Role Bleeding (n.) - Each area of your life typically has you fulfilling a certain set of expectations based on the people or situation. Your specific role can be consciously chosen, assigned by the group, or even unconsciously fallen into based on your past.

Monkey Mind (n.) - As you begin to do a meditation practice, you will notice that your mind has the tendency to just chatter away.  You may be constantly planning, ruminating, justifying, thinking about last week's TV show, and on and on. This inner dialogue does not often stop. It leaps from topic to topic like a monkey from branch to branch in a tree. The name we give to this often mindless mental chatter is called "Monkey Mind."

Trigger (n). - An external stimulus that invokes a strong fight, flight, or freeze response is a Trigger. A trigger can be based on undealt with issues, past traumatic experiences, or can be environmental in nature. When the trigger is related to a strong traumatic event, the individual can experience flashbacks, the return of repressed memories, or find themselves mentally disassociating or shutting down. When the trigger is environmental, a person is reacting to something outside their control in their surroundings like repetitive sounds or certain visual images.

We won't cover trauma-related and environmental triggers. That's for you and your therapist. For this post, we are looking at non-trauma triggers. Or, as they are sometimes affectionately known, drama triggers.