What is a “trigger?”
We are triggered when we’re not in a creative, loving, and happy place. A trigger is a stimulus that sets off an immediate – mostly unconscious – reaction. Our triggered state is the result of our interpretation of our current situation filtered through our prior losses or painful experiences. The trigger is experienced as a loss of love, safety, security, well-being, control, or positive regard and is perceived as a current threat to our emotional or physical needs. Triggers create instantaneous links between something that happened in our past and something happening in our present.
Once triggered, our reactions may include anything from annoyance to blind rage. Triggers can drive us into disproportionate reactions. When this happens, what we think, feel, say, or do is excessive in relation to the provocation. We may not even know why we’re reacting so strongly; we just are. There’s an emotional charge, our stomach churns, our hands sweat, our blood rises, and we have the desire to flee or to fight! We fall so deeply into our triggered state that we can’t focus on anything else.
How do I get triggered?
It can be something someone says or does, their tone of voice, the look on their face, a thoughtless act, or just about anything else. Somebody cuts us off in traffic or says something that hurts our feelings, or maybe we just make a simple mistake. Maybe an event upsets us – we get some terrible news about a friend or loved one, or a big deal we were waiting on falls through.
But is it the person or circumstance that triggers us – that frustrates us, makes us angry or unhappy? Remember, we defined a trigger state as “the result of our interpretation.” And we are solely responsible for that interpretation.
Why should I get un-triggered?
It’s easy to feel justified in our feelings and blame others when we’re triggered. But, unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to be effective and impossible to be our best while triggered. That’s because, in our triggered state, we use only a limited set of responses or coping mechanisms: fight, flight, freeze, or appease. These reactions might be useful if we’re being pursued by wild animals but are entirely ineffective in personal and professional relationships.
In a perfect world, we would never get triggered, but we all do. And, if being triggered means we’re not in a creative, loving, and happy place, that implies that we’re probably triggered to some degree fairly often. What if you had a tool that would allow you to master your triggers any time they appear? What would it feel like to rapidly recover from a trigger so that you could spend the rest of your day feeling creative, loving, and happy? What if you could spend the majority of the rest of your life feeling creative, loving, and happy?
Our straightforward training is the answer.
Contact us to find out how you can learn to rapidly recover from triggers
and get on with the business of being awesome!
