Triggered and True

What if feeling stuck, like you've slipped backward in your healing, isn't a sign the work has failed, but a sign it's finally you've grown more than you think?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese continue their series on how the Compassion Method brings biblical truths to life, this time turning to perseverance, and what to do when your emotional and spiritual growth feels like it's stalled.Brian talks openly about the very human urge to give up when the process feels slow, when no clear milestone appears to be reached, and when people find it tempting to think, "This just isn't working for me." It's learning to be: with yourself, with others, and with God.Together they unpack why we get the order backward, trying to "do to be" instead of "being to do", and why understanding without application only medicates our pain instead of healing it. Laura explains why simplicity creates the consistency that actually rewires the heart and brain, and why chasing the next book or the next technique can feel like progress while quietly keeping us stuck.They dive into the freeing truth for anyone ready to walk away: many of us try to escape our pain by cutting off the marriage, the job, or the church. But drawing on James 1 and Brian's own writing, Laura invites a braver path—turning into the storm within, letting it do its work, and discovering we can often be okay in the very relationships we thought we had to leave. Like the "wax on, wax off" of the Karate Kid, the unseen work is building the muscle for the "I get it" moment, and the times we most want to give up are usually right before it finally clicks.In this episode: 🔹 Why hitting a plateau—or feeling like you've gone backward—is normal, and often a sign that genuine change is happening 🔹 The myth of "arriving," and the shift from "doing to be" to "being to do" 🔹 What "being" actually looks like day to day—and why understanding without application only medicates the pain 🔹 Why simplicity and consistency, not more information, are what truly rewire the heart and brain 🔹 How to "turn into the storm within you" and persevere—so you rarely have to cut off the relationships, churches, or jobs you thought you had to leave📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the reason prayer feels so difficult has less to do with your faith—and more to do with the wounds you've carried since childhood?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese continue their series on how the Compassion Method brings biblical truths to life by exploring prayer, forgiveness, loving your enemies, and other commands that often feel impossible to live out.Brian vulnerably shares a childhood memory that helped him understand why prayer had always felt like talking into the void. Although he believed God loved him, he struggled to believe God truly cared to hear him. Laura helps trace that struggle back to a past experience of not feeling heard, revealing how our relationships with earthly caregivers often shape the way we experience our relationship with God.Together, they unpack a freeing truth: many of the hardest commands in Scripture become natural—not through trying harder—but through healing the places in our hearts that keep us from experiencing God's love. When our wounds receive compassion, obedience becomes the fruit of relationship instead of the burden of performance.In this episode:🔹 Brian's personal story of why prayer felt so difficult—and the childhood wound that helped explain it🔹 How early experiences with parents and caregivers can shape the way we relate to God🔹 Why biblical commands like prayer, forgiveness, and loving your enemies become possible through healing rather than willpower🔹 The difference between behavior management and allowing God to transform your heart from the inside out🔹 How the Compassion Method helps remove the barriers that keep you from experiencing a deeper relationship with God and others📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the Christian life was never meant to be about trying harder, but about healing deeply enough that love becomes natural?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese continue their conversation about faith and emotional healing by exploring one of the biggest misunderstandings in the Christian life: the difference between producing the fruit of the Spirit and trying to manufacture it through willpower.Using Galatians 5 as the foundation, Laura explains why Scripture calls love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control fruit—not accomplishments. Fruit isn't something we force; it's the natural result of a healthy root. In the same way, emotional healing and a deep relationship with God create the conditions where Christlike character grows from the inside out.Rather than leaving listeners with another list of spiritual behaviors to achieve, this episode offers a freeing invitation: stop striving to look like Jesus, and begin allowing Him to heal the places that keep His life from flowing naturally through you.In this episode:🔹 Why the fruit of the Spirit is something God grows in us—not something we produce through willpower🔹 How emotional healing removes the wounded patterns that keep Christlike character from flowing naturally🔹 The connection between the Compassion Method, inner healing, and spiritual transformation🔹 Why trying harder often leads to frustration—and why a relationship with God leads to lasting change🔹 How healing your heart allows love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control to become the natural overflow of your life📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the healing that's transforming your heart is more biblical than you've been led to believe?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese continue their conversation about common objections to the Compassion Method by addressing one of the biggest questions they hear from Christians: Is this process actually biblical?Laura shares her own faith journey and explains how her relationship with God shaped the development of the Compassion Method from the very beginning. Together, she and Brian explore why emotional healing and Christian faith never compete with one another—they have always been connected.Looking at Scripture through the lens of relationship rather than performance, they unpack how compassion, emotional awareness, and healing have been woven into God's heart all along.Rather than asking listeners to take their word for it, Laura points back to the life of Jesus, the Garden of Eden, and the consistent biblical pattern of God moving toward people in their pain before inviting them into transformation. It's a conversation for anyone who's wondered whether emotional healing can truly deepen—not diminish—their walk with God.In this episode:🔹 Laura shares how her own relationship with God led to the development of the Compassion Method🔹 Why the Compassion Method is rooted in biblical principles of relationship, compassion, and restoration rather than self-improvement🔹 What Scripture reveals about God's response to shame, pain, and emotional brokenness—from the Garden of Eden to the life of Jesus🔹 The difference between healing through relationships and striving through performance or religious obligation🔹 How emotional awareness and self-compassion can strengthen your Christian faith by helping you experience God's love more personally📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the emotions you've spent your whole life trying to avoid are actually trying to help you heal?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese tackle one of the most common objections to the Compassion Method: "Shouldn't I ignore my feelings instead of paying attention to them?" Together, they unpack why so many of us fear our emotions, where that fear comes from, and why learning to feel your pain is essential to emotional healing—not a threat to it.Laura explains that most of us didn't learn to distrust our emotions as adults—we learned it as children. When our feelings were ignored, shamed, or met with disconnection, we naturally came to believe that emotions were dangerous. But emotions themselves aren't the problem. They're faithful messengers, revealing what's happening in our hearts and pointing us toward the places that still need compassion and comfort.Rather than letting emotions "drive the car," Laura offers a healthier picture: your true self stays in the driver's seat while your emotions are finally welcomed into the conversation. Healing begins when we stop fighting what we feel and start understanding why we feel it.In this episode:🔹 Why so many people believe feeling their emotions is dangerous—and where that belief usually begins🔹 The difference between letting emotions guide your decisions and allowing them to reveal what your heart needs🔹 How childhood experiences of shame and disconnection teach us to suppress our feelings instead of processing them🔹 Why emotions are reliable indicators of what's happening inside you—even when they aren't telling you what to do🔹 How the Compassion Method helps you feel your pain, receive comfort, and respond from your true self instead of your triggered self📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the questions you keep asking are actually pointing you toward the healing you've been looking for?In this special Q&A episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese answer listener questions about emotional healing, the Compassion Method, trauma, learning, and what it really looks like to grow when life feels overwhelming.From navigating new challenges and emotional triggers to understanding how the brain learns, Laura offers practical, compassionate guidance for questions many listeners wrestle with every day. Along the way, the conversation reminds us that healing isn't about getting everything right the first time—it's about becoming curious, staying present with yourself, and allowing each challenge to become an opportunity for growth.Whether you're wondering why certain situations keep triggering you, how to apply the Compassion Method in real life, or simply need encouragement to keep going, this episode offers honest answers and hope-filled perspectives rooted in both neuroscience and compassion.In this episode:🔹 Why learning something new often feels emotionally triggering—and what your brain is doing in those moments🔹 Listener questions about trauma, emotional healing, and applying the Compassion Method in everyday life🔹 The difference between reacting from old survival patterns and responding from your true self🔹 Why curiosity and self-compassion create lasting growth far better than self-criticism or perfectionism🔹 Practical encouragement for anyone who feels stuck, discouraged, or unsure whether healing is really happening📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the freedom you're searching for isn't found by doing more, but by learning how to be still?