Using Emotional Triggers as a Roadmap to Healing
Triggers have gotten a bad rap in recent times. We're terrified of being triggered and we're scared of triggering others. We tiptoe across eggshells in our interactions. In return, we expect others to do the same. To mind themselves to avoid ruffling our feathers or crushing those fragile eggshells that surround our deepest wounds. In this article, we flip this perception—the one that vilifies triggers—on its head. Instead, we explore why welcoming emotional triggers is a necessary step in the process of deep healing. And how the things and people that trigger us serve as messengers and as tour guides, leading us to the areas that need to be healed.
“Flow with your triggers. Letting go of the need for the world to conform to your sensitivities so that you can live fully and move through the full emotional breadth of life. Don’t avoid triggers; embrace, integrate, release.”
here’s what you’ll learn in this article:
What happens in the brain when we’re emotionally triggered.
Three common approaches to reacting to emotional triggers.
How to use emotional triggers as a map to explore your most important healing work.
Introduction
An emotional trigger is anything from memories, experiences, words, or events that sparks an intense emotional reaction in us.
This reaction occurs independent of our mood in that moment—meaning we can be in a wonderful, joyful mood and encounter a trigger that sends tumbling into the depths of anxiety, despair, whatever the emotion might be.
Triggers have gotten a bad rap in recent times.
We're terrified of being triggered and we're scared of triggering others.
We tiptoe across eggshells in our interactions—whether in close relationships or out in the world in general.
In return, we expect others to do the same. To mind themselves to avoid ruffling our feathers or crushing those fragile eggshells that surround our deepest wounds.
In this article we flip this perception—the one that vilifies triggers—on its head.
Instead, we explore why welcoming emotional triggers is a necessary step in the process of deep healing.
And how the things and people that trigger us serve as messengers and as tour guides, leading us to the areas that need to be healed.
What happens in the brain when we’re triggered?
In the brain, there are two main pathways when we're emotionally triggered.
There's the survival-based reaction that activates the amygdala.
And there's the slow burning, thought-based reaction that takes shape in the prefrontal cortex.
Let’s first take a look at the amygdala’s trigger response…
Quick Hitting, Fast Burning Triggers—AKA ‘Seeing Red’
These types of emotional triggers hit quick, cut deep, and fade fast. When people say they ‘see red’, this is what they're talking about.
There's an intensity to the way the brain responds in these instances.
In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman refers to this type of trigger response as Neural Hijacking. It's also sometimes referred to as emotional hijacking.
Neural Hijacking occurs in situations in which the amygdala—the brain's emotional processing center—takes over the normal reasoning process.
Goleman notes that the process is typically set in motion when something sets off "the neural tripwire".
The amygdala is constantly scanning every perception and environment with one flavor of question in mind:
"Is this something I hate? That hurts me? Something I fear?"
When the answer is 'yes', the amygdala instantaneously sets off a cascade of alarm bells in all other areas of the brain. This activates the fight-or-flight response and overrides all aspects of the rational thinking mind.
In true matters of survival, this response is a valuable asset. It keeps us alive.
Unfortunately, though, the amygdala is both imprecise and impulsive.
When a single key element of a situation we're facing is similar to a past scary or upsetting situation, the amygdala calls the present situation a "match" and then sets off its alarm system before there is confirmation from the thinking brain.
Goleman notes:
But in human emotional life that imprecision can have disastrous consequences for our relationships, since it means, figuratively speaking, we can spring at or away from the wrong thing—or person.
Next let’s take a look at how the prefrontal cortex handles emotionally triggering situations…
Slow Burning, Sticky Triggers: Harboring Resentment
These are softer, duller emotional triggers.
They’re soft enough to bypass the amygdala's alarm system but potent enough to activate the prefrontal cortex. Once triggered, the neocortex then mulls over, contemplates, and perseverates on the situation.
The right prefrontal lobe harbors negative feelings like fear and aggression. The left prefrontal lobe is responsible for regulating unpleasant emotions, essentially serving as an "off" switch for upsetting feelings.
