
Dealing with triggers (yours and others)
What happens when you’re triggered and how not to let it ruin conversations, collaborations and relationships.
Being ‘triggered’ has become a commonly used phrase — denoting a strong reaction that someone experiences as a result of an event, action or set of words.
But what does it actually mean? And how do you deal with situations where you, or someone else has been triggered?
It’s a very literal term — like when a gun is fired, pulling the trigger initiating an often explosive set of bodily sensations and accompanying thoughts.
One of the first questions to ask is why a specific event might trigger some people and not others?
It’s because our triggers in the present are the result of our individual, past experiences and conditioning.
When we’re very young and our brain is refining its understanding of how we need to operate in this world, significant or repetitive experiences lay down neural pathways which stay with us for life.
Particularly when we’re in pre-verbal stages of development, these experiences form a set of scripts — shortcuts or quick-fire decision-making processes that tell us what we need to do in particular situations and relationships.
These scripts commonly relate to seeking approval or avoiding rejection, either in relation to a figure in your life or to a group of people.
They elicit strong feelings around love, identity, belonging, fear, shame, guilt and other big emotions.
As adults, these scripts live with us and we carry them everywhere we go.
This means that in any given situation we may be ‘triggered’ into a state by a situation and/or relationship that is close enough to our past experience. Our brain perceives us to be threatened (for instance) because once upon a time, possibly too long ago for us to remember, something that felt a bit like this happened and it had a big impact on us.
So despite a conflict happening right now, the fear or anger we might feel is a ghost or shadow of our past.
We literally enter into a ‘triggered state’.
How to deal with your triggers
Having a good understanding of what’s going on is the first, most important step.
This is because when we’re triggered, all we can really see and feel is our own, immediate experience.
Commonly the brain goes into some level of fight-flight-freeze, issues stress hormones and switches into seeing others as a problem or threat.
Try to stay aware that what’s happening is a chemical reaction based on some aspect of your past — not an objective version of reality, or the totality of how you are capable of responding, right now.
This isn’t about suppressing or denying your reactions. It’s important to recognise and respect these thoughts and feelings, to feel some compassion for yourself — just don’t make the mistake of believing that the other person is definitively the problem or that they are ‘in the wrong’.
Pause for as long as it takes, notice what’s going on in your head and body, and just try to accept that it’s there.
If you need to, try and find some language that allows you to make this visible to others — “OK, I’m triggered right now and I have to deal with that first. I’m just going to take a moment.”
And again, remind yourself that the experience you’re having is not ‘you’ but a version of you that’s based on an experience in the past.
Conversely, if you can see that something you’ve said or done has resulted in someone else being triggered, hold all this in mind and don’t judge their reactions too quickly or harshly. However they react or behave, it’s not a definitive reflection of their attitude towards you or the issue you might have raised, but an echo of a past, difficult experience.
In this respect, it’s an incredibly vulnerable and open position any of us can find ourselves in and a gives us glimpse into who we are more widely as a person — so whether try and stay curious.
At the same time, give them some space and come back to the conversation when it feels like the right time.
Note: avoid explaining any of this to them — especially please don’t tell them ‘just breath’ as you’ll just sound deeply patronising, particularly through the filter of their triggered state.
Back to you though — when it’s all kicking off, breathing can be incredibly helpful.
Long, slow breaths introduce more oxygen into the body and help the Sympathetic Nervous System calm down. It’s a bit like hitting your mind and body’s ‘reset’ button (there’s more about this here)
By pausing and helping your neurophysical state to settle you’ll be in a better position to understand why you reacted the way you did (beyond simply blaming the other), understand more clearly the intentions behind the triggering event and see different perspectives.
This isn’t about allowing abusive behaviour simply because you’re triggered by it. If your safety is genuinely under threat, you need to remove yourself from the situation and look for help.
However it’s also very easy for us to stay in constant conflict by not understanding the nature of our triggered states.
It can sometimes seem like a safer place to be, as we can stay behind our wall of offence and hold the other wholly responsible.
But it’s also miserable and staying in that state for too long can have devastating consequences for your physical and mental health — the body doesn’t like having to deal with a constant stream of stress hormones being pumped into it, and nor do the people around you.
Sometimes it might be very hard to accept that there might be a valid reason for someone to behave in a certain way. But if we look at this as a simple, objective fact — we all believe we’re the good guys — then it makes it clear how our triggers are our business and others belong to them.
If we can increasingly hold our thoughts, feelings and reactions more lightly, we can stay in spaces and relationships where disagreement needs to be had but we don’t necessarily want to experience (or cause) unnecessary difficulty and confusion.
My name’s Max and I teach the practice of ‘How to fight well’ because I believe that life is better when we can disagree and still get on. If you enjoyed this, please give it a clap, subscribe to my publication for more of the same or sign up for one of my online courses.