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese explore what they call a roadmap to true freedom, weaving together neuroscience, emotional healing, the Compassion Method, and faith to show why lasting transformation begins with slowing down instead of striving harder.Laura explains that our brains are wired to stay busy, solve problems, and react automatically, making stillness feel uncomfortable, even threatening. But it's in those quiet moments that we notice what's actually happening inside us. Rather than rushing to fix our emotions, we can learn to observe them with compassion, reconnect with our true self, and discover the freedom that has been there all along.The conversation offers both the science behind why stillness changes the brain and practical ways to incorporate it into everyday life. Whether you're constantly busy, struggling with emotional triggers, or longing to hear God's voice more clearly, this episode offers a simple but powerful invitation: stop striving, become present, and let healing unfold.In this episode:🔹 Why the brain naturally resists stillness—and how that keeps us trapped in old emotional patterns🔹 The connection between neuroscience, emotional healing, and the Compassion Method🔹 Why awareness begins with slowing down instead of trying to fix yourself🔹 How stillness creates space to hear your emotions, reconnect with your true self, and experience God's presence more deeply🔹 A practical daily exercise to help you become more aware of your body, your emotions, and the identity that's underneath them all📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the emotional trigger you're trying to avoid is actually the doorway to your healing?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese challenge one of the biggest misconceptions about emotional triggers: that they're something to fear or eliminate. Instead, they explain why triggers can become one of the greatest gifts in your emotional healing journey when you learn how to work with them instead of against them.Using the powerful picture of riding a wave rather than being crushed by it, Laura shows how emotional triggers stop feeling like they're happening to you when you approach them with curiosity and compassion. What once felt overwhelming becomes an opportunity to uncover the pain beneath the reaction, comfort the part of you that's hurting, and discover the true self that has been there all along.If you've ever wished your triggers would simply disappear, this conversation offers a hopeful reframe: healing isn't about avoiding the waves—it's about learning how to ride them.In this episode:🔹 Why emotional triggers are opportunities for healing rather than obstacles to overcome🔹 The "wave" analogy that changes how you experience overwhelming emotions and emotional reactions🔹 How the Compassion Method transforms triggers from something happening to you into something you can work with🔹 Why curiosity and self-compassion create lasting emotional healing where self-protection and avoidance cannot🔹 How every trigger holds an invitation to feel your pain, receive comfort, and reconnect with your true self📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the holidays don't have to be something you survive—but something you actually experience?In this special holiday episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese explore why Christmas and family gatherings can stir up so many emotional triggers—and how you can approach them with greater peace, awareness, and self-compassion.Rather than offering another list of holiday coping strategies, Laura explains how the Compassion Method helps you prepare from the inside out. Whether your triggers come from difficult family members, unmet expectations, loneliness, grief, finances, or childhood memories, the goal isn't simply to manage your reactions—it's to understand the wounds underneath them so your true self can remain present.The conversation is filled with practical ways to prepare before the holidays begin, from revisiting childhood Christmas memories to using the Remote Control Exercise and practicing brief moments of attunement throughout the day. The result isn't a "perfect" holiday—it's becoming more connected to yourself so you can be more genuinely connected to the people around you.In this episode:🔹 Why holiday stress is usually about much more than the holidays themselves—and what your emotional triggers are really pointing toward🔹 How childhood Christmas experiences continue to shape your expectations, reactions, and relationships as an adult🔹 Practical ways to prepare emotionally before family gatherings using the Compassion Method and the Remote Control Exercise🔹 Why trying to avoid difficult people rarely brings lasting peace—and how caring for your own heart changes the experience instead🔹 How to move through Christmas with greater presence, self-compassion, and connection so you're not just getting through the holidays, but actually living them📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the person you trust the least... is yourself?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese unpack one of the deepest roots beneath anxiety, relationship struggles, and emotional triggers: self-trust. They explore why betrayal by others often awakens something much older—and why healing begins by restoring trust in yourself before trying to rebuild trust with anyone else.Laura explains that many of us learned early in life not to trust our own hearts. Whether we grew up without supportive caregivers, or we were forced to mature too quickly, or painful experiences taught us to doubt ourselves, those early wounds shape how we experience broken trust today.The conversation offers a powerful reframe: the goal isn't to pretend betrayal doesn't hurt. It's to comfort the places within you that were wounded so you can respond from your true self instead of your triggered self. From that place, wisdom, healthy boundaries, and genuine trust become possible again.In this episode:🔹 Why broken trust with others often reveals a much deeper lack of trust in yourself🔹 How childhood experiences and early caregivers shape your ability to decide with confidence🔹 The difference between "capital T" Trust—the deep need to feel safe—and the everyday trust required in healthy relationships🔹 Why healing doesn't mean ignoring betrayal, but comforting the wounds it awakens so you can respond from your true self🔹 How restoring self-trust frees you to set healthy boundaries, navigate relationships with wisdom, and be okay regardless of another person's choices📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the healing you've been looking for doesn't start with fixing yourself—but with finally understanding yourself?If you're new to Triggered & True, this is the perfect place to begin. In this special introduction episode, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese share what the podcast is all about, why emotional healing matters, and how the Compassion Method helps people move through emotional triggers, shame, anxiety, and pain without becoming trapped by them.Laura and Brian introduce the heart behind the show: healing isn't about becoming someone new—it's about returning to the true self you've always been. They explain why emotions aren't problems to solve but invitations to discover what's happening beneath the surface, and how compassion creates lasting transformation where self-improvement alone cannot.They also walk you through where to start in the podcast, highlight a few foundational episodes, and introduce practical resources designed to help you apply what you learn right away.In this episode:🔹 What "Triggered & True" means—and why emotional triggers can become invitations to healing rather than something to fear🔹 The heart of the Compassion Method and how self-compassion helps uncover your true self instead of simply managing symptoms🔹 Why emotional healing isn't about fixing yourself, but learning to understand and comfort the parts of you carrying pain🔹 The best episodes for new listeners and how to begin your own healing journey through the podcast🔹 Two practical exercises that help you move from simply learning about healing to actually experiencing it in everyday life📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more:https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the shame you've spent your whole life outrunning traces back to something as simple as being a sensitive kid who felt too small?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise follow up on their last conversation ("Uncovering Shame, Reclaiming Your True Self") by getting deeply personal — Brian opens up the actual roots of his own shame, and lets it be walked through in real time. It's a vulnerable, illustrative companion to the previous episode's teaching, showing what tracing shame back to early childhood actually looks like.Brian shares that the thing that eventually "blew up" in his life traced back to something surprisingly simple: two childhood sources of shame, both tied to not feeling like "a man." He was a sensitive boy who felt deeply and cried easily in a stoic family that didn't have a grid for it — so he came to believe he was a "crybaby" — and he was very small (4'10" and about 90 pounds as a high school freshman), which the world constantly pointed out. Laura connects it back to the Garden: just as Adam and Eve covered themselves, Brian spent years covering the "crater" of not feeling enough with protectors — the need to be cool, relentless work, performance, and eventually even his Christian faith turned into a work to cover himself. The hope is in the tracing: naming where shame comes from, and comforting that child rather than compensating for him, is where the healing finally begins.In this episode: 🔹 Brian's authentic story: two childhood roots of shame, both tied to not feeling like "a man" 🔹 The sensitive boy in a stoic family — how "crybaby" became a shame identity 🔹 Being small in a world that wouldn't stop pointing it out — shame over something you can't change 🔹 The Garden connection: how protectors (coolness, work, performance) become the "leaves" we cover ourselves with 🔹 When even faith becomes a "work" to cover shame — and where real healing starts instead📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if there's a quiet virus running underneath everything — one that keeps the emotional healing from taking hold, and you don't even know it's there?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise go deep on the one thing that may block your healing more than anything else: shame. Brian compares it to a virus running low-grade on your operating system — slowing everything down, disrupting even your ability to absorb the Compassion Method — while you keep wondering why things aren't working the way they should. Laura calls it what she's called it from the beginning: the root of all anxiety and depression.Tracing shame back to its origins in the Garden of Eden, Laura and Brian draw a striking distinction: God can free us from sin, but shame is something we do to ourselves — no army drove Adam and Eve into the bushes; they hid on their own. From there they explore one of the method's most challenging ideas — that the knowledge of good is as detrimental as the knowledge of evil, because trying to "do better" to escape shame just traps us on the same wheel. Brian shares how he spent years reading the Bible in shame, as a checklist of good and bad to fix himself, and missed its heart entirely: that God asks things of us out of love and protection, not to earn His approval. The freeing conclusion: you can't fix shame by doing better — the only thing that heals it is compassion.In this episode: 🔹 Shame as a "virus" running underneath your healing — and why it's the root of anxiety and depression 🔹 Shame's origin in the Garden: why we hide ourselves, and why God frees us from sin but not shame 🔹 Why the knowledge of good is as detrimental as evil — and how "doing better" keeps you stuck 🔹 Reading the Bible in shame vs. in love — a checklist to fix yourself, or a Father protecting you 🔹 Why you can't fix shame by doing better — and why only compassion actually heals it📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the harsh way you judge other people is really a mirror of the way you quietly judge yourself?