This brain pathway creates a more balanced response to triggers because it involves the thinking mind, but it can also lead to more drawn out resentment or emotional stuffing if left unchecked.
Once distressing thoughts such as righteous indignation become automatic, they are self-confirming: the partner who feels victimized is constantly scanning everything his partner does that might confirm the view that she is victimizing him, ignoring or discounting any acts of kindness on her part that would question or disconfirm that view.
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence
When we find ourselves experiencing this slow burn type of trigger, we tend to perceive of the world, our surroundings, or certain people as being inherently flawed. We might take on an inflexible or rigid perspective or make ourselves into the victim in these instances.
This leaves us vulnerable to emotional hijackings, because we're easily hurt, angered, and otherwise distressed by what others do or say—or don't do/say for that matter.
Which of course leads to continual distress.
What happens spiritually when we’re triggered?
Triggers bring to mind the concept of the pain-body. The pain-body is something Eckhart Tolle describes in detail in the book A New Earth.
Overview of the Pain-Body
We know that the physical body has an innate survival-focused primitive intelligence. This is the semi-autonomous life force that allows the body to carry on living without the mind manually willing it to do so.
For example:
Your body has the ability to react and move out of harm's way before you've even had a chance to think about keeping yourself safe (thanks to the amygdala). This type of survival reaction is instinctual—your body reacts without you consciously willing it to do so.
Likewise, there's another semi-autonomous energy form that exists within each of us that's made up of our unprocessed emotions. This is the pain-body. It, too, is a primitive type of intelligence and a psychic parasite with one goal in mind: to keep itself alive.
Tolle notes that, like all living things, the pain-body periodically needs to feed. But instead of eating food, the pain-body replenishes itself with emotionally painful experiences.
The pain-body thrives on negative thinking and dramatic situations.
It especially loves intimate relationships and families because there is so much delicious drama to be devoured.
In A New Earth, Tolle notes that the pain-body has both dormant and active stages.
Much like a hibernating bear, when the pain-body is dormant, it's doesn't need to feed.
However, the pain-body periodically awakens to feed for one of two reasons:
It hasn't fed in some time and is starving for emotional drama.
It's triggered awake by something that happens. In other words, trauma and drama can shake the pain-body out of its dormant phase.
Unfortunately, once the pain-body is awake and feeding, it doesn't want to stop. It feeds and feeds and feeds.
It only hopes that eventually we'll start to have negative feelings about our negative feelings. Because yum, more food.
The pain-body loves when we're emotionally triggered.
It convinces us to get all riled up when we are and to feel victimized by the world, defeated, and hopeless. It feasts on this downward spiral.
Of course, if we're unaware that the pain-body exists or that it's taken over, we're bound to mistake this taste for negativity for dysfunctional aspects of ourselves or to externalize our problems and point a finger at someone or something else.
Either way, we find ourselves triggered by everything when the pain-body is active, but in a way that deepens emotional wounds instead of healing them.
The pain-body loves this—it's like a juicy double drama burger with shame sauce.
After feeding for hours, days, or weeks, the pain-body eventually goes dormant again. Leaving behind a depleted mind and a weakened immune system because of all that stress it stirred up.
3 Common Reactions to Emotional Triggers
For the most part, we tend to take one of three approaches to cope when we're feeling emotionally triggered.
The Push + Shove
Approach number one is what I call ‘The Push and Shove’.
This is an action-oriented and externalized reaction to triggers. If this response had a mantra, it would be "Wanna fight?"
From this vantage point, every emotional trigger becomes a threat to our identity.
This approach tends to lead to "trigger exhaustion"—responding to every trigger with a defensive or aggressive reaction is absolutely exhausting.
Once we're done reacting, we might also then relive the experience over and over and over again ad nauseam by retelling the story to anyone who will listen.
I love the recommendation that spiritual teacher Maureen St. Germain makes for this in her book Waking Up in 5D:
Tell the story no more than three times and then let it go.
