Growing your Cup and Meeting Triggers with Compassion, with Thomas Hübl

Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J’aime Rothbard.

Why do we beat ourselves up for getting pulled into the same old triggers? And how can we grow our capacity to observe our emotional reactions  – rather than being hijacked by them?

Pocket Project co-founder Thomas Hübl has devoted his life to helping as many people as possible to ‘grow our cup’ – his term for building a capacity to meet the trauma loops playing out inside of us with more awareness, spaciousness and compassion.

In this episode, Thomas and Matthew go back to basics by exploring how we can tell when we’re experiencing trauma reactions from the past – and what it means to gradually learn to respond to triggering situations, rather than react.

By choosing to ‘own’ our triggers, we don’t magically dissolve the legacy of past trauma, Thomas explains. But we do start to heal when we bring more awareness to the mechanisms behind our anger, sense of overwhelm, or impulse to withdraw — rather than pathologising these symptoms as signs that there’s something wrong with us. 

“The cup that holds the trauma trigger is growing,” Thomas says. “And it's important because some people say, ‘Oh, the healing is only when the symptom disappears.’ No: The healing is also when the cup grows.”

Thomas explores how groups oriented towards collective healing can serve as a ‘social mirror’ that can reveal more of our own unconscious patterns. And growing interest in building healing communities represents a reawakening of a latent human capacity to support one another to process collective and ancestral trauma that is now ripe to be recovered, Thomas believes.

This conversation aims to inspire anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how we can loosen the grip of unprocessed trauma on our lives — whether we’re new to collective healing work, or advanced practitioners.

This conversation was first published on Thomas’ Point of Relation podcast. A second installment from the dialogue will follow in the next episode of What Is Collective Healing? 

Further Resources:  

Point of Relation podcast (with Thomas Hübl)

Thomas Hübl

Thoms Hübls Instagram

Pocket Project

About Thomas Hübl:

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.

His new book, co-authored with Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is called Releasing Our Burdens: A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral and Collective Trauma. Thomas is also the author of Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World and Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.