Defusing Triggers

Our tendency to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn when we feel when we’re triggered is often a response to something from our past. The work is not to eliminate all triggers, but to understand why you’re feeling triggered, how to defuse them when they come, and when to take a moment to slow down to care for our body, mind, and soul in response to those triggers.

Listen to Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen discuss some of their triggers along with some of their strategies for defusing those triggers in this week’s episode of the Allender Center Podcast.

Episode Transcript:

Dan: There are some topics that feel a little important to address but are still a little bit distant. This happens to be one that is not so much dear to my heart, but near to my heart. Yeah, we’re going to talk about being triggered and I just got an email that apparently you opened. We won’t go into the details, but it’s a departure of really a good, wonderful human being from the midst of our work. And it just in the opening of that email and seeing the event of being able to celebrate and send this good man, I just wanted to pound my little screen. I’m not particularly mature, no one’s ever accused me of that. But being triggered when you open an email, I didn’t expect to be triggered when I opened an email and there it is. So Rachael, I would like this hour or whatever to be addressing what we need to deal well with the unexpected moments when we have a flash, flood, a rush…

Rachael: Yeah that’s a great way to put it.

Dan: … of cortisol. I remember when we were, I was in Israel, we were walking down what’s called a wadi and it’s just this stream bet. And our host said probably best not to be in there because even though it looks dry, there could be rain 10 miles away and it can rush down so quickly that literally you will not hear it or be able to step out of the way. That sense of being flooded by something that looks like a dry riverbed but could sweep you away in a moment, being triggered is not only difficult but important for us to be able to say, how do we do our very best to defuse those trigger mines that can easily blow us up.

Rachael: Yeah, and I mean this is obviously, it’s a necessary topic just in general, but in a point in time in our society and culture where people are traumatized and the trauma is compounding and as we’ve talked about, not necessarily equitable on how it compounds and which bodies bear the brunt. I mean, do you not notice in your own life, heart and mind, but certainly just as a baseline right now, I think people are in a state of constant trigger, triggering, and then if you add any personal realities to that. It’s just getting amplified. So for example, driving right now feels a little bit like, okay, just pay attention and be gracious. Riding on an airplane right now feels like is someone going to lose their mind and in their flooding of stress, biochemicals act psychotic in the air and we’re going to have to reroute. So again, that sounds extreme and we are talking about that’s the extreme way to understand it. And again, we’re talking about things on a spectrum, but we all know what it is to have that flooding of stress biochemicals. Like you said, a flash flood is such a great imagery of this and so often it feels involuntary. We don’t have any control over it. There’s nothing we can do. We may not even be aware that we’re in it. It’s just maybe we can talk a little bit about how do we know when we’re flooding stress biochemicals. For people listening who are like, okay, I understand adrenaline cortisol, but sometimes the emotions that come, I know for myself because in fight, flight or freeze, I tend to move toward fight. My triggered dysregulated emotions tend to surface more as agitation and anger initially when I’m flooded. Less, they are less like, oh, I’m afraid, oh, I’m sad. I mean it’s kind of how you said, I want to punch my screen. It comes out in a flash of like, “Ahhh!” you know?

Dan: Look, it’s one of the reasons we do well with one another. We are fighters.

Rachael: So true.

Dan: And we’ve yelled at each other and had unpleasant encounters. But there is a sense of understanding of how each of us gets. And prior to the beginning of this, you were attempting to regulate me and it was knowledge-based-kind, but also more than kind. It had a kind of containment, you need to hold yourself, you need to be able to engage this because we have a task to do and the issues that are bringing about this flood, we’ll address in due season. So I mean even that was enough to get me into this process of talking about what happens when you get triggered. I mean the whole podcast began as a result initially of Becky asked me to work on her computer because she was having such frustration in getting a certain tax issue resolved. But prior to that she was at the table, I’m on a couch and I can hear her suffering. Literally she’s like, oh, I cannot get this. Oh, I think I got it. And then, oh no, back and forth. I’m hearing her articulate her distress. I didn’t name the fact that her distress was beginning to trigger me. So by the time she brought me the computer interrupting my work, I flashed at her. But it had little to do with being interrupted. It didn’t even have primarily to do with the issue that I’m pretty, I mean she’s amazingly incompetent with her computer. I’m just literally a teeny notch above. So the fact that she’s about to ask me to do something where I am incompetent to help, even that wasn’t the trigger. It took me a while after I kind of bit her to be able to go, wait a minute, what’s going on? You just treated the person you love more on this earth than any human being really poorly with angry, “I’m working, how can you just interrupt me? Blah, blah, blah” going, that’s not it. The issue of the computer’s, not it, what is going on? So triggers, even when we’re aware there are bodies being flooded, at least for me a lot of times in the flood is a fragmentation that keeps me from having clarity as to what in the world is prompting this.

