Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, handling hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and a life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Y'all, it has been a week. I don't know about you, but these last few days have been disturbing. From outrageous emergencies from others, impatient adults, and kids on break, and a sick kid, my soul has been fried. Y'all know that cup I talk about always pouring into?

Erica: It has been poured out all over the floor. I don't have to tell you this, but as women, we have a lot on our plate. We're responsible for leading households, leading teams, making tough decisions, and constantly adapting to changing circumstances. It's no surprise that we can be triggered in many of these situations. But what can we do?

Erica: How can we manage our emotions in a way that allows us to stay calm and centered? Well, fear not, because I'm gonna tell you. Today, we will walk through what happens when we get triggered, why it matters, and what we can do to better manage these triggers. Have you ever been on a Zoom or a Teams call, or maybe even an in person meeting, and everything seems to be going okay?

Erica: Maybe not smooth, but just okay. And then all of a sudden, someone speaks to you in a certain way? Maybe they raise their voice, or maybe they say something that just sends you into a tailspin. For me, it's almost like this out of body experience where my reptilian brain just takes over. And y'all, full transparency. I don't even know what a reptilian brain really is.

Erica: I haven't done the research, but it sounds about right. And this brain just takes over. And what happens next? My reaction isn't the reaction I necessarily want to put out there, but it just flies out. Totally been there.

Erica: When we are triggered, our bodies and our minds respond in a variety of ways. Physically, you might feel your heart racing, your breathing become shallow, your muscles tensing up. Emotionally, you could experience anger, frustration, fear, or even shame. And then cognitively, you might experience those racing thoughts and find it difficult to concentrate. Triggers can come flying into your day in so many ways, through a client's critical feedback, a family member's comment about how you parent, or it could come up through someone raising their voice at you, or maybe an insensitive joke.

Erica: Sometimes these triggers are related to past experiences like childhood trauma. Sometimes they're just present day stressors like a difficult colleague or a looming deadline. But as the fearless leading women that we are, we have to be able to have a level of awareness about how these triggers impact us and our ability to communicate effectively, and ultimately how we're viewed in the workplace. If we're angry or defensive, for example, we might be more likely to lash out, shut down, or, if you're like me, cry. Oh, I hate, hate, hate, hate those angry tears.

Erica: Y'all know those responses are not good. They aren't productive. And if you're here listening to this podcast, they likely do not represent how you want to lead or what kind of woman you want to be. Now, not too long ago, I snapped at someone that I was working with, and it was not a proud moment for me. And as soon as it happened, it was almost like my anger and frustration shifted to shame and blame and guilt on my own self.

Erica: And I immediately apologized, but I just kept ruminating on the situation. And then I was ruminating on the fact that I was ruminating. You know, do you ever beat yourself up after you're triggered? You know, where you say, oh, why did I do that? Or I shouldn't have done that or acted like that or said this, and I wish I hadn't yelled. That was me.

Erica: Now here's the good news. That rumination can be powerful. It can be a really fantastic tool if you harness it in the right way. So here's what I did and what I want you to do. If you find yourself in this type of situation, first thing, you need to figure out why you reacted.

Erica: Now, in my case, I reacted the way I did because I was at the end of my rope in frustration on a certain topic. I felt like I wasn't being listened to. I felt like I wasn't being heard. And then I felt as if I was being talked down to. And y'all, that's what did it for me. All of that together just felt crushing, and it created that out of body experience.

Erica: But understanding the why is the first step you have to take ownership of in order to manage the triggers and stay calm. Then I went deeper. I peeled back the layers of the onion a little bit to understand why I responded the way I did. So now I understand the why. I'm still ruminating on that past event, which we all know isn't productive. I just started by asking myself questions and getting really honest.

Erica: And I was able to realize that I was ruminating because my actions, snapping at that colleague, it didn't align with the person that I am, the leader I am, my core values, or how I want to present myself. I was not wrong in my feelings of frustration or feeling talked down to, but I was wrong in my trigger response. Now I'm not saying that person didn't deserve a little heat. I certainly think that they did, but I could have given that heat in a much more conducive and constructive manner, and in a way that aligned with my core values and the person that I want to be, the leader I want to be. Now I wanna shift gears on you for just a second and talk about triggers in the home.

