In this episode, Sarah breaks down the exact 4-step process she teaches clients to move through painful breakup triggers without spiraling or losing momentum. She explains how triggers are really just old programming asking for an update — and how a few simple shifts can instantly create safety, clarity, and emotional relief. If you’ve ever been hit by “that song,” “that street,” or “that memory,” this episode will help you reclaim your power and remember your strength. Join Over it and Onward, starting December 3: https://sarahcurnoles.com/over-it-and-onward/over-it-and-onward
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Have you gone through a breakup and you're tired of feeling low lonely or lost? I've got a pep talk for you. I'm Sarah Curnoles, your breakup bestie. I'm a certified life coach with years of coaching experience, helping people just like you turn your breakup into the best thing that ever happened to them. Each week, tune in to get a pep talk, to heal your heart. Let go of the past, reclaim your power and get back into your main character energy. Your breakup may have shattered your world as you know it, but together let's build a new better world. Let's go.
(00:43)
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of Breakup Pep Talks. It's Sarah Curnoles here, your breakup bestie. I am here today talking about something that hits all of us at what feels like the worst of times. It's breakup triggers that song, driving down a certain street, that restaurant where you had your first date, the stupid coffee mug of the inside joke, or that random text notification that makes your stomach drop thinking that it's them when it's really just DoorDash letting you know that your fries have been delivered. Yeah, I have been there. So this episode's for you if you've been feeling sensitive, activated or your emotions are sneak attacking you. I want you to know you're not doing anything wrong, and if you're in the thick of it, I see you and I am sending you so much compassion. You're just human going through a lot of change and you're in the middle of healing.
(01:47)
Today I'm going to walk you through a simple, powerful process that I teach my clients that will help you move through a trigger instead of getting swallowed up by it. So this was inspired by a memory I had. So my ex was really into baseball, professional baseball. He had his team and he had the season tickets and he was just really, really into it. And he started bringing me to games and I just really enjoyed it. It was something that I began to learn to love through his passion for it. And months after we had broken up, this was a while, we broke up in the fall and I guess so it must've been spring. I took a different way home and it routed me right by the baseball stadium, and it was baseball season too. So it was probably six months, it was spring and I just started crying because I hadn't driven by there yet.
(02:58)
I hadn't thought about baseball seasons coming and I'm going to have a whole new relationship to this local team and all of that. And I just started crying there in my car and I let myself cry and I let it all out. What I didn't do, what I found, I don't know how I managed to do this, but that's why I'm teaching this so that I could break down what I did so that I can now teach it to all of you. But I was able to move through it without processing it as a setback, without me telling myself, oh my God, something's wrong. I shouldn't be crying over something that happened months ago. No, I just let myself cry and then I was okay, I got to the other side. I soothed myself and I was fine, and I wanted to break that down so that I could help you powerfully move through any triggers that might come up for you.
(04:02)
So let's first talk about what a trigger actually is and the problems that it causes. So I want you to know that a trigger is not the event, right? It's not the baseball stadium. It's the meaning that your nervous system thinks it needs to assign to the event. So was my nervous system was assigning to that stadium all the memories that I had with him, all the good times I'd had with him. So I want you to think of it this way. That song doesn't hurt you, right? If you're hearing a song that you listen to together, it's not the song that's hurting you. It's the story that your body is remembering. And that story could be something like someone I loved is no longer here, or maybe it's making it into I must not be enough, or I used to feel safe once. I don't feel safe anymore.
(05:03)
But what I want you to start thinking about for this trigger, it's just your brain trying to protect you, but it's an outdated mode of protection. It's running an old program that needs a system update. Just like if your phone was to say, there's a new system update, run the update now we need to run an update for your system, and we're doing that today. So we are going to learn how to handle when that comes up and how to avoid some common pitfalls and what to do instead. So one of the most common pitfalls I see for people is that they make it mean something about their progress with their breakup, meaning that it could be something I thought I'd gotten so far, I thought I was over this and this means that none of my progress has mattered. That might be the story that you make the trigger mean about you. Or maybe you are still in the early phases of the breakup and you're still having a lot of the triggers and you're thinking, I'm never going to be able to get over it because everything triggers me.
(06:26)
So that is the very first hurdle that we want to tackle. Your trigger doesn't mean anything about you, okay? Just because your body is having a reaction does not mean that your progress hasn't mattered. It doesn't mean that it's all gone. It just means that you need to run an update. So I want you to notice and catch that for yourself if that's the first place your body goes. Because what happens if we go there, if we go to that place of like, oh man, I'm really screwed here because I'm never going to get over it. We end up getting in an anxiety loop because that's going to create some anxious feelings, maybe despair, and we're going to sink deeper and deeper and deeper into that loop of anxiety, despair, depression, and it's harder to get out rather than if you have the notification pop up in your phone, you allow yourself to have your emotional reaction and you're going to reprogram like we're going to discuss in a moment.
(07:32)
If you allow yourself just to go through it without making it mean anything about yourself, then you can move through it and reprogram yourself faster so that the triggers don't end up triggering you sooner. Okay, so let's move into how do we reset ourselves and how do we reset a trigger? So first, I want you to notice what's happening. It seems so small to notice that I'm triggered. I'm experiencing a wave of emotion just naming that gives you language to wrap around what's happening, okay? So when you have that awareness, when you label it, you actually begin to create a little distance and a little space for yourself that instantly is going to shift you away from being inside the trigger to being the observer of the trigger. And when you have some distance like that, we can move to the next step. And it happens instantaneously.
