Triggers

by David Richo

  Some of our demons are based on shame. We can distinguish shame from guilt. We often confuse these two experiences. They are important in our understanding of triggers because, as we shall see below, each leads to a different reaction. Likewise, each has its own unique protocol for healing. Here are the differences:

  A final word about guilt: Guilt inputted into us in early life from family or religion is a common internalized trigger. When the guilt is appropriate, we welcome information and recommendations that show us how to honor the social contract. When the guilt is inappropriate, we recognize that and learn to let it go. As full-fledged adults we realize that the purveyors of guilt about what was not really reprehensible—for example, self-pleasuring—were not ultimately concerned with our breaking a commandment. Their purpose was to gain and maintain control over us, especially over our bodies, genitals in particular. What is called “sin” in this instance is really about daring to defy authority by affirming our own power over our bodies. It seems that we were guilt-tripped into believing it was wrong to experience pleasure. We were warned that our sexual instinct was dangerous, could get us into trouble, including a place in hell. Adults see now what the threats were really about. We were being guilt-tripped about having personal power. We were not being taught what we really needed to know: how to use our power—or bodies—intelligently.

  We see harmful teachings like these now without resentment toward those who inflicted them on us. We feel compassion for ourselves and for those who were afraid of losing their power over us. And we no longer hand it over to them, either. Instead, we form our own conscience with wisdom and with respect for ourselves and others. We give ourselves another chance at having and enjoying personal power. Then if we are still triggered internally by old inappropriate injunctions, we let ourselves feel the danger of offending (some unseen force) and do it anyway.

  Hell itself will pass away,

  And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

  —John Milton, “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

  WHAT MAKES TRIGGERS SO DISTURBING

  Trigger reactions involve projection. We see ourselves in others but think it is entirely about them, not about us. In projection we are looking into a mirror of ourselves. It helps to use the analogy of viewing a movie. We feel attracted to or repelled by one of the actors. But the actor is not there! We are gazing at a picture of our own attractions or repulsions. We are doing the same thing the projectionist is doing, projecting. The difference is that he is doing it without being triggered by what he sees.

  Most of the time a trigger hinges on what we imagine or believe. We imagine that what is happening is serious, threatening, sometimes even having life-or-death importance or consequence. For instance, if our ego has become indignant, we might believe the other person does not respect us as he should. Our belief can be, and often is, illusory. An experience can be carried over from the past and projected onto someone in the present. An example is fear of arousing a man’s anger. When Dad started to become angry, a beating followed. Now we fear others’ anger because our body fears a repetition of that original sequence. In other words, we predict an outcome based on past experience, not always an accurate forecaster. (Anger may indeed lead to violence in our present life, but that would be a coincidence not a given.)

  Serious triggers hearken back to early trauma. Since triggers happen in the primitive brain, a recollection of a past moment seems totally real in the present. This is how they retraumatize us. When the original painful event occurred, we were unable to express our indignation. It was unsafe to show our feelings. We dissociated ourselves from them. Our reaction to a trigger in the present finally enacts our original but stifled scream of fear or anger. A trigger gives us a chance to experience fully in the here and now what was interrupted in the past. This is how the trigger experience can help us. The psyche, always on the lookout for an opportunity to heal and integrate, catches onto a trigger so that our original incomplete experience can be finished at last. D. W. Winnicott in “Fear of Breakdown” assessed it this way: “The original experience of primitive agony cannot get into the past tense unless the ego can first gather it into its own present time experience.”

  It is hard for any of us to see that the bigness, the wallop, of a trigger, does not indicate a comparable level of seriousness or importance. The wallop has gained its heft from past events. In addition, every time we give in to a trigger we reinforce and magnify its importance as well as the level of terror or rage it evokes.

  At the psychological level, a trigger can ransack our sense of safety and security. It can feel like a death threat from which there is no escape. The stress increases when we can’t find a way to fix the problem—that is, can’t self-regulate. We feel a sense of powerlessness, even a sense that our world is falling apart, that we are falling apart. We lose our trust in ourselves. We find ourselves in a chaotic world of disorganized attachments to ourselves and others. This all happens because we are being forced to look at a trauma we are not yet prepared to face. We have been thrown into the deep end of the pool before we had learned to swim.

  Dan Siegel, in his work on trauma therapy, coined the phrase “window of tolerance.” This refers to trauma-managing, self-regulating, and self-soothing techniques that enable us to go through a threatening experience safely. A trigger closes, or at least narrows, our window of what we can tolerate. This happens because our prefrontal cortex has become temporarily disabled and its rational powers are not fully accessible. Its executive function is bypassed. Instead, the amygdala and limbic system in general take over. We therefore feel an emotional impact without access to all the subtleties of rational thought. When we go to our inner resources of self-adjustment and self-management our wise brain comes back into focus. Then our responses to the triggering event can become appropriate. Our window of tolerance has been reopened. We have space in which to hold an experience, contain it safely, and move through it securely and bodily too. The narrow window has widened.

