Nima Rahmany (Part 1) — Navigating Emotional Triggers: A Journey to Personal and Professional Development

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast dedicated to helping you level up your game and become the best version of you.

Normally, we spend our time developing strategies for market dominance, leadership and business growth.

But true success isn't just about what you accomplish on paper.

It's about how you show up as the highest, best version of yourself in every area of your life.

That's why today's episode is part one, a special two part series.

This week we're laying the foundation by focusing entirely on personal development.

We're joined by Nima Romani to explore what it means to become trigger proof, break intergenerational patterns and build genuine emotional safety.

Then be sure to tune in next week for part two, where we'll build on these insights and pivot the conversation directly towards professional development.

So let's get into part one.

Join me now for my conversation with Nima Romani.

Well, hi, Nima, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

I am stoked to be here.

Just a few minutes of chatting with you and I'm like, I could hang with this guy.

Hey, I'm excited about this.

I love the subject matter which we're going to be talking about how you can become trigger proofs, how to stop reacting and start reconnecting.

And I said, it's so timely and even on a personal level, I'm interested in this as a personal, always interested in personal development, making ourselves better.

And our whole show is really about how do we level up our game and become preferred emotionally in our world and how do we make the best versions of ourselves.

So I'm excited about the topic, but before we kind of delve into it, our audiences always like to go back and go, how did you get here?

What was your transformations?

Go back to high school.

You're in high school.

Where are you living?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I am in Stittsville, Ontario, Canada, just outside of Ottawa.

Persian immigrant who came to Canada at the age of four, Parents leaving the Iranian general.

Like IRGC came in the Revolutionary Guards.

The Shah days.

Yeah, exactly.

As soon as Shaw was out, my parents took us.

Imagine two, a young couple, Persian couple in their twenties having twins that are now four years old and now in your early mid twenties.

It's like, I got to get the fuck out of here with my kids to have a future.

And they uproot and they come to Canada and unbeknownst to me, it's a traumatic experience that, that they're, you know, constantly in hyper vigilance for religious persecution from the Baha', I, as Baha'.

Is.

We were raised as Baha'.

Is.

So this experience of fleeing, this experience of being othered is what I was kind of like born and raised into in my very formative years without the awareness of that happening.

Kind of like Covid, children are in today's day and age, very similar type of intergenerational stuff that you don't know is a wound because you're literally swimming in it.

And multigenerational.

That's a good way to phrase it.

Okay.

So you're growing up and you're going to school.

You've got career path ahead of you.

You come from, you know.

And though I remember being around in the political days, that was what some people might remember.

When we had the Iranian hostage situation, Reagan was coming in, Jimmy Carter was the president, United States.

There's a lot going on.

The revolution was going on with the ayatollahs.

I mean, it was a big disruption.

So to be able to out of your family culture, you probably left family behind.

So.

Yes, that's all part of it.

Yeah.

I'm assuming.

Do you still have family there tonight?

Not really.

Everybody's kind of immigrated.

Anybody who I have a connection with, so we don't really have that many family back back home.

Yeah.

And of course we can see the trauma that's even going on today that's going to create.

Yes.

Generations again.

All right, so you're in, you're in high school, your college.

You got to decide on a career path.

What was your, your father obviously as a businessman or did he create his own?

He's a mechanical engineer.

So he came, he got educated to upgrade.

They both upgraded their educations in Canada.

They got, you know, college and university kind of degrees.

My dad got his masters and he was just like all about education.

Education.

You got to be a doctor.

Got to be a doctor, Got to be a do.

So when I discovered chiropractic at a career day, I'm at a career day, I'm the eighth grade in Stittsville.

A chiropractor comes in, shows the spine, talks about what they do, the whole philosophy of the nervous system and removing interference in the body healing itself.

And I'm like, that sounds like me.

And by the age of 13, I was like hell bent in becoming a chiropractor.

I was like, nothing's going to stop me.

And I graduated CMCC Chiropractic in 2001.

All right, so you did that.

How long did you practice for?

Practice for 25 years left as a member in good standing.

But within the first 10, 15 years, I started discovering that patients that are coming in with stress related problems and their aches and pains, there's something far deeper and in this unconscious kind of anxiety that's been in my nervous system ever since we had moved to Canada, not really knowing it.

I inherited this intergenerational angst of this constant feeling of hypervigilance that I inherited.

I went down a path of personal development unknowingly trying to solve that experience.

And I found all of these amazing tools, especially Dr. John DeMartini in chiropractic school.

He blew my mind.

And he taught me how by changing our perceptions, you can actually shift how you perceive the world.

And I just went all in and it was amazing.

And so I started integrating that into my practice just on Saturdays, just saying, hey guys, I want to offer you a little gift.

