Triggered and True

Latest Episodes:

(Ep. 42) Guiding Adult Children Using The Compassion Method Process Nov 10, 2023

Show notes

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

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 41) Discovering Your TRUE SELF Oct 13, 2023

Show notes

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

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 40) What You do is NOT who you ARE. Sep 08, 2023

Show notes

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

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 39) The Powerful Relationship between Joy and Pain Aug 11, 2023

Show notes

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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 38) Who’s the Victim, and who’s the villain? Jul 21, 2023

Show notes

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 you

A 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

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 37) Discover These 4 Ways to Love and Care for Yourself Using the Compassion Method Jun 30, 2023

Show notes

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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 36) Applying The Compassion Method (TCM) to children and parenting Jun 09, 2023

Show notes

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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 35) What happens when the pain is simply too BIG?!? May 19, 2023

Show notes

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 happened

A 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

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 34) Learning to Comfort Grief and Identify its Hidden Forms Apr 28, 2023

Show notes

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 return
A 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

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

(Ep. 33.) Emotions Are Not Your Enemy Apr 07, 2023

Show notes

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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

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