Hi, my name is Andy and welcome to Radio Headspace.

And to Monday morning, the start of the week, I hope you had a good weekend.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, we're talking about trigger words.

I don't know if there are particular words in your life, perhaps in your relationships,

even in your own mind, that trigger you to feel a particular way, very quickly, very strongly.

He reminded me as we were chatting the other day about when I was training to be a lifeguard many, many years ago,

as much younger. And one of the first things I was taught was whatever you do, don't say, don't panic.

In my mind, I was thinking all that this person's in the water, they can't swim, they're waving,

their arms around, I think they're probably already in a state of panic.

But the point was, if they hear the word panic, they are that much more likely to react to it.

It's a trigger word.

And as I was chatting to this friend of mine, he was saying the thing that he found most frustrating

in his relationship was if he was ever told to just relax or to just calm down.

And my guess is that for most of us, those could be included in a whole set of trigger words or trigger phrases.

And there's a good reason for it.

If you think about how we work with our own mind, the thoughts and emotions that arise in our mind,

if difficult thoughts arose in our mind and we were simply able to say, oh just calm down

and the thoughts immediately subsided, then of course we could say that would be a valid response.

But actually, when we have that kind of conversation in our mind, it's very discursive.

There's a lot of energy to it.

And simply saying just relax or just calm down.

It almost feels as though it negates the seriousness of how we're feeling.

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