Trigger Happy

Lot’s of events throughout our daily life can trigger or evoke old feelings of similar experiences from our past. Some of these events could have been rather traumatic when first experienced and those tend to be the ones that conjure up the most negative emotions in us when they resurface again.

We’ve all heard the word “triggered” by now, but it is important to understand that we have lots of opportunities to experience them throughout each day. So what causes some of them to have more impact or influence over us than others? For example, seeing a scoop of ice cream on the ground can remind us of a time when we were young and dropped our ice cream cone. As a child, this was no doubt a terrible experience, but it likely doesn’t impact your day very much beyond recalling that moment and then moving on with your day. Other triggers from our lives can have far greater influence over our current mood and can even be a driving force behind some of the less desirable decisions we’ve made in our current day.

The secret behind these different reactions to these triggers and how to drive better outcomes is to get “trigger happy” about them. Now I realize that even this term of “trigger happy” can even be triggering for some because of the common meaning behind it, but it really comes down to changing our attitudes on how we view these triggering moments and how to restructure our thinking about those moments to change the outcomes when they creep back in our minds again. For some, these outcomes can be altered through self reflection and meditation. For others, it means years of intense therapy with a qualified professional. The most valuable tool to discern between these two types of triggers is right there between your ears even if you didn’t know it.

The best way to start breaking these triggers down is not running away from them and pushing them down back into silence in your mind. Again, working with a therapist or trusted counselor on the more intense triggers is highly recommended, but for some of the day to day triggers you can rely on yourself or even through the help of a coach or guide. The first step in working with a guide on some of these triggers is to start simple. When you experience any trigger, start by simply noticing exactly how it makes you FEEL. Does your heart race? Do you think of a particular person, place, or thing? Do you feel sad or angry? Give that trigger a description, draw correlations to other things in your life that make you feel that way, or even give it a first name like “Bill.” Owning these feelings and emotions, normalizing them for yourself, and accepting them for what they are can be extremely freeing and make them far less impactful. Just by acknowledging them for what they are and what they mean to you is such a big part of this process.

From there, I recommend reaching out to a trusted source to help you start working on deprogramming those triggers. One of the methods for doing this can include understanding that these are a part of your historical programming that once kept you safe from these similar negative events repeating in your life. Your brain does a wonderful job of steering you clear from similar events in your current day to avoid provoking these tough thoughts. Once you start to understand that these triggers belong in the past when you first experienced them and that the trigger was put in place because of your mindset at that time, you can start to deprogram how it effects you today because you are NOT that same person anymore. Your circumstances have no doubt changed and most of us are stronger now than we were in that past moment anyway. Ask yourself if that same event happened again today, how would you deal with it NOW? How you deal with it now can be assisted by a guide to help you understand what tools you have already have available today to address new and old triggers to design your new process or method for handling these in the way to get your best possible outcomes. Sometimes we need to craft new tools to go at these successfully.

The more you repeat these corrective patterns in the present, the more you deconstruct those old emotions or even self abusive behaviors of your past. You can be free of these triggers, but you have to put in the work and practice. There has never been one time in your life that you took your first step out on to the field for your first day of practice as an expert in that sport. Why should your personal feelings be any different? Go find that friend or get that coach or guide that’s been through something similar and came out on top (or didn’t) and ask them to advise you on how to now approach them to achieve your best possible outcomes. You got this!