(08:40)
You might not even notice the shift, but just labeling it puts you in the role as the observer. Okay? The next step I want you to do is put one hand on your heart. You're going to create some self-soothing right away. So do it right now with me just for some practice. Seriously, go ahead. Do it right now unless you need your hands for driving or something while you're doing this or cooking, or maybe if you're cooking, if you can take a break, put your hand on your heart and tell this to yourself, we are safe. You're telling this to your nervous system, to your body. We're safe. It's just a song, it's just a joke. It's just a text message. I'm right here.
(09:27)
And then I want you to create some safety in your own body by taking one breath slower than you probably want to take it. So take a slow deep breath and then let your exhale be long and slow. Good, good. Putting your hand on your heart and taking that slow breath and saying comforting words to yourself is going to help reset your nervous system so that you feel safe and that you know that there's nothing wrong here in the moment, which is what your body is trying to signal you by that trigger, right? It's trying to say, oh no, high alert, there's change something wrong. We're going to take control and we're going to say, no, no, we're okay. I can handle this.
(10:22)
And then I want you for step three, now that you've calmed yourself down a little bit, identify what is the real wound, right? A trigger is showing up to show you where there are still pieces of you that are not healed. So for me, with the baseball stadium, it was just pointing to, oh, this was something that we did together and I haven't really processed through. What do I want to make of the baseball team now that it's not our thing anymore? What do I want to assign to that and what do I want my relationship to it to be? And there was also a level, there was a level of mourning of letting go of that was our thing. And so that was something that I hadn't mourned and I was letting go of that. So what is the wound for you? Is it abandonment or rejection? Is it a fear that you're going to be alone or that you won't find love again? Is it that it feels like you're losing a part of your identity? Those inside jokes as small and insignificant as they seem, when we pile them all together, it feels like it's creating a picture of who we are. And even the trigger of an inside joke can feel on a deep, deep level, I'm losing a piece of my identity. So I want you to identify what that wound is for you that still feels unhealed.
(12:07)
And just by brazing your awareness around it, you don't even have to directly heal the wound, but just by having your awareness on it actually puts healing in motion. There may not be anything that you need to do. I didn't have to actually decide what I wanted my relationship to baseball to be just by noticing like, oh, this is a change that's happening for me. I got to be able to just identify that. And it sort of worked itself out naturally. And then here's step four. I want you to give yourself a replacement truth. So you could try something that feels grounding and true to you, not fake positive. There's a difference. So grounding and true might be something like, this is just a memory, not a prophecy of my future. Or maybe you tell yourself, my heart is still healing, the past is not where my future is.
(13:08)
Or you could try something of I'm becoming someone I actually like, right? I think of that because sometimes we take on these hobbies and interests with our former partners and they become part of who we are and part of our identity, but we didn't really like it in the first place. It's not really a part of who we are. We were just being supportive and trying something new, and maybe we got a little over invested and we stepped out of our integrity there, and it could still have some triggers around it, but we can, now that we are single, you can identify what are those things that you actually like, and who am I becoming fake positive would be trying to put sugarcoating on top of it of like, you got this girl, you're going to be okay. It feels a little fake. So you want something that feels grounded and true.
(14:03)
Something like my heart's still healing. Okay, so those are your four steps. Lemme review 'em one more time. You're going to name what's happening. Step one, step two, you're going to put your hand on your heart and take a deep breath. This is resetting your nervous system for safety. Step three, you're going to identify what's the real wound here. Step four, you're going to give yourself a replacement truth. Okay? So I want you to start to reframe how you see these events, these triggers that come up. They aren't signs that you're going backwards. They don't mean that you're not healed. They don't mean that you're not over it. It just means that you are in the middle of updating your new software. Your heart is still, it's still integrating into this new chapter of your life. And each time you move through one of these triggers with this level of awareness and this level of compassion and kindness for yourself, you're rewiring that you can meet your emotional needs and that you are somebody who's trustworthy and who can handle this.
(15:15)
I want you to know you are not weak. You are so much stronger than you're giving yourself credit for. You are capable of doing hard things. You can handle uncomfortable emotions, and you will get to the other side of this. So if today's episode was helpful, I want you to know that I keep this work going. I actually launched a brand new three month program called Over It and onward we start December 3rd, which if you're listening to this on Tuesday, the day that it comes out, it starts tomorrow, December 3rd. So I want to give you an invite of, it's not too late, come join us now. This is going to be 90 days Healing in community where I guide you week by week, step by step-by-step, teaching you all the modules of how to heal your heart and start your life in a way that feels bigger and more exciting than what it was when you were with your ex, right?
(16:16)
I want you inside this group, and because this is the first time I'm doing it, I am offering it at a very special price that I want you to take advantage of. Be one of the lucky people who join me at the beginning of this program. You're going to help me shape what this is for the future of the program. You're going to get a lot of personal attention from me because I am so invested in making sure that you are successful and that you're not only over your X in 90 days, but you are confidently moving forward into the next chapter of your life, making it look more beautiful than you probably can imagine. Right now. I'm here for you. I'm going to put the link to sign up for it in the show notes here, and I want you in that room. I want to see you there. Alright, my friends. I hope that even if you're in the thick of it, even if you're being triggered still, that you still find moments in your day that you can remind yourself of how strong you are and that you can keep moving forward. So I want you to reclaim your confidence, your identity, and your joy after heartbreak. And that's what we're going to keep doing here and inside over it and onward. Alright my friends, I will see you in the next episode. Take care.