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on judgment — and the surprising place it comes from. Starting with Matthew 7 ("judge not, that you be not judged") and reading it with the word "condemn" in place of "judge," they draw a crucial distinction most of us blur: the difference between the everyday wise judgments we're meant to make and the shaming, condemning judgment that quietly eats at us. And they trace that condemning judgment back to its hidden root: how we see ourselves.Laura and Brian unpack why harsh judgment comes from the triggered child brain — the amygdala, which can only see what's right in front of it — rather than the sophisticated adult brain that can hold perspective and compassion. They land on a line that reframes the whole thing: "Heal the pain, and the shaming judgment ends, and true wisdom judgment begins." Along the way they navigate the cultural over-correction (from a harsh past that judged everything to a present that says you're not allowed to judge anything), why "what you do matters, but who you are matters more" holds both grace and real consequences, and how genuine justice actually flows from being okay — clear-minded, tenderhearted, at peace — not from being so triggered that all we can do is condemn.In this episode: 🔹 Matthew 7 revisited: the difference between "judge" and "condemn," and why it matters 🔹 Why condemning judgment comes from the triggered child brain, not the wise adult brain 🔹 "Heal the pain, and the judgment ceases" — how self-judgment fuels the way we judge others 🔹 The cultural "both ditches": from judging everything to being told to judge nothing 🔹 Why real justice flows from being okay — not from a triggered, condemning place📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if hearing real people tell you exactly how healing changed their lives is the encouragement you needed to believe it could change yours?In this very special episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise hand the microphone to the people who've lived it: brave graduates and students of the Compassion Method who share honest testimony from their own journeys. Each of them once had a "great awakening" moment — and each shares how discovering the method helped them see and finally tend the pain underneath. It's a moving, hope-filled episode that shows what this work actually looks like in real lives, actual marriages, and real callings.First, Libby shares how Laura's 10 Gifts and the brain science behind them opened her eyes as a wife and mom of three — and awakened her own passion to help others. Then married couple Gary and Kristie Van Kley open up with striking honesty about over two decades of a hard marriage, and how making their own healing the priority — rather than trying to fix each other — brought change individually and together. Next, Kristy, a recently retired teacher turned coach, describes discovering the method through a practitioner and finding, for the first time, permission to feel her own anger — and how she now approaches even dating from a true-self place. Finally, Jeff and Marissa Prentice share Marissa's harrowing story of a sudden panic attack and losing her faith while in ministry school. How Laura's "you're not broken, you're just covered up" was like a lifeline. And how the two of them studied the method themselves and built a lifelong calling around it.In this episode: 🔹 Libby: How the 10 Gifts and brain science became her great awakening as a wife and mom 🔹 Gary & Kristie Van Kley: healing a 20-plus-year hard marriage by each tending their own heart first 🔹 Kristy: a retired teacher finding permission to feel her anger — and dating from her true self 🔹 Jeff & Marissa Prentice: a panic attack, a lost-and-rebuilt faith, and a calling born from healing 🔹 A recurring thread: "you're not broken, you're just covered up" — and why feeling pain can be a privilegeConnect with our guests: 🔹 Libby Mathews — www.JoywithLibby.com 🔹 Kristy Allen — www.dramaworkswellness.com 🔹 Jeff & Marissa Prentice — www.prenticeconsulting.co 🔹 Kristie Van Kley — [email protected] 🔹 Gary Van Kley — [email protected]📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if physical pain isn't just physical — what if it's quietly pressing on an emotional wound and making the whole thing feel a hundred times worse?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise explore a connection they'd only ever hinted at before: the deep link between physical and emotional health. The timing wasn't planned — within a single week of each other, both hosts had their first-ever surgeries, giving them fresh, firsthand material to work with. What they discovered is that physical pain and emotional pain are constantly "ping-ponging" back and forth, and that a physical health crisis is often a powerful emotional trigger hiding in plain sight, precisely because it feels so logical to just say "of course I hurt."Laura and Brian get honest and personal about what their surgeries surfaced. For Brian, being physically unable to "do" shut down the background program he didn't even realize was running — the little boy still working hard to keep everyone happy — and revealed how much of his life is driven by that fawning "doing" protector. For Laura, it exposed her deep programming toward independence and self-sufficiency, and how hard it is to let herself need help, rest, or even take pain medication. Together they talk about numbing physical pain the same way we numb emotional pain, why staying connected to yourself through pain matters, and how preparing your heart ahead of a hard season lets you meet it with more peace and even find the precious parts in it.In this episode: 🔹 Why physical pain and emotional pain constantly feed each other — and why a health crisis is a hidden trigger 🔹 How surgery interrupted Brian's "doing" protector and revealed the boy still trying to keep everyone happy 🔹 Laura on independence, needing help, and how hard it is to let yourself rest and be cared for 🔹 Why we numb physical pain with the same protectors we use on emotional pain 🔹 Finding peace and even a gift in the middle of pain — and preparing your heart before a hard season📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the anxiety — or the shutdown — that's followed you for years isn't chasing you, but is a scared, lonely child trying to get your attention?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise continue their live walkthroughs of the remote control exercise with two brave volunteers, and the pairing is illuminating — because Laura takes two very different people down two very different paths to the same place.First, Miles from Sweden brings a trigger that's shaped much of his life: Intense nighttime anxiety and panic attacks that have surfaced in months-long waves at ages 10, 18, and now 35, each time carrying the fear that "this is going to be my whole life." Rather than hunt for the cause, Laura treats the anxiety as a messenger, explaining why all his knowledge and formulas couldn't reach it — when anxiety hits, you're not in your adult brain, you're back in the amygdala, where "anxiety is a wild animal chasing you." She walks him back to his 10-year-old self, not to fix him but to know and be with him, and they find a boy who felt alone and unprotected. The comfort is simple but difficult: "adopt little Miles as a third child" and be with him the way Miles already is with his own two kids.Then Lori Lynn, joining from Hawaii, shares a trigger many will recognize: Her body shutting down around people of authority, or whenever she can't be heard. Laura maps it to freeze and fawn, and helps her actually feel the pain rather than manage it — then uses what Brian calls a "ninja skill," gently shifting which caregiver Lori Lynn brings in when the first one can't hold the moment, until compassion breaks it open. Her session lands on hope, and on one of the episode's most powerful truths: we can't change what happened to us, but we can infuse it with love — and while a wound may always hurt, it doesn't have to hurt the same, because who you are is bigger than anything that's happened to you.In this episode: 🔹 Two live walkthroughs, two unique paths to healing — Miles from Sweden and Lori Lynn from Hawaii 🔹 Miles: lifelong nighttime anxiety traced to a lonely, unprotected 10-year-old — and the "adopt him as a third child" comfort 🔹 Why knowledge and formulas can't reach a trigger: the adult "website" vs. the child "coding" 🔹 Lori Lynn: freezing and fawning around authority, and learning to feel the pain instead of managing it 🔹 "We can't change what happened, but we can infuse it with love" — why a wound can still hurt, but not the sameA gentle note: in one of these walkthroughs, a guest bravely touches on painful childhood experiences, including harm by someone who was meant to care for them. It's handled with real tenderness and hope, but if that's close to your own story, be gentle with yourself as you listen — and if you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if watching someone else navigate their emotional pain in real time could show you the way through your own?In this special episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise do something they've never done on the podcast before: walk real listeners through the remote control exercise live. Two brave volunteers each agreed to be a "guinea pig" — bringing a genuine, tender trigger and letting Laura guide them through it in real time, so you can hear the entire process instead of just learning about it.First, Mel from Australia shares a trigger many will recognize: Her husband works long hours and is often called out, leaving her feeling alone with the home and personal responsibilities. Laura gently walks her from the surface reaction down to what's underneath — pausing the situation instead of blaming or justifying, moving past the "big" emotions to the tender ones (loneliness, feeling like she doesn't get his best), and tracing it back to a little girl who learned it wasn't safe to have a voice or big emotions, so she became "patient until she wasn't." Along the way: how over-patience and fawning are their own kind of trigger, and why secure attachment means being free to say "I need."Then a second volunteer — Brian, from Pennsylvania — shares a trigger lots of people can relate to:He brings a pervasive, ebbing sadness and the anger that rose at work that day. Laura helps him move past the anger "cloaking" it, through feeling out of control, and down to the loneliness underneath (the kind you can feel even around people). His session opens into one of the episode's most beautiful moments: reconnecting with his child self through a real childhood photo — the little boy who loved to play and laugh with his dad — and Laura's "magic-eye" image for why it takes patient, repeated looking before that younger self suddenly "pops" into focus. Two different people, two different wounds, one hopeful demonstration of the whole method in action.In this episode: 🔹 Real listeners, real triggers — the remote control exercise walked through live, twice 🔹 Mel's trigger: loneliness when a spouse works long hours, traced to a childhood without a voice 🔹 How "patient until you're not," over-patience, and fawning are triggers in disguise 🔹 Brian's trigger: anger at work "cloaking" a deeper, pervasive loneliness 🔹 Reconnecting with your child self through a photo — and the "magic-eye" patience it takes to see him📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the emotional reaction you've been fighting to control for twenty years could simply stop being a reaction at all?