The Internal Cycle
Written by Laura Carr
Triggered, activated, reactive…these are a few ways one might talk about their experience when they are feeling a LOT of emotions. Your emotional experience is a cycle and within that cycle there are different systems operating. I am a visual person, so I am going to attach a diagram that I created years ago that I have found useful. Maybe you will find it useful too. There are 5 systems that are operating when we are activated and I’m going to walk you through each of them. They start with the triggering event. Then the reaction starts: physical sensations, thoughts, emotions/feelings, belief system (unconscious), behavior.
A triggering event can be something mild. Some example could be a smell, someone not smiling at you, someone having a different opinion, someone laughing (and you think it is about you), being cut off in traffic, reading a social media post. The list of triggers is infinite; some make sense and others don’t, until we examine what they represent for us. When we get triggered, it sets off an automatic chain reaction that is usually unconscious. When we make the unconscious conscious, we bring awareness to our internal dynamic. If we approach ourselves with judgment or justification we stay stuck. If instead we approach with compassion and curiosity, this give ourselves options and this approach in and of itself is curative and allows for growth.
We are not our thoughts. We are not our feelings. We are not our feelings. We are not our beliefs. These are things that happen within us and we have been taught to identify with them and see them as who we are. Let’s look at the 5 systems.
The Cycle of Internal Emotional Experience, by Laura Carr:
Event
Body Sensations
Thoughts
Feelings
Belief System
Behavior
Remember, one cannot have a thought without a feeling or a feeling without a thought.
Physical Sensations
Some people are very aware of body sensations and some are not. The body is always communicating; the question is are we listening. Some examples of physical sensations are tingling, heart racing, nausea, muscle tension, butterflies in the stomach, clenching, sweating, changes in breathing, feeling warm, hot or cold. You might feel disconnected from your body. You might notice your hands or teeth clenching. You might notice yourself moving faster or slower than usual.
I think of body sensations as like a sound track to a movie. When the other systems are activated, the body sensations reinforce the other systems. The unconscious belief is often, “if I feel this way than what I’m thinking/feeling MUST be true.” And this makes it hard to detach or *disidentify with the process. I’ll talk about disidentification later. The take away for this system: practice checking in with your body. Pay attention to sensations, subtle or strong and name them. This would look like, “I notice my shoulders are raised and I’m clenching my jaw.” Or, “I feel disconnected and feel numb.” Or, “my face feels hot and my hands are tingling.” We are not trying to change anything. We are noticing!!
Thoughts (the mental system)
The mental system is all about the thoughts that occur in the mind. This mental conversation is happening 24/7. And we believe is most of the time. What is your mind thinking? What thoughts are you noticing? Thoughts go in two directions; they are either directed inward at you or they are directed outward at others. It can be helpful in the beginning to write these down. Inward direction may look something like this, “You’re such an idiot. Why’d you do that? God, you always screw things up. What are you going to do? You’ve ruin everything.” And this can go on and on and on.
When thoughts are directed outward they may look something like this: “That jerk. Can believe they did that! They are always so arrogant and selfish. They never think of anyone but themselves. I hate them.” With thoughts, the mind will always look for evidence to prove the thoughts.
Emotions/Feelings (the emotional system)
I like to keep it simple and use 5 basic emotions. These are: mad, sad, bad (shame), glad and afraid. These are the core emotions, except shame (that is another blog) and anger which is generally a secondary emotion (again, another blog). Many people bypass emotions and instead express thoughts and opinions. “I feel like you shouldn’t have left.” Or, “I feel like they are selfish.” These are feelings. These are thoughts.
When we bypass emotions, we abandon ourselves (which is usually modeled to us in our childhood). We end up feeling abandoned by others though and do not realize we are actually the ones doing the abandonment (another blog). When we skip the emotions, we aren’t able to be vulnerable and we aren’t able to correctly identify our needs.
Belief system
The belief system is generally outside of our awareness but we can get hints by examining our thoughts. Belief systems are created usually unconsciously and can stay hidden until we bring them under the light of curiosity. Let’s use the example from above from the mental system. “You’re such an idiot. Why’d you do that? God, you always screw things up. What are you going to do? You’ve ruin everything.”
With just these thoughts we would explore what belief might be present for this person. Some possibilities are: I’m not trustworthy, something’s wrong with me, mistakes are dangerous. What we will see is that there are core belief systems that show up repetitively in a person’s life.
Behavior/Reaction
This system is reflected in the behaviors that the person engages in, which is the end of the cycle. Examples of behavior are yelling, hitting, self-harm, people pleasing, overcompensating, hiding, lying, numbing behavior, self-harm, over-functioning, shutting down, manipulation are a few. We are used to looking at “bad” behaviors when it comes to being triggered. But “good” behavior is also included here. What we are looking at is the energy underneath the behavior. When we are triggered and we are unaware, we are reactive and our reactions will reinforce the unhelpful, destructive cycle; even if the behavior looks “good.”
Here’s an example: I get my feelings hurt when my boss gives me feedback. I snap back and respond with something mildly defensive. Then I feel super guilty and I go overboard with a work project (perfectionism and overcompensating) and I bring in bagels the next day to the office because of the guilt. The entire cycle happened but I was unaware of any of it. This leads to creating resentment because I have a belief that “no one appreciates me” and I play this out consistently in my work relationships.
AWARENESS is key, but awareness alone will not create change. We must cultivate awareness, the ability to notice, and combine awareness with compassion. These two ingredients allow for attunement with the human, your human. We are learning how to be there for ourselves in a way that was not modeled in childhood. Eventually, this leads to a change in behavior, but the change in behavior is the last to occur. So, we also need patience, lots and lots of patience and of course, a kind and supportive therapist to keep you kindly accountable.
Externalizing the process
Externalizing the various elements of this internal process helps you separate the authentic you from the process. I’ll write about that in a separate blog. Feel free to print out this diagram and use it to help you externalize this internal process.