Erica: These triggers can come from a family member, a spouse, even your own children. Now I get triggered when I do not feel heard or understood, which, depending on the situation, leads me to shouting. Sometimes it leads me to saying hurtful things. In fact, I actually just paused this podcast and this recording to yell at my children. Again, not the kind of wife, mom, or person I want to be.

Erica: Now fortunately, once you have identified these triggers and you understand the why, there's a lot of strategies that you can use to help manage these triggers and stay calm and centered, and not let the less than desirable responses come raging out to the surface. So here's what I found that works for me. Taking a deep breath and focusing only on that breath. Y'all, I'm even saying that if you are in the middle of a Zoom, you just tune every single person out and focus on that inhale, and the exhale. It's almost like tuning out the world.

Erica: And I will tell you why this works. If you are in the heat of it, being shouted at over Zoom, focusing on that breath turns all of the external volume all the way down. Then, once you've had that breath and you've taken your moment, you can always ask that person to repeat themselves. You know, just say, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't catch all that.

Erica: Would you mind repeating it? And it forces the other person out of their emotion and honestly gets them to calm down as well. Now if you're triggered in a different moment, say, maybe over email, girl, take all the breaths you need. Get up from your chair. Do a quick stretch.

Erica: Your immediate response is not required. The next thing I do is I try to look through a different lens. Typically, the lens of the person that's triggering me. So when I am triggered and I stop and I take that moment, I look at the comment, the email, the situation, whatever it is, through their viewpoint, and I can often find a bit of empathy, a bit of understanding. You have to remember that we all have different life experiences, different traumas, different things going on in our lives, all of which, if we take a moment to try to understand, can help us create insight and help us find common ground.

Erica: This reflection and taking a different viewpoint can help calm down the trigger in the moment and clear our minds enough to move forward in a productive way. And then, girl, take a break. I don't care what that break is, but take it. Sometimes I will get up and go for a walk outside if the weather's nice, and sometimes I just move away from my computer or wherever I am and scroll through TikTok for ten minutes to get that dopamine hit. But when you physically remove yourself from the location that you are in when you're feeling triggered, it will give you the space that you need to process your emotions.

Erica: You have to know when to walk away, to take that breath, and then come back calm. And then the last thing that you can do that works for me every single time is talking it out with a good ass girlfriend. Nothing beats a night out, a phone call, where you can just let all of those feelings out, all of those thoughts out, without judgment. Having a safe space where you can just vent and say whatever the hell is on your mind about the other person, about the other situation, it is so cathartic. So having that person where you can just be fully supported, chef's kiss.

Erica: Nothing is better than that. That is the girlfriend that you need in your life, the one that will help you hide the body kind of friend. They hype you up, they support you, and they get behind you. And girl, let me be honest. Managing these triggers is not easy.

Erica: It is truly a skill that you can develop over time, and it takes practice. It takes those mess ups like the one I just told you about. On the best days, we can manage these triggers with ease, but you're going to have those moments where we're just not our best selves. But when you are aware of how you respond, you can start using the strategies that we talked about earlier. We can take that deep breath in a much needed moment to be a more calm and centered person in the face of a challenging moment.

Erica: The last thing that I wanna touch on is to tell you, do not beat yourself up in the moments when you act in a way that you are not proud of. We have all been there. And guess what? We'll all do it again sometimes. Do not be like me and ruminate over the situation.

Erica: There is no positive outcome in beating yourself up. I want you to get curious about your reactions, about your emotions in the situation, and then I want you to practice self compassion. I want you to accept that you did what you did. And maybe you weren't proud of it, but it happened. And I want you to accept that and give yourself the grace and the forgiveness, and then move on.

Erica: At the end of the day, y'all, we are just humans living the human experience, and learning to embrace yourself and the imperfections, it will give you resilience. It will give you the fuel that you need to be that badass, kick ass, amazing woman, mom, wife, and friend that I know you are. So real quick, y'all. Before you move on to that next episode, I've got a huge goal of 105 star reviews before I drop my one hundredth episode, and I need your help.

Erica: If you could just scroll down and tap the link, write a review, drop a few kind words on what you love about this episode, it will truly help the message land in the hands of the woman that needs to hear it most.