Emotional response to triggers

I'm improving my ability to handle triggers more effectively. Triggers are circumstances in which a person, place, or thing evokes strong emotions or leads individuals to relive a traumatic experience.

Triggers include uncomfortable topics, reminders of past events, things other people say or do, or even one's behaviour. When people feel triggered, they can experience strong emotions and physical reactions, such as an increased heart rate, dizziness, stomach discomfort, or sweaty hands.

People's first tendency to react to such triggers is to defend themselves or attack others, which is rarely or never a good way to deal with such situations. The best thing to do is to take a step back, literally or mentally. Namely, the emotions usually go away, and then you can generally use your reasoning to react to the incident.

It takes practice, but it is possible to step back and figure out where these feelings originated. It also helps to be curious about what is going on. Behind these triggers lies some underlying fear or worry.

People may fear rejection, betrayal, criticism, humiliation, exclusion, or rejection. They may fear that no one wants or needs them, or on the contrary, that people need them too much. They may feel helpless or not in control of the situation and experience insecurity or fear that they are losing their independence.

No matter the case, there is always something behind such incidents. In my case, it has worked for me to train myself not to react immediately and to take the time to figure out what is bothering me when I feel this kind of trigger. For example, I used to get emails at work where I felt like people were talking down to me, which made me very angry and hurt.

Instead of reacting to this behaviour, I got up from the computer and got a coffee or a glass of water. By the time I got back to my seat, the emotions I was experiencing mainly had passed, and when I re-read the email, I could see that the person didn't necessarily mean what I had read out of their words.

I regularly experience these triggers, big or small, where I think I'm reacting to a particular event or what others have done or said, only to find out afterwards (when I've had a chance to think about it ) that I was not reacting to what was happening at that moment, but to my older experiences and memories.

Therefore, it is unfortunate to immediately react to such an incident by taking it out on others or mishandling matters because one has no control over one's reaction to such triggers. It takes practice, but in such situations, instead of letting your emotions take over, you can take responsibility for your behaviour by taking a deep breath, taking a step back, and looking at what is going on before acting.