Understanding your emotional triggers reveals something uncomfortable: how many deflection mechanisms you’ve built to avoid feeling.
Here’s the story of the time the horn in my car went out and how I realized I was constantly deflecting and suppressing my true feelings and emotions.
When the Horn Stopped Working
Rarely, if ever, do I feel compelled to use my car horn. That is, until it went out after a Kia recall.
Not having a means of projecting my feelings about other drivers somehow meant that reality started manifesting MANY opportunities where I not only wanted to use my horn, but I would have been rightly justified by any measure in doing so.
But I didn’t have a horn. So instead, I found that I had to actually CONFRONT the underlying FEELINGS compelling me to use the car horn in the first place: anger, rage, frustration, fear.
Uncomfortable feelings that just tooting the horn allowed me to bypass, deflect, and suppress.
All the Other Car Horns
Then I started thinking about all the other “car horns” in my life. Things I use to state my case without having to feel the discomfort that reality has gifted me to open up my nervous system.
Snarky comments on social media. Slamming doors. Walking out of rooms. Turning the TV off. Turning the TV on. Closing the browser. Crumpling the paper. Hanging up the phone. Going for a hard run. Cranking up the music. Eating all the food. Drinking all the booze. Doing all the drugs. Sending the reactionary email. Filing the lawsuit. Using the curse word. Interrupting. Scoffing. Avoiding. Projecting, projecting, projecting.
What Triggers Are Showing You
It wasn’t fun to have no car horn and have to actually feel the DEEP frustration and vulnerability that comes with being on the road with millions of “unknowns.”
But it was humbling and valuable. It gave me an excuse to grow my awareness and recognize that reality isn’t against me. It’s showing me what to FEEL. And sometimes the thing we need to feel most is UNCOMFORTABLE.
Learning to Trust Reality
Reality is relational. As I FEEL through its triggers, I form a new relationship with my surroundings. We each are full of energy blockages which compel us to create protections against what we feel we can’t control.
But an interesting thing happens as we let reality trigger us and SURFACE the latent emotions we’ve hidden deep down. We begin to TRUST that reality has our best interests at heart.
What “car horns” can you eliminate in your life as a test? How uncomfortable would that be for you?
This is shadow work in action.
If you’re ready to feel what your car horns have been helping you avoid, explore the Shadow Work practices.