The Everyday Awesome Project

81: Triggers to Tools: Transforming Your Inner Landscape

• Polly Mertens & Samantha Pruitt • Season 1 • Episode 81

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Triggered much lately? We all all! But have you ever wondered why certain interactions trigger intense emotional responses in you and other things do not phase you? This week with Coaches Polly & Sam we discuss how that answer lies in how your brain stores memories and then adds emotional charge to them. 

Coach Polly shares her training in the powerful world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and reveal how understanding "little t" traumas can transform your daily experiences. While traditional therapy has its place, the waiting lists are growing longer, and many people need immediate tools to manage their emotional triggers. That's where these practical techniques come in.

Here is the deal- your brain captures memories like movies or photographs, storing them with specific characteristics - brightness, size, distance, and color. The emotional impact you feel directly correlates with these visual properties. Through the 'Swish Pattern' technique, you can consciously alter these memories by making them smaller, dimmer, black and white, or even adding absurd elements like circus music. This simple but profound practice can neutralize the emotional charge of painful memories without requiring years of therapy. But that is just the beginning! 

What makes these approachs particularly empowering is that it doesn't require confrontation with the person who hurt you. The healing happens entirely within yourself as you recognize that while events may have happened externally, the emotional aftermath lives inside you - where you have the power to transform it.

Coach Sam and Coach Polly share personal examples of using these techniques to neutralize a triggering moment, demonstrating how creating multiple versions of the same memory can dilute its emotional impact. We are all humans and humaning is hard. But today you can get some free tools for lessening the load. Whether you're dealing with workplace tensions, relationship conflicts, or lingering childhood resentments, these techniques offer accessible tools for emotional freedom. Try them yourself, or if you're facing bigger challenges, use this as inspiration to take that first step toward healing. 

-Coach Polly & Coach Sam xoxo

@everydayawesomeproject 







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Polly Mertens:

hey, superstars, welcome back polly here and sam.

Samantha Pruitt:

What's up, beautiful humans yo yo.

Polly Mertens:

Today we're talking about little t's and big t's. Some of our favorite topics triggers, but tools for triggers and traumas, no less tools for triggers and traumas okay, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt:

Less Tools for triggers and traumas Okay, yeah. So, to be clear, this will be a positive episode. You don't want people to run like hell, and we did say that when we were unpacking. What we're going to discuss today is like this is a. This is a spicy topic for people.

Samantha Pruitt:

You know, mental health crisis is the latest epidemic right, it's the pandemic of our times and many, many people have, you know, psychological, emotional sufferings going on. So we want to just be honest. You know, we're not therapists, we're not psychotherapists, we're not psychiatrists, all of that kind of stuff.

Polly Mertens:

One of us is a hypnotherapist, but yeah.

Samantha Pruitt:

Exactly, and we deal with humans all day long and we deal with ourselves.

Polly Mertens:

So I just thought it was great. One of the things you said before we started on air which I just want to reiterate is um, you, you know, you're and we're going to talk about this in a future episode we don't have it all unpacked yet. You're going through this detox for your gut and stuff like that, and they were like, hey, maybe you could get some therapy for that. And you're like, well, look at that. And so you went down the path and you made some outreach and so far no luck. And it's like, just for something not simple, but something like this isn't even a capital T trauma. This is like, hey, I just want some support while I go through this detox. I don't know what's going to happen. Right, and that end.

Samantha Pruitt:

Exactly, it really, really. It's a little bit disheartening. And also, I've worked with other people and I have family members who have had mental health issues. You also have had this experience. So, like, sometimes we're an advocate for other people and trying to navigate the system and get support and resources, et cetera.

Samantha Pruitt:

The system got very bogged down during the pandemic. I mean, the crisis was before that, by the way, so it's not because of the pandemic, but anyway, the systems got really bogged down. And then the advent of everything going online. So now people can just have a, you know, therapy through an app, whether there's a human on the other side or not, there's therapeutic apps, right. Or they could have therapy through an online portal where maybe they don't even see the person. They talk to the person. Did you know? Texting therapy was the thing. I was like, wait what? Yeah, one of them offered therapy sessions through just texting and messaging, no actual human contact. So anyway, anyway, the world is, it's just the world of therapy and the resources for mental and emotional health have just radically changed. The landscape has changed.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, there was a little bit of that education I needed to yeah, and what we were talking about too is, you know, so I've been sharing since I joined um, this, this program. So I'm doing some landmark education landmark, landmarkworldwidecom, if you want to look it up work there that I've I started doing 20 years ago with the Landmark Forum, which transformed my life from eating disorder to no eating disorder, and it's like that's how freaking radical this work can be right, and I've seen it in other people's lives, so reintroduced to it, going through a program around their communication courses. Specifically, One is access to power. The second one is power to create.

