What Is Wrong With Me — The Most Painful Story You Carry

In this episode, Martina dives into one of the most painful conclusions many women quietly carry: not that something bad happened to them — but that something is fundamentally wrong with them.

When we get triggered, jealous, disappointed, rejected, or insecure, many of us don’t just feel emotions — we turn them into identity. 

Martina unpacks why that happens, what attachment and nervous system learning have to do with it, and how to stop abandoning yourself when difficult emotions show up.

Inside this episode:

• why triggers often activate old attachment wounds — not just present-day problems

• how emotions like jealousy, disappointment, and insecurity become “proof” that something is wrong with you

• what self-abandonment actually looks like during emotional spirals

• practical tools to separate feelings from identity and stay grounded when you’re activated

This is a raw, honest conversation about emotional triggers, shame spirals, nervous system responses, and learning how to stay on your own side — especially when it feels hardest.

Follow Martina on Instagram @femmagical for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and more!

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.

Transcript

When A Trigger Feels Like Proof

Martina 0:00

In today's episode, we are talking about the moment many women, obviously including you and me, know way too well. When one uncomfortable emotion suddenly turns into what the hell is wrong with me? Because most of us don't just feel jealousy, rejection, disappointment, or insecurity. We make it mean something about who we are. So today we're unpacking why triggers feel like proof, how your nervous system learned this story, and how to stop turning emotions into an identity and letting go of the self-embandemment with the question, what the hell is wrong with me? And because I'm not here to throw just information at you, I will also share what triggered me this week. Because I deeply believe personal stories from me and showing you how I go about it in real life is actually where the value for both of us really is. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode and thank you for being here. Maybe because it's the end of the week, because it's usually less not necessarily less busy than on the other day, but yeah, maybe it's also the pressure knowing I want to record before the weekend and publish it. So anyway, I hope you had a great week and happy Friday to you. And for some of you who will listen, it might be Monday, it might be a Tuesday or a Sunday. Anyway, I wish you any happy day whenever you tune into this podcast episode. Because

The Painful Thought Something’s Wrong

Martina 2:00

today we will talk about something that in my coaching practice and also in my own life, that's a reoccurring theme. And I might have done similar podcasts around this topic, but not really addressing it in this way or with that frame. So, what we discussed today is the notion that we all have experienced one point or the other in our lives of something is wrong with me. So I personally believe that one of the most painful conclusions humans come to is not that something bad happened to me or to you, but something is fundamentally wrong with me. And sometimes I still catch myself, especially when certain emotions arise or certain triggers arise, and I catch myself feeling like I shouldn't think or feel this way, because I am not 12 anymore, I am a certain other age, obviously, that I would deem more mature, but again, your emotions don't care how old you are, and the story that you usually tell yourself is a very young one. And I feel that is why when now as adults you get triggered by something, maybe something even very trivial trivial, but you have a big reaction around it, or you have really nasty thoughts, disturbing thoughts that you feel like, oh, I shouldn't have that. Oh my god, I'm so bad. And then the whole shame spiral is getting triggered. And this as soon as you feel shame, there's also this self-kind of a little bit of self-hatred coming your way, and then you're not rooted in in your in your self-energy, in your heart, you are spiraling, and obviously in your brain, your amygdala is firing, which doesn't allow you space or time to reflect because there's constantly your nervous system being triggered by there is a threat. So

