Tackle Emotional Triggers: Learn What Sets You Off

Emotional triggers are feelings, events, situations, places, people, and things that propel overreactions, anxiety, anger, withdrawal, or other negative automatic responses. They are often associated with negative past experiences that get tapped into by current events. 

Recognizing and managing your triggers is vital for your own well-being, happy relationships, and career success. 

What's in This Post

What are Emotional Triggers?

When people get triggered, something new that isn't all that bad stimulates an overblown automatic reaction because it taps into something else that was bad or fits with a pattern of challenging experiences. 

It's like the new thing throws an emotional switch to the on position, and you're suddenly flooded with emotional pain that isn't about what's going on right now.

Trigger sources can involve any of the senses. It could be something you see, hear, smell, physically feel, or taste. It could involve persons, places, or things. It could be a memory that pops into your mind, as is common with PTSD or trauma triggers. 

Although triggers could be negative or positive, this post addresses those that stimulate emotional pain and discomfort.

Common Emotional Triggers Examples

Some common emotional triggers include situations that remind you of big past traumas or repeated smaller challenges. 

Other emotional earthquakes may come from painful or uncomfortable emotions like feeling rejected, betrayed, excluded, or ignored. 

Someone expressing disappointment in you can tap into a reserve of feeling not good enough and create an overblown sense of being fatally flawed. You might explode in defensive pushback, shut down, or spiral with depressive thoughts. 

People can also be trigger sources. It may be individuals you had past negative experiences with or groups of people who have real or imagined characteristics that set you off.  

Those are just a few examples. I'll provide more in a few minutes.

What Happens When Someone Gets Triggered?

When people get triggered, the automatic emergency response of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn kicks in. 

Unless they interrupt the automatic response, the next thing they do will be reactionary rather than thought out. 

Individual reactions to being triggered vary widely depending on the individual and the nature of the trigger.

Here’s a breakdown of what might happen when someone gets triggered:

1. Immediate Emotional Response

Intense Emotions: People typically feel big emotions like overwhelm, anger, sadness, despondency, hopelessness, stress, fear, anxiety, or panic when triggered. 

Physical Symptoms: These emotions may be accompanied by physical symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating, shaking, nausea, or shortness of breath. Being triggered can also have the opposite effect: rather than being hyper-stimulated, you may feel exhausted. 

2. Cognitive Impact

Intrusive Thoughts: The triggered person may experience intrusive rumination and distressing negative thoughts related to past experiences or traumas.

Distorted Thinking: They might engage in negative thinking patterns, such as cognitive distortions like catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, or overgeneralization.

3. Behavioral Reactions

Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn: The person might become confrontational, withdraw from the situation, feel paralyzed and unable to act, or compulsively go into people-pleasing mode.

Avoidance Behaviors: To avoid the discomfort of being triggered, people might develop avoidance behaviors, steering clear of certain situations, people, or places.

4. Emotional Regulation Challenges

Difficulty Calming Down: It can be challenging for the triggered person to calm down and return to a baseline state of emotion.

Self-Soothing: They may need to use self-soothing techniques or seek support from others to regain emotional stability.

5. Relationship Impact

Strained Relationships: The way an individual reacts to a spurt of intense emotion can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, or withdrawal in relationships. The triggered person may lash out at others or isolate themselves.

Communication Breakdown: Emotional flooding can make it difficult for the person to communicate effectively, leading to relationship strain.

6. Long-term Effects

Reinforced Negative Patterns: Repeated triggering without addressing the underlying issues can reinforce negative emotional and behavioral patterns.

Increased Sensitivity: Over time, the person may become more sensitive to triggers, experiencing more frequent or intense reactions.

Why Should I Identify My Triggers?

Before we talk about why you should identify your personal triggers, I want to address a common misconception about the subject.

You DON’T identify your triggers so you can make other people responsible for not triggering you. You identify your triggers so you can figure out how to stop the automatic fight-flight-freeze-or-fawn instinctual response to a perceived threat. You identify triggers so you can work on reducing their triggering impact.

Reasons for behavior don’t excuse behavior. We are each responsible for our reactions.

Ownership is a critical concept in dealing with your triggers in a healthy way. Own your thoughts and feelings, and own how you behave in response to your thoughts and feelings.

Benefits of Identifying Your Triggers

Identifying what sparks strong feelings in you can make your life better in many ways.

It provides key information for improved emotion regulation—a crucial skill for personal and relationship well-being. 

Emotion regulation is the ability to control the intensity and duration of emotions and manage your behavior response. 

Identifying triggers is a first step toward reclaiming your personal story, letting you define your reactions rather than allowing them to define you.