Polly Mertens:

And then I've taken on a year long program that is basically living those distinctions inside of those programs, with a whole team, a whole bunch of other people throughout the region that are also practicing these distinctions, that really want to get good at this. And you know you and I were talking about it. I was like I was like why are you doing this landmark study? Like what are you doing? And it's like I can't think of a better thing to do with my life than to be a better speaker and communicator and listener. And you know, just because life is conversations right.

Samantha Pruitt:

Yeah, with ourself and to the world.

Polly Mertens:

With ourself, yeah, and if things are not being communicated effectively, poorly, we're not communicating with people, blocking people from our life, shutting them out, not talking to that person or, oh you know, avoiding people all sorts of symptoms from a root cause of not having the tools and techniques. So this is where we started this conversation. You and I were like, and there's a lot, there's a beautiful body of work that I was sharing with you in landmark we call it recreating communication, which is where something. So I was just sharing, I'll just share this and then we'll go into what we really want to talk about, which is sharing with you guys something else that I've learned through my studies and practice in the world of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, which is called the swish pattern, taught from a body of work called neuro linguistic programming, nlp. So NLP is very popular. Tony Robbins is a big proponent of that, so if you know him then you know he uses NLP and it's great and it's a therapeutic method.

Polly Mertens:

But in landmark, one of the things we do is called recreating. So I was doing that actually this morning, before we recorded this, like literally doing it in my life, where I had a conversation inside of a team. We were creating this little mini team on Monday and somebody said something like I'm too busy, don't have time for this, and I was like like hurt. I was hurt by the communication, you know, and I was like whoa, and what we discover is you know when, when there's a trigger, when there's something there that's like I didn't just roll off my back like oh, she's busy. Okay, it was like oh, she's busy. And then I feel hurt, sad, rejected, whatever comes up.

Polly Mertens:

There's a little mini T trauma or something inside of me, right, and so I worked with my coaching partner this morning through the landmark process and how to they teach us how to recreate like be with that communication newly, instead of in the triggered state that I was in, Be with her communication, be over there in her world and understanding it.

Samantha Pruitt:

And it was like oh, she's just busy, she's prioritizing things in her life and I was like, oh you know, don't go into the practice yet.

Samantha Pruitt:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so anyway what we first want to describe to the listener is like why is this even important? And when you said the word therapeutic and we were talking about therapy, I want to just circle back to that really like basic awareness for myself, like I was like, oh therapy, is that a thing I should be looking into? What does that look like now? What is the landscape? What are the opportunities? I'm trying to heal my physical body, which means I need to also be healing my emotional body. Yeah, I am a human being Last time I checked and so therapeutic opportunities are available to me.

Samantha Pruitt:

You're currently in this practice with this course and you've taken and are, you know, well practiced and versed in other types of therapeutic methodologies, which we want to talk a little bit about that. But for the listener it's like it's kind of and maybe this is just obvious but couldn't we all use some kind of therapy? And there are so many different types, so we're not casting judgment on this type or that type or another type. Today we're here to discuss a little bit about not a little bit a lot about small T's and big T, trauma and some tools that you might use along the process of you understanding why you respond to things the way you respond, how your brain and emotional pathways work when you are around certain people in certain instances, or spoken to in a certain way or whatever. So I just wanted to like lay a foundation before we start digging into the garden.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, and this, this is in the under the umbrella of one of you, and I's favorite topics is emotional mastery right, exactly.

Polly Mertens:

And so emotional mastery and emotional intelligence is utilizing various tools or perspectives. You know, and I feel like I walk around with a little toolbox that I've collected over decades from personal development, work, therapy, not to knock it. Sometimes, from what I understand of some, I've seen that takes years, like you know, for eating disorders, for example, the common traditional talk therapy traditional was seven years. I was like, oh my God, you're just gonna go into like this weight, and I was like, no, you got to like get some tools right.