Attachment Lessons Your Body Learned

Martina 4:07

let's go back to the deeper psychological mechanism behind there's something wrong with me. Because that is rooted in attachment and in kind of nervous system learning, especially in your early childhood. That obviously happens without you being consciously aware of because you just lack the brain bandwidth to even understand what's happening. There is no context, you're right, you are just it just happens automatically. And a child's brain is organized around attachment and not logic. So your nervous system, when you're very young, is constantly asking itself whether you are safe, you are connected, if you are wanted, or if you are, for example, emotionally held by your caregivers, ideally, your parents. And we are, when we are obviously young and you have your own kids, you might know that so much better. Children are dependent on their caregivers, on their parents for survival, and the brain is so sensitive for any cues of connection and disconnection. So, when, for example, your mother is emotionally inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, that was more or less my experience with my mom. Some moms can be intrusive. Maybe your mom rejected you or was just distracted because there was so much going on in her life. She had maybe to work or she had a lot of kids to take care of, or maybe over over really critical. That was also one of my early childhood experiences. Your nervous system experiences stress. And of course, as children, we cannot accurately contextualize the situation. You don't ask yourself those cognitive sophistications, such as, well, my mom struggles with emotional attunement, or my dad is maybe emotionally immature for his age. Or even like so simple as like, oh yeah, I see my parents are stressed because XYZ, you just don't know as a child. And so you you immediately personalize these experiences because you obviously you cannot objectively see what's going on in your parents' life. So, of course, what are you assuming? That your mom or your dad not being here for you, emotionally secure for you, consistent with their love, their unconditional love, also, by the way, you will think this is about you. And there are these conclusions that you might feel like as a child. I am too much, you might not be important, you are annoying. I have heard a lot of times in my childhood that I'm annoying, which is really something that still irks me that I had to hear that so often. Because as a child, you know, of course, it's not easy for anyone to deal with a child, you know. But if you hear constantly that you're annoying, that's just unnecessary for a child. You know, I know a child is a lot of work, but it's not necessarily annoying. So, or you learn that you're hard to love or that you are unsafe in relationships. So, again, those conclusions are absolutely not in your consciousness, they are very implicit. You just gather this information, and your nervous system is processing this, your subconscious is processing this, but not you as an adult that can better process this. But I even have to caveat here because the reason why I'm coaching a lot of women is because I'm helping them learn how to process this with the prefrontal cortex, where there is the logic, where there is the reason, and get grounded when the amygdala, you know, this reptilian brain is firing constantly. I mean, this is part of the nervous system that's obviously our threat detector that's constantly firing for a situation that might be a text message that you didn't get. Maybe you got a message or you had a phone call with someone or a conversation with someone face to face and it didn't go well. There might be a tone in there that was threatening to you, or whatever it is. I think you might come up with a lot of those experiences and examples by yourself. When you then think back of certain situations, you had big reactions. Let me think about something. Oh, yeah, I have something for this week, for example. So

