“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” – Viktor E. Frankl
On any given day, you might experience a variety of emotions often which are connected to specific events or people. When the emotions arouse an intense negative reaction or trigger, we may feel our mood change quickly. Being able to name the trigger and then educating yourself about the potential reasonable responses to it is the first step navigating unpleasant situations and interactions.
Triggers
David Richo in “Triggers: How We can Stop Reacting and Start Healing” defines a trigger as “any word, person, event or experience that touches off an immediate emotional reaction”. Emotions being felt run the gamut of a range of emotions which include anger, fear, panic, humiliation and even shame. The author shares that “trigger” is an appropriate term for what is happening as the “gun” is in the hands of someone else. The person, situation or thought is actually pulling the trigger. Our reactions to triggers can last a short moment or lapse into minutes or hours. The duration is determined by how often we have experienced the trigger and our typical reaction to it. Reactions are based upon the beliefs, assumptions, projections, and the meaning we assign to the trigger. For example, a direct report may become angry when not acknowledged as his/her boss moves through the office in the morning. The interpretation is that “my boss doesn’t care about me”. A turn-around we use in our coaching curriculum is found in the work of Byron Katie. It is four sentences “Is it true; is it really true; how do you feel when you think that way; how would you feel if you didn’t think that way?” This reframe can stimulate thinking about other ways to react to what is happening.
Hooks
A second author, Susan David in “Emotional Agility” calls these triggers “hooks”. She shares that our four biggest hooks are blaming our thoughts for action or inaction, incessant chatter in our heads, old outgrown ideas, and beliefs about ourselves and hanging on too long to believing we are right. These four hooks circulate through our minds like a movie inside our heads. The movies can translate into narratives that are fueled by self-defeating thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. When we experience the same story continually, we start to believe it without questioning ourselves about its truth. Then when we experience the story in real life, BOOM, the emotions are off to the races. David believes that emotions making the connection to past experiences can confuse the mind with regards to what is happening in real time.
Emotional Inflammation
Taking a similar approach to triggers, Lise Van Susteren and Stacey Colino in “Emotional Inflammation” share that emotional triggers have commonality in the feelings they bring about with regards to discomfort and a rapid acceleration of emotions. The challenge becomes that just thinking about a stress event can set off the physiological response we call fight, flight, or freeze. This response can lead to a state of hyperarousal creating health impacts that affect the entire person-physically, mentally, and emotionally- as stress hormones circulate throughout the body. The authors add that triggers can combine to fuel inflammation without our awareness of what is happening. Bringing triggers to full conscious awareness allows for a number of positive ways to heal triggers.
Healing Triggers
Susteren and Colina offer strategies that can help in expressing and regulating emotional responses. First, alter your vocabulary in describing the situation and emotion. They also invite you to revisit your history by asking a few questions such as: What just happened? Why am I suddenly feeling what I am feeling? What was I doing or thinking about before I began to feel this way? Now explore the connection to what has happened in the past. What are the similarities of experiences and reactions to previous encounters? The authors add that we must be detectives in surfacing what is happening as many individuals tend to hide painful triggers from themselves.
Similarly, Marc Brackett in “Permission to Feel” guides us to be “emotion scientists”. As the name suggests, we should be willing to experiment and learn everything we can about emotions. Most importantly, this involves being open-minded. We don’t need to judge whether an emotion is good or bad, right, or wrong, productive, or non-productive. Once we recognize that we are experiencing an emotion, the next step is to understand where it is coming from. Learning about our emotions can lead to more effective interactions with others and triggering situations, albeit slowly.
This work happens slowly because our brains scan for what’s wrong instead of what’s working due to evolution. Dr. Rick Hanson: The Neuroscience of Lasting Happiness shares that in the past if we were not vigilant about what could be a danger, the danger could end our lives. While that is not the case in our present lives, we still tend to examine situations from a negative mindset which can set off emotional triggers. Once the emotional triggers have been activated the amygdala goes into action to produce the flight, fight, or freeze phenomenon. None of these three responses take us into successfully navigating emotional situations. In fact, once the amygdala begins secreting the hormones needed to respond, the thought center of our brain begins to shrink making it difficult to give a rational reaction. Thus, the work we do to heal takes place over time through focused effort.
90 Second Rule
This blog would be remiss if it did not share Jill Bolte Taylor’s work in controlling triggers. She believes that the first 90 seconds after an upsetting event are crucial for choosing to engage the trigger or not. In her videos, she shares that it takes only 90 seconds for the chemical release of stress hormones from the trigger to clear our bodies. That sounds like a short time for those of you who may feel it for a longer period. The secret is to examine what you are experiencing and move your thoughts to something else more positive. If you keep thinking about the experience, your body will keep secreting those hormones and lengthen your experience of those chemicals.
Many of us have triggers that pull us out of our comfort zones. They cause us to feel strong emotions and before we know it we are reacting to the triggers. Being able to anticipate our emotions allows us to express and regulate them more effectively. Developing emotional agility including the ability to recognize, understand, label, express and regulate negative emotional patterns results in strengthening our emotional intelligence muscle and creates more successful relationships with self and others.