Triggered and True

Latest Episodes:

(Ep.32) Answering Your Frequently Asked Questions Mar 17, 2023

Show notes

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

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

(Ep. 31) The Psychology of Money Feb 24, 2023

Show notes

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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

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

(Ep. 30) CM in the Marketplace - Do Our Protectors Increase Our Performance? Jan 27, 2023

Show notes

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

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

(Ep. 29) Navigating Manipulation, Narcissism, and Gaslighting Jan 06, 2023

Show notes

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 people

A 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

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

(Ep. 28) Divorce and the Compassion Method Process Dec 16, 2022

Show notes

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 roots

A 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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

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

(Ep. 27) Revisiting Child Self Nov 25, 2022

Show notes

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.com

https://lauraduncan.com

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

(Ep. 26) With Special Guest Anthony Bulau Nov 04, 2022

Show notes

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

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

(Ep. 25) The 10 Gifts (Part 2) Oct 14, 2022

Show notes

What if your emotional pain isn't a problem to fix, but a signal flare showing you exactly what your heart's been missing?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise return to one of their most-loved topics — the 10 Gifts — but this time the focus is application, not just understanding.

Because knowing the concept is easy; actually giving your younger self what it never received is where people get stuck. This is the "how" episode.

Laura revisits the ten emotional needs every child is meant to receive from birth to age twelve — to be seen, heard, accepted, taught, protected, provided for, valued, told you're enough, given affection, and given play — and explains why she frames them as unconditional gifts rather than needs.

From there she and Brian go deep on the hard part: how to actually access your five-year-old self (she describes memory as a full "file" reached by an overgrown pathway you can walk again), why your brain's belief that "I never got it, so I don't need it" is as false as saying you don't need food, and how "gift givers" show up in unexpected people who leave a mark not by what they said, but by how they made you feel.

It closes on a reframe that reorders everything: the solution to emotional pain is not to fix, but to fill.

In this episode:

🔹 Why this is the application episode — closing the gap between understanding the 10 Gifts and living them

🔹 The full list of ten, and why Laura calls them unconditional gifts rather than needs

🔹 The "file" and the overgrown pathway: how memory works, and how to reconnect with your younger self

🔹 Why "I don't need it" is a protector's lie — and why emotional needs are as real as food and water

🔹 "The solution is not to fix, but to fill" — pain as a signal flare pointing to what's missing

📩 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. 24) Codependency Sep 23, 2022

Show notes

What if the exhausting work of keeping everyone around you okay is the very thing keeping you from the connection you're aching for?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise tackle codependence — and cut through the buzzwords with a one-sentence test simple enough to change how you see every relationship.

It starts with a listener's question about staying close to a hurtful family member, and opens into something universal: how do we stay connected to people who do things we don't like, without losing ourselves?

Laura's definition is disarmingly clear: you're in codependence when I'm not okay if ___ isn't okay — when you need a person, a circumstance, even God to be okay in order for you to be okay.

From there she and Brian explore why the fix is counterintuitive (the problem is never really the other person), why walking on eggshells and "fixing" everyone actually breeds resentment and dependency rather than closeness, and why helpers, counselors, and caregivers burn out carrying a weight that was never theirs to hold.

At the heart of it is a gentler way to love: the image of a father simply staying present through his child's whole tantrum — not fixing, just being with — because connection with others begins with connection to your own heart.

In this episode:

🔹 The one-sentence codependence test: "I'm not okay if ___ isn't okay. "

🔹 What "being okay" really means — clear-minded, tender-hearted, and at peace (not necessarily happy)

🔹 Why fixing and people-pleasing breed resentment and dependency instead of the closeness you want

🔹 Helper burnout: why counselors, pastors, and caregivers carry a weight that was never theirs

🔹 The power of "being with": how a parent staying through a tantrum models actual connection

📩 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. 23) Forgiveness and the Compassion Method Sep 02, 2022

Show notes

What if you've forgiven someone a hundred times — and it still hasn't set you free?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise take on forgiveness, and why the way most of us were taught to forgive doesn't actually work.

We know forgiveness matters — our faith teaches it, our parents demanded it, and unforgiveness really is like drinking poison and hoping the other person gets sick.

But if you've ever forgiven someone over and over and still felt the wound reopen every time you're triggered, this conversation explains why: you can't skip from naming the pain straight to letting it go.

Laura describes the missing middle step as a "waiting room" between recognizing your pain and releasing it — and that waiting room is comfort. Until you care for the wound underneath, you'll keep repeating forgiveness as a ritual.

She and Brian walk through why you can't heal pain without going back to feel it, why healing only reaches as deep as you let yourself feel, and Laura's "mile 13" marathon metaphor for pushing through the moment every instinct says run.

And there's genuine hope in how it ends: many people never even notice the moment they forgave — they just filled their cup little by little until, one day, the person's name came up and they were finally okay.

In this episode:

🔹 Why traditional, rushed forgiveness fails — and keeps you forgiving the same wound forever

🔹 The "waiting room" of comfort: the missing step between naming pain and letting it go

🔹 Why healing only goes as deep as you're willing to feel the pain — and why that's okay

🔹 The "mile 13" moment: pushing through the point where everything in you wants to run

🔹 How forgiveness often arrives quietly — filling your cup little by little until you've let go

A gentle note: this episode focuses on emotional wounds, not situations of physical or sexual abuse. If you're in harm's way, Laura is clear she's not suggesting you return to it — your safety comes first, and the pain can still be tender from a distance.

📩 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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