Come in and learn some skills, life skills for a stressful world.

So that we're lowering our resistance and our friction with reality, or specifically from our past, which we're carrying around with us, we could remove that friction.

We feel better, we feel healthier, we feel more vibrant and more alive.

And so I started kind of like going down that path.

And yeah, that's where you are.

This is what's interesting.

Chiropractic has a.

One of the major tenets of chiropractic.

And if I misspeak on this, please clarify.

But that disease and disease conditions, you know, originate from the spine and work its way out.

So if we can fix those issues.

But a little, I need to jump in and kind of correct that philosophy.

There's very.

Chiropractic is very divided.

Like many professions like Islam, like Jew Christianity, like as an entity, it's divided in the middle.

And on one side is a group of people who believe that it's more of the holistic type of view.

Their approach to the body is that the nervous system, that there's an intelligence in the body.

And by removing the interference through points in the nervous system, through the spine, oftentimes you can bring that nervous system back into a state of harmony, equilibrium, relaxation, state of ease.

And then another group which is kind of like the medically minded, they're looking for validation from the medical.

So they just want to keep it as like the 3D reality.

And back pain, let's just keep it to back pain.

Let's just talk about only back pain, only neck pain.

And anything else is quackery because we want medical validation.

So I was kind of More of, you know, the middle.

Yeah.

I don't go too far.

And I'm kind of like it.

I see the energetic component of releasing nervous system dysregulation so that you can bring safety into the body.

And then on the other hand, yeah, we all want to be out of pain.

I had an extreme amount of back pain, and I was getting adjusted because I just wanted to be out of pain.

So both can coexist is what I love to see.

Yeah, it's interesting why, if you get the physical structure going, the body can heal itself.

It's its best healer.

And I know you believe that.

And then what's interesting, though, is now that connection with that brain of ours where we develop that fight or flight and so much of our childhood traumas, if you will, and we all have them, everybody has them, everybody's experiencing them start to manifest themselves just like an injury would, just like a structural injury would.

And so you're working now on the internal systems to get that right as well, and structure.

So let's go.

So what have you discovered there?

You work with a lot of professionals, you work with entrepreneurs, you work with successful people.

Not successful.

Do you start to see patterns that you're starting to see?

Oh, yeah.

And then let's talk about those patterns.

What did you notice?

Yeah, well, I noticed the patterns in everybody now, because I look.

I first had to look at the patterns within myself.

And so instead of talking about them, I want to tell you about the patterns that were really challenging, which is I've did a lot of personal development work, followed the big names.

But on a cognitive level, we can get to an understanding of these changes.

But the embodiment of all of these concepts are really what are demonstrated.

The proof is in what the body is saying.

So if I'm caught, if I'm building wealth or I'm trying to do personal development to become more, quote, unquote, successful.

And I built this on a wound that deep down, because of those experiences from childhood, because of that shock and trauma or experience like I had when I was 2 years old and I was separated from my mother for a period of about three months while she was exploring immigrating to Canada with my twin brother, because she could only bring one of us that wound that becomes a wound that often, at 2 years old, you don't really have the language to describe.

Right.

So it's an experience that's in the body, and it creates anxiety, it creates this alarm in the system, which then we go into the head to try to Create stories about our lives in order to cope with that alarm.

So this is what they call the anxiety alarm, arm loop.

My friend Dr. Russell Kennedy taught me about that.

And it was like, oh, eureka.

I realize when you're doing personal development and you're unaware of this wound of unworthiness that you're trying to seek success for, you will get that success.

You will achieve it.

Like I did all these awards for best chiropractor.

One of the biggest practices, making a lot of money.

And all of this drive and this push to try to get some level of worthiness from an external perspective is exactly the manifestation of that wound.

And we don't really know it.

And the sneaky part was I was using personal development as a means of negating or avoiding or exiling that wound even further.

And that led to a really toxic relationship where one divorce, several failed relationships after that, leading to this one really toxic one, which I didn't understand.

Codependency.

I didn't know about attachment theory, but we were in a codependent trauma bond, push, pull dynamic which ended up escalating in intensity.

And then we would have amazing sex because it was all driven by the sex.

And so this push and pull dynamic that I felt powerless to get out of because the sex was so amazing, eventually that spell was broken.

One night, March 11, 2018, where after a five hour argument, I slapped her.

And in that moment I was like, wait.

I had left chiropractic at the time.

We were teaching this personal development stuff.

But in our personal lives, we were not living congruently with all of whatever the stage Persona is.

I don't know if you know anybody like that, but that was me.

It's.

Yeah, I do.

And that was the symptom.

I've seen it.

I've had lunch with big names, as big as names as you can in the business and.