A Real Trigger In Salary Talk

Martina 8:50

I was discussing with a male friend of mine via voice notes on WhatsApp, a topic that is a challenge. It's called salary negotiations and finding the right balance. So I was finding the right balance for me to be determined and getting as pay race, but not being pushy, because obviously, as a woman, you cannot come across as pushy because if you're pushy, you are seen as aggressive, and an aggressive woman is a bitch. So I always fight try to find a new one. So my friend is a CEO of a company, so I was like reflecting loud on a voice note, like how I went about it, what the follow-up conversations will be. And he sent me back a message, and he's a very logical person, he's a very alpha-driven man. So, what I mean by that is like he's always solution-oriented, and he is very direct and lays everything on the table. And the message to me was I was irritated afterwards and confused because this message had so many layers. There was a lot of gold in there, a lot of tips that I thought, well, that's great. I actually wasn't thinking about it, I can take that on. But I was unable to take it on in the beginning because I was irritated and yeah, confused, because he meant it well, but then there were condescending tones in there. He in the end reacted on reacted on something that I said in an earlier message where I was like, you don't know how it is as a woman in corporate America and negotiating salaries and all this stuff, and then it this it didn't take well because he kind of said like something along the lines like, You don't tell me, I know. Something like that. So there were so many things packed in there, and then in the end he also said, like, oh, this is just a conversational banter between the two of us, right? It's just an easy conversation, and I was like, it didn't feel like it. It didn't feel like it, you know? So I processed this for a whole day. It really made me, I was not happy with this at all, and it took a lot of time to dismantle this message, send something back the next day in a grounded way, but with boundaries, and I reflected back to him how I perceived that message, and obviously not blaming him for anything because I know those triggers are mine, but on the other hand, I'm not a doormat, and I also know that my emotional access can be revoked by putting a boundary, and I clearly told him how I felt about it, and that he could have done a slightly different job with a certain messaging and framing the way he portrayed certain things, because some of the things were more or less like, oh, you do this wrong, or you could have done it better, but not in a reflective way, like, oh, here's a thought for next time, or maybe for a follow-on conversation, more of like, oh, you should have blah blah blah. And the tone itself, it wasn't a written message, but the tone itself in his voice signaled to my nervous system that he kind of tells me that I did something wrong. And short story, long story short, that's how it goes. I was like, no. So that was a trigger here, and there's always a part in me that is like, Am I not overreacting here? Is this even okay to say something? Right? And then, of course, you know, because there is a tiny, tiny voice like, oh, I'm not good enough, or I'm not because I have I haven't done maybe my first negotiation round according to a textbook. And it's always difficult because, you know, there are multiple people involved and all that stuff, so it's not always like, oh, I can just prepare something and then you know have that in that conversation. And it's like amazing, like textbook point A2BC, because there's a lot of information that I got during those negotiations that I didn't have and made it clearer to me that right now I can't have a pay raise, but I will have one in half a year, and then we have to build a case for this and all that stuff. So I don't want to bore you with this. I might do an extra episode about it because I feel like salary negotiations for women is an absolutely not a red flag, but it's it's something that we women do do the least. We we like the least in our jobs, but I think it's it's super, super important. And I've learned so much in my life how to do it and do it better. And every round I also get to know myself and understand where we are going and doing better. So okay, I'm going on a tangent here, but just to understand that, you know, I had those like the way how he spoke triggered my I am not good enough because I haven't done it. And I am already, it's not my first salary negotiation, and I also wanna talk to you guys on the podcast about it and relay the experiences, the wisdom that I extracted. And I, you know, there were there was definitely a part that felt like I'm not worth worth of even this conversation with him because according to him, I should have done slightly better. Or he kind of said, like, oh, I'm not really asking for anything, which is BS because I did. I even have the receipts because I'm recording those conversations, and you know, ChatGPT definitely pointed out that I have been very explicit. Anyway, it's also not his fault he hasn't been part of this conversation with my bosses, so he doesn't know, but I cleared this up with him.