Rachael: Oh, absolutely. And you kind of already said this, how do you defuse when you don’t actually even know what it is, how to predict it. And so getting into the soil and dirt of our stories is so necessary in understanding why something would bring about a fight, flight, freeze or fawn reaction in us. Did you get any clarity as to what in the world was going on?

Dan: Well, not quickly. I wouldn’t like to say I was more insightful and mature than I am, but it required because my being triggered and being angry at Becky triggered her. So then she’s responding from my, triggered from her trigger and I’m being now triggered by her trigger. And you just go, this is infinite regress. It is the echo chamber of a dark canyon. How the hell do we get ourselves? And eventually by being able to let go, wait a minute, I mean somewhere in that midst I was at least able to go, I’m wrong, but give me time. I know my response was so far from anything kind or legitimate, it took me a while just to be able to come back to her, not to deal with the trigger, but to just come back and kind of go, what do you think just happened? And I love my wife, I love her brilliance. And she said, oh, do you think I might have reminded you a little bit of your mother? And I’m like, go away. Don’t talk to me when you hear a sentence and you kind of go immediately internally, I don’t want to deal with it, but there’s something here. And she said, I probably sounded too desperate for you. And there was the trigger. I’m good with people’s anger, I’m good with conflict, but desperation, it’s a deep rooted carved into cellular scars. So that level of what I felt was her desperate plea for help, I didn’t make any connection. There was no resonance with regard to what my body felt then versus what it felt with Becky. But when she named that, it was like, yes, I know that I to be true. So I think it’s so important to say as you put it so well, you can’t defuse what you can’t see or what you can’t sense or what you can’t predict. So important to know that a lot of the triggers, you’re not going to be able to preventively pull the plug on, but you can know certain remembered themes, certain remembered triggers, and be perhaps just a step better at being able to deal with the past. Knowing the past more often than not, is the context for where that trigger really got formed. And I know I’ve spoken about my mother’s borderline desperation that created an ongoing sense of exhaustion and trial and trauma. But knowing that it didn’t catch me in the moment simply because the present always has this element of being unexpected and surprising. So I think you can do a lot of work that will eventually enable you to get closer, maybe sooner to something of the trigger process. But only if you’re willing to have done something of that past work.

Rachael: Yeah, I mean triggers, they are remnants of a survival technique that helped, that we coped with that helped us survive. And as we talk about, we’re needed at the moment, usually when we’re younger and you put it well worn pathways, so well, so well worn, that’s what makes it like, oh, there’s the canal. The flood always comes down that canal. But they don’t necessarily, we don’t need them now. So it does feel like being hijacked when they come. And so yes, the work of in some ways excavating what is this connected to? It does, like you said, it not, won’t necessarily prevent you from feeling triggered, but it will certainly give you more choice, more freedom to disrupt it when they come. Like you said, more quickly than just being at the mercy of them. I wish that this was something like you. I love that you brought a story of marriage. Cause I do think in friendships… in organizational cultures and spaces, certainly in marriages, in parenting, and as we talked about just in public in general, oh, how much… Michael and I are constantly talking about, okay, I think I just triggered you. I’m aware you have a really strong reaction that feels like this is a familiar way of coping with your world. Or right now for me being triggered, I just am more able to name, I’m just really dysregulated. I’m really dysregulated because I have a seven month old and I’m sleep deprived and I feel like I’m having to contend with really familiar triggers that I did not anticipate from a tiny human. I anticipated, we’ve talked about this, I anticipated flooding cortisol when she had needs that I couldn’t quite figure out. Cause I know that’s a trigger for me. And it is so connected to story, but I am finding another one which feels very thematic and that is when I do know what she needs and I’m trying to help her. Maybe she’s running a fever from vaccines and she’s miserable and she’s groaning and I know she needs some Tylenol to help some of the symptoms not be so brutal. And she spits the Tylenol out because she doesn’t like the texture and it comes in her hair and all over her clothes. And so now not only is she moaning and groaning, but now I got to get the sticky stuff out of her hair. I’ve got to change her clothes and she’s going to be cold because she’s running a fever. And that feeling of I’m trying to help you, I know what you need, but not only are you not receiving it, but you are rejecting it and making the problem worse. I am realizing my seven-month-old is having to bear, not really because I’m working at it, but I get so triggered in that moment and I have to do the most deep breathing. And this is not about her. This is about the places you have been called to be a prophet and a priest and a queen, and to see well and to offer care and to try to preempt disaster. And people don’t take the help!