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise devote a full episode to the tool at the practical heart of the Compassion Method: the remote control exercise. They first introduced it back in Episode 6, but here they go deeper — into both the science of why it works and the art of doing it well — and issue an exciting invitation for a listener to walk through it live on a future episode.Laura explains why the exercise exists: understanding your triggers in a weekly session isn't enough because healing happens in real time, in real life. The remote control exercise actually rewires your brain so that your default shifts from "react" to "pause and connect" — and she's watched clients who practiced it for even two weeks discover they simply weren't angry anymore, not because they were white-knuckling it, but because the wound underneath got tended. She uses the image of a splinter left to fester: our triggers get louder and louder not to torment us, but because our heart is trying to get our attention to heal the infection underneath. And she unpacks the "art" of it — why your first answers stay surface-level, and how, with practice, you learn to go deeper and truly know yourself.In this episode: 🔹 What the remote control exercise is — and why understanding a trigger later isn't enough 🔹 The science: how practicing it rewires your default from "react" to "pause and connect" 🔹 Why trying not to get angry only works for so long before it boils over 🔹 The splinter metaphor: why your pain gets louder until you finally tend the wound 🔹 The "art" of going deeper — why your first answers are surface-level, and how practice changes that📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the meltdown that made you feel like a failure is actually proof that the healing is working?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise get honest about a feeling every listener knows: "I feel like I'm failing at this." Whether you're brand new to the Compassion Method or 56 episodes deep, there will be moments — often right after some progress — when a huge triggered reaction leaves you embarrassed, ashamed, and certain you're doing it wrong. This entire conversation is here to tell you: you're not.Brian opens up about a recent big reaction of his own and the shame spiral that followed ("I do a podcast on this stuff, I should know better"), and Laura admits she still gets triggered too — and is genuinely grateful when she does, because a trigger is the doorway to the pain that's finally ready to be comforted. They dig into why this can't be mastered like a business process or a math equation: emotional healing isn't a skill you perfect, it's a lifelong practice, and the only thing you really become an "expert" in is vulnerability and humility. Most freeing of all, they redefine success: it's not doing the steps perfectly or never melting down. Success is being able to say "I still accept you, I still love you" to yourself in the exact moment you feel you have failed.In this episode: 🔹 Why a big triggered reaction isn't a setback — and is often a sign you're going deeper 🔹 Even the hosts still get triggered — and why Laura is grateful when she does 🔹 Why this can't be "mastered" like a business or math skill — healing isn't a formula 🔹 "You should know better": how a childhood shame message keeps running in adulthood 🔹 Redefining success as self-acceptance in the moment of perceived failure📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the exhausting question running under everything — Am I good enough? — is the very thing keeping you from freedom?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise return to an idea they first explored back in Episode 9, prompted by a listener question: the knowledge of good and evil as the ultimate root of all pain, anxiety, and depression. It's a conversation that weaves Laura's Christian faith through the Compassion Method — and, as always, one that offers just as much to listeners of any faith or none, because the pattern it describes is simply human.Laura shares how her faith shaped the method — including the loneliness she carried even with a strong relationship with God, a happy marriage, and four kids, and how she discovered she was missing the tangible human love the Compassion Method helped her finally receive. From there she and Brian unpack the "two trees": why you can't eat from both, how living from the knowledge of good and evil traps you in a frantic, energy-draining loop of "am I good enough?" (Brian likens it to malware quietly running in the background), and how the tree of life — living from fullness, from the fruit of the Spirit — produces a genuinely good life as a byproduct rather than a performance. The freeing turn: when you're no longer led by good-and-evil, you're not living good to earn love or living in fear of being bad — you're simply free.In this episode: 🔹 Why "am I good enough?" is a frantic loop that drains you — like malware running in the background 🔹 The knowledge of good and evil as the root of anxiety and depression (building on Episode 9) 🔹 Laura's faith journey — and the loneliness that persisted even when everything looked right 🔹 The "two trees": why you can't eat from both, and what it means to live from the tree of life 🔹 Why a good life flows as a byproduct of fullness — not as a performance to earn love📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the way you treat everyone around you is just leaking out from the way you quietly treat yourself?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise put a revealing spin on the golden rule. We know "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" — but this conversation flips it: we will treat others the way we treat ourselves, whether or not we mean to. And once you see that, the pressure to be a better friend, partner, or parent shifts to something far more freeing.Laura and Brian start by exposing the quiet manipulation hiding in the usual reading of the golden rule — loving others the way you want to be loved, hoping it boomerangs back, which fails the moment someone's needs differ from yours (they nod to the Five Love Languages here). Then they get to the heart of it: the harsh judgment we aim at others is a mirror of the judgment we aim at ourselves, even when we'd never admit it. They unpack "shame highs" and "shame lows" — how feeling good about yourself for doing well is just as conditional as feeling bad for doing poorly — and why you simply cannot out-communicate a root of self-hatred: if underneath it all you don't like who you are, that's what gets transmitted, no matter how carefully you word things. The freeing turn: you are the gatekeeper of your own value, and loving others well begins with tending your own heart.In this episode: 🔹 The golden rule, flipped: we treat others the way we treat ourselves — intended or not 🔹 The hidden manipulation of loving others "to be loved" — and why it wears you out 🔹 Judgment as a mirror: how criticism of others reflects how we see ourselves 🔹 "Shame highs" and "shame lows" — why feeling good for doing well is just as conditional 🔹 Why you can't out-communicate self-hatred — and why you're the gatekeeper of your own worth📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if you could heal the wound between you and your parent — or your child — even if they never change, and even if they're no longer here?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise turn to a relationship almost everyone carries some pain around: parent and child. Laura shares her heart for this one — she's watched so many people, parent and grown child alike, decide the relationship is simply too painful and cut each other off, often for valid reasons, only to pass the same disconnection down another generation. Her hope isn't necessarily reconciliation, but healing: tending the childhood-level wound underneath, whether the other person ever takes part.Laura and Brian are clear that this pain isn't only about the dramatic or illegal — far more often it's emotional neglect: a parent who couldn't fully accept, see, or hear their child. And it connects all of us, because everyone has been someone's child.They explore why superficial apologies don't hold (the pain resurfaces every holiday because the wound was never comforted), why we meet best at our child selves ("two five-year-olds arguing in the kitchen"), how healing gives us new eyes to finally see the good our parents could give, and a gentle counter to cut-everyone-off culture — every parent is a little unhealthy, and distance isn't the only path. The freeing anchor throughout: your healing is never contingent on the other person's. It's not about them changing. It starts and can be completed with you.In this episode: 🔹 Why you can heal this relationship even if your parent won't change — or is no longer alive 🔹 Emotional neglect, not just abuse: the quiet wound of not being accepted, seen, or heard 🔹 Why superficial apologies fail — and why the pain floods back every holiday 🔹 Meeting at the child self: how "two five-year-olds in the kitchen" reframes the fight 🔹 A gentler alternative to cutting family off — and why your healing doesn't depend on theirs📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if everything you reach for to feel better — even the "good" things — is really you trying not to be alone in your pain?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise build an entire conversation around a single line from Brian's old notes: "If you have never had anyone be with you in the problem, you will medicate with the solution." It's a quietly profound idea, and unpacking it reframes how you see every coping habit you have.Laura widens the definition of "medication" far beyond the obvious. Yes, it can be substances — but it's just as often spirituality (in fact, God telling her to "stop medicating with Me" is part of how the whole method began), food, exercise, education, or knowledge. Understanding your pain, she explains, is not the same as healing it; it just gives a false, temporary comfort. She and Brian are careful and non-shaming — medication isn't "wrong," and prescribed medication can be a real bridge to healing, not something to yank away — but they show why it can't be the end of the road. Most movingly, they explain what "being with" someone actually does: a caregiver lends a hurting child their calm and their very brain, because a child's mind believes the pain will last forever. The hopeful takeaway: there's more to your story, and you are not defined by whatever you've used to cope.In this episode: 🔹 "Medicate with the solution" — why we reach for relief when no one was with us in the pain 🔹 Medication is bigger than substances: spirituality, food, education, and knowledge count too 🔹 Why understanding your pain isn't the same as healing it 🔹 "Lending a brain": what a caregiver's presence actually gives a hurting child 🔹 Why we often medicate from our child brain — and why that explains out-of-character choices📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the very reasons you've decided this "won't work for you" are the misconceptions keeping you from the help you need?