The holidays often bring up old triggers—especially when we spend time with family. If you have intensified reactions to familiar challenges, lucky you! No surprise, these are tied to who you were when you were younger and what you needed back then.
Instead of avoiding your triggers this season, try a different approach: get curious about them. Triggers will show up no matter what. In this blog, we will explore the special opportunity they offer, and how you can benefit.
Your Inner Child’s Unmet Needs
At this time of year we remember our childhood. When we were young, some of our core needs weren’t fully met—being heard, held close, adventuring, or feeling safe. To cope, we adapt. Adaptations which may have helped us then, show up today as emotional reactions.
For example, I grew up in a household where it was considered rude to let another human being finish a sentence. In all the crossfire and interruption, my voice often wasn’t listened to. I felt dismissed, like it wasn’t worth even trying to contribute what I was seeing. As an adult, it is easy for me to get triggered into that same feeling and withdraw.
For others, a youngest child who wasn’t taken seriously for example, the trigger may activate her to fight to defend her thoughts and actions.
If you use these triggers to reveal your inner child’s deepest unmet needs, you discover a shift: those unmet needs often become your greatest gift.
The Child’s Need Becomes the Adult’s Gift
Emotionally intensity is a training ground. We become experts in what we have felt most deeply for the longest. From my experience, I learned a lot about what it feels like to have something to say where it seems like there is no room to have it be heard. I understand the precise mechanism by which a person withdraws or withholds. So well that I see how everyone is doing this, one way or another.
What you longed for most is probably what you’re now uniquely able to give—to yourself and to others. For many people, that’s where clarity of purpose begins.
Discovering Purpose
As a coach—and we are all providing support to others one way or another—the search for purpose is a common presenting issue. Supposedly inspiring hifalutin notions of life purpose quickly become cliche. It is apparent the person doesn’t need more of that futuristic imagination of success. Start simple and practical. Your purpose is about expressing your unique gift.
When a person is clear about who they are, in this sense of what each of us brings that promotes awareness, motivation, balance, or rest in others, their purpose is obvious: find ways to optimize the expression of that gift.
So we have a through line. Your emotional trigger connects to your inner child’s deepest unmet needs, which in turn points to your unique gift, and clarifies your life purpose as the expression of that gift.
Holiday Practice
This holiday season, when you feel triggered, pause and ask: What is this showing me about deep unmet needs—and what I’m here to offer now?
Let even the uncomfortable moments this coming season be a revelation. Happy Holiday!
David Lesser