Triggers and trauma

What are triggers?

Suddenly you become afraid, tense, angry, overcome with shame, or start trembling. Completely beside yourself or conversely numb. Without perhaps fully understanding why. Or you think: this shouldn't affect me this much, should it?

High chance you have been triggered. There is nothing wrong with you. Being triggered happens automatically. But you can gain insight into it, and learn how to deal with it.

A trigger is a stimulus that can evoke strong emotional and physical reactions. You are also often no longer able to think clearly. It can involve external stimuli (something you feel, see, taste, hear, smell) or internal stimuli (a bodily sensation such as hunger or an elevated heart rate, a thought, or an emotion).

Examples of external stimuli can be: 

• Seasons or a certain type of weather
• People who evoke something in you
• Situations between people, for example arguments but also love
• Certain locations or spaces
• Not seen, feeling heard, or having all eyes on you
• Criticism and rejection
• Something you see or hear
• A certain word, or a certain sentence
  
  

Examples of internal stimuli can be: 

• Emotions
• Physical experiences such as nausea, rapid heartbeat, or pain
• Sensory experiences such as smells, taste, sound, being touched, seeing certain images
• Certain thoughts like: ‘I can't handle it’, ‘they don't want me’; thoughts that can fuel all kinds of things
• Memories that surface
  
  

Fragments of a traumatic experience

These stimuli, or triggers, can be seen as small fragments of a traumatic experience the one that brain firmly stored. For example, a certain scent, color, or sound that was present during a traumatic experience. Sometimes you are very aware of triggers and the association with a previous bad experience, but it can also be unconscious. 

When you get triggered, it actually means that a memory is being activated. Emotional and body memories that are stored in your emotional brain. After all, we remember trauma strongly with our feelings and our body, because at that time less energy went into thinking. 

What does being triggered mean?

Even if your life is going well, and your world is currently safe, your inner alarm system Acting at the moment a trigger occurs. Brain and body then react instinctively, believing there is a perceived threat. 

When you get triggered, you are overwhelmed by feelings and impulses. The emotional memory center sounds the alarm. Your heart rate goes up and muscles tense up. Thinking is blocked because all energy is focused on survival reactions as fight, flight, or freeze.

Something in the present touched this memory

It is as if your brain brings up an old memory and makes you feel as though you are experiencing that event all over again, even if the actual present is very different.

Your body remembers how it reacted to those previous situations. So, if you end up in a similar situation, the same physical reactions such as heart palpitations, sweating, or muscle tension may occur again.

Signs of being triggered

What triggers you and how you react varies from person to person. However, there are often characteristics in the areas of physical, emotional, psychological, and behavioral reactions that you can recognize in yourself or in others.