Triggers

by David Richo

  REAL AND IMAGINED TRIGGERS

  When we know we are triggered by something, unique to us or universal, we are on the lookout for it. This high-alert style may lead to our imagining what is not really there. For instance, we might judge others unfairly because we are basing our attitude or behavior on a faulty suspicion. Here is an example: Pascal comes from a family in which people did not have his back. His parents did not stand up for him, nor did they step in to protect him when needed. This led Pascal to be overly sensitive about whether his friends and partner could be trusted to back him up. On one occasion he imagined that they did not come through for him when they actually did. At a party, a coworker, Cole, was saying that Pascal had more talent than fit the job he was in. Cole was encouraging Pascal to look for work that would take advantage of his full range of creativity. Pascal’s friends and his wife, India, heartily agreed. But Pascal felt Cole’s comment as a put-down. He felt hurt that India and his friends did not speak up for him but agreed with Cole. At home, he projected blame onto India.

  Often, blame in a relationship is based on misunderstanding or imagining a trigger that was never really pulled. In addition, blame is often a cover-up for grief. And grief is what Pascal was actually feeling. When India explained, Pascal realized he had it wrong. He then found comfort or relief, but that does not help him identify and work with the deeper patterns behind his trigger reactivity—only salve it. Pascal still needs help finding the useful path from painful trigger to personal work.

  Some triggers are based on reality; some are based entirely on illusion. For instance, fear creates a distorted version of reality, something like the way the world looks to a colorblind person. We might react with a paranoid fantasy or belief to something that is not really a danger. We are triggered by something that is not happening—a situation like the one we saw in the example of Pascal and Cole.

  Here is a personal example of how fear triggers and misleads. Once I was looking out my window into the backyard of my house in Duxbury, Massachusetts. I saw my cat, Keif, in distress mode, strongly arching her back and fiercely hissing. I saw no danger and wondered what she was reacting to. When I looked out another window, I realized what all the fuss was about. A gentle-looking cocker spaniel puppy had wandered into the yard. Not only did the puppy pose no threat; he also didn’t even see Keif. So all the cat’s gyrations and adrenaline reactions were in vain. Keif was triggered into fear mode when there was nothing fearsome happening. I remember thinking that the whole scene was a metaphor for some of my own fear reactions. My story shows that we, like the scared cat, can misread some triggers. Could it be that all our triggers are cocker spaniel puppies? Could it be that we are like Kief, afraid of what isn’t harmful (and perhaps the thing she was afraid of would have only wanted to play)? Likewise, we too might feel fear at times even from a position of safety—normal for a cat and for us.

  We are also triggered by an illusion when the meaning or level of seriousness we imagine does not match reality. Since we are caught in our own projections this mismeasurement will be well-nigh impossible to pick up on. Here is one example: Jamie tells her friend Casey that she is moving away by the end of the year. Jamie’s words are a trigger; Casey immediately has a sinking feeling in her stomach. Jamie’s message is simply that she is leaving town; her decision was not meant to be an abandonment of Casey. Yet Casey feels it that way because her emotions do not distinguish between absence and abandonment. Any leaving is taken as abandonment, which exaggerates and mistakes its meaning. (A fear of abandonment doubles the impact of a trigger.) Casey will benefit from her reaction when she sees that grief is appropriate but feeling abandoned is a pointer to where her work is. This example brings to mind the psychologist Erik Erikson’s 1950 book Childhood and Society: “Why do we think the face has turned away which only looked elsewhere?”

  In a second example, the illusory interpretation of an experience is more subtle. Rocco is single though he wants to have a partner. He is trying to sublet his apartment for six months while he works in another city. Prospective renters come to view his place, but they choose other apartments. He is triggered into worry or panic. He realizes that he is to leave soon and thinks, “I still have no one.” That phrasing can be a clue to Rocco that somehow he is mixing up a business transaction with relationship concerns. He is feeling rejected by the viewers who did not choose him, when actually they only did not choose the apartment. Rocco can work on how his sense of isolation or unworthiness has contaminated what has to be seen as a straightforward business enterprise.

  We notice in both examples that we are triggered when we have not separated what is informational from what is personal. Likewise, in both examples, grief is appropriate, and the triggers help us look at our personal work. When a trigger accomplishes that nudge toward self-reflection, it is a true boon.

  Casey and Rocco might tell their friends about how they were triggered. Their friends may rush to explain: “Oh, it wasn’t meant that way.” But that statement is addressed to the part of the brain based on reason, the prefrontal cortex. The trigger reaction is happening in the limbic system of the brain. So rational explanations do not work. The friends are speaking in cerebral to someone who now can only speak limbic. That part of us does not listen to reason, cannot listen to it. The work for Casey and Rocco will require a deep look into the primitive origins of their reactions and a reach into the appropriate feelings they have been avoiding.

