Triggers

In the dynamics of human relationships, the phenomenon of being 'triggered' is a well-known but often misunderstood concept. It refers to those moments when something in us triggers a strong emotional reaction, often resulting in an argument or conflict.

You probably recognise it (in yourself or in another person), you are in a situation and 'something' makes you quite irritated, angry, anxious or very sad, for example.
The situation seems ordinary and yet you react anything but very 'ordinary'.

For example, you notice that your heart beats faster, your hands get sweaty, you stiffen up, your mouth gets dry, you scream or you shut down. You feel anger, sadness, shame or you start feeling worthless. In such a moment, you often fail to reconnect with yourself and the other person so that you can talk it out or see the situation clearly. Everything in you reacts as if something terrible is happening.

Triggers are thus people, places, things, sensory perceptions or situations that trigger a feeling or idea of insecurity and activate your nervous system to a protection mode. A trigger can be a realistic threat such as a car coming at you at full speed or a perceived threat such as a boorish email from your supervisor.

Triggers can make you feel 'ok' one moment and 'not ok' the next.

For instance, bullying, not getting loving attention from your parents, having to behave too maturely in childhood, (sexual) abuse, divorce and loss of loved ones are some examples of traumatic events.

When you experience fear or anger and you cannot express or release these feelings, your sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight response) remains activated. This means your body remains in a constant state of readiness, which is not good for your health in the long run.

At times when you are triggered or overwhelmed by this emotion, your body may begin to tremble, become restless or you may find yourself fidgeting or wiggling, for example. Your body has something to tell you in that moment. The stuck energy and tension wants to leave the body. It wants to make the movement appropriate to the fight-or-flight response.

And although fear can potentially paralyse (freeze) you, the body still wants to make the flight movement and helps you to make this movement. This also applies to repressed anger. The trapped energy wants to release itself through your body.

Trauma creates triggers via a survival response

Trauma, in a nutshell, is what is happening inside you after an event that has affected you and which has not received enough healthy attention in your immediate environment. This unprocessed trauma causes people in the present to still react from a survival response to a 'normal' situation. Triggering is what we call it.

When you have experienced trauma, the balance between 'being in action' and 'being relaxed' is disturbed. Your body is then also in a state of readiness and cannot recover sufficiently. As a result, you experience many situations as unsafe and you react from that insecurity.

It is easy to agree that a "bad day" is different from "trauma", and that "trauma" is a term reserved for people who have experienced something very unusual.

Personal trauma can result from a shock, such as a disaster or accident, abuse, problems within a relationship, or negative interactions related to cultural, personal or community identity. It may be externally obvious, private and known only to a small group or secret, so that no one knows about it except the person who experienced the trauma.

Trauma can result from a single event or repeated, prolonged or chronic events. It can even result from situations that may not even seem "traumatic", such as shame. Its impact depends both on the circumstances of an event and the resilience of the person's nervous system at the time in question. Sometimes we are better able to process and release and sometimes we are not.

Almost everyone has experienced trauma in childhood, adolescence or adulthood. Often those traumas are deeply tucked away in the subconscious from where they do their destructive work.

These movements reduce the flight response of your autonomic nervous system:

1. Sit on the edge of your seat
   Place your hands on your knees with your palms facing upwards
   Move your legs up and down in turn as if you were running
   Meanwhile, keep your mouth open and make room for sound
   Hold this for a moment and then close your eyes
   Take a few deep breaths through your nose and observe what your body is experiencing.

2. Stand with your feet firmly on the ground
   Let your arms and hands hang loosely beside your body
   Start vibrating and shaking your whole body as if you are shaking off something
   Meanwhile, keep your mouth open and let your breath come out with sound
   Hold this for a moment and then close your eyes
   Take a few deeper breaths and observe what your body is experiencing.