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise clear up the most common misconceptions about the Compassion Method — the sticking points and misunderstandings that quietly keep people stuck, or convince them not to try at all. It's a myth-busting conversation that's especially useful if something you've heard on the podcast made you bristle, doubt, or think "that can't be right."Laura and Brian work through the big myths: You're too far gone or too unique to heal, that healing should be fast "There are no villains" means letting people off the hook or ignoring accountability; "The blamer is responsible" means the harm was your faultthat the method turns you into an emotionless pacifist who never cares about anything that once you've done the work, you should never get triggered againthat focusing on yourself is selfishIn this episode: 🔹 "I'm too far gone" — why what you've done or suffered only covers up who you are 🔹 Why healing takes the time it takes — and why a clock on it backfires 🔹 "No villains" doesn't mean no accountability — and being "responsible" means for your own heart 🔹 Why the method doesn't make you an emotionless pacifist who ignores the world 🔹 Why still getting triggered isn't failure — and why self-focus isn't selfishness📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if one conversation, one workshop, one moment of desperation could quietly change the entire direction of your life?For their milestone 50th episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take a step back to look at how far the journey has come — and to bring the whole Compassion Method full circle for longtime listeners and newcomers alike. If this is your first episode, it's a warm and complete place to start; if you've been here a while, it's a chance to see how the pieces fit together.They begin where it began: the January 2019 workshop where Laura and Brian first met, in the middle of what Brian calls his "great awakening" — and Laura's read on him then, that beneath the desperation she saw hunger and genuineness. From there they re-walk the heart of the Compassion Method: why shame is so debilitating because it says what you do is who you are, why chasing "good" traps us on the same hamster wheel as being "bad," and how the little daily judgments — a grade, a mistake at work, a snappy text — feed the knowledge of good and evil just as surely as the big ones. They revisit the three steps (awareness / comfort / discovery — or "feel your pain, get comfort, go play"), why "logic-ing" your way around a feeling is really suppression in disguise, and why healing is less a finish line than a lifelong practice of coming home to yourself.In this episode: 🔹 How Laura and Brian first met — and what she saw beneath his desperation 🔹 Why shame is so debilitating: it says what you do is who you are 🔹 The good/evil hamster wheel — why chasing "good" traps us the same way "bad" does 🔹 Why the small daily judgments undermine us as much as the big ones 🔹 The three steps revisited — and why "logic-ing" past a feeling is suppression in disguiseNew here? This full-circle episode is a great place to begin. Other great resources below! 👇📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if you were never actually bad at feeling your emotions — you just were never taught how, and never got to practice?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise get practical about the skill underneath all the others: learning to feel your emotions.It's personal for Brian, who spent 43 years not feeling — until, as he puts it, the volcano erupted and landed him in Laura's office. If you've ever said, "I'm just not good at feeling my feelings," this episode reframes that as something you can practice, because it's not a fixed trait.Laura and Brian start with why we stopped feeling in the first place — most of us, as small children, learned that big emotions made the adults uncomfortable, so we were quietly taught to shut them down (no shame in it; we all came by it honestly). Then they make the case for why feeling matters: suppressed emotion eventually erupts, but more importantly, if you don't feel, you can't heal — and you can't connect to who you are, because who you are is tied to your emotions. They get concrete with tools: why joy and pain travel the same circuit (so numbing one dims the other), the wavelike rhythm of moving between sadness and joy that Laura witnessed grieving alongside her kids, Brian's "practice sleeping in" homework to interrupt his doing-protector, and a five-minute daily self-attunement practice you can use as an on-ramp before the remote control exercise.In this episode: 🔹 Why "I'm not good at feeling emotions" is about practice, not a fixed trait 🔹 How most of us were taught young to shut big feelings down — and why there's no shame in it 🔹 "If you don't feel, you can't heal" — and why your true self is tied to your emotions 🔹 The wavelike rhythm between joy and pain — and why numbing one dims the other 🔹 Practical tools: interrupting your "doing" protector, and a five-minute daily self-attunement practice📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if that constant feeling of being misunderstood — or unable to trust anyone — isn't about the people around you at all?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise revisit shame and blame with fresh revelations Laura has recently uncovered. It starts with a refresher — shame is so debilitating because it whispers that what you do is who you are, which feels unchangeable — and then goes somewhere new, into how shame quietly wires the way we attach, trust, and feel understood for the rest of our lives.Laura uses the image of two hoses connecting — a child and a caregiver — to show what healthy attachment looks like, and what happens when shame keeps disconnecting the hose every time a child does something "wrong." The child concludes not "I did a bad thing" but "there's something wrong with me," and goes looking for connection elsewhere — sometimes in behaviors or addictions that lock in the shame cycle. From there she and Brian unpack two "secondary triggers" that trace straight back to childhood: feeling chronically misunderstood (a shield that protects us from being vulnerable with our own pain, usually rooted in loneliness), and struggling to trust (capital-T trust is built in early childhood, not with the spouse or friend we're blaming today). The freeing turn, as always: even if you never got these gifts, you can go back and give them to your younger self now. Listen to this episode to learn how.In this episode: 🔹 Why shame is so debilitating: it says what you do is who you are 🔹 The "two hoses" of attachment — and how shame disconnects a child from connection 🔹 How disconnection sends us searching for connection in behaviors and addictions 🔹 Feeling misunderstood as a shield — and the loneliness usually underneath it 🔹 Why "capital-T Trust" is built in childhood, not with the person you're blaming now📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com 

What if the truest thing about you — underneath every reaction, every failure, every good deed — is simply that you are, love?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise bring their three-part faith series to a close. If your true self was created in the image of God, and God is love, then your true self is love — so why don't we act like it? This finale answers that question and, from there, turns to the harder, holier work of actually returning to who you were made to be.After recapping the trilogy — true self as the image of God, the 10 gifts as God's design delivered through earthly parents, and "there are no villains" — Laura and Brian go deeper into being versus doing. They unpack "be still and know that I am God" through the Hebrew word Rafa (to cease, to let go, to show yourself slack), and connect stillness to being okay: clear-minded, tenderhearted, and at peace. Most movingly, they reframe the Garden of Gethsemane as the true climax of the crucifixion story — Jesus modeling how to face emotional pain rather than numb it, asking his friends to simply be with him even though they didn't know how. The finale lands on something both scary and freeing: comforting your own heart is within your control. You get to do this — and you don't have to wait for anyone else to show up and do it for you.In this episode: 🔹 "You are love" — why your true self, made in God's image, is love beneath the pain 🔹 Being vs. doing: why "doing energy" runs out but "being energy" is unlimited 🔹 "Be still and know" — the Hebrew Rafa, and how stillness connects to being okay 🔹 Gethsemane reframed: Jesus facing emotional pain as the real climax of the story 🔹 The scary, freeing truth: comforting your own heart is within your control — you get to do thisThis is the last episode of the three-part faith series — start with the two previous episodes (45 and 46) for the full arc.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the "mom and dad" work you were afraid was unspiritual is actually God's own design — the same pattern He chose for His own Son?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise continue their series connecting the Compassion Method to the Christian faith. Picking up where part one left off, they take on a question that trips up a lot of believers: if God is the answer, why does the method have you bring in a mother or father to comfort your child self instead of going straight to Him? Laura's answer may surprise you.Laura shares the conviction she felt early on — "Don't bring Me in until I've been properly represented" — and she and Brian build the biblical case around it: God designed our parents to be the tangible expression of Himself, delivering the 10 gifts in early childhood, and He followed that very pattern with Jesus, who needed Mary and Joseph's care and protection from birth to age twelve. From there they go deeper into shame and religion — why the harshest words Jesus spoke were to the "good people," the Pharisees, not the sinners; why both "good shame" and "bad shame" separate us from love; why the knowledge of good can be as spiritually deceptive as the knowledge of evil; and why the encounters with God we keep waiting for often come, quietly and supernaturally, through His people.In this episode: 🔹 Why bringing in "mom and dad" is God's design — not a detour around Him 🔹 God's own pattern with Jesus: needing earthly parents from birth to twelve 🔹 "There are no villains": honoring that our parents gave what they had to give 🔹 Why Jesus was hardest on the "good people" — and how good-shame separates us as much as bad-shame 🔹 Why God's encounters often come tangibly through His people, and why that's no less supernaturalThis is part two of a three-part faith series — the trilogy concludes in episode 47.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if doing all the right things for God has quietly left your heart untended — and there's a way to have faith without the shame?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise go deep on something listeners have been asking for: the Compassion Method in the context of the Christian faith — how it helps you actually live your faith, and where the whole method began. It's a candid, scripture-grounded conversation for Christians wrestling with shame, and an illuminating look for anyone curious about the roots of the work.Laura shares her own journey: raised in the church, recommitting at 18, reading the Bible as a to-do list of good behavior — and being "good at being good" until she wasn't, which left her feeling hopeless. The turning point came when she felt God say, "Stop medicating with Me." She'd gone through her husband's death still praying, still worshiping, still believing — but she was bringing God her pain to make it disappear rather than letting Him be with her in it. From there she and Brian unpack faith without shame: Proverbs 4:23 ("above all else, guard your heart") as the practical heart of the method, why spirituality alone doesn't tend the heart (and how that sets even anointed leaders up for moral failure), why your triggered self can't grow spiritually, and the prodigal-son homecoming — coming back to your true self and finding God was there, waiting, the whole time.In this episode: 🔹 Laura's faith journey — reading the Bible as a behavior checklist, and the hopelessness that followed 🔹 "Stop medicating with Me": how going to God to erase pain can suppress it instead of healing it 🔹 Proverbs 4:23 and guarding your heart — the Compassion Method as a practical way to live it 🔹 Why spirituality alone doesn't tend the heart — and how that sets even faithful leaders up to fall 🔹 The prodigal-son homecoming: why your triggered self can't grow, and how God waits as you return to yourselfThis is part one of a two-part faith conversation — part two continues in episode forty-six.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