Samantha Pruitt:

And so that's where I've seven years you could be dead If you have an addiction or something life man.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah so one of the ones I wanted to bring up and we'll go into it here in a little bit is like it's a practical tool that you can use today. Yeah, like you don't have to wait seven years for this gift to unpack it, and it's like in seven years I'll have this trigger trauma. You know better. It's like, I know, like you'll have it today.

Samantha Pruitt:

And I was expressing um, I've been part of groups before they weren't therapy groups, but there's therapy groups, you know AA and other types of groups that have shared trauma, for example. Or there's one-on-one therapy and stuff like that, and traditionally they are talk therapy modalities. There's lots of other kinds modalities. There's lots of other kinds but and how? My response or observation to that, or personal response I should just speak for myself is like I'm listening to everybody else's crap, so I've got my own crap. I know I'm totally distracted by Fred Sally and Susie's crap and their their thing. Whatever they're doing is triggering me even more to no end, is triggering me even more to no end. That's my personal experience. So I would like to have and I will still investigate what other therapies may or may not work for me during this detox period and like my connectivity with food, my emotional experience with food especially because that's a challenge for me right now with what's going on with my health like how to make peace with all of that and work with it, not against it.

Polly Mertens:

Well, I just want to say one thing that I think has been my experience, which is slightly different, so I have been in those and I'm not going to label them, whatever groups that the conversation sounds very much the same year after year. There's not, there's not a level of growth or distinction or you know something to like an expansion. It just feels like a stuck place. It's talking about what? And I have definitely benefited from groups that they talk and they share with the intention that that person and anybody listening is growing not with you know so, if they share something.

Polly Mertens:

It's not like give me pity, give me your you know sympathy or something like that. It's like reflect back to me something that I don't see for myself and help me grow, and those can be those. I've had some of the biggest breakthroughs, you know, watching someone work right, getting some growth and some coaching, and by listening to them I see something that I'm doing inside of my world or something that that relates. It can't even be the same thing, like some guy's working on I don't know his relationship with his girlfriend and I'm over here like, oh my God, my boss, you know something like that. Like it can be that disparate, but you can see how. So I think there are groups that can not, you know, be up to stuff, and that can be one way, but there are groups that, if they're up to something, expansion, growing you then they can be very beneficial.

Samantha Pruitt:

Well, let's just point out that you're creating one. It's called the come alive and there's going to, it's going to be a real thing, like these group or this. This community will be facilitated in this way, exactly. So it's being created and you're right, they do exist. Sorry to poo-poo on that, but no, no, I just don't want people to feel trapped, that like that's what it is, and if it didn't work. There's nothing there's and, and that's, that's it.

Polly Mertens:

So like, keep, keep looking for the group, right, like so I, I too like I walked in this group and I was like boy, this feels like the conversation that is going to not take me anywhere, I'm not going to be growing uplifted or whatever. And then you get into a group in an environment where things were popping and you know ideas and expansion is happening, personal growth, it's like that's, that's where you want to be met. You know going for it.

Samantha Pruitt:

Okay, Okay. So what is NLP? Nlp is why?

Polly Mertens:

I'm not sure I'm prepared to answer that big but neuro, neuro linguistic programming, nlp, was founded, I want to say, 30 years ago, brindler and someone else. It's like the short little snippet for Instagram or whatever is like, it's the study of success. The study of success. Okay, what the hell is that? I was like, what is that? So what they did is, they said they actually studied psychologists who were having success with their patients and discovered what was working, like how are you getting these results for your patients?

Polly Mertens:

We're like all these other therapists, psychologists, whatever we're not and they took these techniques, these strategies, whatever. And then they fine tuned them and perfected them and it's like there's a technique. So like this one that we'll go over today is like this is something that works, that has worked and some people apply it. And they just created a body of work and called it NLP and brought them all together. Right, and it's fascinating and it's a really deep dive, because these psychologists spent their whole life studying the mind and how people think and where do we store the trauma and where does the? You know, how do we unpack it and how do we break you know the bonds that a belief or a trauma can can have upon us right and all it is is, you know, basically it's bodies of energy you know, like, like a memory is.

