When to do when your mom triggers you?

Rick Hanson
90 followers
1 Video View·Apr 22, 2025
The truth is, some people, especially close family, may always trigger us in certain ways. The brain is designed to learn deeply from early experiences, especially painful ones.
That’s the bad news.
The good news? You can change your relationship to being triggered.
It may still happen, but it doesn’t have to invade your mind. With practice, you can create space around the reaction, more mindfulness, more breathing room, more clarity.
And in that space, you can start to notice what else is true: your inner stability, and even the moments of care and intention that might otherwise get lost.
It’s not about avoiding triggers altogether. It’s about gaining freedom in how you relate to them.
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well bad news good news good news bad
news your mom may always trigger you uh
we're designed to learn from our
experiences especially negative
experiences that happen when we're young
involving other people so it could be
that if she does certain things
especially under certain conditions when
you're particularly
vulnerable you may still get triggered
that's the bad news the good news is
that if you are triggered you can change
you can shift your relationship to being
triggered so it's happening but it's not
so invasive so that you have more
mindfulness around it more spaciousness
more distance from it and you're able to
be aware of other things that are true
including what's happening over here
with you and including aspects of your
mother that are not triggering you that
are in fact really sweet and
well-intended even if she's kind of
awkward about it that's the first good
news the second good news is that yeah
actually over time often we can not be
triggered at all that takes a certain
amount of internal emotional learning in
which uh for example we start to
understand more the intentions of the
other person uh the good intentions even
if they're expressed awkwardly we start
to get more of a sense of the being
behind their eyes that really helped me
with my own mother to get a sense of her
loving good intention way back there and
last you can keep reminding yourself
that she's over there you're over here
you're not implicated in her mind stream
and you can have compassion for her and
wish her well all of which will help you
not be triggered anymore
