Learn What Triggers You
For a large proportion of our daily lives, we are not conscious of our feelings, so they make themselves known to us when we have an emotional reaction. I call the stimulant that causes this sort of reaction a trigger – something that we react to emotionally in the moment when we see it as a perceived threat to ourselves, which then impacts how we are being.
Read some of the examples below:
You are speeding on the motorway, and suddenly in your rear-view mirror, you see blue lights flashing. How do you feel? What do you do?
After putting a lot of work into your report, your line manager gives you only negative feedback. How do you feel? How do you behave?
You arrive at an important meeting to find that for the umpteenth time, someone else has taken your pre-booked room. How do you feel? How do you respond?
After a sleepless night and a workday full of challenges where everything appears to have gone wrong, a colleague reaches out and asks how you are. What do you feel? How do you respond?
Reviewing the above, you may have different intensities of reaction to each point, but it’s worth considering what the trigger is any time you find yourself reacting and not being completely in control of your feelings and actions.
Triggers occur at three levels:
1) Ourselves. We may be triggered by our thoughts and how we relate to ourselves. For example, I was driving to deliver a workshop an hour away from my home and, almost at the venue, I suddenly thought I’d left all my notes and materials for the event back in my office. I immediately flushed, braked and pulled over, anxiously berating myself for being so forgetful. On checking the boot, I found everything was there. I had imagined it all and triggered myself.
Think about how you might cause yourself to react in an unhelpful way by criticising yourself or holding yourself back.
2) Others – both people and things. It’s probably much easier to think about how other people or things trigger us than how we trigger ourselves. As human beings, we find it so easy to put the blame on to somebody else or our circumstances. It could be someone’s tone of voice, their overall manner, or that they say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
3) System. Things that go on in the organisations in which we work can trigger us. For example: the announcement of a re-structure or the perceived behaviour of senior leaders from people on the front line.
The thing about triggers is they are based on our perceptions. They relate to our basic fight or flight instinct, so we react, but that reaction is not necessarily the most helpful response. For example, in my annoyance at my line manager’s criticism of my report, I might sit quietly while they go through each point, but I’ve already decided they are wrong, so I am not really listening.
Another thing about triggers is that they are reactions based on either unconscious past-based decisions or future-focused anxiety. The flashing blue lights in the rear-view mirror causes me to put my foot on the brake because I am frightened that I will get a fine, points on my licence or even a driving ban – all worries about the future, stimulated by learning from the past.
My line manager’s feedback and the tone they deliver it in, remind me of being reprimanded at school and I respond accordingly as a sullen child.
So, if I am coming from the past or concerned about the future, I am not present, and being present is one of the antidotes to being triggered.
When something triggers me and I unconsciously react, I experience a loss of power. I might feel powerful in the moment, but ultimately there will be an impact. For example, closing myself off to my line manager’s feedback blocks off my ability to learn and may ultimately jeopardise how my line manager views my attitude and performance. If I am present and not replaying decisions or experiences from the past, or present and not feeling anxious or concerned about the future, I am in a better place to choose how I respond.
Responding is different to reacting in that it comes from a place of conscious choice. Being present to and recognising my emotions, I can use them as valuable information to guide how I respond. For example, noticing my line manager’s tone and perceiving the criticism they have about my report, I feel annoyed. But rather than acting on that annoyance, I can choose to simply notice it and let it pass before responding to my line manager in a more open and curious way.
Why are we vulnerable to being triggered? There are a variety of circumstances that might result in us being triggered, for example:
When we are unaware of our emotions and the impact they have on both ourselves and others
When we have a lot on our plate, too many things to think about, so we are less able to be conscious and manage ourselves and our responses
Tiredness
For women, time of the month
Something happened earlier that is impacting our state, eg we’ve received bad news
A decision we’ve made in the past, based on an impactful experience in our childhood and now influencing us from our unconscious
Our preferred ego traps, which guide what we filter for.
I’m sure you can add examples of your own. Whatever causes you to be vulnerable to being triggered, developing awareness around it gives you a chance to do something about it. Consider what you are getting out of your reaction.
Short Term Gains
Is there short-term gain, for example feeling self-righteous?
Take a look and tell the truth to yourself.
As human beings, we don’t do anything unless we are getting something from it, even when we take a position that might not on the surface appear that pleasant (eg annoyed, miserable, indignant). Returning to my annoyance with my boss, I am triggered because I feel vulnerable, so when my boss criticises me, my resentful behaviour is a defence against my vulnerability being exposed. It is safer to take a position of counterattack and reject my boss’s comments, justifying this to myself by seeing my boss as a negative person.
Ever heard of the term ‘self-imposed psychic prison’? This is exactly what we do: we trap ourselves through our own viewpoints, decisions and assumptions, and because we are triggered, often outside of our conscious awareness, we can get stuck in these viewpoints. We then get a great deal of satisfaction out of being selfrighteous about our point of view and look for further evidence that backs it up, resisting evidence that might point to the contrary.
Long-term consequences
We can get stuck in our reaction because we are getting something out of it immediately, but there are long-term consequences.
Back to the criticising boss scenario. I am indignant and resistant to what they are saying, so in our conversation I am not really open to any contribution. I am preserving my fragile ego, but I have shut myself off to he learning opportunity. Think about what the long-term consequences of my behaviour and attitude may be. I don’t develop or build self-awareness, which stops me from being able to see my strengths and capabilities, and my report writing certainly won’t improve. My relationship with my boss suffers, reducing trust and connection, so my reaction has a negative impact on others. I become perceived as someone who is closed or a moaner.
Staying stuck with my point of view, I lose personal power, which impacts on my results – I don’t achieve what I want. Ultimately, this impacts on my career when I don’t get the promotions I want.
Whenever you get stuck in your own position and are making other people wrong, you are potentially losing power. You may feel fine in the moment, but you won’t longer term. So, can you avoid being triggered?
We are always going to be vulnerable to reacting, but there are many things we can do to help us be more conscious of ourselves and increase our resilience.
Becoming familiar with our feelings and what they are informing us of, rather than reacting to them, is certainly helpful. Keeping a log of our emotions and the triggers we experience during any given day allows us to see where our trigger points are. Strengthening our personal foundation, including our integrity, health and wellbeing, contributes to a more positive sense of self, which leads to us having greater self-esteem. In turn this helps us either not be triggered in the first place, or manage ourselves more effectively when we are.