HOW TO RESPOND TO TRIGGERS WITH OUR BRAIN AND NOT REACT WITH OUR EMOTIONS

When I’m triggered my heart races, I feel a knot in my stomach, energy runs through my whole body, and my emotions feel bigger than me. When I’m triggered, I’m afraid, angry, hurt, stressed.. The emotional activation of these emotions changes how I relate to myself and everyone around me. When I’m triggered, I’m not me anymore, I let my emotions get the better of me and stop thinking clearly. When I’m triggered it affects my ability to remain present in the moment.  When I’m triggered my nervous system is on edge. 

In the face of unpredictable stress, we are triggered, and we act based on our emotions and not with our intellectual logical brain, which is a natural survival response.  But this automatic alarm may cause false assumptions, conclusions, or reactions. One single moment in our childhood can create a trauma response in our nervous system, a default programming in our mind that makes us react in extreme, emotional ways.  

How to respond to your triggers?

1-Recognise your emotional triggers.

They’re different for each person.  When you find a trigger ask yourself what happened and why am I feeling this way? Where am I feeling it in my body?  

The better we notice the trigger the better we will be at managing it.

Take responsibility for the feeling. The triggers themselves are not the cause; it is how we react to them. Instead of thinking “I’m upset because my mum told me that, I’m frustrated because my boss rolled his eyes, I’m sad because my colleague judged me, I’m angry because my kids…” Ask yourself, how come I felt frustrated and sad when he said that? Why is this word triggering me? Is there a positive interpretation of this feeling? The part of you that reacts is a younger version of you. What are the resources you have today that you didn’t have at that time? How does this change your interpretation? The more we understand and reframe an internal trigger the more we will be able to deactivate it.

2- Make space for your feelings and OPTIMISE your response. 

We can’t control how we feel but we can control how we respond to those feelings. Like in the kids’ story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, “we can’t go under it, we can’t go over it, we have to go through it.” We have to go through the feeling and find a way to respond that results in the outcome we wish to have.

Ask yourself, “What assumption am I making right now due to this feeling that might not be true?” And, “What is the intent behind what I am about to say?”

For those triggers that automatically lead you to a feeling of stress, frustration, anger, and anxiety, take a moment to acknowledge the trigger you are feeling and ask yourself if your instinctive response, for example to yell at your boss and quit, is actually useful to you. You can control how you react; you can update or modify your instinctive response. 

We can channel our responses towards actions that move us forward positively in our lives.  It can be hard, sometimes painful, to better our emotional health, but it’s a battle worth fighting. 

3- REGULATE a feeling to restore a calm state. 

Catch yourself in that moment, and instead of reacting, think of an approach which helps you to act differently when you are triggered. Is there a different way you can get your needs met?  

Remember, it’s not what the other is saying but the reaction we have to it. 

To break a negative state of mind, taking a walk, journaling, talking to someone you trust, washing your face with cold water, breathing deeply, counting backward from 5 before reacting … All of these and more can help you move on from anger, stress, and anxiety, and awaken the prefrontal cortex. The part of the brain that gives you control on what to do next, and helps bring you back to a feeling of calm and control

The reward for all this hard work for me, and what helps keep me in a calm state, comes when I’ve managed to change a reaction of anger to that of compassion, and see my kids’ actions as simply the action of a kid rather than something they are doing to purposefully annoy me. 

There’s a true power and true sense of control and mastery and freedom when we are able to regulate our state of mind and keep our calm in the most triggering situations and be grounded in this moment; not one we experienced in the past. 

4- Finally, make sure you practice SELF-CARE:

I know for me that if I’m tired, if I haven’t had time for me, for my work, for my walk … I will be much more easily triggered than if I come from a place of contentment, energy, and productivity.

What selfcare means is, like our triggers, different for all of us. The important thing is to remember to make time for just you, and those things which bring you back to a grounded, present state. 

In the same way as you need to understand what triggers you and how to shift from reacting emotionally to acting rationally, you also need to understand what helps you return to a calm and comfortable state, post-trigger. That is the essence of self-care. 

In the meantime, next time you feel triggered, take a deep breath and remember that you control how you react. You get to choose.

For those of you looking for more tools and strategies you can use to help you understand and manage your triggers better, you can schedule a free discovery session: CONNECT