Meeting the Protectors

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” — Carl Jung

Jung is pointing at something most of us, including me, would rather avoid. The path doesn’t run through the light we imagine — it runs through the dark we won’t look at. And the darkness rarely announces itself as darkness. It shows up as a reaction that’s far bigger than the moment that caused it. A common term for this is a “trigger”. A trigger is a reaction that is out of proportion with the event. And if you are desiring transformation, then the first step is to acknowledge the moment isn’t the cause, it’s the doorway. If the trigger is the doorway, then what’s on the other side that most of us don’t want to look at? The wound, the fear, the limiting belief we didn’t choose, and operating system we didn’t write and a childhood we didn’t pick. Something unknown is hidden is there. And if you can find the courage to look, door by door, you find a new freedom – freedom from the bondage of self.

On our last podcast (Meeting the Protector) my wife and podcast co-host extraordinaire, Jacqueline, and I started to explore how to deal with triggers, not only as individuals but as part of a healthy (divine) union. We have since had a tremendous response to that podcast with respect to how relatable the conversation was to our listeners. So much so that I am feeling called to share parts of it in this thought piece.

I had been sitting with my own triggers recently, and instead of managing them or explaining them away, I got curious and followed one all the way down with the help of a mentor. I don’t tend to get triggered that often anymore, but this one kept showing up and I was very motivated to find out why it dept recurring. To restate, a trigger is a reaction that is out of proportion to the event The recurring event, in my case, was not feeling understood by Jacqueline. It really stood out for me because that trigger doesn’t happen with anyone else. I don’t intellectually expect anyone to understand me because everyone lives in their own subjective reality. They can only understand though the lens of their own experience. I fully embrace that idea. But a trigger is not an intellectual event. It is an embodied process.

My starting point was that I know the story behind this. This is not new territory for me. I have a deep understanding of my childhood wounds; I accept that I have fears of abandonment and rejection and limiting beliefs of I am not enough and I am not worthy of love, amongst many others. I am aware of the story behind it all and, with most events, that awareness of the story has been more than enough to disarm the trigger. But not this one. Going into the story was not helping here.

My mentor had a different approach. She asked me to describe “who shows up when this trigger goes off”; what are the attributes of the “protector” that arrives in the moment to “keep you safe”. At this point, I am out of the story and into the lived experience. The protector that shows up is cold, patronising, unkind, cutting and overly aggressive. Jacqueline had described (mirrored) this too me on several occasions. Then my mentor asked me to give it a name and ran through several examples, and my whole body buzzed when she said, “the lawyer”. That was it! The lawyer was showing up to litigate the case of not being understood. The lawyer (the prosecutor in my case) was going to make his case to the judge, break down the defense and win at all costs. That is who had been showing up, in related circumstances, my whole life to “protect me”. Ok, I could see it clearly for the first time but now what?

And then my mentor shared a simple but revolutionary idea to me. What would it be like to introduce the lawyer to Jacqueline? What would it be like to invite the protector out of the shadows and into the light, and let your wife meet him? Simple of course. Revolutionary because my first instinct, now that I could see the lawyer clearly, was to exile him and make him bad. But protectors are not enemies, they are child soldiers still fighting a war that ended fifty years ago for me. The lawyer has been working to keep me “safe” my entire life. The lawyer is part of me and if I reject him, he will just hide again only to remerge the next time he feels I need protecting. I will remain bonded to self and bonded to circumstances beyond my control.

Gratitude and integration. I introduced the lawyer (conceptually) to Jacqueline and in doing so integrated this protector into myself and into our union. I gave Jacqueline full permission to let me know when she noticed the lawyer showing up on the scene to litigate the case. Bringing the dark to light is more powerful when I can lean into my relationship to do it. Then she asked me the most beautiful thing. “Can you tell me what it is you need from me when I see the lawyer show up?”

“Ask me if I am feeling misunderstood”

From darkness to light and from fear to love,

The Way