Dan: Well, I’m thinking this sounds a lot like therapy. This sounds a lot like pastoring. This sounds a lot being maybe the changes, at least with most of the people I work with. I don’t have to get aspirin out of their hair, but that just take my help!

Rachael: Would be so much easier. This would be less work for everyone. So I mean it’s, I’ve just making light of, but it’s real. The struggle is real because she’s a baby. So she’s like, she’s not going, yeah mom, I’m rejecting this Tylenol because I don’t want your help. She’s just like, this is disgusting. I don’t like this texture. I don’t feel good, get this out of my body. And so to have to be contending with something so clearly a trigger because I’m like, my reaction to this does not match what is actually playing out here. Whereas other times when we’re triggered, we might know the volume is too high, but we feel really entitled to how we feel.

Dan: I’m checking, but at some level, don’t you feel even when it seems connected and logical, there’s something irrational in it.

Rachael: Oh 100%.

Dan: And what I mean by irrational is we can’t make sense of it and we know there’s an extremity, but the fact that you and Michael are starting, not like yesterday, but in your early years of marriage, allowing that language to actually be a lens to look through as looking at what’s happening between the two of you. It took us and it’s still taking us decades to actually have that window. And it is so freaking helpful. It wasn’t in the moment of the computer issue, but soon thereafter, and I mean 15 minutes, we were largely restored. Now I still couldn’t help her with the computer. So there was a new, not severe, but new trigger. But we were already in the process of regulating, which is another word for defusing. When you can come and surround the trigger with a sense of we’re not going to let this exacerbate intensify and in one sense ruin what’s going on between us, then you’ve got space to begin the process of asking what’s provoking this? And I need simple categories. I have a simple mind. And for me there are three keywords. What’s going on with regard to anger, fear, and dread. Now you could add a hundred more what’s going on with shame, what’s going on with exposure. But if I address those three, I’m afraid. I mean the trigger itself may not be clearly I’m afraid. But if I’ve got the ability to step in and go, what am I afraid of? What am I angry about? And something almost deeper to my core, what am I dreading? And I would hold dread and shame and in one sense, fear and shame, makeup, what I mean by the word dread. Then I’ve got at least some ground to begin to dig, to be able to say something has provoked what’s going on in those three. What about for you?

Rachael: Oh, I was just thinking definitely anger. But for me, anger is always about, like you said, fear. It’s always about dread. And sometimes it’s about sadness. What am I actually really sad about or I don’t want to be sad about. I don’t want to experience loss here. I don’t want to have my heart broken here or my heart’s already broken. But I definitely, for me, danger where I feel like people are putting me or themselves the people I love in danger unwittingly or wittingly it, that is very provocative to me. And I think what’s interesting is these are so in-storied and so embodied because you and I are both fighters, but Michael probably moves more toward fawn when he’s triggered. And so it can go underground in a way that if I’m not paying attention, I could be triggering him very, very badly and he could be moving toward me like he’s actually trying to offer care, but as a safety, coping, survival mechanism where he’s actually really scared of the way, I’m like, we’re triggering each other just like you’re talking about. And so again, I love that you’re like naming, what provokes, and I think learning what provokes each of us because it’s going to be different and the way we respond when we’re provoked is going to be different. Because when anger provokes me, I power up. When anger provokes him, he moves down and quiet almost, if you don’t see me, you can’t hurt me. And I’m like, if you’re going to hurt me, you’re going to pay.

Dan: I’m going after you.

Rachael: Or I’m not going down easy. Yeah.