Shame Spirals And Identity Collapse

Martina 14:42

So back to the topic of not feeling worthy. So and the thing is that whenever your life goes well, you feel like happy, things are going well, you're balanced, you have a peace, you maybe, you know, I don't know, have just great relationships at the moment, nothing is triggering, you don't ask yourself, something is wrong with me. You don't think that there's something going on with you that's broken. But as soon as you have a trigger, as soon as there is some uncomfortable emotion arising, this is one of the first thoughts or painful conclusions about yourself that you usually draw. Some people more, some people less. And I also have to say it's not something always that conscious. So it's not always this is a sneaky thing. You you because you might just think, well, no, last time I was triggered, I was just irritated or angry or disappointed. I wasn't feeling uh what there's something wrong with me. This is not my core theme. And I might agree with you, but to that extent that I say, are you really sure because you slowed down and really unpacked it skillfully with time and resources? Because underneath all those things, a disappointment, a rejection, a jealousy, or whatever it is, irritation, rage, anger, that can be very sneakily packed into the thought that there's something wrong with you. It is you and not the other person. And of course, there's a lot of protection going on in our lives, right? We often think feel like, oh, the other person is at fault because it helps us processing the pain. Because it takes a lot of reps, to be honest with you, to sit with the hurt, those uncomfortable emotions and unpacking them. But I really guarantee you you had those thoughts more or less for all of your triggers or uncomfortable emotions, maybe not for every situation and in every feeling or you know, trigger, but in most of them, you we're just not that conscious because it sneaks in and we're actually used to this thought, so it's kind of like on repeat. And I have coached so many women, I could say maybe all almost in the last six years, around 100, 80 and 100 for sure. So I'd say the unworthiness is one of the most conclusions, painful conclusions women go to, even if unconsciously and they are not aware of it. So again, I as a child you have reactions that you are not super aware of of why you have them or why parents, caregivers are not reacting to you in a certain way. So you might learn that connection with my loved ones is unstable, it's inconsistent, or you're easily too replaced maybe by a sibling or by another adult, and yeah, so and then there's an adult. So the adult mind then often adds another second layer to it. So I uh I used to ask myself, why am I reacting like this if I have a big trigger? Like the first thing I'm always is like, why am I reacting like this? Or like, oh my god, this reaction I have is pathetic, or I'm crazy, or normal people wouldn't feel this. So of course there comes shame again and it compounds into more and more stress. Many people are not only suffering from the trigger, they are actually suffering from the self-ref re self-rejection about the trigger. So it's not only what I observe with my clients that they are ashamed of the trigger or that it triggered this reaction and it's like a big thing, and they know like, oh my god, it's not a big nothing big happened, but my reaction is so big. They're actually suffering from self-rejecting them about the trigger, about the emotion. And this distinction really, really matters. So, and maybe the problem isn't that you have human emotions. Because I think that's a lot of people think that this is the problem. Maybe the problem, or the bigger problem, is that we attach a meaning to these emotions that are actually painful and are letting us spiral longer than we should, and that actually causing havoc in our system and in other people's system. So we often convert emotions into an identity. That's how sometimes the brain tries to make meaning of what we feel. So, for example, if I feel jealous, I might think that I am I am weak or toxic. When I feel like insecure, I might feel like, oh my god, I am yeah, I'm weak. Or if I get rejected by someone, then I'm unlovable. And again, that then was all back to what we discussed earlier with childhood, right? Where you what is meaning-making is the meaning that you attach to these situations or experiences that were very painful as a child. So feeling an emotion does not automatically define your character ever, because feeling an emotion is something that's happening for maximum a day. You shouldn't feel it for a week for sure. For me, I feel it maybe for a couple of hours, but I feel like in the background it's getting less and less, and I really try hard, really, really try hard not to attach any meaning or