Triggers, why do we have them?

We all have something/many things that can trigger reactions, it can be as simple as a tone of voice or body language. We get triggered because of memories, and past experiences! Have you ever experienced an automatic response to a certain situation? Maybe even feeling bad about how you reacted, but still stand up for your reasoning? Why does this happen? 

The emotion you feel in the moment can be the answer, is it anger? Fear? Sadness? Does it cause fight, flight or freeze reactions? 

Do you feel trapped with these emotions? Triggers are our way of protecting ourselves from potential pain, when something feels or looks familiar to a past experience, that caused us harm. Our brain loads the memory and how we dealt with that incident in that moment, locking and loading that reaction for future use. 

Voilà you have a trigger in the bank!

It is rather simple when you hear it like that, but the truth is dealing with those triggers can be extremely painful, because you have to look so deep into yourself and face your pain. Understanding what moment caused the trigger, it can be repetitive instances that you endured or it can be a one time occasion. For example: You are cheated on by the person you love, how you feel and how you react to it will be stored in your memory bank for future use... 

In this situation, say you break up and meet someone new, now when ever you can't reach your new love, your mind will start playing games, putting doubt, insecurities, and over thinking the situation, which in turn causes you to start feeling the way you did previously. This is a terrible place to be because you can't see the situation for what it is, you are jumping to conclusions without reason, in your mind you are justifying your emotions before you even know what is going on. We can guess the situation that will follow, you will jump down your new persons throat before they can explain anything, only to perhaps find out that they simply didn't have signal or their battery died.

This is a trigger, and with time that passes by, how many times will you use that trigger before it ruins a perfectly good relationship? This trigger now becomes a self-sabotaging reaction, which will cause you to never really be happy in any relationship if you don't deal with it.

To be able to have a healthy, trusting and loving relationship in the future, you need to visit the place where it all started! This is where choosing to be vulnerable is important, letting your guard down. Remember that explaining to your partner why these reactions occur is not going to get you off the hook for every single time, you wouldn't like being attacked for something you didn't do just because of someone you never met, so don't expect that from someone else... 

This means you have to deal with your pain, even if that means seeing a psychologist, therapist, counsellor or any mental health professional to assist you through that process. 

You deserve happiness, feeling secure and whole, without fear of heart break! This is an example of a trigger, which comes in many shapes and forms and many different reasons. 

Never give up on yourself and your happiness!

Written by Chantel Groenewald   04/12/2023