You've been listening for a while, feeling the shift — and you're ready to ask, "Okay, so what's my next step?"In this episode of Triggered & True, the focus turns to Laura Duncan herself — her story, and the body of work that's grown up around the Compassion Method. After 43 episodes and a steady stream of listeners asking how to go deeper, Laura and co-host Brian Freise pull back the curtain on where the method came from and the different ways people can carry it beyond the podcast.Laura retraces the origin (first told in Episode 7): how the Compassion Method was born from her own grief after losing her husband in 2009, and her determination to change the hard statistical trajectory for her four young children — a search for real answers that turned her into the "guinea pig" of a process she couldn't find anywhere else. Brian and Laura talk about why so much existing grief and shame work stops at managing pain rather than healing it, how the work scaled from a years-long one-on-one waitlist into workshops, an online course, a companion workbook, and a multi-year school — and why the podcast will always remain a free front door. Their honest guidance for a natural next step: understanding the concepts isn't the same as applying them to your own heart, and there are deeper, more hands-on ways to actually do the work when you're ready.In this episode: 🔹 Where the Compassion Method came from — grief, four young kids, and a search for actual answers 🔹 Why most grief and shame resources stop at managing pain instead of healing it 🔹 How the work grew from a years-long one-on-one waitlist to reaching people worldwide 🔹 Understanding the concepts versus applying them — why the free podcast is a front door, not the entire house 🔹 Laura's heart behind making the work accessible, and how to think about your own next step📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if getting healthier quietly changes every friendship you have — including the ones you thought were solid?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise turn from the intimate relationships they've covered before — spouse, kids — to the ones just a step removed: friends and extended family. As students in Laura's school kept noticing, life looks different "post-Compassion Method," and this conversation explores why and how to navigate it without falling into the trendy trap of simply labeling everyone else toxic.Laura and Brian dig into what happens when you stop relating from your triggered self: if you used to keep friends by fawning — constantly making everyone else okay — and you stop, the people used to that version of you can get triggered by the change. They look honestly at how many "friendships" were really codependence, why healing lets you set boundaries without cutting people off, and a genuinely challenging reframe: a person behaving badly isn't a towering villain but someone small in that moment, reacting from their child brain. The freeing turn is being okay in any relationship — whether that means going to the holiday gathering in peace, or being okay not going — because you no longer need anyone to change for you to be yourself. The goal in every relationship: their behavior matters, but they matter more.In this episode: 🔹 Why your healing can trigger people used to the "old you" — especially if you used to fawn 🔹 When a "friendship" was really codependence — and how to tell the difference 🔹 Boundaries without cutting people off — a nuanced take on the "toxic people" trend 🔹 Seeing a difficult person as small, not as a villain — reacting from their child brain 🔹 Being okay with going to the gathering — and being okay with not going📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the hardest part of watching your grown child struggle is what it quietly stirs up inside you?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on a subject close to both their hearts — and to their own current season of life: the relationship between parents and their adult children. Requested by several listeners, it's an honest, in-the-arena conversation (neither host claims to be an expert) about what changes when your kids grow up, why you might still relate to them as though they're small, and what's really going on inside you when you do.Laura and Brian start with brain development from infancy to adulthood and how a parent's role shifts at each stage — from hands-on in the foundational 0–12 years to increasingly hands-off as kids become adults. Then they get personal about why our own children trigger us more than anyone else's: they're closest to our pain, uniquely connected to whether we could give them the 10 Gifts, so their struggles can stir our deepest shame as parents. The turn is deeply hopeful — Laura shares walking her own kids (and the "gap-standing" father figures after her husband's death) through the 10 Gifts, and how "learning to be okay when your children are not" frees you to break generational cycles of lack instead of passing them down. Whether you have adult kids, young kids, or you're an adult child wondering why your parents relate to you the way they do, this one's for you.In this episode: 🔹 How a parent's role shifts across brain development — and the hard transition to hands-off 🔹 Why your own children trigger you more than anyone else's — closest to your pain, tied to your 10 Gifts 🔹 Why a grown child's struggles can stir a parent's deepest shame — and how to move from shame to hope 🔹 "Learning to be okay when your children are not," — clear-minded, tenderhearted, at peace 🔹 Breaking generational cycles of lack instead of passing them on to the next generation📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the person you were created to be isn't lost — just underdeveloped, waiting for you to use them again?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise pick up right where the last episode left off. Once you've learned that your triggered reactions aren't who you really are, a natural question follows: then who am I? This is the answer — a practical, hopeful conversation about discovering, developing, and finally living from your true self, which Laura calls the ultimate goal of the whole Compassion Method.Laura and Brian offer insights on how "joy triggers" reveal your true characteristics, and how pain triggers reveal your wounds (when did you last feel truly alive, hopeful, carefree?), and why your true self isn't a finished person to uncover but a part of you to grow. Laura's "one strong arm" image lands it: the parts of yourself you've exercised your whole life are strong, while the carefree, joyful, adventurous parts have gone weak from neglect, not absence. Brian gets personal too, revisiting his very first one-on-one notes with Laura to trace his own path from discovering his true self to actually embracing and loving it. It's the episode that brings the method full circle.In this episode: 🔹 After the triggered self, the real question: then who am I? 🔹 Joy triggers: how the moments you feel most alive reveal who you actually are 🔹 Why your true self isn't just uncovered but developed — the "one strong arm" metaphor 🔹 Why the triggered self stays stuck while the true self can keep growing 🔹 Brian's own journey, from his first session notes to embracing and loving his true self📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the harsh way you judge other people is really just a mirror of how you've been treating yourself?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise return to the idea at the very center of the whole show — who you are is not what you do — and follow it into a place that stings a little: judgment. Most of us look at ourselves through the lens of what we do, good or bad, and then we do the same thing to everyone around us. This conversation gently exposes what's actually happening when we judge and offers a far more freeing way to live.Laura and Brian unpack why harsh judgment is really displaced pain — a full-blown form of blame that lets us feel better by making someone else "worse" — and why it always circles back to how we feel about ourselves. They look at how a polarized culture feeds this, why our reactions to hot-button topics come from our own inner world, and a beautiful twist on the golden rule: to truly treat others as you'd want to be treated, you first have to treat yourself that way. The payoff isn't just kinder relationships — living from "what you do matters, but who you are matters more" is what guards your own heart against the bitterness and resentment that quietly eat at you.In this episode: 🔹 Why we judge others by what they do — and how that mirrors how we treat ourselves 🔹 Judgment has displaced pain: how making someone "worse" lets us avoid our own shame 🔹 Why a polarized culture pulls us to extremes — and why our reactions come from our inner world 🔹 The golden rule, reversed: treating others well starts with treating yourself well 🔹 How living in love guards your own heart from bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the reason you can't feel joy anymore is the same reason you've been avoiding your pain?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise explore a truth that reframes both halves of your emotional life: pain and joy travel the same circuits in the brain. Suppress one and you suppress the other. It's why so many adults quietly notice the wonder, play, and delight of childhood has drained away — not because joy left, but because the unfelt pain underneath is blocking the whole channel.Opening with the words Brian gave his daughter at her wedding — that life brings breath-taking moments, some exceedingly painful and some exceedingly joyful, sometimes in the same package — Laura and Brian unpack the neuroscience and the hope of it. Why you can't selectively numb, why the only way out is through, and why comfort always rises to meet pain in equal measure — feel a ten in pain, and you can feel a ten in comfort. The catch is trust: most of us stopped believing comfort would come, so we stopped feeling at all. The empowering turn is discovering that the comfort was never meant to come only from outside you — it's an inside job you're capable of.In this episode: 🔹 The neuroscience: pain and joy share the same circuits, so suppressing one suppresses the other 🔹 Why joy fades with age — not because it left, but because unfelt pain is blocking the channel 🔹 Why you can't selectively numb — cover your eyes to pain and you cover them to joy 🔹 Why comfort rises to meet pain in equal measure — and why we stop believing it will come 🔹 Comfort as an inside job: why even the best people in your life can only reach so far in📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if letting go of the villain in your story isn't about excusing them — but about finally taking your power back?