Polly Mertens:

Uh, you know, if we look at a computer, it's zeros and ones, right like there's at a computer. It's zeros and ones, right Like there's nothing in a computer, it's zeros and ones on a disk or something like that, somewhere, right yeah. But we look at it and you pop up a computer and go, oh, look, there's a pretty picture and there's a mouse and there's things to do and programs. It's like. Well, inside of you is lots of stored energy in the form of smells and sights and sounds and experiences, the emotions that you had in your body, and they get stored. They get stored right. And so that's where the trauma comes from. Is that initial moment of something happening, some moment, some experience, something? We made up something, we heard something, someone said to us, whatever it can be an impact physically, I mean, you could be abused, hurt, fall to have a car accident, you know traumatic whatever.

Samantha Pruitt:

Get your arms. They call those the capital T traumas.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, yeah, and so that is stored in the body and stored in the mind through these memory banks, right, and in NLP they have a masterful way. It would be too complex to try and describe the whole thing. Maybe in future episodes we can go into little snippets of it. But really it's the mind stores things in pictures and videos and it stores them in specific places.

Polly Mertens:

So you guys are hearing me, you're not seeing me, but if you were seeing me, it's like there's like a movie screen in front of us, if you will, and our memories are stored in certain places, like on a picture frame, you know, like we put them in places and we make them a certain size and we, you know, categorize them, you know, and it's just fascinating, and we all do it a little bit differently, so it's not exactly. It's not like oh, samantha, you know what? I know, your memory is going to be over here at nine o'clock in your memory. So if you look up at nine o'clock, you're going to see that memory and it's going to be right here, about three feet from you, and it's going to be vivid and whatever it might not be, it might be lower left at 6 pm, you know, six o'clock or seven o'clock and it's darker or kind of faint, and maybe you've, maybe it's not. Some people put them in white picture frames or black picture frames and some people it's just kind of fuzzy edges, whatever.

Samantha Pruitt:

It's, however, the memories that your mind how it stores it. So it's so fascinating dude Studying NLP.

Polly Mertens:

I was just like are you kidding me? Is this, is this really what our brain is doing? And it like yep, over and over again. And when you see a master like Tony Robbins on the stage, he's so reading your face, because you are giving away so many signals by where your eyes go and what you're looking at, of like, where you're storing things like well, it's, you know, I mean, we, we think about this with um, uh, what are they like? Lie detector people, like people that uh, oh, yeah, face facial recognition and they can tell, like, if someone's lying and stuff like that same thing. It's like the face gives away what the mind is thinking, what the body is like sending it. So it's, it's linked to that, it's similar to that. You know similar kind of studies, if you will.

Samantha Pruitt:

So in learning this as a tool and practicing it with other humans and yourself, of course, over time, what's like the basics. Don't take us through the advanced course like right now you're getting a freaking master's degree in this, literally at Landmark, but take us through the basics.

Polly Mertens:

For the listener and myself who are new to this, Well, you tell me if this is the basic, where I can like simplify it.

Polly Mertens:

So, basically, so what I want to share with you is one example for myself is where a memory got stored a little T trauma, something happened between interchange with my mom and I stored as a little picture.

Polly Mertens:

When I think of that memory it hurts, you know, like I have anger towards my mom or disgruntled or whatever. Like it brings back up the energy that was stored in that moment when that thing happened and it's about transforming that, right, and so that thing that got sort of like. I mean, if we think about how many times, like if you were, like you know how you have your phone and like you want to take a couple pictures of, like, oh, like you're taking pictures of your friends, you're like, oh, let me take three of them and I'll delete the one that or I'll keep one, right, your mind is literally doing that your whole life, yeah, throughout the day, right, and what your brain does literally so this is a little more NLP and hypnosis is what's happening with that massive database that your brain is taking all those pictures and videos is when you sleep. If you get three series of REM sleep, you go into that deep REM. One of those is to delete old files.

Samantha Pruitt:

It's clipping and pruning the videos that it doesn't need to it doesn't think you need to remember, right, and so that's then. Most of us need to go to sleep for a very long time.

Polly Mertens:

Well, that's where you know you get the sleep disruption and where you can't literally like think straight and you can't take in more information or you're just like a zombie. It's because you didn't, the brain didn't sort of reset back to zero and it's like, okay, let's start the movie camera again. It's like no, don't have any more on this reel to take in.

