others, and spending a lot of my time in a mental space of self-acceptance and joy, feeling these things is like stepping into an emotional hellscape. It feels like I just drank motor oil, the shame, insecurity, and disconnection from a bigger, more sacred perspective is so poisonous.
Noticing what’s happening, I decide to stop in my tracks - carrying on with this level of shame, insecurity, judgment, and discomfort coursing through my mind and body sounds like a rather grim prospect. So I begin playing around with ways of navigating this old pattern of mine - this reflexive insecurity response.
The first thing I play around with involves looking at the successful men whose profiles I’ve been browsing from a very different perspective. I try to imagine looking at these men from the wisest, most compassionate, graceful vantage point I can fathom: That of a deceased grandparent, a guardian angel, or spirit guide (I’m doing this not as a practice in any kind of mystical belief system, but as a way of using my imagination as a tool to access empathy). I imagine the unquestionable, unconditional understanding, love, and pride that such a being would see these young men with. I try to make this more than a mere cerebral exercise, actually emotionally putting myself in that immensely graceful, soulful perspective, seeing these men as divine children who have grown up, are continuing to grow, and are learning how to hold themselves in this world, to articulate themselves clearly, to develop integrity, to discover what makes them who they are, and exercise their capacity to love and support others in whatever way they can. I attempt to see all of their flaws or weaknesses through this big-picture vantage point - as completely understandable, inoffensive, sacred lessons they are learning, beautiful, fundamental pieces of their life here, part of what connects them to the common spirit of humanity.
Doing this stretches me beyond the confines of my small, self-absorbed sense of weakness and insecurity, and into a place where these men are all very separate, sacred individuals whose journeys are in no way a threat to mine. In a way, it’s as though I’m showing the insecure part of me a wider perspective of the world, of other successful people, and of its own place within the river of humanity.
It doesn’t take long for the tears to start welling up in my eyes, as I open up and am moved by the beauty before me.
The next thing I do is address the feelings of worthlessness, separateness, and loneliness that have been activated in this triggered part of me. I can see how alien, abnormal, and awful this part of me feels about itself as it looks at these seemingly perfect men’s profiles.
I acknowledge that this hurting part of me is, in a small way, correct in part of what it is feeling. We currently do not have the kind of success the men we are looking at do. That is objectively true. What isn’t true, however, is the direction this hurt part of me is going in with that bit of information.
I explain to it that the reason our path looks different is not because we’ve made terrible mistakes in life or are simply forsaken. It’s because our path is different. Really different. We’ve gone on an unusual path, and it has been absolutely sacred and brilliant. We’ve stepped through different doorways, and they have been profoundly beautiful. Thanks to this path, we’ve grown into who we are, and who we are becoming. This is not a mistake or an accident, it’s sacred. We wouldn’t have had it any other way. And yea, we’re not in the same place as these other individuals - we are on our path. They’re on theirs, and that is sacred too.
In essence, I held the sacredness of my path for this depressed, ashamed part of myself. I held light around the unique or unusual aspects of my life and personality that it was seeing as embarrassing and weird. And I did it with a level of conviction and forcefulness that got through.
After a few minutes of pausing and holding these broader, bigger-picture perspectives for the hurting, insecure parts of myself, I found myself scrolling through these profiles with a sense of pure joy and enthusiasm at what was before me: A variety of individuals making their unique ways through this extraordinarily mysterious journey of being human on earth. I went from brittle insecurity and judgment to open-hearted empathy and humility. And I carved one of many pathways to approaching social media in a healthier, more life-giving way.
What a win!
I’m sharing this experience because I suspect that some version of the feelings I experienced while scrolling social media are extremely common. I experienced a form of being triggered - having my unresolved emotional experiences stirred, altering my perception of reality - that might be easy for some to relate to.
Of course I get triggered in different ways every day. It can be quite a magical thing, when I am able to do something beautiful with it. The first step seems to always be noticing the physical and mental signs that I’m in an old emotional state - I’m no longer a fully empowered, mature, gracious adult, but have slipped into an extremely familiar, less mature emotional landscape. Learning how to notice this is itself an extraordinarily high art that I’m sure I’ve only barely touched the surface of in this post. I wrote a whole book joyfully unraveling it through my personal story.
I’ve shared just a tiny window into my experience with this post, though I sometimes think that one of the best ways we learn is by simply hearing from different people about the honesty of their different experiences, and connecting to whatever within that is true to us.