Stop Triggering Your Triggers!
Somewhere in this century and during this age of therapy, self help and rehabs, the word “Trigger, Triggering, Triggers” has
become the signal that someone is about to mentally or emotionally melt down. We all have “triggers”. These things
are also known as unresolved issues, touchy points, delicate issues, hot buttons, psychological causes, sensitive matters,
sore subject, etc. When someone all of a sudden says “I’m being triggered”, what exactly do they mean and what do they
expect to happen?
I had this conversation with a client recently. She had gone to an event where socializing and talking to other people was
part of the norm and expected from people in the room. In one of the conversations, a man had complimented her,
which made her uncomfortable, and then he asked her out. She was able to blow off the conversation in a way that made
it seem like it wasn’t that serious, but inside she had decided she was never going to this event again. When I asked her
why she had decided that, she said “I felt so triggered and when I’m triggered that means I’m not safe.” While this may
be true, my fear for her is that instead of learning how to deal with the feelings threatening her safety, she has learned to
use them to hide from places in the world that she feels unsafe from. While this is also something that can be true and
useful to do, how do we know when it’s time to hide from something and when something is a lesson that we need to
face so it no longer owns us?
I recently saw an interview with Billie Eilish where she said that “there isn’t a woman I know who hasn’t been sexually
assaulted on some level”. I agree with her 100% and also have plenty of sexual assault experiences of my own. And
while the purpose of this article is not to address sexual assault (I could write a whole book on the subject and might
just do that), it is to address the power we give to anything inour lives that limits us from being our true complete selves.
Whether it’s sexual assault, someone’s anger, someone’s stupidity, a dog running down the street or anything that
reminds us of something that we are scared of or hurts us or makes us uncomfortable, until we face that thing it will always
own us. It will always have the power to throw us into a tizzy.
Imagine that one day you are just going about your life, having a wonderful day and then all of a sudden you are
“triggered” and your day is ruined. That would be awful. To have no control or power over what can ruin your day. Maybe
you walk into a restaurant with your friend and you are laughing and carrying on, when all of a sudden you look to
your left and you see your ex-boyfriend having lunch with some woman. She’s not just any woman, she is the woman
he cheated on you with. You are “triggered” and you immediately feel yourself start to shake and get super
emotional and you start crying and you turn and run out of the restaurant. You get in your car and you are so upset that you
don’t see that red light and you end up in a car accident. And on and on and on.
While you are in the hospital reflecting on what has happened, you realize how much of an asshole that guy was
and that none of the consequences of the day were worth it. Not only did he not see you and therefore doesn’t even know
what has happened (thank God), you wouldn’t want him back if he was the last man on earth. Yet somehow just the sight of
him “triggered” you. How do you stop this from happening again?
Being “triggered” means that there is something in that triggering situation that is unresolved and that there is
something that still needs to be dealt with so that you have power over it and not the other way around. Not dealing with
emotional triggers is a sign of emotional immaturity. Once youdeal with it, you will have emotional intelligence as well as
emotional maturity. That sounds like such a great deal, so why doesn’t everyone deal with their emotional triggers?
There are a couple reasons for this. Humans are emotionally lazy. We let our emotions lead us instead of us leading our
emotions. You have to make a choice as to whether you want to be a child emotionally or an adult. Being an emotional child
is easier because you don’t have to think before you speak, or before you act. You don’t have to consider how other
people will be affected by your words or your actions. You don’t have to do anything to change yourself because
someone else is always the problem. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, because wanting to do
something is a feeling and feelings are your guidepost.
To be an emotional adult means that you have control over your mouth, behavior and feelings. This is not easy. It takes
work. It takes discipline. It takes practice. Sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes it is very hard. It means that when
someone upsets you, you have enough agency over yourself that you can keep yourself calm and not react emotionally so
that you can be rational in the conversation. It means that when you are upset about something, you can ask yourself
self reflecting questions that help you resolve the situation instead of pretending it’s not happening and pushing it down,
only for it to happen again in the future with more intensity. It means, that you don’t take other people’s personality
accidents personally (meaning you make it about you) but you can see that they are having a rough moment and you
find compassion for them and can practice restraint. Doesn’t that sound boring? It does, but it also sounds delightful once
you have experienced it. So why wouldn’t everyone want to experience that?
Again, there are a few reasons for that. Some people areaddicted to drama. I mean it’s not an accident that there are
countless reality TV shows to watch and the one’s with the most drama are the more successful ones. Some people are
stuck being victims. It’s actually a condition called Learned Helplessness which basically means a person has a sense of
powerlessness as a result of a traumatic event or their belief that they are unable to succeed at something, anything or life.
When you are stuck in this belief system, your emotions are all over the place and you experience lots of anxiety and
depression. You also may believe that if people would just do this, or not do that, or change this way or do whatever you
need them to do, then you would be ok. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
My definition of emotional immaturity, being a victim or being “triggered” is when I believe I am so right about how wrong
you are that I am convinced that I don’t need to change anything with the way I think, behave or see the situation. I
believe that you are the one causing the problems, not me. I believe that I didn’t or don’t contribute to the problem at all so
therefore I don’t need to do anything differently. This mindset is my own personal prison and creates so much pain within
me and I can’t seem to see my way out other than for you, them, it to change so I can be happy, free and successful.
Can you see how sick this is?
So getting back to my client who was triggered, by the guy who complimented her and then asked her out, as a result of
her unresolved sexual assault trauma, if she keeps using her “trigger” as a reason to not go to this event, or stop talking to
this person, or whatever excuse she uses it for, she is going to pigeonhole herself out of life.
I believe that we are meant to live free. That no one, no thing, no situation should have the power over us to limit who we
are as a person and what we are meant to experience in this lifetime. But no one, no thing and no situation can do that to
us without our permission. I have to first see how I rob myself of my own freedom with limiting beliefs, unresolved issues,
emotional immaturity and needing to be right about how wrong you, it, them are so I don’t have to change.
What I ultimately told my client that day about how to handle that situation was to say a multitude of different things. She
could have said “thank you” to the compliment and then simply “I’m not available” to the going out with him part. Or
she could have just excused herself from the conversation and gone over to someone she knew she felt safe with. Or
she could have not lingered long enough with people she was uncertain about and just been light and polite and kept
moving. There are a plethora of responses that she could have used in order to keep her personal power instead of
retreating into a victim mindset (we also do that when we don’t know what to say or how to react in a situation).
She also didn’t need to make him wrong, embarrass him or straighten him out to get her point across, although there are
some people who do need that because they don’t get how creepy they are coming across or don’t want to see the truth
about the situation. As Michelle Obama has famously said “When they go low, we go high.” We never want our behavior
to be worse than the original offense was. We also never want to willingly give our power to anyone. It doesn’t serve
them and it never serves us to play small.
The truth is this, until you deal with the things that “trigger” you, you will keep being “triggered” until you do and the
“trigger” will build momentum and eventually it will become paralyzing. Don’t wait until it gets to this point. You deserve
better than that. But you don’t get what you deserve…you get what you negotiate. Everything is a negotiation. Negotiate wisely!