Or in events and seeing how they treat people.

Servers.

Yeah, A server coming for lunch and be treated rudely by somebody who's in the self help guru stat, who I was, you know, falling, or their microphone went out and their battery died.

And they berated the.

The person handling the audio technician in front of an entire audience.

Right.

And that kind of.

That just to watch the reaction of the audience and how this person was treated, they kind of lost all credibility there.

Yes.

And I understand.

And you know what?

In my own personal behavior, I could probably say the same thing.

In other words, guilty.

I've been guilty of that too.

So you're saying that I'm kind of Cringing a little bit because I'm looking at all the times in which I reacted beyond what the situation called for.

Yeah.

I've, you know, my Persona, the most of the time I'm this way.

90% Of the time, I'm in a positive framework.

But then every once in a while, there's those triggers.

You have a shadow and, you know, I'm a petulant 7 year old and.

Or, you know, and that's me just self diagnosing.

And it's like.

And it's frustrating because you have it when you're triggered, you feel it in real time and it's almost like you don't care.

You know, it's bad.

You know, it's that there's an element of control to it, for sure.

Yeah.

Because how, how we can control.

But it's kind of like you're okay in this spot.

And that's the problem is it feels okay.

You actually don't care.

You start pulling away from everything in that environment and it's an awful place.

And then afterwards when you come down and that adrenaline dissipates and that.

Because it's instant, it's an instant thing and it's that I think it's trying to find that gap.

And like, I've looked at things would have set me off and some of us have been angry.

It could be road rage, it could be other, you know, whatever the issue is.

And we try and manage that anger, all right, Instead of actually identifying what's that real, what's the root cause of that, that trigger, and then how can we pause that gap so it doesn't.

Fly into it as you're talking, I'm just channel, I'm just getting all these downloads.

So I can't wait to answer those questions.

Please, Please.

Yeah.

So essentially, how do we, how do we expand that gap?

That was the first question that I had to ask after I had done that to my ex.

And we sat there and I was just like, oh my God.

Like, it was like the biggest wake up call that I could go through because I can't tell you how much shame that I felt in that moment.

Right.

And so one of the most important parts of shifting our reactivity was after this came up, I started looking.

I couldn't do the usual entrepreneurial things that we use to distract ourselves from that feeling, which is, oh, let's go make more money, let's go create another offer, let's go build something so that I could kind of avoid this shameful, pitiful part of Me.

And it was like the universe gifted me this experience where nothing, none of the previous methodologies of this mindset work that I could see was actually working to absolve me from the deep emotional pain I was feeling after having gone through that, after having put my ex through that and having gone through that.

And now we're in this dynamic where the whole world around us, our community found out and they're all just.

It was all during the MeToo type of experience.

And it was like, are we going to, are we going to basically destroy this man's career?

There was a little group kind of in that situation.

So my nervous system went into a freeze because doing what I do, I'm teaching, I'm speaking, I'm using my voice, but there was no power behind my voice.

I couldn't even get myself up to, to say anything because I thought, oh my God, I am such a fucking fraud.

I cannot believe the self loathing is.

The natural follow up to that.

So I had, I realized that I had built my entire identity on that wound that just got exposed in that moment.

And so the gift of that experience was learning how to understand this aspect of myself that I had been creating, this public Persona to not deal with, to not feel.

And so I stopped doing all the things that, you know, distracted me and then I went inside.

And so how do we expand that gap?

It's done through expanding your capacity to sit with your shame in a high level.

This is what I'm doing.

Case in point, a man who just said the exact same thing.

Successful, you know, amazing marriage.

They have their grandparents now, you know, in their mid-50s.

And it's like this experience of betrayal happened in their relationship.

And she's very public about it, she's open about it.

She runs a podcast around this whole topic.

And I'm helping him.

And basically without the experience of being able to sit in our shame, any form of negative feedback towards you, you're going to perceive as an attack and you're going to get super duper reactive.

That's.

There's no gap between stimulus and response if you're carrying shame.

Interesting.

Essentially that's what I discovered.

Yeah, it's instant.

It's like a switch gone.

And what's interesting, do you find that there's times, yeah.

In a public environment.

And I, I'm a trigger.

I can manage, I want to use the word manage.

I, I can delay.

It's a delay really, than anything that whatever that trigger, that feeling is, because I'm that, that Persona, that visual plus, it's terrible.

You'd be ashamed if anyone even saw you behaving that way or saying things that you would regret saying.

Where.

And then in the privacy, it maybe it dissipates or maybe you'll come back to it later.

But it's like a.

And I don't know if all the triggers are the same.

Like, I'll give you an example.

My parents were immigrants.

Dad World War II went through 29 homes in.

Back in London.