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on a deliberately provocative idea — one they warn may trigger you: there are no villains in life. It's not a comfortable message, and they know it. We've been taught every story needs a bad guy, but the Compassion Method sees something else: a world full of hurting people who hurt people, caught in a cycle that only ends when we stop pouring our energy into blame and start tending our own hearts.Laura and Brian are careful and honest about why this lands so hard. Blaming the villain feels like the only way to make our pain valid — so if there's no villain, we fear our pain doesn't count. They gently untangle that: your pain is real whether anyone is to blame, and the person who's actually asking to be validated isn't your pain, it's you. Crucially, this is not about excusing harm. Laura is explicit — "your abuse matters, and I'm not minimizing it" — and clear that letting go of blame doesn't mean the behavior was okay, that you stay, or that there are no consequences. It means refusing to let the person who hurt you stay twenty feet tall while you stay small.In this episode: 🔹 Why "there are no villains" is so triggering — and why blame feels like the only way to validate pain 🔹 The reframe: your pain is real with or without a villain, and it's you asking to be seen, not the pain 🔹 Why a false sense of comfort from blame keeps the person who hurt you "twenty feet tall" 🔹 Not excusing harm: "your abuse matters, but you matter more" — and why this isn't about staying 🔹 Becoming your own boundary — the freedom of being okay no matter how someone treats youA gentle note: this episode challenges how we assign blame and touches on being wronged, including abuse. Laura is clear that it never excuses harm or asks anyone to stay in it — your safety comes first. If any of this feels close to home, be gentle with yourself, and reach out to someone you trust.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if "love yourself" has always felt vague — because no one ever told you there are four different ways to do it?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise unpack a framework Brian first encountered in Laura's Compassion Method school and immediately wanted to bring to the podcast: the four ways we love ourselves.Most of us are strong in one or two and quietly starving in the others — and naming which is which turns the fuzzy idea of "self-love" into something you can actually see and tend.Opening with a line from William Young's The Shack — "love is just the skin of knowing" — Laura and Brian frame self-love not as a self-improvement project but as discovery: you're not broken, just covered up. Then Laura walks the four: self-care, self-compassion, self-image, and self-belief. She closes with a gentle, non-burdensome invitation to notice where you're full and where you have lack — because how you love the world flows directly from how you love yourself.In this episode: 🔹 The four ways we love ourselves: self-care, self-compassion, self-image, and self-belief 🔹 Self-care as four-dimensional — body, mind, heart, and spirit, not just the physical 🔹 Self-compassion: the honest question "Am I actually moved with love for myself?" 🔹 Self-image and self-belief — how you see yourself, and what you hold to be true about who you are 🔹 Why this is discovery, not self-improvement — a gentle inventory of where you're full and where there's lack📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the most powerful thing you could do for your struggling child isn't to fix them — but to heal something in yourself?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on parenting — and turn it on its head. A listener asked how to walk a triggered child through the Compassion Method: do you do the remote control exercise with them, look for gift givers, explain what's happening? Laura's answer redirects the whole thing: parenting is far more about the parent than the child, because how we care for our kids is mostly a byproduct of how well we're caring for ourselves.Laura and Brian unpack why our children trigger us so intensely (codependence — "I'm not okay if my kids aren't okay"), why we parent from our own early childhood coding even when we're determined to do the opposite, and the difference between a defensive and an offensive approach to raising kids. Then Laura gets remarkably vulnerable, sharing the hardest chapter of her own parenting: a daughter she struggled to attach to, how she unknowingly reinforced "what you do matters more than who you are," and how the Compassion Method eventually let her simply be with her child — even while being screamed at — instead of pushing her away. It's honest about real mistakes and deeply hopeful: this is empowering precisely because it's the one thing you can control.In this episode: 🔹 Why parenting is more about the parent than the child — and why that's good news 🔹 Codependence with kids: "I'm not okay if my children aren't okay," and the frantic cycle it creates 🔹 Why you parent from your own childhood coding — even when you're trying to do the opposite 🔹 Laura's honest story: struggling to attach to a child and learning to be with her in her reactions 🔹 Why "don't be a better parent — try to be more connected to yourself" changes everything📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the tools that usually calm you stop working the moment you need them most — when the fear is so big you can't even think?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise answer a question every anxious heart will recognize. A listener who'd binged 24 episodes wrote in: when her husband was in a car accident and she spent three hours not knowing if he was okay, she tried the remote control exercise — and couldn't make it work. She spiraled into a full panic attack she couldn't climb out of until the text came he was alright. So what do you do when the pain is simply too big?Laura walks through why the exercise stalls in a genuine crisis: when your brain flips into survival mode, you get stuck in the big "reaction" emotions — terror, panic, worst-case scenarios — and can't reach the tender feelings underneath where comfort actually lands. She and Brian offer real, in-the-trenches workarounds: why pausing can feel almost heartless but is the most loving thing you can do, why the crisis is usually stacking on older, unhealed pain, why the mind always races to the worst case (and how that traumatizes us with an event that hasn't even happened), and how, with practice, you can find peace inside the very circumstances you can't control.In this episode: 🔹 Why the remote control exercise stalls in a real crisis — and how survival mode hijacks you 🔹 Reaction emotions vs. tender emotions: why you get stuck, and where comfort actually lands 🔹 Why pausing feels heartless in the moment, but is the most loving thing you can do 🔹 How a present crisis stacks on older pain — and why that makes it feel unbearable 🔹 Why the mind races to worst-case scenarios, and how that traumatizes you with what hasn't happenedA gentle note: this episode discusses panic attacks and a frightening accident, told with care and hope. If you're struggling with anxiety or panic, be gentle with yourself as you listen, and reach out to someone you trust.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if you've been carrying grief for years — over things you never even let yourself call grief?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise return to a subject at the very root of the Compassion Method — grief — but this time they go looking for its hidden forms. Most of us only recognize grief in death. Laura, whose own journey began with losing her husband Jeff fourteen years ago, has learned that we've all grieved far more than we realize: we just never had permission to feel it because it didn't arrive as a funeral.Laura and Brian widen the lens to the losses that quietly shape us: grieving what we hoped for, grieving the childhood or the parent we didn't get, grieving a divorce or a season that ended. They explain why minimizing your pain ("other people have it worse," "they did their best") is just another way of suppressing it, why you can't rank grief because it's about how deeply something hit you, not how big it looks, and how "compounded grief" stacks old, unhealed losses onto present ones — which is why a current heartbreak can feel so much bigger than it "should." It closes with something tender and hopeful: how facing grief, rather than fixing it, is what finally lets the good memories return.In this episode: 🔹 Why grief isn't only about death — the hidden losses we never gave ourselves permission to feel 🔹 Why "other people have it worse" is denial that keeps you suppressing your pain 🔹 You can't rank grief: why depth is about how something hit you, not how big it looks 🔹 "Compounded grief": how old, unhealed losses stack onto a present one and magnify it 🔹 Why the goal is to comfort grief, not fix it — and how that lets joy and good memories returnA gentle note: this episode discusses grief and losing a spouse with honesty and hope. If you're carrying a loss of any kind, be kind to yourself as you listen — and if you're struggling, reach out to someone you trust.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the emotions you've spent your whole life trying to master were never your enemy — but a messenger you were taught not to hear?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on a belief many of us absorbed young: that emotions are messy, weak, or dangerous — something to suppress and rule over rather than feel. Brian grew up seeing emotion as a sign of weakness (acceptable at a football game, nowhere else), and this conversation gently dismantles that lie, making the case that your feelings are actually how your heart tells you your story.Sparked by a listener wondering why painful reactions surface in peaceful moments — waking up, worshiping, having coffee with a friend — Laura explains how suppressed emotion backlogs until it bubbles over, and why the real purpose of emotions isn't to be managed but to help you know yourself. She and Brian talk through why some people have "no grid" for their feelings and how to start from the very beginning, why we resist emotions when we don't believe comfort is waiting on the other side, and how feeling in small, incremental doses builds trust that comfort will keep coming. Brian closes with a vulnerable personal story — one he warns is hard for him to share — that offers real hope: those big, scary emotions you've run from your whole life can become something you no longer fear, and eventually even run toward.In this episode: 🔹 Why we're taught emotions are a weakness — and the handful of "safe" places society lets them out 🔹 Why pain surfaces in peaceful moments: how suppressed emotion backlogs and bubbles over 🔹 The real purpose of emotions: not to be mastered, but to help you know yourself 🔹 Starting from zero: how to feel when you have "no grid" — and why comfort makes it safe 🔹 Brian's personal story: how the emotions you run from can become ones you run toward📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if you stopped pouring your energy into fixing everyone around you, and put it toward the one world you can actually change?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise open the mailbag again, answering listener questions that all circle the same quiet, universal cry: my environment isn't okay — how do I fix it? It's an honest, practical conversation for anyone who feels stuck waiting for the people or circumstances around them to change before they can heal.Laura's through-line is the Compassion Method's most freeing promise: it's standalone. You can be okay inside yourself even when your external world isn't — because shame only sticks when you already believe it's true. From there she and Brian work through real questions: how to apply the method when the people around you are shaming you (and why fighting the shamers just hands them your attention), how to connect with your child self when you have no childhood photos or memories — even lost in a house fire — and whether the remote control exercise works on physical and chronic pain, not just emotional pain. It closes on a tender, grounded word about mental health diagnoses: get every resource you need, but don't let the diagnosis get all the attention — because you matter more than any label.In this episode: 🔹 "My environment isn't okay" — why the method is standalone, and how to be okay even when it isn't 🔹 Applying compassion in a shaming environment — and why fighting the shamers gives them your power 🔹 How to reach your child self with no photos or memories — because the brain never dumps the file 🔹 Can the remote control exercise help with physical and chronic pain? Why the body keeps the score 🔹 Holding a diagnosis with compassion: treat it fully, but let the person matter more than the label📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the reason "enough" money never feels like enough has nothing to do with money at all?