  Our reaction to a trigger is somatic, bigger than any thought. We feel it in our body—for instance in our breath, stomach, neck, jaw, and so forth. It happens internally, with heart rate, with brain synapses. Trigger points are indeed deeply embedded in our bodies: “The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego,” Sigmund Freud wrote in The Ego and the Id. Some examples of a bodily triggered reaction are a stab of pain, losing one’s temper, blushing, feeling nausea, feeling anxiety or panic, being stricken with grief. More serious reactions—for instance shock, stroke, heart attack—require a medical intervention.

  We might be especially vulnerable to being triggered when we are already in distress: We are cranky, overtired, physically uncomfortable, irritable, frustrated, upset from a recent disturbing experience elsewhere. Our excessive reaction can lead us to make hasty or undiscerning decisions. We can lose our discriminating powers and act impulsively. Then, we may do or say something we will later regret. We may hurt someone’s feelings. We may hurt ourselves.

  The impact of triggering events is especially strong when we have not had enough sleep. The neuroscientist Matthew Walker, in his 2017 book Why We Sleep, writes, “Without sleep, our brain reverts to a primitive pattern of uncontrolled reactivity. We produce unmetered, inappropriate emotional reactions, and are unable to place events into a broader or considered context…. We cannot rein in our atavistic impulses—too much emotional gas pedal (amygdala) and not enough regulatory brake (prefrontal cortex).” Likewise, an excess of norepinephrine prevents REM sleep—that is, necessary deep sleep. In healthy sleeping, during the periods of REM sleep, our stress hormone, norepinephrine, becomes inactive. This prevents us from waking up during a stressful dream.

  Triggers can be disturbing for another reason: In addition to personal triggers there are also collective ones. For instance, we might feel foreboding anxiety or indignant rage while visiting a historic site where terrible deeds were
perpetrated. The archetypal energies linger there for years and, without an inner shield, we are in the line of fire. Our triggered reaction can even last a long time after our visit. We are carrying the grief of the original tragedy still sparking with haunted hurt.

  Some triggers work positively to marshal an energy in us that may have lain dormant up until now. For instance, we are in a situation in which someone is being victimized. Suddenly, we access the courage to step in and protect him. The human hero energy has been galvanized.

  As a practice we might ask this question when we are triggered: What part of me is ready to be activated by this? This expands our self-esteem because we notice our wealth of inner resources.

  The best news, as we have been seeing, is that every trigger shows us what our psychological or spiritual work is. In this sense, every trigger is an example of synchronicity, the meaningful coincidence between the trigger and our finding out what we have to address, process, and resolve—all in accord with the appropriate timing and our own readiness, of course. How do we address, process, and resolve a problem or issue?

  To address is to look at it what is going on without attempting to avoid, deny, or escape it. We admit what we are up to. We name our feeling, concern, trigger, reaction, addiction, longing. Neither Winken nor Blinken nor Nod is onboard.

  To process is to experience and express any feelings we have about the problem. This includes seeing how they may hearken back to our childhood. We look at our projections, transferences, and defenses. We look into our traumas to whatever extent we are ready to do so. We explore the origins of our triggers and reactions. We do this with the diligence of fearless spelunkers, no corner unexplored however dark.

  To resolve a personal issue is to make a change for the better. We work on ways not to react inappropriately to triggers but to respond effectively to whatever happens. To resolve an issue in a relationship is to hear one another and open to one another’s feelings. We make an agreement that leads to more mutually acceptable interactions in the future. We let go of any need to resent, retaliate, or hold a grudge. We may then notice ourselves entering a serene enlightened space.

  As a final review, here is an at-a-glance picture of our topic so far:

  Trigger

  The stimulus takes the form of a word, gesture, experience, action, or event that makes us feel unsafe and insecure.

  Impact and Belief

  We experience an emotional impact based on a belief, usually exaggerated, sometimes mistaken altogether, that the stimulus is important, crucial, imperative to act on.

  Reaction

  Our reaction can be an emotion such as sadness, anger, fear, shame, regret. It can also lead to a behavior such as raging, attacking, retaliating, placating, kowtowing, yielding, breaking into tears, falling apart, fleeing, fighting, freezing.

  The more important a person is in our lives the stronger is the impact of a trigger from her and the longer-lasting our reaction. We are healthy people when we let people matter, especially those who are close to us. But sometimes we bring someone too far into ourselves, we overvalue their opinion, we dissolve appropriate borders between us and them. Then we are vulnerable to being overly triggered by what they say or do. Our human challenge with all our fellow humans is to seek a balance between caring and boundaries.

  Resources

  We can marshal our internal and external resources to help us work effectively with our trigger reactions. The following chapters focus on how we can steadily build these resources.

