Emotional Triggers

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

Emotional Triggers can be so debilitating for people, some such situations can be rejection or being ignored, helplessness or loss of control, feeling unwanted or unneeded.  Just recently I have had more clients coming to me with such issues. They are wanting to find out how to deal with these reactions and responses that they are experiencing sometimes from ‘nowhere’.

When supporting these clients, it can become very clear where the issues are coming from quite quickly. For the client alone finding the cause can often be difficult to pinpoint due to the trigger itself. Let me explain, if everything is going along fine you are less likely to want to revisit the issue or ‘poke the bear’ so to speak but trying to deal with it when you are triggered and in ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response is impossible.

I enable my clients to feel more relaxed in a calm environment where they can be truly heard. This allows space for a better understanding as to what is going on. When people are able to speak aloud what their fear is, quite often on hearing what they are saying to themselves the lightbulb turns on. They can break down the experience and realise what it is that causes the stress response.

A trigger might make you feel overwhelmed, in a state of panic, helpless or unsafe. These emotions are valid for you, a way of keeping you out of harm. This trigger will originate from an experience, either that you had or witnessed or was told about. We are so powerful in our subconscious mind and as I said before our primary need is to keep ourselves safe therefore our behaviour will change to that end.

In understanding the trigger, in picking it apart it can be more manageable. In taking away its power it is possible to ‘deal’ with it and view it from another perspective. Then finding a way of seeing the truth in the situations that you find yourself triggered. The Truth is I am not where I was. The Truth is I can control how I respond. The Truth is there are things I can put in place to make this easier to manage. This enables a controlling of your conscious mind and ‘dispelling’ or ‘rewriting’ what resides in your subconscious. Therefore, you can change your response.

This can be an ongoing process, therefore talking about our fears to therapists, colleagues, family and friends can be so valuable. Talking about a negative experience to dispel it when it first happens will stop it being stored and coming up later in another situation. Parents, friends, colleagues, managers allow your children and staff the opportunity to tell you what their day has been like in a calm environment. To allow those fears to be dispelled and not grown in their subconscious to become a debilitating trigger.