I grew up around a lot of noise and action. Everything around me was loud from the urban sounds of Baltimore to the sounds of people in my family verbally or physically fighting. I didn't realize just how loud my surroundings were until I experienced quiet times. All of that noise disturbed me. Especially the noise that came from fights. I am talking everything from my aunts and uncles arguing to witnessing physical fights at school or that one time my father destroyed the interior of our house in a drunken rage. In those moments I was scared and I realize that as an adult I have some PTSD from being around noise and violence.
Fast forward to today and I am still not fond of arguments, name-calling, or physical fights, and any time that I even get close to serious conflict I am triggered. I start to feel like the little boy who was unable to protect himself and all I want in those moments is to be safe and I want to simply hide under a rock.
Fortunately, in my adult years, I am not experiencing the level of violence and noise (by choice) that I observed as a kid but I still have to deal with conflict that may arise from friendship, romantic relationship or even from work because let’s be real, work can be one of the most emotionally violent places one can go, especially as a black man in America but that is for another day.
When I experience drama or conflict now, many times it impacts me more deeply than the magnitude of the actual situation because my emotional triggers have been activated.Emotional triggers are upper-reactive places inside you that become activated by someone else’s behaviors or comments Says Judith Orloff, M.D. These emotional triggers can result from past trauma, insecurities, and negative past experiences.
Many of our triggers are formed from childhood based on upsetting situations where we could not protect ourselves and because we were children we did not have the capacity or tools to deal with the pain sufficiently so we tucked it away or ignored it.
An Example
Let's say you were bullied from age 7-14 about your skin being too dark and it making you ugly. Let’s say that you never really got over the hurt that it caused but of course you moved on with life. As an adult you encounter someone who makes an insensitive remark about the color of your skin such as "you are pretty for a dark-skinned girl" you may feel hurt, ashamed, and ugly in that moment because even if you have worked to regain your self-esteem since you were bullied, your response may be aggressive or you may revert to a really sad place because a part of you has not healed from the bullying and therefore you are still affected by the current comment.
Emotional triggers are those things that are still healing. We may be actively working to heal them or they may be laying dormant but chances are that we all have a few. These fear-based beliefs have settled their way into our lives and are simmering in the background so when someone throws an emotional ingredient into the pot the water begins to spill over.
Most common emotional triggers according to Psychology Today
Someone rejecting you.
Someone leaving you (or the threat that they will).
Helplessness over painful situations.
Someone discounting or ignoring you.
Someone being unavailable to you.
Someone giving you a disapproving look.
Someone blaming or shaming you.
Someone being judgmental or critical of you.
Someone being too busy to make time for you.
Someone not appearing to be happy to see you.
Someone trying to control you.
Someone being needy or trying to smother you.
Trying to maneuver life and relationships with one or several emotional triggers can be difficult. Imagine that your triggers are like land mines closely placed together, sooner than later somebody is going to step on one and boom you explode. The explosion can look like overreacting, lashing out in anger, or maybe you hold on to it longer than what is healthy. Another reaction is that you implode or become withdrawn as the impact and emotions that were sparked by the trigger begin to consume you and make it difficult for you to recover.
Trigga fingers turn to twitter fingers
and unhealed painful past experiences often turn into emotional triggers. The invisible bullets are in the form of current situations but the emotional trigger is from the past. In this episode I explore the the impact that past hurts have on you when they show up as emotional triggers
It took me a long time to learn what my triggers were. One way to discover your triggers is to assess the things that happened to you in your life that make you upset or sad or emotional. Focus some attention on things that other people say or do that throw you off and make you feel anxiety, guilt, or shame. Once you assess what those triggers are, see if there are any connections that you can draw. Once you make connections I suggest that you ask yourself is there a history that explains why you react the way you do in these situations? Sometimes we aren't aware of the impact of a painful memory. Not being able to protect ourselves as a child can morph into us being protected as adults.
People can be triggering, places can be triggering. imagine someone who was proposed to in a specific space and later that engagement was called off when that person travels back to that place they may feel the pain of the broken engagement.Lately, I have noticed that one of my triggers is making hard decisions. This stems from the beautiful support that I received from my mom growing up. My mom was and is very nurturing and supportive so I always had her opinion or support as a resource when I was making a big decision so t felt comfortable to decide because I always have her there as a support system. Once I grew up and was faced with some very hard decisions I was lost without her help so when it came time for the decision I became very anxious and I reverted to indecisiveness not realizing that what I was reacting to was the lack of my mother to help make decisions. It wasn't that my mother was no longer available to support me, I simply grew up and realized that I needed to be the man she raised me to be she always gave me freedom but subconsciously I relied on her support more than I realized.
Now when I am making a decision sometimes I freeze up so I am working on healing that needs for momma’s support to make decisions
Emotional triggers show up in so many ways and it is important to heal and I highly suggest counseling or therapy because that way you have a non-biased professional there to te help you heal.
What I did wrong was not being aware of what my emotional triggers were sometimes I II took my unhealed hurt out on people disproportionately to their actions or worlds. Now I am aware of what my emotional triggers are so I can either communicate them to others ahead of time and or use the tools Ii learned during therapy and self-reflection to delineate my past hurt from the current situation.