Dan: And I think an important contrast, especially talking about marriage is seldom do you have two people who have the same trigger response. Not that we don’t all have all four of fight, flight, freeze, fawn, but we all have a certain realm that we’re more proficient in. And Becky’s response, I would’ve used to have said she’s stonewalled, which is kind of an angry silence, but it’s become even over the last six months so much clearer that no, she freezes. Yes, she just internally, but she looks like she’s angrily shutting down, but she’s actually internally at that point gone. So when I’ve been triggered and I get ramped up and certainly more vocal, you can see the heartbreaking interplay. She gets more frozen and silent, but looks defiant, which in the defiance makes me want to fight more and then I fight more. She be, so the fact is what we have come to live and to believe that will keep us from harm not only brings oh, so much harm to ourselves, but so much harm to those around us. Right? Again, not like fault finding, you shouldn’t do this. It’s more, oh my goodness, this is the very antithesis of safety and the very antithesis of what you would want on behalf of the people that you care for. So it’s so crucial to know that when I’m ramped up, I’m triggered. We were in some meeting not long ago when you looked at me and you said, how’s your anger? And I’m like, I’m not angry. She said, well, you said impatience is your way of showing anger. And it’s like, oh, shut up. Yes. So we get to know one another’s core structures and then it’s not a judgment, it’s an invitation. And I think the way you invited me, the way I know Becky has invited me lets me have so much more clarity about how my trigger response is impacting others.

Rachael: Yeah. Oh, I’m just, that sense of creates some more debris and more trauma. And it’s, I think because it feels like a runaway train, it’s so not what we want. So then when you are triggered, but now you’re in shame and that’s sort of part of the process you’ve named, right? You just have a survival response that is not so much misplaced, right? Because the what’s provoking is familiar, but maybe the volume is irrational, the volume is misplaced, needs to be turned down a little bit. So you can have a little more choice. So you can be more grounded. And I think I just want to name often when this is playing out in these public spaces, I’m watching all these TikToks of people acting psychotic is like, oh, they’re triggered. Then the other person’s triggered by how crazy they’re acting and cruel. And again, it’s not to excuse the behavior because we all have more volition and choice than we’d like to admit if we’re willing to do the work. So when someone is just like, well, this just provokes me, so don’t ever, I think in marriage you have to come to the rally of, oh, we’re going to keep, we can’t ever get to a place where we don’t trigger each other. That’s not the work. The work is how do we defuse when they come? And so it’s it when things just get amplified, amplified, amplified. And it is like we do need to be known. Sometimes we do need an invitation. And we certainly the wisdom that you and Becky had to take some space, and this is why I think sometimes when people say, don’t go to bed angry. I’m like, sometimes you need to just go to bed and give your body a chance to come down overnight so that you can regulate and figure out what is going on and actually locate it in a meaning-making way. And I think I would just say, I just want to throw out there, because I know we’re going to talk a little bit about even more, how do we defuse , but I also want to name some of us when we are in seasons where it feels like we are triggered all the time. There’s not like… coming from a grounded space doesn’t actually feel like the norm. It feels maybe like we’re constantly dysregulated. That is, it’s okay to also acknowledge sometimes our bodies, if you’ve had chronic trauma, complex trauma, adrenal fatigue, cortisol flooding is very familiar, sometimes we need medical support to get those biochemicals regulated enough to give us a baseline to then do the work of like, okay, thematically, what is causing this, triggering? What is causing this anxiety? What’s causing this fight, flight, or freeze response? And how do I have more choice? Sometimes we need medical support, often we need to be engaging our bodies so that they can come down, whether that’s going for a walk, whether that’s getting doing yoga, whether that’s getting a massage, whether whatever we have to do sometimes to actually allow the body and our biochemical responses to settle down and get back in our prefrontal cortex. And that’s what you’re saying. I had to, I’m too amped up. I can’t even think straight, I can’t even make sense of it. It’s irrational. So part of I think the defusing and disrupting, and it is actually just taking a pause. It’s putting yourself in timeout, which we can’t always do. But I try to think of this when I feel myself getting into fight, flight, or freeze in public. You need to take a timeout or you’re going to end up on someone’s TikTok as like a Karen.

Dan: I’m sorry. It’s horrible. It’s hilarious. Sorry.

Rachael: But, I mean…

Dan: I just saw you on TikTok. It’s not a good image. But to underscore in public, there are very few places that you can go tend to your body. And the one place that should be a place is the bathroom public or private, even more preferable of it’s private because you can lock the door. You may not need to be there for its primary purpose, but it’s still a place to be able to go sit and be able to start doing a little bit of this work of I’m ramped up, something’s going on. And at least for me, I can know that there was a comment made or that there was an inference made that just either scared me or angered me or created dread. But at least what I can do is I know I’m not, well now I can’t get well, but I can get better in one sense the impact that I might have if I don’t. So that idea of space, it is crucial because it now gives you time to let your left frontal lobe come back online to begin that process of tending to your body. And sometimes literally, I just need to touch my chest, put my hands on my face, and I am a rocker. I need to move forward. I meet side to side. And that self-regulation is, it isn’t defusing yet, but it’s at least coming to the mind and beginning to dig around it so that it doesn’t explode. So in that process, you are deregulating, you are coming back to a more regulated presence. What then would you suggest I am all ears for what you have found helpful?

