The 4-Step Process to Navigate Family Triggers - without self Betrayal
I can see myself, from a third person perspective. My body is leaning in. I’m ready to fight. Sitting in the living room, looking around at all the familiar faces. My heart is beating fast. All of a sudden, I notice the vibration of the familiar frequency. The pull, the tightness in my gut, the script about to hijack my body and run. *Exhale*. I pause, and focus my attention inward. I don’t just think “he’s wrong”, but I know, in that moment, this is information for my evolution.
That simple act of noticing myself and pausing changed how I related to my family this weekend, and created and epic get-together, drama-free.
If that’s what you’re looking to create in your life, read on.
If you’re still waiting for everyone else to change first, bookmark this for later. But if you’re ready to reclaim yourself regardless of what they do—this is for you.
More of a listener? Here you go. Otherwise, keep reading …
The moment before is definitive of the next
Here’s a simple thing we’re not taught to pay attention to: There is a moment before the blow out that becomes definitive of how we engage.
If we allow the moment to be defined by the pull of the familiar, we will play to the tune of the same old dance. But if we give ourselves permission to push the internal pause button, our reality transforms.
Last week, I shared with you why the holiday season is so taxing for 9 out of 10 Canadians.
This week, I’d like to share with you how to pay attention so that you don’t contribute to re-creating the familiar story. Because you can.
Before you do or don’t say anything, your body is giving you signs to pay attention to.
But most of us override that moment of information because we are to track everyone else’s emotional state—to read the room, manage the temperature, adjust ourselves to keep the peace.
Women, especially, have became experts at detecting the micro-shifts in other people’s faces, voices, energy.
The cost of that? We stop paying attention to what is happening inside our own bodies — the place where power lives.
The research on this is startling. Women excel at reading emotional cues in others—we are more effective than men at recognizing faces, interpreting body language, sensing what’s unspoken. Our brains light up differently when we process emotion, especially “negative” emotion. We’re wired for this kind of external attunement likely because our safety depended on it.
But here’s the paradox: despite our heightened sensitivity to others, women typically show lower interoceptive accuracy than men. That means we pay more attention to others than we do to ourselves.
Any woman surprised by that?!
We’ve been conditioned to look outward. And in doing so, we abandoned ourselves. We think someone else has the answers. Someone else has the power. And that’s a detrimental belief rooted in lack of internal safety.
Here’s the problem with all that: if we don’t know how to pay attention to our own body cues, we miss out on critical information that lends us powerful in our own lives. We become unable to differentiate between an environment that is safe or one that is unsafe, mistaking familiar for safety and seeing threats where there may not be any.
Those are the consequences of not being internally referenced — aka sourcing the truth from our inner cues. Because they can never, ever lie.
The trick is learning how to differentiate the voice of truth from that of trauma.
So how do you reclaim this? How do you learn to trust your body’s signals when you’ve spent a lifetime overriding them?
You need to be intentional in your practice. And you need a map.
The map I use that has been changing the lives of women for over 30 years is a four-part process called Name It, Claim It, Choose It, Change It.
It’s one method of paying attention so you intentionally interrupt what is happening without losing yourself to the familiarity of the pattern.
Let me show you what this looked like. We were sitting around the living room. The whole family was there. Children running around making noise. The adults talking (bordering on arguing) when my dad said something like, ‘People were always worried about all technologies before they came out...’ and off he went listing examples. And I felt the pull to argue hardcore. So I made a comment that heated things up more. Oops. The temperature in the room started to rise. I didn’t want that. So I knew I had to stop, and redirect. Here’s how:
Name It — Notice yourself. Put your attention on what’s actually happening in your body. Not the story. Not what they said or did but the sensation, the pull, the pattern. Without naming the moment and what’s causing the problem, you cannot change anything.
Research shows that naming the activity you feel in your body—sensations, urges, and patterns, not just stories—shifts brain activity from the limbic system (emotional/reactive) to the prefrontal cortex (reasoning/control), making it possible to change your behavior.
In my case, sitting in that living room, I noticed my posture, what my body’s doing, what I wanted to habitually give in to: “I’m leaning forward. My heart is racing. I want to fight.” I knew that this was a moment of me seeking to exert control in the room by ‘being right’.
Claim It — Once you can name it, you can own that this is your experience, your nervous system, your pattern. It’s tot caused by them; it’s created by you, for your evolution. Oof, this is a hard one, indeed. It’s the hardest part because we’ve been taught to judge and blame others for our life. Especially women — we are conditioned to follow, not lead.
Taking ownership of our life’s circumstances (“this is happening in me, not to me”) is underpinned by two key concepts in psychology: sense of agency (I am causing/choosing this) and sense of ownership (this is my experience, my body). This matters because a strong sense of agency helps reduce stress and anxiety, especially in emotionally charged or threatening situations.
In my case, I had to claim: “I’m the one choosing to add fuel to the fire right now right now. I’m yanking the chain because I want to be right. And I can choose what matters to me in this moment: stop.”
Choose It — This is your moment of power where you decide what matters to you. You decide what direction you will take — the familiar, or the intentional? To take the later, you have to connect with what’s your intention? What do you actually want to create in this moment?
Superposition in quantum physics show us that our mind can hold multiple possibilities at once. When we make a choice about how to interact, the superposition “collapses” to a single outcome which we call “reality”. But before a choice is made, it holds the full range of possibilities — it is the act of choosing that creates “reality”.
In my situation with my dad, I knew that staying present and having a fun gathering mattered more than being right or playing out the familiar story of how my family “is”. Creating connection mattered more than winning the argument.
Change It — Here’s a fundamental: without choosing differently, you can not change your reality. So if you want to change your life, you have to choose differently. That’s how you change it.
Mindfulness is key. You don’t need studies to tell you that — you know that when you pay attention, the quality of your life is different than when you live mindlessly.
How mindful are you of what you want your life to look like?
The key is to let the energy move instead of bracing against it. In that room, in that moment, I brought my attention to the base of my spine, I softened my breath, and I became an observer to my reality, while rooted in my body. I smiled at myself—not at him, at me. Internal recognition, and I let it go.
I will not change anyone’s mind by arguing, but I can change their experience of being with me for the better.
The whole thing took maybe 30 seconds.
But it changed the entire trajectory of the weekend.
The moment passed without escalation. No drama. No resentment. No aftermath where I replay the conversation in my head for three days wishing I’d said something different so the weekend was fun.
Choosing to pay attention is an act of power. The question becomes— what do YOU choose to pay attention to?
If your attention is on the familiar story of “oh there he goes again”, you will create a reality that feeds the familiar pattern and leaves you feeling the familiar way in the presence of the familiar people.
It’s too easy to stay stuck.
That’s why most people are.
But you don’t have to.
Want to go deeper?
Join us for “Staying Centered in the Holiday Chaos: No matter who’s around”
This isn’t a webinar where we move through Name It, Claim It, Choose It, Change It so you can feel this process in your body.
You’ll leave with:
A body-led tool you can use the moment you feel yourself disappearing
Your own roadmap for navigating your specific triggers
Proof that you can stay present without losing yourself
A calmer holiday season—maybe your first
Investment: $47 CAD
If you’re ready to stop abandoning yourself mid-conversation and reclaim your sovereignty before the holidays hit—this is for you.
See you there,
Stela
When the self-help stops helping, it’s time for something deeper.
Our Authentic Living Library gives you free, lifetime access to body-led tools, audio journeys, and workshops designed to help you reconnect with yourself—on your own terms.
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