Samantha Pruitt:

Well, you don't have any more space, just like your damn computer or your phone, like you're out of gigabytes. No go yeah.

Polly Mertens:

Add some more storage. Yeah, get some fucking sleep. Yeah, that's what it's telling, totally, and yeah, so, anyway, that's so. The technique is about taking these old memories that got stored right, so, like that one one walk us through one, to take us through an experience.

Samantha Pruitt:

If you want to use you and your mom, you don't have to.

Polly Mertens:

No, no, no, this is perfect Cause it doesn't do it, it doesn't have the trigger on me anymore, cause I already did this. But I'll explain to you what I did, cause I did this years ago. So picture, you know, I'm, uh, in my parents' house as one of those like came back to live with mom. I was going to grad school. So I'm in the bedroom on my bed, mom walks in the through the door, yelling at me about something, to be honest, because I've already recreated this and, you know, transformed it. I don't remember the nature, but I do remember the experience of sitting there yelling at me and whatever, and I was like Whoa, right, so that experience, I can hear the voice, I feel that like kind of tension, or the sweat in my body like you know, want to fight this. The loud voices, the screeching, you know, insults that were said, all that stuff.

Polly Mertens:

So what happens so with this technique is so if I, if I, if someone says, ok, well, remember a time when you, this reminds you of something, right, so, like, I bring this picture up, and so for me it was like front and center, it was about two feet in front of me. I could see the picture of her walking in, but I could still see the room. You know it wasn't just like her isolated, like a person standing there, like I could see her in the doorway, I could see the room, I could see the bed and my feet on the bed, and you know she's standing there and so the technique is that is stored in a certain distance for me. So here's the beauty of one of the things that you can do with NLP is just by transforming a few of the spatial things with this picture.

Polly Mertens:

So if you have a memory and it's stored, if it's like kind of close to you, like this one's like about two feet away, if I just say bring it closer and make it brighter, so if I say, okay, it's, you're like holding it or you've got that picture frame, and you say like make it closer and make it brighter, I would feel more upset in my body, like I would be like she's fucking up in my face now, like we're going to go to head here, right, you know she's, she's really letting me have it Right. Or I could make it dimmer. So I just like dim the lights on the scene and I just push her away and I make it further and further away, so like she's like a mile away. I don't feel anything in that moment I don't even feel her.

Polly Mertens:

It's like can't even see her there. Right, that kind of a thing.

Samantha Pruitt:

I love the way you described one of them, which was to make it black and white. Oh damn, that just really like. For me was a great visual transformational moment to think of something being so vivid and colorized and so loud to being muted or black and white.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, so you change the perspective, like how far away the distance, let's say like, is it really super close? Like we'll just make it smaller, make it further away. If it's like bright and vivid and bold, okay, we'll just kind of blur it, you know, or make it black and white right, just kind of turn it into neutrals or tones, and then, you know, just make it smaller. Like all, just in doing that, you'd be amazed where, how, your relationship to that trauma, that that experience could be.

Samantha Pruitt:

Before we go on thinking back about how your brain takes these experiences and puts them into this library that eventually runs out of space. Yeah, it helps people understand why they do what they do. So when you're trying to know yourself as a person, this is what personal growth work is. Who the hell am I, why do I do the things I do and how can I do them differently?

Polly Mertens:

Well, we can go into a whole episode about how this all creates your identity.

Samantha Pruitt:

Exactly, but just from the basics, is like do you ever wonder why you operate under the operating system that you have? And this is a big reason for people to understand rather than to carry guilt and shame and all this heaviness around like being broken or not really having the life that they deserve. There are reasons that you operate the way you operate. The more you can understand these reasons, the more compassion you have for yourself and the more understanding you have about yourself as a human being.

Polly Mertens:

Well, and it's. I want to even be like. If we just hold it true to NLP, it's not even reasons, it's just where you've stored those memories, which one you're recalling most, which ones are bigger and brighter. So so, for example, I was doing this a little bit recently in the study of like characteristics that you know, we describe ourselves. So let's say, um, if somebody were to ask you like, do you see yourself as a compassionate person? Instantly your mind like finds its library, it has a database wherever it stores it spatially. A lot of times it's kind of like on the side of you, like if I said, well, how do you know you're compassionate person? Like, you will have this little picking card or something everybody does a little differently, but you'll be like oh, there's that time examples, and there was that time. Yeah, yeah, right.

