The Trigger Is The Teacher

We now have 2 dogs and 2 cats.  We went from 0 pets to 4 in about 1 year—four animals off the street and in our house.  Was it good for them?  Yes!  Was it good for the family?  Yes!  Was it good for me?

Well I actually fell in love with the first, then accepted the second, and allowed the 3rd for the family, but my reactions to #4 were little storms of irritation that kept flaring up.  

Fortunately, every day I got up in the morning and meditated, which washed out all the irritation.  Great!  After 30 years of meditating, you’d hope for something like that to work.  My meditation and mindfulness practice also created a kind of hyper awareness of how irritation built up, which was both dark and fascinating to watch.  

The problem was, I seemed powerless to do anything about the strong emotions when I was at home.  By the time evening rolled around, irritation built up so much that it gave me a stiff neck and shoulders.  My mental state was emanating out into my body.  

So I adjusted my anger.  First I adjusted my anger slightly outwards towards one particular family member who loves pets.  I didn’t want to hold onto that hot potato—I gave it to someone else!  

That didn’t work out very well as you can imagine.  In fact, it made the situation worse.  Our family life was a bit on edge.  You might think, "well, set some healthy boundaries, Kurt!  Just say no."  

But I couldn’t bring myself to reject any pet.  Each one was very sweet and they played so well together.  I saw the positive effects on the family, but also the negative effects on me.  Of course I had the power to say no, but I didn’t want to use it.  In fact, although I didn’t admit it to others, I was actually kind of morbidly curious about why I was reacting so strongly.  

Now if the pets had a bad effect on the family, that would have been a different story.   Or if we couldn’t afford them, or if our living space was too small, or if I had to do all the work in caring for them.  None of that was true.  It was primarily my own internal reaction that was challenging.  

In fact, there were a good 6 months when the negative effects of my anger were more than neutralizing the positive effects of the pets on the family.  The net effect was, let’s just say, bad.  

But facing the pets meant facing the anger.  So, I did what every good meditator does when faced with strong emotions.  Run!  

Well, not really, but going into my home office or leaving the house sure was lovely!  No stimulus, no response.  No pets, no anger.  Nice!  

But I was bothered by the fact that I was bothered.  I knew that compared to what some people go through, this was nothing. In fact, compared to what I have gone through in the past, this was also a minor issue.  

So why was this bothering me so much? 

In a word:  conditioning.  Not hair conditioning.  Here-and-now conditioning.  

Conditioning means something very specific in meditative traditions:  it’s basically the past visiting the present.  

Every time we experience something and have a negative reaction, it leaves behind the mental memory along with associated physical tension.  To put it simply, we store the experience and the reaction in our mind and body.  

If we experience something over and over again and react to it in the same negative way, deeper and deeper impressions are formed and in this way, the mind is shaped and the body is burdened.  

In my case, I grew up with great parents...who did not want pets.  They didn’t want the work, the expenses, the noise, the energy of animals in the house.  Very sensible indeed.  

I heard them comment quite often on how pets are not desirable.  It’s not that they didn’t like animals, in fact it was the opposite—they loved animals, they just didn’t want them in the house.  

And so I grew up with those memories and attitudes and just kind of absorbed them.  Aversion to pets lived within me—it was a pushing away energy that was activated every time I saw pets.  Looking back now, it’s funny how I had allergic reactions to other people’s pets.  I bet it was more than just biology.  

Apparently kids will absorb the systems of the people around them, especially parents or caregivers, until well in their twenties (and I suspect even longer).  I absorbed my parents' reactivity to pets and that reactivity lived within me for a long time until just the proper conditions revealed it.  

Enter 4 pets and that aversive energy which lived within me came out in full force.  That is conditioning.  And I got a nice dose of it last year.  

Talking about this with my wife and son and friends was definitely helpful.  (Thank you family and friends!)  Taking myself out of the situations through walks and occasional trips was also helpful. 

But the key to dealing with that old conditioning was this:  the constant practice of turning into the strong emotions, getting to know them as a set of physical sensations combined with mental images and letting all of that come and go.  

How uncomfortable it was to watch/feel that triggering happening in real time.  I saw how the sensations formed and peaked and plateaued and faded.  And watched them over and over again every day, all day long, all night long, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, until death do us part.  

Just kidding, it was not ad infinitum and fortunately it didn’t kill me.  But the reactivity seems to really have settled a lot.  It took about 6 months. I can’t say all the “pets-are-bad” conditioning from childhood has been neutered…I mean neutralized, but most days I don’t feel it much anymore.  

Now this is obviously just a light, little example of conditioning and how it can haunt us.  So many people have experienced very heavy trauma which is buried in them and burdens them day and night.  

I have also experienced my share of trauma.  And I know that friends, family, and professionals can surely help a lot.  But ultimately, I have found that the solution to being free of those inner burdens seems to be the same, no matter what it is. 

Once we have some basic needs met, a supportive network in place and some mindfulness skills under our belt, the ultimate solution to bothersome inner reactivity seems to be:  stay.  Stay.  Learn to look within.  Even if it is very uncomfortable.  Get to know yourself and in doing so, be free.

Copyright © 2026 Kurt Scholler / (734) 973-2040 / East Lansing, MI