Here's more explanation for the benefits of identifying your emotional triggers:

1. Better Self-Awareness

Getting to Know Your Reactions: When you recognize your triggers, it helps you figure out why you respond the way you do in particular situations.

Spotting Patterns: By identifying what sets you off, you can see patterns in how you feel and act. This gives you useful insight into issues that keep popping up.

2. Improved Emotional Regulation

Gaining Control: Knowing your triggers is the first step to stopping automatic negative thoughts, feelings, and reactions—so you can make better choices in how you respond.

Less Stress: By anticipating what might spark intense emotions, you can prep yourself for those situations and engage coping skills to reduce stress and anxiety. (See the Effective Strategies for Managing Emotional Triggers and More Techniques and Tips for Successfully Navigating Emotional Triggers sections below for coping skills help.)

3. Healthier Relationships

Better Communication: Understanding your triggers helps you communicate your thoughts and feelings with more tact (your honest opinion delivered in a respectful way).

Things Run More Smoothly: Being aware of what sparks anger, anxiety, and overreaction in you can prevent misunderstandings and conflicts.

4. Personal Growth and Healing

Addressing Root Causes: Identifying your triggers can help you uncover and deal with unresolved issues that are getting in the way of your health and happiness. 

Empowerment: When you recognize what is setting off big emotions, you can stop being held hostage by them and take control of your reactions.

5. Increased Resilience

Coping Strategies: Understanding your triggers allows you to develop effective coping strategies to handle difficult situations.

Emotional Strength: Dealing with triggers constructively builds stress resilience, making you better equipped to handle future challenges.

6. Mental Health Improvement

Reduced Symptoms: Managing triggers can relieve symptoms of mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Preventive Care: Spotting triggers early can stop emotional stress from getting worse and support your overall mental well-being.

7. More Mindful

Present Moment Awareness: Figuring out what triggers you helps your ability to stay in the moment.

Better Focus: With improved emotional control, it's easier to keep your focus and concentration on track.

What Causes Someone to be Triggered?

Common triggers fall into several categories. 

Emotions

Anger is a secondary emotion. There is some other emotional pain (e.g., fear, guilt, disappointment) under that anger. Any uncomfortable emotion can stimulate overreactions and be the primary source of anger. 

Anxiety and panic are heightened levels of fear. Anything that creates fear can trigger fight-flight-freeze-fawn and create a negative reaction that is bigger than warranted by the presenting situation. 

Events, Situations, Places, or Things

Events, situations, places, or things that connect to something upsetting from the past can trigger negative thoughts, emotional overreactions, and anger in the present.

People

Overreactions and anger can be triggered by individuals, types or characteristics of certain people, groups of people (members of a race, religion, nationality, philosophy, family, etc.), or basically all “people.”

Physical State Contributing Factors

Physical states that create an on-edge feeling—such as being hot or cold, hungry, tired, or hormonal—can contribute to irritability and overreactions. 

How Do I Identify My Triggers?

Here are helpful tips for identifying your emotional triggers:

Emotional Triggers Worksheets PDF Download Printable and Fillable Versions

Click here to learn more about my easy-to-use checklist and tip sheet for identifying your emotional triggers. Available on my Etsy shop: AnnSWellnessDigitals. 

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Effective Strategies for Managing Emotional Triggers

To effectively manage and mitigate the impact of emotional triggers, you can employ several strategies:

Awareness: Recognizing and acknowledging triggers is the first step toward managing them.

Mindfulness and Resetting Relaxation Techniques: Practices such as deep breathing and quick grounding exercises can help manage immediate reactions. 

Cognitive Behavioral Techniques: CBT techniques can help reframe negative thoughts and develop healthier thinking patterns. 

Journaling: Writing about your experiences can help identify your triggers and also help you process them—so you get to a place of more sustainable calm and clear-mindedness. Journaling with prompts to guide your experience can take this intervention to the next level. Check out this blog post for more info and resources: The Positive Benefits of Journaling.

Support Systems: Having a strong support system of friends, family, or support groups can provide comfort and understanding.

Therapy: Professional support, such as emotion skill building, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), approaches that heal old wounds, or other therapeutic methods, can help individuals understand, mitigate, and manage their triggers.

If you'd like to talk about the possibility of me helping you deal with triggers, reach out by completing the contact form found here.  

More Techniques and Tips for Successfully Navigating Emotional Triggers

I have created many books, workbooks, and journals to help people use the information in emotions to make their lives better.  

Two that are a particularly good fit for dealing with triggers:

Building Skills to Uplevel Life: Silver Lining Emotional Intelligence Workbook

Becoming Calm: Silver Lining Anxiety and Stress Resilience Workbook and Journal

 

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