Samantha Pruitt:

And what happens? We're building a case. Let me show you my 10 reasons.

Polly Mertens:

Well, this, so this is how identities get created. Is we give ourselves Unconsciously, unconsciously, yes, or you can grow. All this stuff is like you know, the, the, what do they call it About success? Right, strategies for success Like this. You can build this, like, if you want to see yourself as more compassionate, you know like, oh, you were probably compassionate a lot more than you're remembering, right, but if we, like, had you really go back, like oh yeah, oh yeah, right, and you can build that. You can notice times when you are being compassionate and then, like, store that memory, like reward yourself. For you know, because, when we have an inverse relationship to a self-concept, right, if it's like we see ourselves less than other people see us, or you know, right, it's because we're diminishing or we're sort of hiding from ourselves all those times when we were that.

Samantha Pruitt:

Exactly.

Polly Mertens:

So that we don't.

Samantha Pruitt:

Focused instead on the others.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, we make this big old pile of I'm a turd and I'm an asshole to people or you know, I don't care, whatever, you know we make that front and center and that's the most important. Where we've got this library of. Oh yeah, remember that time you did that with your aunt and you remember you took care of that and you know, and now we can hide it from ourselves. So it's all available, right, and it's just noticing how we got it stored, stored. So there's work that.

Polly Mertens:

So, when we talk about therapy, this is part of how you can work with an nlp practitioner to transform existing memories. I'm not even talking about, you know, like one of the things we're going to talk about is like transforming a memory. But these are existing memories and you just aren't recalling them. So like going in and making them and then put a link, like, like, like have them as like a deck of cards and you just look at them all the time, like like a really lovely person and I do great things for people, and look at, you know I did this, you know but that's a cool art project, dude, you gotta have that for come alive.

Samantha Pruitt:

Everybody builds your own deck of cards. I freaking love this that's really cool.

Polly Mertens:

Well, let me just share this other. You know, part of you know I shared about NLP, with the taking the image and making it small. But here's another one, um, that this is how I did it with that particular memory. That's why this memory doesn't feel so charged for me. So I took like uh, I actually kind of made it like in the moment I said that you know, I could see the whole room, but it felt like a little bit like a tarot card, right, like so it was like a little tarot card in front of me and my mom was the character and so picture, you know, mom, whatever she was wearing in this little tarot card and what I did. So you know, and this is through prompting, right, you can write some of these down and prompt yourself or whatnot. So it's okay, take the original memory and like see it there, right, and it might be like a little mini movie Maybe it's a 10 second or a three second thing that she did, whatever, or it could just be a still thing, like I remember the moment when this happened. So you take that and you see it like you see it, right, same size, like it was out in front of me, about two feet little tarot card thing with my mom on it and she's you know, kind of that, and then change the volume, like all of a sudden I'm playing, um, like I did the whole card in, like the whole thing.

Polly Mertens:

It says, okay, it's a circus theme. So, like all of a sudden, my mom's a clown, you know the little toy car, music's playing in the background and like little, uh, dogs are jumping around or whatever. And it's like, oh, mom's a little clown in a circus theme, right. And then, okay, cancel that, right. Next one, oh, uh, psychedelic, right, like it's all wavy and groovy and you know, change the colors, looks like tie-dye, and I'm like, wow, this is all groovy. What's mom up to, you know? And then next one, just the black and white, right, like, just make it black and white and turn the volume down, like she's not even saying anything, right, oh. And then I think the last one I did was, uh, disneyland, I was like I'm at disneyland and mom's mickey mouse, you know, she's like, you know, with like little ears and she's talking like minnie mouse and you know whatever. Well, what happens in the brain is it now has like five versions of the same story of that moment of that moment.

Polly Mertens:

And so when I you know, and it's like OK, so you know, clear, all of that, go back and try and remember that experience. It has like zero charge. Like I can see my mom standing in the hallway but I don't see her yelling at me, I don't, you know, like I'm not upset, not hurt, whatever, just like that. Wow. So that is like therapy you can fricking use, do something with. It doesn't take seven years to do that.

Samantha Pruitt:

You can do it by yourself. You can do it for free. You can do it with another person. You can do it, obviously, with a practitioner, right, do this all the time, like if these are really deep, you know capital, t, capital, all letter traumas. Like obviously do this in in therapy with another licensed practitioner, that's important, but like call me so many things that the any day average human can be like. I just don't understand this piece of why I do what I do with this relationship or environment or whatever. Let me just take a look at it.