feel like or make a conclusion about my character, about my identity. So also a trigger feels very convincing to us. So triggers distort your perspective. So it's not that so let's put it this way when when I feel regulated, yeah, I feel confident, I am grounded, I am rational, and also compassionate towards myself and others. When I'm triggered, I sometimes catastrophize things, especially compare myself to others. I might shame myself, I might question my my worth, and also assume everyone else is doing better emotionally. So whenever you feel emotional discomfort, your brain is looking for certainty because your brain hates one thing more than anything in its in your Life, and that is uncertainty. So, of course, what's the easiest explanation if you feel like disappointed, like fully? I mean, I just thought this this week I'm I I was a bit disappoint- not a bit, I was disappointed with my sister, and it took me two days to really get over it, and I was disappointed that I was disappointed about her, but in the end of the day, yeah, I felt disappointed, and that's fine. And that is emotionally discomforting because I'm usually not that disappointed with my sister. I love her dearly, and I don't know when I was last time disappointed, so we really get along really, really great. We talk every week, so we have a really great relationship. And I was disappointed for full two days, and I didn't want to actually like engage with her. I wasn't ignoring her, but I was just like not replying to a text message right away because I wanted to process what I was feeling. Because, and then also I was like, is there something wrong with me to feel disappointed for more than a day? Because even the second day I mean today, I'm way better. You know, I I feel like how the disappointment is like subsiding in my system. But Wednesday, it happened Wednesday and Wednesday and Thursday, I was so like so mad at her. But you know, I know that it was an innocent mistake on her end. There was nothing done that she did intentionally at all. So of course I just kept that to myself, journaled about it, and did what I usually do, not letting get it to me. But you know, uh, it was definitely a moment where I thought I thought, like, is there something wrong with me? Am I overreacting? Because it's like I'm still a little mad at her. So, you see, I have triggers. I have a lot of situations in a week where I'm going through what I'm actually talking about on the podcast. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's it's fair to talk about this topic and also bring in what triggered me this week because I would be interested to hear what triggered you. Because also what I want to say is sometimes I'm getting triggered more often than I wish. And it's also sometimes related to my PMS, you know, which phase in my cycle I am, right? Because for some phases I'm easygoing, peaceful, and some in some phases I get irked, something irks me, or I'm I'm more rageful or whatever, than in others. So I I don't know what I wanted to say actually now. Oh yeah, I think I know where I wanted to go. So I and then I feel like you know, as no one talks about that. I mean, I seldom have a conversation on the phone or with voice notes or messages, but someone says, Oh, this XY XYC triggered me. The only one who says that to me is my best friend with whom I'm voice noting forth and back. Simona, her name is, you might hear this name more often. She's my bestie, and we tell each other those things. But other than that, there I I don't know anyone else who like says, Oh, that triggered me. So sometimes I feel like, oh, that's just me, or am I the only one who is emotionally up and down? You know, because then I compare myself to someone on social media or some other friends I'm in contact with, where I never hear any, oh, that was an issue, or I was like had a confrontation with someone or whatever, right? So and and comparison makes everything so so hard. Because this modern comparison culture on social media, this the polished personalities that you see floating around your phone on your devices, the heeled girl branding I sometimes see online, like these polished brands of women who show up and everything is just so perfect. Sorry about that. My husband is texting me because I was just complaining to him. Let my smaller dog pee on the bathroom rug. Sometimes it happens, and it really I really have to tell my husband this bothers me. It didn't trigger me, but it bothered me a little. So yeah, and you know, all these polished personas who are never feel insecure, or just this performative confidence, and that just I could just vomit all day if I see that. And then of course, you might compare your inner raw world because you know it's so well, because you are in your own shoes, to someone else's edited performative outer world.

