Blog Short #211: Douse Your Emotional Reactivity by Taming Your Triggers (A 5-Step Strategy)
Photo by Arun Prakash on Unsplash
Imagine you’ve just finished a big project at your job and done an outstanding job. You worked on it with another colleague who contributed valuable input, but you did most of the work.
Your boss praises the finished product at a staff meeting but focuses most of his praise on your co-worker as though she did most of the work. You leave the staff meeting, retreat to your office, and have a meltdown.
Anyone might react the same way under the circumstances, but the reaction is magnified in this case because it hits one of your triggers.
You grew up in the shadow of a sibling your parents repeatedly favored and praised for their achievements. You could never measure up.
This is how triggers work. They come from previous experiences stored in your subconscious brain.
When something happens in the present that mirrors the previous experience (or even hints at it), you’re emotionally triggered, and your reactions are amplified, sometimes out of control.
Knowing your triggers can help you regain control and reduce that emotional fire.
I’ve got a plan for you, but first, you need to understand how your triggers develop.
How Emotional Triggers Are Developed
As we’ve already affirmed, triggers come from experiences stored in your memory.
However, what makes something a trigger is the intensity of the emotional impact it had on you when it happened. The more impactful the experience was, the stronger the trigger.
Some triggers come from a single experience, especially a traumatic one, and others come from repetitive experiences. That’s the case with our example above.
To complicate things more, some of them are unconscious, meaning you have no idea where they come from and are unable to trace them back to your experiences.
It could be that you repressed a memory or that you developed it early in life before you had language.
Our brains begin storing memories before we have the words to recall them. Even infants and toddlers store emotional memories of their experiences before they can label or think about them.
That’s why most people can’t remember their early years or only have snatches of memory.
However, if the emotional impact of an experience is intense, it will create a trigger.
In other words, you have an emotional trigger, but you don’t know why.
Regardless, you can still diminish a trigger in the present, even if you don’t know where it came from, and strip of its power over you.
Working With Your Triggers
There are two ways to go about working with your triggers:
- Deal with them directly as they surface in the present.
- Study them by identifying as many as you can and begin reducing them one at a time.
I’d suggest doing both.
Use the following 5-step exercise to conduct your study. Then, as you have experiences where an emotional trigger surfaces and you overreact, delve into the particular trigger causing the problem.
The Exercise
Step #1: Identify your triggers.
I’ve attached a PDF listing some of the more common triggers. Using this list, jot down any that apply to you. You can add any others you have that aren’t listed. Be specific.
Take your time with this.
As you make your list, memories that pertain to the trigger will pop up. Most triggers come from repetitive experiences, but not always.
As mentioned previously, a single traumatic experience can create a potent trigger.
Don’t worry if you can’t tie a trigger to a specific experience or memory. Just list it.
Step #2: Prioritize your list.
Put your most potent triggers at the top and go down from there.
These are the ones that create the most emotional reactivity for you.
This list will give you a place to start when you begin working on them.
Step #3: Link a trigger to an experience.
For this step, choose a trigger you want to target.
Once you have it in mind, recall a recent situation in which the trigger was ignited, and you overreacted.
Write it out in sequence so you can see it unwind.
- What started it?
- What was the sequence of events that rolled it out?
- How did you feel and behave in response to each action?
Try visualizing it as a movie in slow motion and see it from beginning to end from the actor’s point of view.
Step #4: Evaluate.
Now let’s take an objective view and evaluate.
- Using your sequence, identify the spark that lit the fire. What words or actions set you off?
- What does it remind you of? Are there previous experiences or patterns you can link them to? If not, don’t worry. Keep going.
- Once it was sparked, where did your mind go? Were there any cognitive distortions on your end? In other words, did you exaggerate, overgeneralize, look at the incident from an all-or-nothing mindset, or distort the facts in any way? Triggers easily create distorted thinking and perception. Almost always.
- Were your emotional responses too big or out of control? Most triggers create responses that are overkill for the situation at hand because you’re responding not only to that situation but to stored emotions.
Step #5: Reflect.
How could you have reacted to the situation if you hadn’t been triggered by it? How would your behavior be different?
Asking these questions and coming up with a different response will help you the next time you encounter the same trigger.
You’ll be able to recognize what’s happening sooner and calm yourself before it gets out of hand. You can also temporarily step out to regain your composure.
By turning your attention toward the trigger and looking at it, it loses some of its potency. You’re engaging your thinking brain.
The power of triggers is that they’re subconscious patterns that sneak through the back door without being monitored. Knowing and watching them keeps the door shut and puts you back in control.
Remember this:
There’s a line from the movie St. Elmo’s Fire that says, “That was then, and this is now.”
It’s a good mantra for dealing with triggers because you’re never exactly in the same situation now as you were when you developed it. You aren’t the same person, either.
The trigger may linger, but you have the power to react differently and take control of your experience.
You also have the power to diminish it. But only if you give it a no-holds-barred look and understand how it’s affecting your reactivity.
A Quick Review
Here’s the fast version:
- Identify and become aware of your triggers.
- Prioritize them in order of potency.
- Tackle one at a time.
- Review distorted thoughts and emotional reactivity, and consider how you could react differently.
- Remember, you’re not in the same place you were when the trigger was initiated. You have control now.
The last thing to note is to be compassionate with yourself when you overreact.
It’s an emotional hijacking, not something you set out to do. But by working on your triggers, you can block that hijacking and take the wheel.
That’s all for today.
Have a great week!
All my best,
Barbara