  As a final observation about our exposure to triggers, we could recall Aristotle’s comment that we feel pity and fear when we are spectators at a stage tragedy. We are indeed triggered while watching plays or films. We notice ourselves reacting as if the events on stage were happening to us. We amp up or tear up based on what we see on the screen, but the story is actually our own. The drama has moved into us, unfolding robustly in the theater of our own wounded hearts.

  Yet, we can react with feelings and then not have to engage in follow-up behaviors. At a horror movie, we feel fear, but we stay seated and we get over it when the next scene opens. Tears flow when the characters of a film endure misfortunes, but we don’t collapse in despair. We become angry as we see them enduring injustice, but we don’t protest or retaliate. This reminds us that we do have it in us to react to a trigger without having to act on it.

  The blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us

  to most preposterous conclusions: but we have

  reason to cool our raging motions.

  —Shakespeare, Othello

  WHEN THE TRIGGER IS INSIDE US

  A trigger can rouse us from the outside, what people do or how events provoke us. But sometimes the trigger is not in the room. It is internally aroused: We recall an event that was traumatic. We imagine what might happen in the near or distant future. We have a sense of guilt or shame and feel a fear of impending doom or punishment. We realize we hurt the feelings of a friend and we are triggered into the fear of losing her friendship. All of this might be illusory of course. We would have to check with our friend to find out if what she is feeling matches what we are believing.

  Here is an example that shows how an internal trigger can connect to our childhood. Let’s say that our boundaries were continually crossed in early life, including by having been abused. This leads to shortening of the spectrum between being asked to fulfill a person’s need and feeling it as a demand. Without that background, the spectrum is wide; we easily see the difference. A friend asks for a favor, some form of support. We might hear her asking as demanding because of our habit of seeing these two as synonymous. Our wick is short so we easily become angry—and can’t trust that our anger is justified. Instead, we can ask her directly if she is asking or demanding. If she is only asking, we can confess humbly, “I get these mixed up sometimes so I need others’ help in discerning.”

  Here is one more example of the spectrum experience. We were not given healthy attention in childho
od, only scrutiny—not watched over but patrolled. We did not feel supported but rather inspected, especially to find out if were staying on the straight and narrow. Later in life we might fear attention, no matter how sincerely it is given to us. Our spectrum of attention, from healthy caring concern to unhealthy scrutinizing, has been cut short. We are able to feel only the negative end of it, the familiar end. Now all forms of close attention are triggering. We feel threatened and we react with the same fears we felt in childhood.

  This leads us to the following question: Who is triggered? It is not the woman who has become a brain surgeon and runs her department at the hospital. It is the little girl still inside her who was told over and over again how inadequate she was and would surely remain. It is not the man who has become a Buddhist monk and is trusted by his sangha to oversee many important tasks skillfully. It is the little boy who was controlled in his every move and trained not to trust himself. The little one inside us had her or his amygdala trained into fear, shame, and a sense of inadequacy before we had boundaries to fend them off. That child within is the one who is triggered. The big adult in the world is still often at the mercy of those internal conditionings no matter what her or his accomplishments, intelligence, or even self-confidence.

  We might trigger ourselves in some of the following ways:

  Feelings arise in us, especially when they do so suddenly, surprisingly, or beyond our control.

  We have a gut feeling, premonition, suspicion, or intuition.

  We keep doing what we don’t like ourselves for doing—for example, fishing for compliments, whining, manipulating, being too passive, getting caught in arguments with people who are closed to new knowledge.

  We can be triggered by our own sense of obligation. This can lead us to choices that do not reflect our own deepest needs, values, and wishes.

  We feel ashamed because we have disappointed someone, especially if it happened because we did not keep our word.

  An inner critic can trigger us into self-doubt or self-blame.

  A memory of a traumatic event, a mistake we made, something we did that we are not proud of sits in us as regret and that may trigger us to blame ourselves or, when appropriate, to make amends.

  A memory of a happy event or word of wisdom comforts us in times of difficulty or pain.

  If we did not let go of our caretaking style toward our adult children when the time for it came, we might now be triggered unduly by their independence from us or by their personal issues.

  Fears and phobias can be triggers into actions or rituals that we believe are useful when they may not be.

  A dream can trigger us both during the dream and when we awaken.

  Any one of our senses can trigger us. Our olfactory sense is particularly powerful and has a long-lasting memory. We can be easily triggered when we smell something that has an association with a past experience—for example, particular foods, perfume scents, flowers, human or household aromas, unpleasant odors.