Emotional Memory And Adult Boundaries

Martina 26:53

So and I also want to tell you that an emotional mature person is not emotionless. Okay, so because I always saw those people who have a very stable and balanced, but that's not the goal. The goal is really to observe what you're feeling, know that you have the tools or the possibility to regulate yourself, and an emotional mature person also doesn't build their whole identity around those temporary states of let's say disappointment or jealousy. So before we go into at the end and what actually helps me to navigate this, I also just wanna dive and connect that back to the childhood. So your nervous system is not responding to the reality right now, it's not responding, so uh my nervous system didn't respond necessarily to my friend's voice message about the salary thing, how I did it, and how I should have done it differently. It was responding actually through accumulated emotional memory. And an emotional memory is not something verbal or very explicit. It and you might not even consciously remember those childhood moments of emotional exclusion, comparison, this inconsistency, maybe even at worse, emotional neglect or this kind of conditional love. You only loved if you bring good home, bring home good grades or if you're like a good girl, right? We we love good girls, my god. So, but your nervous system remembers these patterns, and this is why sometimes those smaller sim situations, a message from my friend who I dearly love, and who is just you know presented the message in the way he did can provoke emotional reactions, such as I was irritated and confused. So, for example, you might have waited for a text that got delayed, maybe a shift in the tone of a person, someone else received attention and not you. Or you feel left out socially, happens to us adults still, right? It's not just a teenage thing or child thing to be excluded sometimes. Maybe you didn't get an invite to a birthday party or hang out at a bar or whatnot, right? Or you perceive emotional distance from someone, or seeing a closeness between others, right? Where you are not part of. And these are just examples that I want to give you because these can unconsciously echo early attachment pain that you and most of us more or less experience because no one, no parent, and you if you are mom or a dad, you know you can't do everything textbook amazing. And that's also not supposed to be the goal ever. And I wanted to give you those examples because again, sometimes I feel like, oh my god, it was a text message, I should maybe have not reacted this way. Because if I when I sent the message back to my friend yesterday where I said, Hey, I felt irritated, I owned that, I thought I was so confused because there were so many layers and frames in your message, blah blah blah. I also thought to myself later on, okay, now he will dive into this 10 minutes message, and maybe it wasn't too much, you know. So I had a little bit of a hangover because I shared that. But then on the other hand, I was like, no, that's totally fine because I wanted to be true to myself. This is how I see it. Doesn't mean it's the absolute truth, and it's he did everything wrong, not at all. I just wanted to also test out if our friendship is able to hold that, right? If we can hold that, I think we will be friends for a lifetime. We've been now for the past almost 10 years, but it's a good test as well. So I was like, let's see. I mean, again, I spoke the message grounded, like with you now, and I told him, hey, I have absolutely no ill feelings or anything. So if he can't handle that feedback and how a message made me feel, I think, and I told him that, then we might not be down the ride for for longer. And that wasn't packaged as a threat, because I'm welcoming also different reactions, but you know, there are certain reactions that I can hold, and then there's a certain reaction when he completely dismisses this and gaslights me, which I don't think, you know, in that case that will happen, then yeah. I'll bring this as an example because at a certain age, and we are all at a certain age, I'm in my 40s, I definitely don't want to deal with people in my life that cannot hold the whole bandwidth of my emotions, or were you know I can't express myself. So I've recorded podcasts around this, and I don't want to divert too much now from our topic of something is wrong with me. Just wanted to mention this as well, in case you know you have people in your life where you have difficulties because it's human beings will always be challenges, but there are also certain challenges that I'm not inviting further into my life, and again, I revoke emotional access to myself then. So