When they were bombing London, they kept taking kids out and putting them into different homes, just knocking on the door, can you take this kid?

So we had 29 homes and paperwork wasn't done.

And there was probably issues that he went through.

I, based on my conversations with him, that abuse all kinds of different things.

He's watching airplanes, machine gun schoolyards and kids trauma.

My mother was kidnapped at age six in England from her dad during the war.

And she never saw her mom for two years.

Right.

And then lived with night terrors for her.

I used to wake up the house, she'd be screaming in the middle of night.

And then the anger.

You would wake up.

You would wake up in that.

Yeah, I'd wake up listening to her waking up, screaming, having a nightmare.

And then when it came time for punishment, it was.

The punishment was always way worse than the crime.

As a kid, like, for me, if I did something really that was not a parent wanted to do, it was.

I've been black and blue from my ankles to my shoulder blades.

It was a whipping.

It was.

You were.

And I only had that a few.

Times, but I did black and blue.

Black and blue.

And you'd be taken away in today's world.

And I still love my parents.

I still love them.

I was able to reconcile as their.

Oh, this is what they went through.

But I also.

But it made an impact huge.

And I was that way, but I was like.

My mom was very verbal.

And so when I'm triggered, I get verbal.

I can get.

You go into the verbal violence.

There's a gradient of violence.

Right.

What I discovered verbally, you can be violent.

That's what we saw.

That's how we learned it.

The issues.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's ideally like, for me is it's that pause.

Can we create that pause between.

Yeah.

That gap to.

Okay, here's the trigger.

I know this is a trigger.

So for me, it's really a trigger of disrespect.

If I feel disrespected, I feel like I'm being totally disrespected.

I'm now lashing out and going to be disrespectful.

Right, Exactly.

And that.

That moment where that boundary is violated in your energy and you feel personally attacked.

Yeah.

Yes, exactly.

There's a shame that gets evoked internally, and it's so painful that the only way is to.

This is what I learned from my integration.

The only way to cope with the shame is to say something so hurtful back or do something hurtful back or physically do something, break something, so that that shame instantly turns into pride.

It's kind of like a cooling system for the shame.

So this is why, if we don't integrate shame, we will respond with verbal violence, physical violence.

It's like, end.

End domestic violence.

Well, no, Sherlock, nobody raises their hand and says, hey, this is such a great idea.

Let's do this consciously.

It's not a conscious choice to do that until you really understand the mechanism of shame and how verbal violence or physical violence, like.

Like any type of attack energetically that goes from a thought, a judgment, to verbal to physical violence, to murder, like, everything in that spectrum is a.

Is an energetic reaction to a feeling of profound hurt, namely shame.

So what I discovered, and it was like, nobody's really talking about it at this level.

So I went and I studied somatic experiencing.

I went and studied polyvagal theory, shadow work.

And I was like, these were all the somatics, breath work.

These were all the things that I was missing in the mindset, work that I had done in my personal development.

Because the true test of embody, the true test of somebody's teaching of something is what are they living?

Right?

So now I have a son.

He's five.

And I've dedicated my life to integrating this work because.

What did you learn, Michael, growing up?

Well, guess what?

I learned it too.

And it's just intergenerational, unresolved stuff just bouncing into the next generation.

And so the people I love working with are the ones who've done a lot of personal development.

They understand the frameworks, but they still find themselves reacting, acting the same way.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like my client, who I was talking about, he was like, look, I see the reaction coming.

I know when it's happening, but I just can't seem to get off of that train.

And guess what?

I told him what I'm telling you.

I said, you can.

We just have to be intentional with going after the root of this because it's not coming from your wife.

We have to go after the unconscious complex that this kind of like, Repeated default reaction is coming from.

And then we have to unearth it and then create an entirely new pathway.

It's like learning a new step in a dance.

So it's possible, but with the right guidance, the right practices.

And now when his wife shares her emotions, now just after three months of rewiring this with the kind of becoming trigger proof to it, she's now able to share her feelings with him.

And he doesn't get defensive, he's able to hold it, he's able to listen and he's able to validate something he's never been able to do in their 30 some odd years of marriage.

So it's possible, if you're willing to take the time and stretch it, but it can't be done just by cognitively.

Okay, I'll get to it.

It's a dance that can be trained and taught.

I think it's a.

Like, what I've noticed is if I'm blindsided or if it comes out of the blue and.

Or I'm tired, say I'm fatigued, I'm tired, or maybe you've had a glass or two of wine, or relax.

Those are not the time to get into those conversations.

Now, if they're prefaced meaning, okay, you and I are going to have a conversation now.

We're going to talk about sensitive things.

We're going.

And we kind of lay out the framework for it.

Yeah, it's like, I can, I can go there.