  Some triggers arise from our unconscious. They may take a while for us to catch onto consciously. They are based mostly on transference. This means unconsciously transferring onto a person in the present the feelings, expectations, or beliefs about a person from our past. Someone comes along who has the qualities, and sometime the looks, of the parent with whom we still have unfinished business. This time the trigger does not lead to a burst of anger or a withering in sadness or fear. It is much more subtle. We try to get that triggering person to come through for us, to relate to us, to show love for us as we wanted one of our parents to have done. If he or she is withholding or distancing, we are triggered and then might react even more impetuously in our demand on him or her. We use every crafty trick we know, every subterfuge we can pull off, to commandeer him or her to fulfill our need. Here is the contradiction, however. At the same time, we subtly train the other person to be more and more like our parent, which could mean his being more withholding. We train him to spurn us. We stay while he is stingy so we can see Dad’s stinginess again. We may then reduce the size of our requests, finally begging for just a crumb of connection. Then, by the grace of a sudden enlightening moment, we realize how that person is indeed just like Dad and we understand what all the fuss we have been making is really about. Awareness releases us from the transference of the past onto the present. We see how today’s trigger hearkens from the past. We see how our past has strong-armed its way into our relationship in the present and how we became triggered and hooked.

  A major internal trigger reaction is grief, expressed or unexpressed. This trigger is well illustrated in the following scene from the TV program M*A*S*H: the medical unit’s commanding officer, Colonel Sherman Potter, is aware that his soldier-patient has awkwardly attempted several times to commit suicide. One day, the colonel finds the soldier in the empty operating room fumbling with the anesthesia machine. He is trying yet again to kill himself. The colonel is triggered into anger and seizes the hose and mask from the soldier’s hand. He then turns on the machine properly, pushes the mask onto the private’s face, and says, “You’ve screwed up over and over so now I’ll show you how to do this right. You want to die? OK, let’s do it!” The soldier is triggered into shock and fear. He pushes the mask away shouting, “Are you crazy? Get away from me!” But the colonel keeps at it (though never intending to harm him). Suddenly, the young man bursts into tears and, burying his face in the older man’s chest, he cries like a baby. At this, the colonel tenderly embraces him and quietly says, “Good, the part of you that wants to live is stronger than the part that wants to die.” Here the poignant scene comes to an end. When I watched this episode, I realized something much more profound going on. I saw a connection between suicide and unresolved grief. A person is more likely to contemplate suicide when he can’t start grieving or can’t end it.

  We bottle up our grief at times—that is, can’t start feeling it. We perseverate in grief at other times—that is, can’t stop feeling it. We repress it in a depressed state. We are possessed by it in a manic state. The soldier in the M*A*S*H episode finally allowed his grief to emerge fully. This freed him, probably for the rest of his life, from the need to destroy himself. The triggers of repressed or frustrated grief were no longer pointed at him. Instead, he was positively triggered into resolution.

  We cannot overlook one other detail in the scene: the grief happened in the arms of someone who cared. It is the combination of letting go into our grief while we are held safely that graces us with the full antidote to despair. What a paradox indeed: grief is our threshold into hope.

  Only if someone has her arms around the infant…can the I AM moment be endured, or rather, risked.

  —D. W. Winnicott, Deprivation and Delinquency

  INNER DEMONS

  Some Buddhist masters wake themselves up with a practice in which they invite all the demons of chaos and disaster to visit them. My little self says, “I am not at that point,” but a braver, more expansive self answers, “Maybe that is what I have already done.”

  —Stephen T. Butterfield, The Double Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra

  An “inner demon” is a metaphor for an irreconcilable, disturbing, and relentless inner conflict. This is another example of an internally aroused trigger. An inner demon has its origin in the past. It can take many forms—for example, feeling haunted by regret, shame, nagging guilt, some terrifying past experience that obsesses us. Likewise, when we repress our traumas they turn into buried ghosts. These become inner demons because the cemetery is inside us.

  An inner demon brings a gnawing sense of inner collapse, a chaos ever approaching, always clutching us. This condition feels like a war within us from which no truce or treaty is possible. An inner demon is a torturer that triggers both anxiety and a sense of powerlessness. It is ego dystonic—that is,
we cannot integrate it into our sense of normality. It feels alien to us, like a sinister demon possessing us.

  Inner demons can’t be fully named. We are conscious of their presence, but we find it hard to describe what they consist of or what they want of us. An inner demon is ultimately an ineffable anguish. Since healing takes telling of our pain, inner demons are tough to banish.

  Actually, inner demons are thought forms and paradigms our ego bought into and now plague us with. Inner demons can lead a person to addiction or other forms of escape, including suicide. An inner demon cancels our ability to protect ourselves with self-deception. We have to face it, no escape. Likewise, we may feel the demon knows us better than we know ourselves. But, he knows us in an unsupportive way—the worst way to be known.

  However, inner demons are not alien—or threatening—to the higher self, our larger life beyond ego. Our wholeness can accommodate what our conscious ego cannot. We activate this aspect of ourselves by feeling grief about whatever trauma was inflicted on us. If the demon is a regret about something reprehensible, we allow ourselves, in the present, to feel contrition for what we did. We ask for forgiveness for the past. We make amends. We commit ourselves to changing our behavior for the future.

  We love ourselves when we accept our own demons as legitimate players in our life drama. Then even our instability and sense of incompleteness can be welcomed. In the Buddhist tradition, the great teacher Milarepa tried at first to expel the demons from his home but finally conversed with them, and they were transformed into allies. Our inner demons can be transformed that way too.