Polly Mertens:

Well, you know and this can help people a lot, I think in those day-to-day relationships you know whether it's your boss, your kids, your spouse, you know had some friendship you know some things didn't go well, like, take some moments of that right and you know you have to want to change, you have to want to grow from this right. Capital T traumas you know from childhood. Or you know big things that happened to you. Yeah, that might be something that you work more with a practitioner, but little things, like you know you've had a little spout about the dishes, you know. Or you had a spout about them not returning your phone call or not texting you or something like that.

Polly Mertens:

Like, totally recreate that with you know, change that picture, change that memory for yourself and you'll just have like, like I said, you can take these self concept ones and hide the good from yourself. You know your relationship is going really well. You can hide all that good stuff and you just pick a couple of cards out there and you look at those dirty cards every day. It's like your relationship is going to look like that, you know what I see and hear a lot.

Samantha Pruitt:

I'm sure I've done. This is probably why I'm so good at seeing and hearing it and others now. Oh yeah, I recognize that pattern. That's fun is people literally build a case for and on behalf of their story, their identity, right? So it's like use the spouse as an example or a coworker or whatever, right, like they're building a case against that. They think it's against that person. Like see all the things I've been accumulating, all of these things. I'm building a case against Fred, right, this is why I'm going to divorce Fred, because I've built a case for 10 years. Or this is why I'm not going to do business with this guy or whatever. You talk to my sister anymore. I mean, we see this shit all the freaking time. First of all, let's just deal with the reality is, you're not building a case against them at all. You're only hurting yourself and through NLP. How would you unpack this need to continue to support that trauma? Literally, they're like stacking the traumas. If you will, is how I'm kind of perceiving when they're building the case against supposedly another.

Polly Mertens:

If you will, is how I'm kind of perceiving when they're building the case against supposedly another. Well, there that goes into. I think, more so this program that I'm in is all about communication, right, so we have constant failures of breakdowns in communication.

Samantha Pruitt:

Right, we're not all day long.

Polly Mertens:

You know I talk about recreating. Well, it's a whole process that we learn, but it's basically getting in the other person's world and listening and understanding and keeping these lines of communication. So, how I've been in my past relationships, I understand big distinctions now where everything can be resolved in through and in communication, right and either. So there's this whole, like I said, these courses that we took. It's like there's typically like seven to 10 ways of protecting ourself or ultimately, but they're actually disempowering. So we're we're protecting ourself, we're defending our position, we're, you know, judging the other. You know all these little things that we're doing in that moment building, the case just like leave us powerless.

Polly Mertens:

Instead of like like we start withholding communication, we start like oh, I can't tell him that or I can't tell her that, and like we're not self-expressed. So any of that stuff like. That's like the fertile ground for the breakdown in the relationship because the communication isn't flowing, it's not authentic, it's not honest, it's not, you're not being heard and that person, you know, you're like rejecting that person in a moment for something they said, instead of like getting in their world and you don't have to always agree with it, but getting it. I get the communication even if you don't agree with it, you know like for yourself.

Polly Mertens:

Yes.

Samantha Pruitt:

It's for yourself, for your own personal benefit. It's not giving away a piece of yourself through that experience to the other, giving them more power. It's empowering you.

Polly Mertens:

It is, you know, and it's not to say you know, when what we're taught some things is like it's not becoming a doormat. No, not becoming a doormat, it is. You can create boundaries Absolutely and it's not staying around and hanging around in places where you're not treated well either. These are not those things Right. It's just getting the communication and communicating back, like receiving it and sending it.

Samantha Pruitt:

Receiving and sending it instead of, you know, protecting and I can't hear that, can't hold those words or can't say those things around me, you know so yeah, maybe what I love about this NLP I know this is very foundational what you walked us through, but like it gives me the power and the control to process this, think through this and change this for myself. I don't need the other person, they don't need to be there, I don't need to talk to them, they're not even part of it at all. So that's also an incredible freedom for many people. A lot of these triggering humans or places are not places they want to reenter. They're not relationships they want to reengage in at this moment, or maybe never, and we have total respect for that.

