You've been triggered... Now what? When we get triggered we can feel all sorts of emotions and physical sensation. We can feel anxious. Our heart starts to race, our head can feel foggy. Our breathing can get short and sharp. Our arms and legs can feel shaky or like they need to move. This is all because adrenalin starts pumping through our blood stream. For a lot of people being triggered by something can bring on all sorts fo emotions and physical experiences, some of which can include sadness, anger, irritability, as well as feeling disconnected from our body, or dissociated from our surroundings. We can get triggered for all sorts of reasons but quite often it’s because we feel unsafe, and we have learned unhelpful ways of coping over the years. Not all of us have had role models in our lives that have taught us how to self-sooth effectively. Self-soothing is when we learn how to regulate our distressed state in healthy more helpful ways so that we can feel calm and safe again. If we have not learned how to do this effectively we can really struggle when we’re feeling distressed. If we feel like we’re not coping well with what we’re experiencing we can feel a deep sense of shame.
The great news is that even though we have not had great role models in life to teach us how to self soothe, we can definitely learn how to do it as an adult. It’s worth the effort because we can’t help what pops into our minds, and we definitely cannot help how we react to things when it gets to a certain point. This is because we think with our emotions way before we think with the logical aspect of our minds. When we put in the effort, we can all explore our triggers to find out how they impact our lives and our sense of self and being, we can work through them, and find more helpful ways of coping when we do get triggered throughout life. There are some steps you can take to help you do this.
The first step is to build awareness. A lot of the time, when we become triggered, we’re on autopilot. It’s a reaction, not a response. In order to be responsive rather than reactive we need to build awareness of when we’re emotionally triggered. What is happening to you in that moment? What do you notice in your body? What are the physical sensations that you can notice? What are the emotions that you’re experiencing? Can you notice any thoughts? What is your mind telling you in this moment? Or is your mind blank?
The second stop is to S.T.O.P. Stopping will help you take a minute so that you don’t end up reacting to the situation. If you don’t stop and pause, your unhelpful coping strategy will kick in and the likelihood of engaging in impulsive behaviours will increase. This is typically what happens when emotions that are strong are raging through our bodies.
S.T.O.P is a useful acronym to help you to:
Stop
Take a breath. Exhale first, out through your nose. Then breathe back in through your nose using your diaphragm which sits just below your lungs. If you’re breathing through your chest it’s an anxious breath. Consciously switch to your diaphragm if that’s the case. Taking a breath starts to send a message to your brain that starts to calm our bodies down.
Open up to the emotions you’re feeling. Let them wash over you. Don’t struggle with them or fight them, let them be. They’re not there to hurt you. Lean into the emotions. Be curious about what is happening so you can continue to build awareness. What about this trigger is upsetting? Why am I feeling angry? Why am I feeling sad? What is happening right now?
Proceed. This is where you self-sooth but in a more helpful way. Self-soothing is regulating your distress/emotions. This can look like many different things. Examples of self-soothing can look like self-validation. This means to label and describe what you’re feeling without judging yourself negatively or guilt tripping yourself as this leads to shame. An example of this can be something like: “I’m feeling sad and hurt because I didn’t get the promotion I was hoping for. I feel let down and ashamed”. Or, “I feel embarrassed and hurt because my friend made fun of me at my expense while we were out with friends”. After self-validation, the last step is to proceed by releasing the emotions you’re feeling in a helpful way. Finding helpful outlets for our emotional energy is a necessary part of self-soothing so we can work through our emotions. If we don’t release the energy in a balanced and helpful way it can build up and create other issues later down the track.
Working through triggers and learning ways to self-soothe can be challenging. We’re here to help! If you need support to help you to learn how to manage triggers give our team a call to book an appointment on (03) 9882-9974.
This blog was written and prepared by Dr Celin Gelgec - Director and Clinical Psychologist here at MWG.