When we get hooked into retelling a story over and over again, we send ourselves back into the energy of whatever it was that happened and we become stuck in that space.
The Deny or Distract
Approach number two is what I call ‘The Deny or Distract’.
When we take this route, our hope is to numb out or avoid whatever feelings were stirred up by the trigger.
There are two flavors to this type of approach:
The Resentful Recoil
This is very much about avoiding or suppressing feelings.
We run away or retreat in fear when we're emotionally triggered. We don't want to feel, so we flee instead.
If this approach had a mantra, it would be a totally loaded "I'm fine."
The Freeze
If we take ‘the freeze’ flavor of the deny or distract approach, we shut down, tune out, or distract ourselves to avoid experiencing the distressing emotions elicited by the triggering experience.
We're paralyzed by our feelings, so we completely distract ourselves from them.
If this approach had a mantra, it would be "Feelings? What feelings?"
Both flavors of ‘deny or distract’ lead to "trigger buildup" or sticky trigger residue.
When we suppress or avoid what we're feeling when we're triggered, we're merely pushing our difficult feelings aside to be dealt with later.
We'd like to think that by doing this, we're getting rid of them, but it's more like we're procrastinating on them or adding them to a bucket. Which means that at some point, that bucket's going to overflow.
The Stand Within, Stay Present, and Ride the Wave
Finally, approach number three is what I call ‘The Stand Within, Stay Present, and Ride the Wave’.
With this approach, when we're triggered we give our feelings the space they need to be felt. We move into the feeling rather than forcing it away, blaming someone else, or running from it.
We embrace our feelings and surrender to them which then allows us to integrate them in a way that heals old wounds.
We hold hands with the emotion and honor its importance with our presence.
Staying present can be very challenging in the moment but ultimately leads to the most effective healing.
If this approach had a mantra, it would be "I see you, I honor you, I embrace you as you are."
When we see the value in our triggers, we allow ourselves to choose approach number three. It’s not easy, but it’s worthwhile.
So(u)lution: Using Triggers as a Roadmap to Healing
Triggers crack open our facade. They crack open the illusion.
From both psychological and spiritual perspectives, our triggers are messengers. They provide a visceral reminder of the areas we still need to heal or surrender to.
Triggers as Messengers
We can reinterpret triggers. Instead of seeing them as negative experiences or people to avoid or forcibly change, we can look at them as helpful clues and reminders of what we need to surrender to or heal internally.
Our trigger points shine a light on the wounds we still need to heal... lined up like mile markers on the road back home to ourselves. Flagging healing work that needs to be done along the way.
This is especially true with triggers that we can’t let go of. The triggers we keep replaying over and over like a broken mind record? We’re fixated on them for a reason.
They're pointing us to our shadows and hoping we're brave enough to shine a light on them. To really feel them. Because once we allow them to be felt, they set themselves free and release us from the limitations they once imposed on us.
What are your triggers trying to tell you?
Think about your hot button issues, topics, people, places, etc. Whatever the things are that persistently activate your feelings in a big way.
What are your go-to triggers and how do they make you feel?
When these feelings are triggered within you, how do you respond?
Do you fight back? Do you flee? Or do you make space to feel?
At their core, most of the emotions we experience when we're triggered can be traced back to fear.
In this way, triggers activate our deepest insecurities. They throw us off balance, making us feel unsafe inside ourselves.
One of the bravest things we can do is allow ourselves to really feel our feelings.
With this in mind, let's take a look at a few strategies to help us stay present with our feelings when we're triggered.
Staying Present with Emotions to Heal Our Wounds
Psychological Approach—Soothing the Hijacked Brain and Balancing Our Perspective
The hijacked brain is scared, it's worried, and it's trying to keep you alive.
In instances when this process has been unnecessarily triggered, the best thing we can do is work to calm and soothe the mind and body. By doing this, we're manually signaling safety to the brain.
In instances when you’re ‘seeing red’, try this two-step approach:
Recognize what's happening. I.e., The amygdala misinterpreted the situation as a survival threat and shutdown the rational, thinking brain.