Tools To Regulate Without Self-Abandoning

Martina 32:37

before we wrap up, I obviously wanna leave you with what actually helps, or what I jotted down what helps me when I get triggered or I have uncomfortable emotions arising. So when we zoom out, the goal obviously will never be to eliminate emotional reactions because that would not be human, and it's also not the point. And the goal is to change the relationship to what is happening inside of you. So instead of asking yourself, how can I stop feeling disappointed or irritated or confused, you could actually turn this into how do I stop turning this into self-abandonment? And what I mean by this self-abandonment is when something gets triggered in you, self-abandonment is the moment you stop being on your own side when you stop being your own cheerleader. So, you know, you turn against yourself, you're feeling like, oh, I'm stupid, I'm pathetic, normal people won't feel this way, or something like that. And emotion is not the problem here, it's the inner aggression toward yourself, and you have to be very mindful because that is again something, a thought, or a process, a pattern that you're not conscious of. Or losing your emotional presence with yourself, you know, you resort to scrolling on your phone. Maybe you numb yourself with food, alcohol, you overthink to that point where you completely dissociate from your body, or you go and seek external validation to fix, you know, the inner void that you feel. So, or making other people more important than your inner reality, you know. So, for example, you feel triggered by someone's success, someone else's success, and instead of staying grounded in okay, something in me feels activated right now, because then let's say you're a friend that you know on social media just celebrates promotion or an opening of a successful business, and you shift into a self-abandonment would be here comparing yourself in a negative way, in a way that spirals, where you constantly check what others are doing, or when you see again see someone who is successful, feel like you are not worth or something is wrong with you because you are not doing something successful. So, yeah, or immediately, you know, reject yourself of the emotion. You tell yourself, I shouldn't feel this way, or I this is not acceptable the way how you react. So, all those things I mean with when I initially said, don't say to yourself or ask yourself, how do I stop feeling this, but say, like, how do I stop turning this whole thing into a self-abandonment? What I usually do is I separate the emotions that I have from my identity, so I know whatever I feel is not an identity state or statement. So if I feel jealous of someone, I don't say think I am jealous. I feel jealous, but I am not jealous. That's quite this is do you feel the difference? I mean, it's a big thing if you tell yourself I feel jealous versus I am jealous, because I know I grew up with saying I feel disappointed. I am disappointed instead of I feel disappointed. And as soon as you say I feel, you already create a little bit of distance, but not in a sense of like you completely sorry, my dog is snoring. Naboo, you're snoring. So I feel it gives you a little bit of wiggle room, a little bit of distance, not to be so absorbed by this with oh, this is my identity, so I am actually not worthy, there's something wrong with me, and all those things, right? It feels more like it's a feeling, it's not I am, okay? And yeah, so this is a this practice is very subtle, but it for me it's very powerful. So instead of becoming the emotion, I name it. You might have heard that already, it's not something I invented, to be honest with you. I cannot also quote from whom I've heard or learned that, but again, I just want as if you know about it, just as a reminder, if you see emotion arising in you, you can say, I notice jealousy, or there is comparison here, or something in me feels left out. This creates a healthy distance, not in an avoidance way, but with clarity. And because you know, identity collapses is what creates shame spirals, and you don't want to go into any spiral. Another point is I emotional self-regulate, so that is not suppression, obviously. So because regulation is often misunderstood, it's not calming yourself down immediately or think positive or override the feeling overall. It means staying inside your body without escalating that story in your mind. So instead of I feel jealous, something is wrong with me, I'm behind, I'm failing, right? This this chain reaction. So example, example again, someone is successful, someone tells celebrates something great, you get jealous, you think something is wrong with me, then you draw the conclusion that oh, you're behind in life, and then the other conclusion is I am failing. You interrupt that chain right from the get-go. You come back to the basics, you start to breathe slower, then your thoughts are spiraling. You kind of like feel the physical sensations. You might have a tight chest, you feel heat, you feel maybe cold, you feel contractions in your chest, in your throat. Very often for a lot of women, it's in the throat or in the stomach. And just let that wave in your body, these contractions exist without narrating a story. Because this story is exaggerated, it's never true, and it makes your physical reaction so much bigger. And the more you feel any sensations in your body, the more your nervous system gets more agitated. And the key shift is to go from the interpretation to the sensation, because suffering is often not the emotion itself, but the meaning that we put on top of it, and then we go and choose the story and make it bigger and harder, and we are the victims, and this one is bad, and all this stuff. And I also want you to self-observe without self-attack because these are two very important things, different things. So, most of the times we are not just feeling, we are also commenting on how we feel. And the commentary is usually a harsh one, as I said before. Why are you like this? This is pathetic, you shouldn't feel this way. And then there are two layers now. You have the emotion, and then you have the self-judgment because of this emo this emotion. And healing starts when you become the observer instead, listen, of the attacker. Again, healing starts when you become the observer and not your attacker. So there's not what's wrong with me, it's oh interesting. This is what happens in me when I feel left out. And that shift alone reduces intensity sometimes dramatically. And that also comes, this is my last point here: curiosity. If you are in curiosity mode, like, oh, that's interesting that I that this happens in me when I feel left out. When you stay curious, you stay also regulated. So you should move into what is it that I'm protecting in myself? What does this story remind me of? Maybe when did I first learn this feeling meant danger? Because curiosity never justifies any behavior, it helps you prevent to go into collapse and in a spiral. And that is really that's already worth a lot.

The Goal Is Not Never Triggered

Martina 41:13

So yeah, I think that is all I can share with you today. It's a 40 minutes episode. I'm wrapping up here. I I'm very grateful if you come that far and could listen to me. And hopefully I had a red thread here and I wasn't like diverting too much. But I just, you know, sometimes wanna I have always people ask me how I record podcasts to also let you know. So I have definitely an outline in front of me. It's not scripted or anything, it's just bullet points. But I'm also in that moment, other thoughts are coming or other, you know, like I'm a vessel to what comes in me, I share with you. So that's why I'm never sticking to my script. But on the other hand, obviously, I don't want to digress, and I also have a lot of personal examples that I want to share. So I know this was a very packed episode, yet I still hope there was something valuable for you. And yeah, in the end, I just want to say I want to say and leave you with that. The goal is not becoming a woman who does not get triggered anymore. I want you that the goal for you is to become the woman who just doesn't abandon herself when something happens.