June 20 - Hot Buttons & Open Hearts: Understanding Triggers & Getting Back to Connection

Saturday June 20, 9-11am PDT, 5-7pm UTC

with option to stay from 11-noon for Q&A, practice and small group coaching
(session 6 in a 15-week Relationship Mastery series)

Hot Buttons & Open Hearts

Understanding Triggers, Breaking the Cycle & Getting Back to Connection

You know how it goes.

One moment everything is fine. Then something happens — a tone of voice, a look, a word chosen just slightly wrong — and suddenly you're not in the conversation anymore. You're somewhere else entirely. Flooded. Shut down. On fire. Or frozen.

And the person in front of you, the one you love, the one you chose, is now the enemy.

It doesn't take long. It doesn't need to be dramatic. It can happen in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, in the kitchen, over nothing. And by the time you've both said things you didn't mean and retreated to your separate corners, you can barely remember how it started.

Sound familiar?

You are not alone. And you are not broken. You are human — with a nervous system that was designed to protect you, and a heart that is trying, underneath it all, to connect.

This workshop is about understanding what happens in those moments — and learning, for the first time, how to work with it rather than be run by it.

Why Triggers Aren't the Problem — Your Response to Them Is

We tend to think of our triggers as the problem. If only my partner wouldn't use that tone. If only they'd slow down. If only they'd stop doing that thing with their eyes.

But triggers are not the problem. They are signals. And the most important thing you can learn about them is not how to avoid them — it's what they're trying to tell you, and what becomes possible when you learn to respond to them with skill rather than reactivity.

In this session, you'll learn that emotional activation doesn't happen randomly. It follows patterns. It has specific entry points. And when you understand those entry points, you gain something most people never have in conflict: choice.

What We'll Explore Together

We begin with the Six Triggers — the specific channels through which emotional activation most commonly enters a relationship: tone of voice, choice of words, volume, intensity (including the speed and urgency of communication), body language, and something remarkable that most people have never considered — the electromagnetic field of the heart.

Drawing on research from the HeartMath Institute, we'll explore how the heart generates its own electromagnetic field that can be felt and responded to by others — and how the energetic quality of your presence, independent of anything you say, can either invite connection or trigger defense in the people around you. This is not metaphor. It is measurable biology. And understanding it changes the way you think about what it means to "show up" in a relationship.

From there, we look honestly at the habits that create disconnection — the automatic patterns most of us slip into when we're activated, the ways we pursue or withdraw, escalate or shut down, and the subtle behaviors that signal to our partner that safety is gone. Not to create shame around these patterns, but to bring them into the light where they can actually be worked with.

Then we turn to the tools.

You'll be introduced to Communication Choices — a framework for understanding the range of responses available to you in any moment of activation, and how to consciously choose a response that serves connection rather than conflict.

You'll learn the Challenging Situation Worksheet — one of the most practically powerful tools in this entire curriculum. Working through it, you'll learn to separate the facts of a situation from the stories you're telling about it, make contact with your own feelings and needs, find genuine curiosity about the other person's feelings and needs, locate what you're grateful for even in difficulty, identify the character strengths you want to bring forward, and move toward requests and offers that actually serve the relationship.

You'll be introduced to the Seven Adjustments — specific, actionable shifts you can make in how you're communicating that can transform a disconnecting conversation into a connecting one, often in a matter of seconds.

And you'll learn the practice of the Connected Time-Out — not the punishing, distancing kind of time-out most of us grew up with, but a conscious, compassionate pause that preserves the connection while creating the space both people need to return to themselves before returning to each other.

You'll Leave With:

• A clear map of the six channels through which emotional triggers most commonly enter relationships — and how to recognize them in real time
• An understanding of the heart's electromagnetic field and how your energetic presence affects those around you
• Awareness of the specific habits that signal disconnection — and how to interrupt them before they take hold
• The Challenging Situation Worksheet as a practical tool you can use immediately in your own life
• The Seven Adjustments — concrete, actionable shifts for turning conflict into connection
• The Connected Time-Out protocol — a way to pause without abandoning, and return without resentment
• A Communication Choices framework for responding rather than reacting when the stakes are high
• A felt sense of what it means to stay open-hearted even when your hot buttons are being pressed

Who This Workshop Is For

This session is for anyone who has ever lost themselves in an argument and wondered how they got there.

It's for the partner who goes from zero to flooded in thirty seconds. For the one who shuts down and disappears when things get heated. For the couple who keeps having the same fight in different costumes. For the individual who knows they're reactive but hasn't yet found a way through.

It's for coaches and therapists who want a concrete, research-informed toolkit for helping clients navigate emotional activation — tools they can teach, assign, and practice alongside the people they serve.

It's for anyone who is tired of the cycle — who knows there has to be a better way — and is ready to stop waiting for it to show up on its own.

A Note from Your Facilitators

We have seen this session change relationships.

Not because the tools are magic — they're not. They require practice, patience, and a willingness to catch yourself in the moment, which is genuinely hard. But we have watched people walk into this session carrying years of the same argument, and walk out with something they didn't have before: a map.

When you understand what's actually happening in those moments — when you can see the trigger, name the activation, locate the need, and reach for a tool rather than a reaction — something shifts. The cycle that felt inevitable starts to feel optional. And optional is everything.

Come ready to work. Come ready to laugh at yourself a little. Come ready to leave with more than you arrived with.

— Scott Catamas & Katrina Vaillancourt, Love Coach Academy

Part of the Relationship Mastery 15-Week Training | Also available as a standalone workshop Saturdays, 9:00–11:00am PDT | Live on Zoom | Replay available