Like, for me, I can go there.

If you and I were going to have this conversation and it's prefaced and it's set up so I'm not.

It's not a surprise.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What you're saying is there's a container that's set for it with parameters.

Hey, let's talk about this.

This is what it's going to be.

And what you're talking about is the concept of creating emotional safety.

So in order for this to happen, like let's say my wife and I are.

We had a rupture or an argument yesterday and we had discussion about something.

And so now in this moment in time, I'm processing and we are going to have.

We're going to have a conversation of repair.

And what you're saying is absolutely right, which is, all right, so let's set that container and this is what we're going to talk about.

But you're already making a few very bold assumptions that I want to invite you to really look at.

And the first one is, are you open first of all, are you open to hearing it?

Yes.

Yeah, sure.

I. I can share.

So the first one.

The first one is you're assuming that when you're having that conversation with her, that your nervous system is in a safe place, that you feel a sense of internal safety.

If I'm not feeling a sense of internal safety.

And in what we call polyvagal theory, in a sympathetic tone, the words that I use to talk to you, the tone of voice that I have, the kind of like, prosody in my voice is going to either cause you to go further into sympathetic or you're going to actually go into what's called ventral safety.

And so how I show up is the next thing.

And the next part is.

Now you're discussing the concept of leadership and polarity.

Who's going to drive the bus on that?

Michael, for the most part, what I've observed is that most of the time it's women.

The female that's driving the bus and initiating a repair with someone who oftentimes doesn't have the skills in how to do it and just expects her to be like his mother and soothe him, which creates a lack of polarity, which creates this sense of.

She becomes his mother.

She's exhausted and burnt out and feeling, you know, not held and not seen.

And he's now the little child that has this entitlement and expectation that she's going to soothe him.

And they're both playing this really shitty game that nobody's winning.

And.

No, no.

It's interesting you use the term rupture.

So.

Yeah, you know what?

You know, you've developed these modalities to deal with and processes to deal with things.

Do you fall off the wagon every once in a while and you have it a rupture where, yeah, you're here.

And then it's like.

And the key is to repair quickly the repair problem.

For me, personally, that's.

I've learned that, hey, repair quickly because you always feel bad afterwards.

But yeah, so it's.

How do you do that?

What do you notice in your great question, if you don't mind me asking, and how that ruptured that quick turnaround.

Quick turnaround.

Okay.

The first thing is when I put an expectation on myself to make a quick turnaround, what happens is I put pressure on myself and I can do what's called cognitive or spiritual bypass, which is rampant in the personal development, because I'm supposed to do it quickly.

There are parts of me that feel really protective, parts that are parts of me that are like, ooh, I can't believe.

I just don't want to, like, constantly abandon myself.

I've been abandoning myself all my life to keep the peace, people pleasing.

And there's a resentful part.

So you got to make sure that you are not invalidating this part of you that needs a little bit of space and needs permission to be seen and heard.

So that can be done by yourself.

You have.

I have my methodologies that I kind of put together is being able to create that within yourself self so that you can bring your adult self online and then initiate repair.

But make sure you're doing it as your adult self, because if you're doing it as your child self and I'm rushing through it, and there's a part of me that just wants to appease you because I don't want you to be mad at me, and I just want to be.

Now you.

I'm.

I'm kind of manipul.

I'm being manipulative both to you and myself, and that's not sustainable.

Do you find that there are certain things.

Are you seeing commonalities of what triggers are like?

So for me, you know, I can be driving down the road, somebody cuts me off, whatever.

There was a time I'd be mad, flipping the bird and move on.

Right.

But now I just move over, somebody's on my back bumper, just move over and go.

And I'm just not letting them get my blood pressure up.

Yeah.

I think as we get older, we start to go, sure want to get my blood pressure up over this.

Are there certain common triggers that you see that are everyone.

Like, for me, it's disrespect for sure, but only from people close to me.

So children, my spouse, if I feel disrupted, doesn't mean they're trying.

And most of the times they're not.

I just interpret it as a disrespect.

Correct.

Could be my wife talking.

Good call.

Good catch.

Can be.

She can be direct, right?

Well, my mother was really direct, you know, and I don't like the directness.

Don't.

And because we're tired, we get grumpy, we get irritable.

We get it.

Do you see?

But if other people taught other people are disrespectful, you don't really care.

Yeah, I could care.

Interesting.

Okay, cool.

So I have a few thoughts on that.

And your question.

Could you remind me of your question a little bit later?

Because I'm going to completely forget it because I.

You've really inspired this.

This track.

So the first thing that you brought up is other people around me, they can say whatever, and it doesn't.

Doesn't bother me.

But when they're close to me, this is what happens.

Right?

So people will say that like.

Like.