Rachael: I’m like, come back, talk to me in four months. Cause I feel like I’m in such a dysregulated season that I’m constantly apologizing and having to come back and feel like I’m, I am getting help. I’m working on this. I mean, here’s a funny story because I don’t know if this will be helpful, but my 11-year-old, did I tell this already about the baby voice?

Dan: No, you haven’t. Okay.

Rachael: No. My 11-year-old is a very empathic little one. And he responds well to good attunement as he should because I think he takes on a lot of the energy and the space and is trying to make sense of it. And that’s part of his survival mechanisms. So when I came home from the hospital with baby Evie and I was in my postpartum baby blue moment, which for me as someone who struggles with anxiety was the hot mess express. He was very dysregulated himself. And we talked a lot about it and it was like we navigated that as best we could. He just didn’t know what to do with me crying all the time and being stressed out and sleep deprived. And so anyhow, and I was very worried about the baby because I was getting very intrusive thoughts about all the ways that she could die. And I was like, try to regulate it. Cut to four months later, she’s freaking out in a car seat on a road trip and that doing that purple crying where she’s not breathing, I’m getting triggered because I feel, and just even biochemically that my body’s telling me she is that okay and you need to save her. And so I’m getting amped up and I’m like, Michael, we got to pull over. So Michael gets out with the baby to help her calm down and my son turns around to me and says, do you have the baby blues again? And I’m like, no, let’s talk about it. But he says, one of the things I’m realizing is that when the people I need help from are need help, when the people I need help from need help, I feel really distressed.

Dan: Oh, brilliant.

Rachael: It was so brilliant. And to be able to kind of one that in and of itself was defusing of my, part of me wants to be like, I need you to be okay. Okay. Cause I’m not okay. The baby’s not okay. I need you to be okay. But the way in which he’s naming why so many of us have come to these places of survival and coping mechanisms and that he could put language to when you’re distressed and I turn to you for help, but you can’t help me because you’re distressed, I feel really distressed. And it’s like, yes, that is very true. And so I think in some ways what can be disruptive, if we can find it is any sense of mercy and grace, that ultimately what’s happening to us is a really young part of us that needs help, doesn’t believe help is available to us and is really distressed and trying to survive. And so we talked about how it is hard sometimes when the adults in your life that you need help from are distressed, but it’s not your job to manage their emotions. And that I have help, I do have places I can go for help and that that’s my responsibility. And that we may not always be able to perfectly escape those moments, but that when they come, I’m really glad to know how they’re impacting him. And so I think if anything, I feel like he was giving young parts of me permission to kind of be like, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.

Dan: No, it’s brilliant. This is again another podcast. But how our children end up in some very lovely ways parenting us? And it is a gift to receive the wisdom of young ones. And what you’re also saying is receiving the gift of the wisdom of your own young ones within your own body and that ability to take space for your body first and foremost. But within that part of our defusing is finding language. But some of that language initially is I will tend to you, I will tend to my body, I will tend to what’s being triggered in me. And I think the language of parts of us internal family systems is so helpful, particularly with this category, that there are younger parts within us. And again, it’s not inner child theory, it’s actually a neurological reality that we are younger parts. And so to have voice to speak and to speak in a way that invites the voice of those younger parts, like what’s going on? As you hear your wife’s desperation, she’s fine. She’s not demanding, she’s not going to devour you. What are you so afraid of? What does your anger accomplish? What’s the dread within you? And in that languaging, we’re beginning to, in some sense, take this explosive entity and begin to snip the right cords or wires so it doesn’t explode. The fact that it’s there and that it threatens doesn’t mean that it has to actually explode and create even more debris. But one of the portions of our brain called the dorsal prefrontal cortex, that seems to in some sense manage a little bit more this idea of intentionality. This is not who I want to be. There has to be this activation of I’m responding to Becky. I do not want, I think we are so apt in those moments, as you put it brilliantly. We know we feel shame, therefore we’re justifying, hiding and justifying versus being able to come out and say, I’m wrong. I’m wrong and I need help. That kind of vulnerability. And this is not who I want to be to you, to anyone. And in that you, you’ve now got more than space. You, you’ve got language that can begin to move you toward practices that over seasons begin to diminish the power of certain kinds of unexpected, but also thematically relevant moments that are likely going to bring about a response. So even the beginning of this podcast that for some people might be three years ago already, but right now I’m, I’m been pondering this departure even as we’ve been talking. And there’s such desire to bless those who make those decisions, to follow their calling into other places while simultaneously holding the grief that this departure is heartbreaking and should be honored as heartbreaking. And so even without putting a lot of words to it, just by talking about this, I’m coming a little bit more back to myself, back to whom I want to be, even in the reality of being triggered and having a sense of departure. So there’s a way to create honor in this process, and I think that’s like most people just want to resolve a trigger, but even more so the issue of how do we honor that our body’s capacity to react and not necessarily well, but the ability to react has been the basis of our survival, certainly in periods where we had very few other options to be able to make it from one tragedy to the next.