Pause and breathe deeply. Deep belly breaths are especially helpful because they cause the diaphragm to push downward which instantly stimulates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve then stimulates the body's relaxation response within the parasympathetic nervous system. Which, in turn, minimizes the fight or flight response and allows the thinking mind to come back online.
Once we're able to think more clearly again, we can then work to bring balance to our perspective.
Bringing Balance to the Resentful Brain
To flip the script and reclaim our power over what triggers us, we can modify our perspective. Often when we're triggered, the mind's instinct is to label the triggering person or situation as the enemy.
We can shift this perspective to one that sees the humanity within people. Which means reminding ourselves that like us, everyone is subject to the emotional takeover of bad days. Maybe even bad years.
This frees us from the role of victim and creates space within our mind to see the humanity in others.
We then see bad moments instead of bad people.
This doesn't mean we act as doormats. Not at all.
In fact, with this stance we actually empower ourselves to take responsibility for our emotions. We recognize our innate power to heal when we no longer expect the world to conform to our sensitivities.
And we begin to surrender to rather than resist what triggers us.
The goal is balance, not emotional suppression: every feeling has its value and significance
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence
Spiritual Perspective—Dis-identifying from Emotions
From a spiritual perspective, we are not our thoughts or our emotions. We are the awareness that perceives of them.
From this vantage point, we don't feel, feeling happens to us. It's a byproduct of the thoughts that form as the mind reacts to a trigger.
Realizing this allows us to dis-identify with our emotions in a way that creates the space needed to process them.
It's important not to confuse dis-identifying with ignoring.
Emotions must be acknowledged in order to be released.
Tolle notes that dis-identifying from our emotions means that we let go of the story that surrounds the feeling or emotion.
If you’re identified with sadness, you might say something along the lines of…
I'm sad because my life is falling apart. My husband left me. I'm disappointed in my career. My car broke down, and I can't afford to have it repaired.
However, if you’re dis-identified with sadness, the recognition of the feeling simply becomes…
There is sadness within me.
In other words, when we dis-identify from our emotions, we take our feelings as they come without trying to force the mind’s interpretation onto them.
We experience the feeling as it presents itself in the body and do our best to stop the mind from getting wrapped up in the story of why it's there.
The added story prolongs our pain and suffering because it feeds into the pain-body.
Tip: It can help to visualize the color violet to calm, heal, and integrate when triggered. This gives the mind something to focus on (or gnaw on) besides the story behind emotion.
Important Note
Note that from either perspective—a practical or a spiritual one—the goal is never to ignore or suppress our emotions.
Rather...
From a practical perspective, we leverage the power of empathy to recognize the humanity in others. This doesn't mean we don't acknowledge what bubbled up to the surface in response to someone's actions or words. Rather that we acknowledge what bubbled up, give it space to be felt, but don't allow the experience to transform us into a victim. Victim mentality robs us of our power to heal.
From a spiritual perspective, we leverage the power or awareness to recognize when we've been triggered. And we do our best to create space for the emotion to be felt by quieting the mind's story around why it's there. Doing so returns our power to us and allows triggers to guide us to the places within that need attention, love, and healing.
Final Thoughts
Don’t avoid triggers, don't fight against them. Instead, embrace their guidance, feel what needs to be felt, and allow the feeling to move through you.
This is so much easier said than done.
It takes immense courage to flow with our triggers instead of pushing against them or shutting down.
But when we do, we reclaim the power to heal ourselves, to heal our lives.
We remind ourselves that the world doesn't need to conform to our sensitivities in order for us to be truly fulfilled.
And we recognize that we have the power within us to experience life in a very rich, meaningful way—ups, downs, and in-betweens.
Bottom line: When we're not afraid of our emotions, triggers lose their power over us. We can move towards the things that once scared us with the confidence that we have the tools we need to heal our wounds.
Sources + Further Reading
Goleman, D. (2020). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books.
Blog post: The Ego's Greatest Lie + The Pain Body
Article: Calming Your Brain During Conflict