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise — a business owner and co-host — explore the psychology of money, borrowing the title of Morgan Housel's excellent book and then adding the one thing they feel it leaves out: the why. Housel brilliantly describes how even the wealthiest people can't get the goalposts to stop moving, but he doesn't dig into what's underneath that restlessness. This episode does.Starting from the famous "I have something he'll never have — enough" story, Laura and Brian make the case that money is neither good nor bad, but it's a powerful mirror for the heart — and that we quietly try to make it stand in for emotional needs it can never actually meet. They walk the 10 Gifts one by one and show how money impersonates each: acceptance (the country club), protection (the emergency fund that's never quite enough), value (net worth as self-worth), provision, and the big one, enough. The freeing turn comes through Laura's own story of growing up with very little money but so much emotional fullness she never knew she was poor — proof that "enough" was never a number, and a picture of what it looks like living, and even thrive at 99, from your true self.In this episode: 🔹 Why "enough" keeps moving — the emotional why beneath the logic of money 🔹 Money as a mirror: neither good nor bad, but a revealer of the heart's unmet needs 🔹 How money impersonates the 10 Gifts — acceptance, protection, value, provision, and "enough" 🔹 Why the emergency fund and net worth never deliver the security we're really after 🔹 Laura's story: growing up "poor" but full — and why enough was never a number📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the pain-driven drive that made you successful is the very thing keeping you from your next level?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise return to the marketplace — and ask a question that top performers rarely stop to consider: our protectors help us perform, so do we even want to heal them? Brian kicks it off with an observation from the business world: so many legendary founders were driven by a deep, childhood-rooted sense of inferiority — a real pain propelling their success, often at the cost of their health, families, and relationships. So if that wound got healed, would the drive disappear?Laura's answer reframes the whole idea of ambition. Yes, pain can fuel performance — but a protector can only ever help you maintain, never truly grow, because the energy spent managing it is energy stolen from your actual gifts. She and Brian get personal about Brian's own "doing" protector, why "doing is the enemy of the visionary," and how performing to look good in front of others quietly caps what you can build. The episode lands somewhere unexpectedly freeing: your true self can accomplish more in a minute than your triggered self can in a lifetime — but success was never the real reason to heal. You're worth it, even if nothing ever comes of it.In this episode: 🔹 Do protectors help us perform — and would healing them cost us our edge? 🔹 The founder's paradox: childhood inferiority as rocket fuel, and what it costs 🔹 Why a protector can only help you maintain, never grow — the hidden ceiling on performance 🔹 "Doing is the enemy of the visionary" — how staying busy crowds out who you actually are 🔹 Why your true self outperforms your triggered self — and why that's still not the point📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the behaviors we're quickest to label in others — manipulation, narcissism, gaslighting — are almost always coming from a place of pain and lack?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on three of the most charged buzzwords in our culture right now: manipulation, narcissism, and gaslighting. It's an unplanned episode, sparked by a real trigger Brian noticed in himself the week before — and it turns into one of the more counter-cultural conversations they've had, not to excuse harmful behavior, but to look honestly at what's underneath it.Laura defines manipulation as an attempt to comfort pain and get needs met through other people — something we all do, often subconsciously, because we're "starving emotionally." She and Brian explore why manipulation only ever comes from lack (a full heart does not need to manipulate), how blame and the "good vs. bad, victim vs. villain" split give us a shame-fueled high that keeps us from our own pain, and why the truth is we're usually both the victim and the villain. The point isn't to minimize what's been done to you — Laura is explicit about that — but to hand you something more powerful than blaming the villains in your story: the ability to be who you are in the middle of it.In this episode: 🔹 A new definition of manipulation: an attempt to get unmet needs met through your external world 🔹 Why manipulation only comes from lack — and why full people do not need to do it 🔹 The victim-and-villain trap: how the "I'm good, you're bad" high keeps you from your own pain 🔹 Why labels like "narcissist" and "gaslighter" can impede the real wound underneath 🔹 A more powerful path than blame: being okay and being yourself, even with difficult peopleA gentle note: this episode reframes charged terms with compassion and is not meant to minimize actual harm. Laura is clear she's not excusing hurtful behavior. If you're in an abusive situation, your safety comes first. This conversation is about tending your own heart, not staying in harm's way.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com

What if the hardest part of divorce isn't the paperwork or the custody — it's the grief no one ever gave you permission to feel?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise turn toward a subject that rarely gets the care it deserves: divorce. We have marriage counseling, but almost no one has "divorce counseling," so people pour their energy into the logistics — finances, custody, co-parenting — while the pain in their heart goes untended, sometimes for years or even decades. This episode is for anyone in the middle of it, or still carrying it long after.Laura speaks about divorce with striking compassion and zero judgment. She's clear that for some people divorce truly is the right choice — and just as clear that most divorce decisions are made from a triggered, "not sober" place rather than the true self. She and Brian explore why divorce is a genuine grief process, often as heavy as a death, and why shame quietly withholds the comfort that grief requires: if you feel you have no right to be sad, you can't heal. They look honestly at how unhealed pain gets medicated — rushing into remarriage, addictions, or "shameless" living — and reframe this season as a real, if counterintuitive, opportunity to finally tend the wounds underneath. As Laura says to anyone who's walked this road: I'm proud of you.In this episode: 🔹 Why "divorce counseling" barely exists — and how the inner world gets neglected for the logistics 🔹 Why most divorce decisions come from the triggered self, not the true self 🔹 Divorce as grief: why it can hurt like a death, and why shame blocks the comfort grief needs 🔹 How unhealed pain gets medicated — fast remarriage, addiction, "shameless" living — and why 🔹 The counterintuitive opportunity: tending the pain of divorce, all the way back to its childhood rootsA gentle note: this episode discusses divorce, affairs, and abuse with compassion and without judgment. Laura is explicit that for some, divorce is the right and safest choice — your story and your safety come first.📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if the "you" that got covered up years ago is still in there, and reaching them is the key to knowing who you really are?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise revisit one of the most important and, admittedly, one of the most easily misunderstood concepts in the whole method: your child self. Before shame told you to perform for love, before you started censoring yourself to fit your environment, you were simply, freely you. That younger self isn't a metaphor or a memory to leave in the past; it's the coding underneath your adult "website," and reconnecting with it is where real healing begins.Laura and Brian are honest that this can feel strange at first, and they spend real time on the obstacles. Anchored by a listener's question, they explore what to do when your childhood feels blank or blocked (your brain keeps every memory, but sometimes buries the painful ones to protect you), how looking at a real childhood photo makes the connection tangible, why picturing a child you already love helps you feel compassion for your own younger self, and why choosing an age of innocence over an age of awkwardness can unlock the tenderness you're reaching for. It closes on the hope that starts small: a flicker you don't ignore, but embrace.In this episode: 🔹 Why your child self and true self are so closely linked — the free "you" before shame covered it up 🔹 Why connecting to your child self feels weird at first — and how an actual photo makes it tangible 🔹 When childhood feels blank or blocked: why the memories are still there, and why they're buried 🔹 A practical key: borrowing the love you feel for a child you know to reach your own younger self 🔹 "Embrace the flicker" — why the first spark of hope is sometimes all you need to keep going📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.comhttps://lauraduncan.com

What if being okay inside yourself — no matter what's happening around you — could change not just your life, but the world?In this special episode of Triggered & True, the tables turn: Anthony, creative director of Laura Duncan Consulting and an overseer of Laura's school, the Conservatory of the Heart, steps in as guest host to interview Laura Duncan and Brian Freise. It's a warmer, wider-angle conversation than usual — part vision-casting, part real talk — that steps back to ask what the Compassion Method is really for.Anthony begins by asking a big question: what would the world look like if everyone connected to who they truly are? From there, the three of them move through some of the most resonant ideas in the entire series. Why frustration with your kids is never actually about your kids ("if I get angry, I must not have love — so instead of blaming, I'm going to get full"), a direct and encouraging word to the men listening who are just learning the language of their own emotions, and the reframe that gives the episode its heart: the people closest to you trigger you the "best," because those closest to your pain have access to the parts of you that everyone else never gets near. It's an inviting, high-altitude episode — a great one to share with someone curious about what this is all about.In this episode: 🔹 What the world could look like if everyone lived from their true self 🔹 "If I'm angry, I must not have love" — why frustration with your kids always comes back to you 🔹 A word to the men: why emotional health isn't just a "female" thing, and where logic opens the door 🔹 Why the people closest to you trigger you the most — and why that's actually an opportunity 🔹 Why your family unit echoes your childhood one — and how that compounds what you feel📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com