The other day someone was talking to me about a topic that caused them to get increasingly angry. I could feel myself getting frustrated at the negativity the person was exhibiting and tried, unsuccessfully, to get them to calm down. Then I could feel one of my emotional triggers being set off, it’s the one that balks at negativity and judgment.

Being able to recognize your emotional triggers is important because it helps improve relationships, provides better mental health, enhances well-being, and offers a chance for you to gain better self-understanding (which enables you to improve emotional regulation).

In this post, I’ll discuss what emotional triggers are and how you can respond to them more mindfully. It’s a skill that I have instilled into my life and I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity to do so. I’ll share with you the techniques that helped me and also offer you other ideas so that you can identify your triggers and be less reactive to them. Ready? Let’s go!

What are emotional triggers?

An emotional trigger is anything that causes you to react with strong feelings. Examples are:

  • Anger
  • Fear
  • Criticism
  • Feeling out of control
  • Being ignored
  • Experiencing unfairness
  • Rejection
  • Grief
  • Vulnerability

Emotional triggers typically have their source in past experiences and have roots firmly established in our thoughts and memories.

For example, I have an intense fear of spiders which I can trace back to my childhood. For my 5th birthday, my father converted the garage into a haunted house. When you opened the door a rubber spider fell at the entrance and dangled in front of you. Add to that having a spider thrown at me by one of my siblings a few years later. Now fear is associated with spiders.

Triggers can also be caused by extremely traumatic experiences that can result in you developing heightened sensitivity around particular situations or people.

There was a family member of mine who would get angry and bang his fist on the table. This happened countless times and caused me, as a child and teenager, to be anxious. In my twenties and thirties, I always got nervous and edgy when people would raise their voices or slam their hands down on a table, desk, or countertop. That action was my emotional trigger formed by the traumatic event of my past.

You can see from these examples that emotional triggers can be considered a learned behavior. A behavior that becomes so ingrained in our psyche that it turns into an automatic and, at times, unconscious, reaction.

There have been situations when I was triggered and couldn’t place my finger on the reason why. Sometimes, when I cry, I get asked what caused the tears, and I say “I don’t know” because…I don’t know! It’s an unconscious behavior that has me struggling to pinpoint the cause.

Other times you can make the association between your reaction and the trigger, such as my arachnophobia and the anxiety of people banging their hand on a table.

The key to being able to connect A to B is awareness. That was a skill I learned through a couple of methods: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness. Yet, there are more techniques that you can use to enable you to analyze why you react to your specific triggers and how you can mindfully change your response. Let’s begin with the tools that helped me.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an aspect of psychology that looks at the way your thoughts influence your behavior. You look at your previous experiences to discover how any unhealthy thinking was established.

CBT aids you in identifying and challenging unhelpful thoughts and provides self-help strategies. It also teaches you how you can become your own therapist.

In regards to emotional triggers, CBT enables you to check the accuracy of your reaction. It’s a “Is it me or is it them?” approach. I came to realize that a majority of the time it was my biased filters that caused me to react the way I did. When you get clarity about your negative thinking patterns, then you can work on replacing these with healthier thoughts, which enables you to react differently when you are triggered.

For those who want to take advantage of CBT, look to see if there is a therapist near you that specializes in this treatment. Additionally, you can access counselors online through sites such as betterhelp, or perhaps you prefer to do a personal course.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness has become a popular form of meditation in the West over the past several decades. The main draw card for me was that it allowed me to have a non-judgmental awareness of my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. As I progressed along in my mindfulness journey I became less reactive to the triggers that previously set me off.

The change wasn’t due to something different in my external world because there will always be things that will set you off. The transformation was inward,  where I started to feel a calmness. And that is one of the beautiful things about mindfulness: you become more impervious to the emotional triggers.

If you haven’t explored the world of mindfulness, there are countless resources online that you can access. Here are several to get you started:

https://palousemindfulness.com/ (This is one that I did and it’s very comprehensive)

https://mindfulnessexercises.com/free-online-mindfulness-courses/28-day-mindfulness-challenge/

https://courses.tarabrach.com/courses/mindfulness-daily

A Trigger Journal

In this technique you record the situation or person that made you snap, the reaction you experienced following the incident (including your emotions and thoughts), and the context around the event. Put everything you can remember down. Get into the nitty-gritty, the finer details, if you can. Don’t hold back.

For instance, if someone said something that lit your fire, then record how angry you felt. Where in your body did you feel the tension? Why is that person “A complete moron!”? Is that an accurate assessment of the person? What was the reason they said what they said? Was it you that motivated them to react? That is, maybe you pushed their button!

Through journaling, you release the emotions out of your system and onto paper. After that, you can spend time in subjective and objective self-analysis to comprehend what you could do differently next time.

You can find helpful prompts to get you started with your trigger journal at Reflection. app

Breathwork

Have you ever been told to take several deep breaths to calm down? It’s sage advice because deep breathing activates your parasympathetic system. That’s the relaxation partner of your body’s autonomic nervous system. The other section is the sympathetic system which is switched on when you feel threatened. Therefore, taking slow deep breaths allows you to effectively “flip the switch”. When you can feel the negative emotions begin to stir up thanks to an emotional trigger, take time out: Stop and breathe.

For longer-term benefits of breathwork, try doing one of the following techniques for 5 to 10 minutes each day:

Box Breathing: Inhale for a count of four, hold your breath for a count of four, exhale slowly for a count of four, and then hold for a final count of four. Repeat this process.

The 4-7-8 method: Breathe in through your nose for four seconds, hold your breath for seven seconds, and exhale through your mouth for eight seconds.

Belly breathing: Lie on your back with your head and knees supported by a pillow. Place a hand on your chest and the other hand on your stomach. Breathe in through your nose and feel your stomach rise. Exhale through pursed lips and feel your stomach flatten. Repeat this for 10 rounds of inhaling and exhaling.

Roll breathing: This is somewhat similar to belly breathing. With roll breathing, lie on your back with your knees bent. Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach. Inhale through your nose and notice how the hand on your stomach is pushed up.  Slowly breathe out through your mouth with a whooshing sound. Do these steps 8 to 10 times. After that, inhale once more into your upper chest. Exhale again with the whooshing noise. Inhale and exhale like this for 3 to 5 minutes.

Reframe the triggers

It can be hard to see emotional triggers as growth opportunities. After all, they open up a Pandora’s Box of emotions within you. However, if you can take these situations as a chance for self-analysis, they help you grow as an individual. The triggers provide a window in which you can look within yourself and gain deeper self-understanding. This is the way I approach them.

Using the techniques listed in this article enables you to see the triggers from a different perspective. On top of that, you get to do introspection and overcome the pain, hurt, and trauma that you have been harboring. That’s where mindfulness helps immensely. I know this from first-hand experience. It does take work. It does take time. Above all, it takes gentleness and self-compassion.

The effort is worth it because you become a robust individual. Someone who doesn’t react with extreme emotions. That doesn’t mean you are callous and devoid of feeling. You have merely transformed into someone who has decided to shut down their emotional triggers. There is peace and joy in that.

 – Brian Simms