Rachael: Yeah. And I think that’s that sense of sometimes what we need to defuse is to grieve. That’s part of the honor to grieve that our bodies have suffered and in some ways needed these defensive mechanisms to, and in part of the honoring is giving back a sense of choice so that we’re not creating more trauma, more debris to honor the exhaustion that there’s, there is, there’s some level of exhaustion in these well-worn pathways. And I think again to how do you clothe where there is shame and exposure? How do you honorably tend to parts of us that actually, if we’re honest, we’re not very fond of, even if we defend them, even if we kind of double down in them in moments when we feel exposed, they are not parts of us that we tend to love and want to lead with when we’re talking about who we are and who God made us to be. And I have seen incredible freedom and redemption in my life. And repentance. I mean a lot of what you’re talking about is repentance, just a sense of we are not bound to these survival techniques, even if they’re familiar. And even if we can’t prevent them from arriving, it is a way our body is letting us know we feel danger, we feel threat. And that’s part of the honor. And so it’s really hard to honor if you don’t know the stories, if you don’t know the context, if you don’t know what is that part of your body, threatened by afraid of, exhausted by, dreading. And so it does take story work. And I think also I have found tremendous healing through EMDR in some of these places. But again, in a mixture of story work and body work, because they’re so located in a memory in a moment in time

Dan: And soon after, there was some significant restoration. I’m calmer, I have owned, Becky has been so kind. We’re working on the computer, didn’t get resolved. But we both decided at that point, Ugh, I don’t think our taxes will likely get done. We don’t have to do it this instant. But at the point where we’re good, I think we’re good, things are like, let’s move on. And I remember she put her hand on my shoulder and I’m like, Ooh, that’s, that’s nice. I like that. But I think there’s something coming. So I’m not being triggered, but I’m like, I think I’m about to hear something. And she says, I’d really like for you to bring those young parts that felt the desperation of your mom. I know you’ve done this before, but I’d kind of like you to go for a walk and ask Jesus just to talk to those parts and for you to talk from those parts to him. And I’m like, oh God, we okay? We’re all in, from my standpoint, a glorious process of reformation and that very tender, really, I thought we were okay at that. I’m okay. She’s like, no, I think you’re fine. But you want to let the one you love even more than me to speak to those parts. And I think that’s where a lot of us either avoid prayer, avoid that engagement with those younger parts, or think that only story work is necessary. But to be able to go, wait a minute, it’s both and not either or without doing the story work. I wouldn’t have known what to even bring. But in bringing those parts, it was a very, very tender walk. Again, wouldn’t it be wonderful to say I’m healed.

Rachael: It would be wonderful.

Dan: Yes. Yeah, I’d, I’d like to meet me at that point. But healing is a whole nother matter. So there is something about not just defusing, but I think of this in terms of the work that has been done by so many excellent organizations where they go into places of war where they’re literally have been the scattering of mines that are blowing children up and destroying lives. And they go in with the slow hard work of finding the mine, defusing it, but then creating in that space where the mines something beautiful, something that bears like, we’re not just going to clear the minds. We actually believe that redemption holds the possibility of growing something beautiful in a place that death was imminent and destruction its glory. And to be able to go, hell no. We need to defuse triggers, but triggers need to become the place where there is this invitation in our vulnerability to the goodness of God, in the land of the living. And that’s what we’re hoping, y’all will hear, not only possible, but so lovely for each and every one of us.