Like what hurts when it's my partner.

And it's.

Because when there's an unconscious complex happening, when there's intimacy, right?

So if they're in your family system, there's an unconscious covert expectation that we have, and this is going to sound weird, that we parentify them, whether it's our children or whether it's our partner, we've unconsciously placed them in the parent role.

Unconsciously.

So when they're being a certain way, it carries more weight for us.

Right.

Than.

Than, you know, some dude off the street who's just, you know, flipping the bird off you.

Okay, cool.

Whatever.

Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, no, exactly.

So.

Exactly.

So what that does is that trigger sends us back in time and it brings us to a younger part of us that experience that which then we're unconscious of.

So our job is to slowly start to notice it, periodically going, oh, there it is again.

There it is again.

So, yes, you will slip up.

So when you're like, do you.

You know, I teach this stuff.

Well, does that mean that I don't get triggered and we don't get into conflict?

Absolutely not.

I think it's healthy for my child to witness us in conflict and then witness us repairing.

Yeah, I agree.

So watching, going, hey, bud, we're gonna get.

And it's like his.

The messaging he's getting is, your mom and I are not always going to agree, but we're always going to repair, and we always love you no matter what.

Right.

And so it's important to really understand, like, we're literally modeling it for him.

I mean, wouldn't that have been fun for you growing up to be able to have had that modeled?

Right?

So that's what becoming a cycle breaker is all about.

So remind me of your question and I'll weave it in.

So the question is, do you see common things that do trigger?

So for me, again, if it's somebody personal going, hey, you're the worst speaker.

This is the worst podcast I've ever listened to listen to.

This is.

I'm like, oh, yeah, good.

Wow.

Wow.

That's all, you know, hey, awesome, tell me, why is that?

I can explore it.

I can question it and go, how did you come up with that?

I can deal with it.

So it's not even.

It doesn't even trigger me.

It Just doesn't right now.

There probably was a time in my early life where it did, but I don't recall it.

But when it's personal, let's say for instance, you're my partner, I'm talking to you and I ask a question and maybe you give me a sharp answer or a snug denied comment, or yes, something.

After that it's like, okay, the most common one.

Yeah, the most common.

You want to know what it is?

What?

A woman will express her emotions.

She's sad, she's grieving.

And a woman is more biologically connected, especially when everybody's healthy, for sure.

Biologically connected to her intuition, her sixth sense, the feminine, the mysterious feminine, the, the unseen world, if we can get spiritual around.

It's a superpower.

It's a superpower that a woman.

Right.

And the shadow part of that is that she feels everything, you know, up and down and good and bad.

And so these waves of these emotions and sadness when she loves her partner sometimes come off as complaining.

A sound of like, you know, a woman who's exhausted because a part of her doesn't feel worthy of receiving, so she over functions and she's tired of it and she's burnt out and she's, she's sad and she's scared and she needs just that.

So that expression of emotion, in whatever way that she does it in form of complaining, critical, whatever.

Yeah.

Causes a trigger in him where he feels like he's not good enough.

Instead of hearing the child's complaint as it is, he is interpreting her sadness as a failure on his part.

And, and that triggers his shame.

And he doesn't want to feel his shame.

So instead of integrating that shame becoming trigger proof to it, he then gets defensive and then tells her why her emotions are bad or wrong or why all the evidence for why he's wrong, she's wrong.

And look at him.

And then he unconsciously is prioritizing being right over the actual connection.

Because as a little boy, if you're not right, then you're not lovable.

That's the message you're given.

So in order for you to be correct, perfect, right.

That makes you lovable.

So what he's saying is, no, I am lovable.

You're wrong, I'm lovable.

And she's now feeling anything but that love.

And this becomes this push and pull dynamic, which is where the anxious and avoidant trap come in her anxiety or his anxiety.

It can also happen in that triggers her avoidance, which triggers his anxiousness, triggers her avoidance and it just becomes that infinite loop of doom.

And that's the most common one.

And it's reversible.

No, it's as you're saying it.

My wife would.

I remember conversations where she might be angry or mad.

And then all of a sudden I'm getting angry and mad and she goes, I just want to be angry and mad.

You don't need to get angry and mad.

I'm just going to be.

Be the one that's angry around.

But I.

So if she prefaces it, hey, I just want to vent here and be judgy and do this.

It's like, oh, okay.

In other words, shut up and listen.

Right?

And in other words, that's where you have an elegant boundary around it.

Yeah, it's interesting.

It's called elegant boundaries.

So what you're talking about is a very foundational root cause of this trigger that happens.

And the problem is actually called enmeshment.

Enmeshment is an, a lack of an emotional boundary between one person and another.

So they bleed into another person.

