Vince Wendling

Becoming Untriggerable, is it possible? Can someone walk through life with ease and grace, no longer tossed around by events and people, or even one’s own thoughts? Is it possible to be peaceful and happy almost all the time…for no reason?

 

At 30 years old, I was miserable.  Nothing I tried could assuage the deep sense of dissatisfaction, angst, anxiety, and growing depression. I had a number of successes through the years, including running two great companies. I had a great relationship, lots of friends, close community, even spirituality. I was respected, loved, always invited to the most interesting events, and yet I was growing increasingly distraught. 

 

I tried anything to feel better: energy healing, sound baths, walking barefoot, eating raw vegan, taking psychedelics, regular meditation, etc. At the very best, all of that only uncovered more of my subconscious density.

 

One day, while listening to a podcast, I heard this guy named Hale walk a person through a series of questions he called the Sedona Method. I followed along, and in a few minutes I felt a strong sense of relief. 

 

“What the heck was that!?” I wondered.  It was too easy. Immediately, I was obsessed. I found everything I could on the Sedona Method, also known as “releasing,”  and began practicing in earnest.

 

At first, relief was hit or miss. Sometimes I would feel better, and sometimes more tangled. I wasn’t being facilitated by anyone, just trying to find my own way, and in hindsight I was often practicing the opposite of releasing; I was holding on. But with continued practice, persistence, and much curiosity I eventually developed my own way to get consistent results.

 

I quit everything in my life that wasn’t my releasing practice. I stopped working, socializing, consuming media of any kind, all of it. I would go for long walks, take care of my body, and sit with my eyes closed, sometimes as much as 16 hours a day. Understandably, my marriage fell apart. 

 

Many months later I found myself living in a tent in the forest of Maui. I had found a place I could spend all day and night in meditation and no one would care. So I did.

 

While sitting, big waves of euphoria or simply relief were common. But what was most encouraging was that I would work on a specific issue, and then days or weeks later when that same trigger presented itself I would almost not even notice. There was simply nothing in me for that specific thing to hook into anymore.

 

Being able to cure my own triggers felt like a superpower. During that time in my life everything came up for review and release. All my beliefs, whether religious, relational, social, cultural, or personal, they all surfaced to be felt,  looked at, welcomed, and let go. 

 

I kept that pace for nearly a year, but eventually enough space had opened up inside of me that I began to consider rejoining the world.

I moved back to my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota and took a job in the service industry, delivering food for a sport’s bar. This contributed a whole new dynamic to my inner work.

In my free time, including my work breaks, I kept up my practice, and the new lifestyle was like jet fuel, offering me so many new triggering circumstances to work through. I would look at each event and simply ask “how is that me?” This continued several more years during which I also added a couple other techniques that began to transform my process in more intentional ways.

There was never an exact moment that marks the deep significant change, but one day I noticed how quiet it was. “Hmm.. I’m not finding any trigger, or contraction, or even anything uncomfortable in myself right now. In fact, when was the last time I got triggered? Or felt any emotional upset? Weird.”

It’s been that way for about 5 years now. Peace is my constant companion, inner quiet is right here. I still get the occasional emotional reaction to something in life, but it usually lasts minutes instead of weeks. When the rare considerably big thing happens, I simply have the well-practiced tool set to fall back on, until the trigger unravels and falls away.

So is it possible to become untriggerable, constantly steady, fully present to the moment and people in it? Can a person be simply okay all the time? I’m not there quite yet, but from everything I’ve experienced, I absolutely believe the answer is “yes.”