Samantha Pruitt:

We're not saying you need to go in. There are therapies where they're like go in, confront the person, write them a letter. That's just a whole other way of being. That's not at all what we're talking about here. What we're saying is going to heal you. This is about you doing it your way under your terms. Well, all the hurt lives inside of us, exactly so, on an energetic cellular level.

Polly Mertens:

The trauma is in us. So it's the healing of our own trauma, it's setting ourselves free, it's not making wrong, you know, justifying whatever for the other person. What I just shared was a way for me, us to heal ourselves, like set ourselves free from something that got stored, from a memory that you know I made this up Like yeah, you didn't have to go to your mom and be like why did you yell at me when I was laying on the bed?

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, and there's times when, sure, like you need to clear up some communication or whatnot. Right, but you know there's. If you lived in a parent child relationship, there's fighting. You know there's, if you lived in a parent-child relationship, there's fighting. You know, like there's some level of that how about any human.

Samantha Pruitt:

Yeah, some of them are actually doing it in real life, verbally, and and some are just doing it internally.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, there's conflict, yeah, and, but it's. If I hadn't resolved that, then there's this lingering inside of me towards my mom Inside of you.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, it lives inside of me, towards my mom side of you. Yeah, it lives inside of me, right, so it doesn't say she's justified for coming in and blowing her top at me, right, but the hurt, the, the, the memory was stored inside of me. The hurt, the trauma, little t trauma was inside of me. It was up and I know, but she wasn't't going to free me. I had to free myself, you know.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, so I hope that's, you know gives people an idea of you know just one technique and you know, by all means, like looking at her, NLP has many more techniques. That's just one of the simple ones and I think it's so powerful too. You know, you can, you know this. I was saying, saying in landmark we're doing this recreating, which is recreating that conversation with somebody that can help free you from the trauma and the triggers in that moment.

Samantha Pruitt:

You can do this with the pictures of your memories of your past, just the same, through nlp and there are people that are practitioners of this that can be there to help you learn this technique and do it with you. You.

Samantha Pruitt:

You know, just like there are therapies and therapists. There's so much out there and available to people, as apparently I've just learned in the last week. You know that there's like all these other things out in the world now that people can be resourcing. Find something that works for you. And also, I just really want to like, in closing, just say don't give up on the process, because the process is you, the work is you, and so what I've witnessed with many people and I could have even had this experience myself recently is like it's can be complicated and I don't know where to go and who to call and how to navigate the process. And you know how do I pay for it and is there insurance? And does anyone actually give a shit? By the way, am I worthy of this? And next thing, you know we've done nothing.

Polly Mertens:

That's not acceptable it's not okay and you know, this moment in this memory that I shared was, I would say, light compared to some, but people are walking around with all kinds of big stuff big stuff so please, you know whether you heard something in this that you want to practice and I encourage you to just try it.

Polly Mertens:

You know you heard some. You know, go back and listen to this again and how to do it and what to do it. Um, you will be amazed how effective this is. It's not not just like, oh sure, it's like, yeah, no, it does. This is how your brain works. This is a freaking science. This is how it works. So help yourself. Go do some little self healing, right? So I like it. And what's our? What's our one thing, what's our last thing that we want to leave people with?

Samantha Pruitt:

Well, my one thing is to take some action and if it doesn't feel like something you can take on your own whether it's a big T or a little t trauma then pick up the phone and make a connection. There's humans like us. There's humans all over the globe these days that can be resourced depending on what your needs are, but you are more than worthy of this process and working through this and fully releasing yourself and becoming, you know, the best person that you can be for yourself. Not for the world, but for yourself.

Polly Mertens:

Wholeheartedly agree. It's like, don't sit with those stories, those traumas inside of you If it's something that is showing up in your outer life. You know, like for me, like I said this moment on Monday I was like, oh, you know, I got hurt by a communication it's like, oh, that's still inside of me. Okay, there's some work to do right, and there's so many modalities it, you know, it doesn't have to be an LP and you have to figure this out and do it exactly like this Maybe talk therapy, maybe group therapy, whatever, but like, find what works for you, get into action. I love it.

Samantha Pruitt:

Okay, why? Because how your life feels is more important than how it looks.

Polly Mertens:

And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.

People on this episode

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Polly Mertens

Co-host
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Samantha Pruitt

Co-host