  TWO

  TRAUMAS AND RESOURCES

  We are turtles, not birds. We take our childhood home with us wherever we go. We cannot fly away from it.

  Now we can look more deeply at points we addressed earlier in this book. We see them in the context of trauma.

  A trigger takes us by storm when it reinstates painful experiences from early life. Our more hard-hitting trigger points may have been implanted by abuse or trauma that happened in the past or in our adult life and are now archived deep within our somatic memory. Such post-traumatic stress is difficult to unseat because a trigger restimulates the original pain. The good news is that our pain is coming from a helpful scalpel not a mugger’s switchblade. It is a nudge, a prompt to approach our healing work.

  CHILDHOOD WOUNDS AND NEUROSCIENCE

  “Trauma” is the Greek word for wound. A trauma is a shocking, injuring event. It evokes severe distress that we are powerless to avoid. We become immobilized or we react with a sudden feeling or un-thought-out choice. Trauma is really more about our reaction than about the causal event. The reaction is our sense of not being in control, helpless, powerless: “I can’t do anything about this. I am trapped. There is no escape or exit.”

  In the original trauma experience we probably dissociated ourselves from what was happening. This makes the memory of it difficult to retrieve. It also explains why trauma takes so much time to absorb and resolve. It can take years to see what our original trauma was, then take more time to feel the feelings we have kept repressed, and more time again to resolve what is still unfinished. None of this can happen until our inner clock tells us we are ready to address our pain, a readiness that may take years to kick in. Trauma therapy thus involves titrating, letting the impact in little by little. As Shakespeare’s character Iago asked in Othello: “What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”

  A trigger, however, disregards our timing and hurls us into our trauma suddenly, before we are ready. This is why it retraumatizes us. A trigger is a bull in a china shop, canceling our carefully built-up—and often necessary—mechanisms of avoidance or titration. Now we understand why we have a regressive reaction, why we feel such childlike powerlessness. A trigger-trauma is an example of something happening to us that is too big for the resources we have gathered so far. For healing to happen a trauma has to feel like a gentle Bambi energy or memory in us rather than Godzilla stomping on us.

  Since trauma is recorded somatically, our bodies know better than our minds what is really happening when we are triggered. For instance, we might become numb in reaction to an attack. We later think we were cowardly. Actually, our reaction was an adaptive measure to a cue too subtle for the brain but easily grasped by our body. The body’s reaction takes precedence over strategizing by the brain. It may not read the events correctly since it assesses a trigger as dangerous on the basis of memory rather than on updated information. But we still don’t need to blame ourselves. We understand that the body has only our survival in mind. Next time we are triggered we can find a way to honor our autonomic reaction and still take a stand.

  Thus, triggers, based on trauma or on any distressing experiences, show us where the past invades the present. We can work with a trigger and thereby look directly into the hidden world of who we are, how we came to be the way we are now, how to heal ourselves, how to enter the present without the past standing in the way. Then trigger reactions turn our wounds into entryways. We are thankful we can learn from our sufferings, even find consolation through what originally hurt us. We hear in Psalm 23: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

  Along these lines, we remind ourselves of the term “post-traumatic growth.” This is a concept from the psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun from the University of North Carolina in their 2013 book Post-Traumatic Growth in Clinical Practice. We can focus on our resilience, not only our trauma—on our ability to gain from our experience and thereby evolve beyond where we were in our pain. The pain following trauma does not have to knock us out; it can awaken our inner resources. A wise therapist may help us here.

  HEALTHY WAYS TO CONNECT OUR THEN AND NOW

  Acknowledge Influences from Childhood

  When childhood issues arise, a trigger that seems like a transaction might actually be a recollection:

  Transaction: “You triggered me when you criticized me.”

 
Recollection: “I am triggered by criticism into a feeling of shame about my inadequacy. This reaction points me to my own work since it reminds me of how Mom came at me in childhood.” We might then say to ourselves or to the other person: “But wait! You are only the most recent version of a long series of unfinished experiences of criticism going all the way back to my earliest transactions with women. Thank you for showing me what I need to revisit and integrate. I appreciate an opportunity like this. Please don’t make it easy on me by softening your comments. The criticisms are helping me lessen the impact they have on me. Then we will surely find more effective ways to communicate. I don’t want to become stoical or indifferent to your comments. Ultimately, my goal in all this is to care more and be triggered less. That makes my work more than just about childhood; it is about fostering intimacy.”

  When we are triggered, we can’t reach common ground. We might wonder if getting triggered is a sly way our scared ego has of making ourselves safe from closeness? We will revisit this in a later chapter.

  The Five As

  The first way, or practice, is to explore the five As, our earliest needs: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, allowing. We look at how these needs were or were not fulfilled in our childhood. We respond in detail, with at least one example, to each of the following elements of the five As in a journal. We distinguish which parent fulfilled the needs, if only one of them did. Remember that no one will give a perfect score to his or her parents.