If you’re reading this, you need to know that you aren’t the only one out there struggling with an unhealthy environment or dealing with people in your life that may not be healthy for you. Unhealthy relationships come in all different categories and levels, whether they are parents, coworkers, friends, siblings, in-laws, people in intimate relationships, spouses, etc.

When I started coaching, I really thought I was going to be coaching females. And maybe that was just because I’m a female and I thought that’s where I would best serve. The more I coached, the more I realized that the toxic traits people carry are pretty common throughout any toxic person. I now have clients who are men who have been raised in a toxic environment, married into a toxic environment, worked in a toxic environment, or tried to get out of a toxic friend circle. The baseline of it is pretty much the same. I get to teach the character traits of the toxic person, and once you understand that, regardless of what situation you’re in right now, you’ll be able to apply that to your situation.

The reason I have stepped into this environment is because I would like to be the person I needed when I was going through what you’re going through right now. By me being able to be in healthcare for twenty-two years, I’ve been given the blessing of communication (for one thing…), the blessing of empathy, and the ability to be able to talk to people on a personal level without them feeling that I am judging them on any grounds. I tell people when they come in for a consultation (or talk to them on the phone for a consultation), don’t be embarrassed to tell me anything because, I promise you, I’ve done it better or I’ve done it worse. And if I haven’t, I know somebody who has.

We are all in this together. There’s a reason I’m doing this. Obviously, this is a way I’m making my living, but the real reason I’m doing this is for you out there to know that you are not alone. I could continue to be a chiropractor and own my wellness center for the rest of my life and be completely fine with that, but when I started doing the toxic relationship awareness and healing coaching, helping people out of the fire of emotional and narcissistic abuse, I found my passion.

When you step out of toxic environment or file for divorce or cut someone out of your life, sometimes it works. Sometimes that’s the end of it and that’s the last you hear from them and you’re free to move about the cabin (for lack of a better phrase). But in other situations (let’s use an example of divorce), if you’re divorcing someone who is emotionally abusive or has narcissistic tendencies, I hate to tell you this, but the divorce is not the end. You can talk to any number of my clients, and they will all agree with me.

You file for divorce, or the divorce is over, or you cut yourself off, or you’ve stood your ground and you expect your boundaries to be respected. Only they aren’t. What you thought was bad before was just the beginning.

Angela and Melissa asked me in a podcast a while back if I had a magic wand, what would I do with it. I wasn’t thinking on a personal level then, but more on a business level, or on my clients’ level. My answer there was: I would take the triggers away. I would take away the triggers that stick with you for years—sometimes your lifetime!—that manifested and developed during your toxic relationship. Then it would be nice to end the toxic relationship, walk out the door, and start over without anything residual following you! But that’s not usually the way it works if you’ve been in a toxic environment for a lengthy amount of time.

Triggers frequently exist when you first move away or get out. As you heal, triggers become less and less. But I continue to see triggers pop up in the lives of people who have been removed from toxic relationships for years–myself included. There are things that still pop up in my life, and I still react to them. That’s what I want to talk about a little bit today.

In the toxic relationship awareness part of my program, I teach on the toxic traits of the toxic person, which allows you to understand the situation you’re in and emotionally disconnect from it. In the second half, I teach the healing. What that includes is self-discovery—or self-rediscovery—and moving forward past the effects that the relationship has had on you and your mental state, even without the toxic person in the picture. To me, that was devastating: You remove yourself from the toxic situation and surround yourself with people who are good and healthy for you and want the best for you…and guess what happens? You start feeling safe and calm, and all of the feelings that you’ve stuffed down for years and years, they have to come out because it’s finally safe to do so. When you start surrounding yourself with people that are safe and you will be okay to talk freely with, without being in trouble or without causing conflict, these poor people in your life who just want what’s best for you get this hurricane of your triggers, and they end up paying for what people in your life have previously affected you with.

Not only is that devastating, it’s humiliating. The people that are surrounding you now—these good, safe people—are now getting the brunt of what the people who were not good for you should have gotten. But because we avoid conflict and learn to stuff things down, when we get into a safe and happy place, this crap has to come out; and it will come out at the wrong time, at the wrong people, in the wrong situation. The only thing I can say is, if you are experiencing this, it has to come out. There are fantastic therapists that will guide you through it, but I can tell you on a person level that it is ugly.

The triggers will get fewer and farther between, and eventually you will start understanding what is going on.

Let’s talk a little bit about what triggers are.

By definition, a trigger is something that sets off a memory or flashback that will bring you back to a place or an event in your head that happened before. Not all of them have to be bad and traumatic; they are memories that cause your body to react as if it’s back in the same situation or the same environment that you were when the event happened. Triggers are personal. Explaining a trigger to someone will make them look at you like you have two heads. So you are going to be the only one that understands that trigger.

If you’re in a toxic environment right now, or you are recovering from a toxic environment, I want you to listen very carefully. Triggers are so personal, you will want to ignore them. They cause your body to react just like you’re back in that situation. It was uncomfortable. It was yucky. It was a trapped feeling. So when your body reacts, you want to stuff it all down again. But eventually, in order for you to move forward and accept your past and maybe even forgive and be open to self-care, triggers have to be dealt with. The more we ignore them, the more they will want to come out.

Triggers manifest differently to different people. The first thing that will happen is that pain in your stomach—that little pain that says “something is not healthy, something is not right, I’m in danger.” When you’re in a toxic environment for a long time, it’s that feeling in your stomach that you learn to ignore. That pain in your stomach is your body’s natural mechanism telling you when something is not safe. But when you become neutralized, or when a toxic environment becomes normal to you, you learn to live with the pain in your stomach because it’s there so often.