I was at a retreat recently and watching this couple just struggling for decades over this.

Of when he goes into his avoidance and he goes into his little poor me victim story about life, about his father.

She then feels anxious, like she's gotta soothe him because his emotions bleed into hers.

And then when he sees her over functioning, it causes him to shut down even more.

So she bleeds into him and they're literally bleeding into each other and they're miserable.

And it's just not sustainable.

And that is the root of it.

It's so painful.

And I.

This was me and my ex and I just want anybody to know who's living in that, that there's a much better way of when you can have a conflict but then have your own experience, clean that up and then repair as two functional adults.

And it.

That's an interesting expression of that.

Let's talk about children a little bit.

Because like I said, when they're little, my wife and I would raise seven and five daughters, two sons.

So we're.

Wow, is that all good family?

Yeah.

Good for you.

And you know, 90 of the time, it's amazing, right?

And what I used to always, what I, my wife and I talk about is I go, hey, if we were in school, our relationship would be an A or an A minus or an A plus.

Because 90%, I'm in the 90s, like 10%.

Yeah.

Where it's very small percentage, but it feels like great.

And I'm more of an all or Nothing kind of guy.

So in other words, when I go into that state, if I've been triggered, it's all bad.

Everything's bad.

There's nothing redeeming about this.

It's all good because we're in this place.

And I'm sure you see that as well.

And I'm wondering as they become adults and adult children, because now I see where they get triggered.

I know what triggers them.

And I can watch maybe when I've been the cause of the trigger based on that.

So it's identifying then going, not going there.

Or maybe you have to walk on eggshells with one or somewhere else.

Or we, this topic's off limits.

We can talk about this.

And of course, we're seeing that now with politics.

We see it with families, you know, with what's going on in the US and we say a massive division going on.

It's that whole divide and conquer thing.

And families is there.

Are you seeing that with the families, with the children become adult children as well?

A hundred percent.

And what you're talking about is just normal experiences of people with different values.

Right.

And someone's going to say something that crosses a boundary.

This is what will happen in a family system.

This is what will happen if you go to a kind of like a group retreat.

This is what happens.

So the question here isn't, is a boundary going to be violated?

Is can we talk?

How do we talk about it when it does?

How do we communicate it in a way which both parties can feel seen and heard and there's repair.

This is unfortunately, with all you can do all the work in the world and you won't be able to avoid, like, you know, let's say you go camping with a family in tight quarters for a week.

Next week you're going to have boundary violations that happen.

And there's a practice and a process and it's messy of repair.

That's really all it is.

It's like you set it up and go, look, we're not going to always get along.

I'm going to have my side of the story and you're going to have yours.

But I'm committed for us to owning our parts and then understanding one another.

Can we start like that?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Are we in this together to do that?

No.

Okay, well, why would I want to continue?

Now I get to examine why I would want to continue to be in an engagement, in a relationship with somebody who has no desire to own their part, who has no desire to look at themselves.

And that might Be your parents.

And so if that's the case, okay, so now I get to make a decision.

Do I want them in my life and my family's life?

Yes.

Okay.

In order to do that, how do I boundary the situation?

How do I make sure that my wife feels emotionally safe so that any processing or problems that happen, I'm able to show up as the person that could have her feel seen and heard?

And then if there's an argument coming with my parents and they have their perspective and they are not emotionally mature enough to be able to kind of like concede and be like parents, which is often the case with boomer type of parents, Baby boomer type of parents.

How do I elegantly boundary the situation so that everybody has as great of an experience as in their capacities according to the word capacity.

So that's where the word capacity comes up, and that's where the cycle breaker gets to make.

It becomes the shapeshifter and goes, what do I want?

How do I make sure everybody is kind of.

How do I lead the container in such a way where there's co regulation happening?

So this becomes a skill.

I love how you're talking about setting the boundaries.

One of the trends that we're seeing.

And as parents, as baby boomer parents, parents, we talk to other friends.

And based on what you're talking about, we're seeing a lot of.

And it seems like it's a fad.

And I'm sure you see this, so I'd love your perspective on it.

Where there's.

What's the word in a strange.

No contact.

No contact.

And it's rampant.

It's rampant.

All of a sudden it's like, hey, I don't want anything more to do with you.

I don't want to talk to you.

Boom.

And you're like, well, can we check?

Nothing.

They won't even discuss what the issues are.

The problems are.

They leave you guessing on what.

That's hard.

It's.

And based on research, it seems like it's prevalent.

It's almost.

Yes.

Epidemic level.

Are you seeing that as well?

Well, I've experienced it.

You know, April, my wife's birthday, my parents and I had a rupture for the first time since I had my own family.

It's been five, six years.

I did so much healing work to get to a really great place.

