As a physician, you’re trained to stay calm under pressure…

and yet, sometimes it’s the smallest moments in your personal life that feel the hardest.

Maybe you’ve had moments like this:

Something small happens…

a comment, a tone, a look...

and suddenly you feel it.

That surge.

The reaction comes fast.

Almost automatic.

Maybe you snap.

Maybe you shut down.

Maybe you distract yourself and move on.

But underneath it all…

there’s this quiet thought:

Why does this affect me so much?

For a long time, I thought the goal was simple:

Stop getting triggered.

Be calmer.

More in control.

Less reactive.

But what I didn’t understand back then is this:

Triggers aren’t the problem.

They’re the signal.

In this week’s episode, How to Use Your Triggers to Reduce Your Suffering, we take this one step further.

Not just understanding triggers…

But actually learning how to use them.

Because every trigger is pointing to something already within you.

And when you know how to work with that moment instead of against it,

everything starts to change.

Episode timestamps:

00:48 — What it actually means to be triggered

01:18 — Can triggers ever be a good thing?

01:49 — The “minefield” analogy that explains everything

04:52 — The 3 ways we usually deal with triggers (and why they fail)

07:11 — Why distraction is so addictive (and keeps you stuck)

10:19 — Why your coping patterns once made sense

12:08 — What emotions actually are (energy in motion)

14:09 — The first step: recognizing what you feel

15:49 — The difference between feelings and thoughts

17:32 — Why you might feel “nothing” at first

19:27 — How to sit with emotions without reacting

23:23 — What happens when you let emotions move through you

24:24 — Why triggers can actually be gifts

25:31 — When it’s okay to temporarily suppress or distract

27:16 — A simple 2-minute practice to build emotional resilience

One of the most important shifts in this episode is this:

You don’t need fewer triggers.

You need a new way of meeting them.

Because when you stop running from what you feel,

and learn how to stay with it, even briefly,

you reduce your suffering at the root.

And if you’re reading this thinking… this is exactly what I struggle with...

we’ve just launched something new called Untriggerable.

It’s designed especially for physicians who are used to functioning at a high level externally…

but feel overwhelmed internally when these moments hit.

If this episode resonates and you want to go deeper into this work, just reply to this email or reach out to [email protected] and we’ll share all the details with you.

🗣️Oh—and if you have something you're navigating and would love my take on it...

You can submit a question or situation for a future episode right here (totally anonymous!):

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