Triggers are activated by our senses. They are activated by sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.

A few examples of triggers:

1. Sight. A type of clothing (a brand of clothing that someone always wore, or you wore and someone always hated). Hair color. Facial Expressions (the raising of an eyebrow…). Objects. Alcohol. Furniture. Different rooms of the house or workplace. Different restaurants or social places. Written words. Christmas trees. Seeing someone you used to know. Unread texts or emails.
2. Sound. Raised voices. Anger. Bangs. Thumps. The sound of something breaking. Crying. Whispering. Screaming. A sound of a train or a door closing. Sirens. Grandfather clocks. Alarms. Footsteps coming toward you. Tone of voice.
3. Smells. Cologne. Perfume. Hair product. Cleaner. Smoke. Tobacco. Certain foods.
4. Touch. The way someone touches you. The way someone approaches you. Personal space.
5. Taste. Alcohol, drinks, or foods that remind you of a specific meal or a certain person’s favorite food.

I learned a lot about myself when my triggers started showing up. My triggers would come out ugly and at the person I was closest to, the person I would never want to hurt for anything. I had to figure out what was going on because the last thing I wanted was to chase the good people in my life away.

It is a long process. You don’t always know what’s going to trigger you. My suggestion is to pay attention to your body and listen to what it’s telling you. The first thing you’ll feel is anxiety; you’ll feel that pain in your stomach, you might feel a little bit shaky, your hands might get a little bit numb, your brain will start going and your breath will change. The first thing you need to do is recognize that you are in a safe place. Secondly, identify what is causing you to have that reaction. I suggest carrying a little notebook. If you can get down to the bottom of what is causing your body’s physical reaction, you may not have to deal with that trigger again on such a drastic level. If you don’t dig down and identify it, it will keep coming until you do.

I had no idea what was going on at first. At the time, I still didn’t have a good grasp on everything that had happened in my life and how unhealthy it had been. I was raised in a healthy environment. I left to college and grad school and to venture out in my life thinking that everybody was good, and that’s where I tripped myself up; I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. I knew I wanted to be in healthcare. I enjoyed taking care of people. I knew what was normal—or what seemed to be normal. I grew up in a loving family, so in dealing with these triggers, I had no idea what they were or what could have caused my explosive reactions. I was humiliated when they’d happen because the people who were witnessing my reactions to these triggers didn’t deserve to.

When I started feeling that pit in my stomach, I had to literally stop and identify what was causing it. I had to make myself go backward and ask myself what happened. Who just called? What did I just see? What is causing me to feel anxious? I’ve been doing this for years now. I haven’t perfected it yet; triggers still show up when I least expect them to, and tada! Explosions happen. But more times than not, I can remember what happened, recognize that I’m in a safe place, and accept my body’s reaction. Once I can put my finger on what the trigger is, I can throw it over my shoulder and it’ll be gone.

That’s not to say that things don’t still crop up! I still fight the urge to punch things down and away, I sometimes don’t address an issue right away, and I tend to let things build up. The problem comes in when the 23rd thing happens and Dr. Heidi blows a gasket on the people she cares about. Now the people that are closest to me knows that this happens and why, and thankfully they are very forgiving. In my eyes, they shouldn’t be, because no one should have to go through an explosion. I tease everyone about Dr. Godzilla coming out once every six or eight months, but I’m still trying to work on that so the people in my life don’t have to pay for my past.

If you have been in this situation, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you are in a toxic relationship, you have triggers right now and you know it. You are going to carry those triggers through into healthy relationships and possibly into healthy relationships where the other person isn’t going to understand your triggers. I want to make sure that you know leaving a toxic relationship is one thing, but working past it to make sure you get back to you so your past no longer affects you is a constant battle. But it gets easier, so don’t give up!

My husband has a phrase that he has taught me amidst raising teenage daughters and working with employees and mentoring people: It’s not about putting demands on people. It’s about constant, steady pressure in the right direction. It’s just like parenting; you have to parent yourself through some of these triggers and stop being so hard on yourself if you don’t fix it overnight. You didn’t get here overnight. You have been programmed to react the way you react, and it is the reprogramming that takes time.

I’ve told you this before: I talk to myself. The reason I talk to myself is this right here: It is to analyze the triggers that I know I have to deal with. And, again, it’s not like it’s catastrophic now, but when it happens it’s humiliating. It’s embarrassing. And it’s devastating to me that I can’t just carry on. It angers me each time I have to deal with a trigger, so don’t give up on yourself because you feel like you are still carrying some of your past. It is chipping away at the triggers one at a time. You will one day be able to throw them over your shoulder like I do.

Sometimes it’s not even anything big! My staff knows. If I get that pain in my stomach, they will stop me and ask, “Okay, what just happened? Let’s work through it.” Angela will ask, “Did someone call? Did you get an email? Did something happen with one of the kids?” And they know to help me go backward to figure it out. It usually ends up being something like “Oh, that’s what it was! I forgot to pay a bill and realized I’m going to have to pay a late fee,” which has nothing to do with anything of my former life; it just has to do with the fact that my body reacts in certain ways, and if I don’t address it, I will continue to feel that way. I don’t like having that feeling now that I’ve learned to live without it.

So I challenge you: If you are experiencing triggers, get yourself a little notebook. When you start feeling that feeling, sit down, give yourself five minutes, and write down what you are feeling. Working through the triggers is your responsibility. I know it seems unfair—the whole toxic relationship thing is unfair—but for you to get where you need to be, knowing that you can solidly move forward and knowing that the choices you make and the things that you do are only for you, you need to address the hard stuff. And triggers are one of the hard things.