And now after a trigger that escalates.

This is just a few months ago in the recording of this, all of a sudden, I'm in a situation where I was kicked out of the home.

Now my son and wife were also kicked out.

For whatever reason that escalated.

And now not only do I have to deal with my own experience of feeling anger and bitterness and resentment and all of my own childhood stuff coming up.

Now I got to worry about these guys now I got to feel how are they doing.

So going through this experience and now walking through and going through the work of beginning that repair process and now initiating it, and we're now moving in those steps without rushing my family.

Some huge perspective of what do you do?

Is you focus on your own inner work.

What you do is whatever's coming up.

Your child is a mirror.

They are reflecting something that you maybe can't see right now or have the unwillingness to see, but it's an invitation to dive deeper into understanding yourself and them and then being the source of repair.

So I went and I did that repair and I made.

I got to that place where I no longer am in that space of victimhood.

I made that.

I made that contact and I was okay regardless because I got to a place of peace with it.

So the answer is to get to a place of peace and heal the hurts before making any contact.

And that's what I'm interested in.

And it's a tough thing.

And there's degrees.

It's spectrum as well.

100.

I think over time.

If you're approaching it, like just on a personal level.

I have is initially it's disappointment.

Initially it's like, why the anger, the frustration.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah.

And then it's as you're evolving through and processing that, it's.

Hey, you know what?

I love this person and I want them to be happy.

And if I've.

Whatever there is.

If.

If this removes.

Yeah.

For them.

Because they're obviously dealing with some trauma.

Right.

That they're dealing with.

And it's correct that my wife always says it's not personal.

It feels personal, but it's not personal.

It's.

It's their issues.

So the best we can do is love them more.

All right.

And which is true.

And hopefully they come back again.

Any.

If you do get interactions, make them positive expressions of that.

Yeah.

And everything you're saying is 100% true.

And what I would add to that is careful.

You're not spiritually or cognitively bypassing that.

There is a younger part of you that feels rejected.

For sure.

And to address that first and to heal the hurt of that and the anger and the bitterness so that you can get to a place of understanding.

So when you do show up.

It's not being led by the wound.

Yeah, there's an emotional sense of safety there.

Because the reason why somebody will shut me out, it's because they're having an experience of a lack of emotional safety.

Whether I had intentions of it or not, I clearly, I don't intend on making people feel unsafe, but that they're projecting their stuff.

So.

So what would love do?

How can I approach it in the most loving way?

So that becomes my work to become that source of love and understanding and use that to heal the hurts.

That's what being trigger proof is all about.

Oh, makes sense.

Hey, let's get a business question.

And just in as we're wrapping up.

Time moves so fast.

Yeah.

I call this the paradox of the decorated wreck in your work.

You use the term that I know is going to hit home for a lot of our listeners.

You call it the decorated rack.

These are professionals who are highly decorated.

They're successful, capable on the outside, but quietly they're struggling or spiraling in their personal relationships.

Why is it so common for high achieving business professionals, entrepreneurs, to master business execution, but feel completely unequipped when a partner pulls away or a child pushes back?

Because the wound that has us being able to push through things is what makes us successful at work.

That same wound in a personal relationship dynamic, you can't use the same tactics that made us successful at work, which is, by the way, a paralyzing insecurity and a need for validation that gets ex.

You can hide that from the stage, right?

Those speakers that you're talking about hide it very well because it's based on a performance.

Your skills that make you successful performers, high performers.

The decorated wreck is a high performer.

Performer in intimacy.

Your performances are all exposed.

Your family can spot right through your bullshit.

And so to me, a true successful person, I look at the way that, that their partner looks at them.

You can tell.

You can tell.

Like if I'm seeing a guy and he's teaching, whatever.

The true test of his success is a radiant partner who just feels really safe and seen and heard.

And if he's too far into his ego, which is what it often takes to become a nine figure entrepreneur, your health and your relationships suffer.

So the skills that make you successful.

You can become successful at work because you delegate your weaknesses to teammates who do better.

But you can't delegate in an intimate relationship.

You have to become that person.

So that's why amazing become trigger proof.

The website is become triggerproof dot com.

Nina Romani this has been amazing on a personal level and a professional level as well.

Amazing.

Love to have you back brother.

Let's do this again.

I'd love to chat more.

Great having you as a guest.

Thanks for being here.

I had a great time.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you can share that with, either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is that true emotional freedom requires changing our internal perceptions and healing past wounds rather than relying strictly on cognitive willpower.

Or maybe it's that we achieve genuine relational success when we expand our capacity to sit with difficult feelings like shame, allowing us to pause rather than react.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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This podcast is created and associated with Summit Media.

My Executive producer is Beth Smith and.

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Goodbye.