What is an Emotional Trigger? + exercise to identify your triggers

An emotional trigger is basically anything that causes you to experience intense emotions, regardless of your current mood at the time of the trigger. You could be having a great day, and suddenly, you are exposed to a trigger and find yourself in a rage. The trigger itself could be an old memory of a traumatic event or just something that makes you think about that event. What happened is that you are suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it could be related to various types of events, including the following:

• Rape;
• Physical assault;
• Loss of a loved one;
• Combat;
• Emotional or physical abuse

What Happens When You’re Triggered?

When you experience an emotional trigger, it significantly affects your emotional state, so you will likely feel very distressed and even overwhelmed. You’re unable at that point to stay grounded in the present, and you experience the sensation of being transported back in time to that earlier event when the trigger was formed. You might have what is called a flashback where you literally believe yourself to be re-experiencing that traumatic event, and you’ll also find that your behavior and thought patterns are affected by this experience.

Emotional triggers vary and can be either internal or external. What triggers you can be as subtle as a smell or a sound, or it can involve certain things that someone might say or do to you. You can also be triggered by observing or reading about something similar to what happened to you. For example, something as simple as watching a movie that depicts a similar traumatic event could trigger you.

Trauma doesn’t always result in the formation of an emotional trigger, and that fact has caused some people to claim that triggers don’t exist. The reality is that people respond differently to traumatic events, and even two people experiencing the same thing might have very different reactions. Whether you form an emotional trigger or not can be affected by numerous factors, including your age at the time of the event, mental health, family history, friend and family support networks, and even cultural and religious beliefs.

If you have formed one or more emotional triggers related to traumatic events in your life, however, this is something that toxic people can and will use against you. The narcissist in your life will not hesitate to push your buttons just to get a reaction out of you. That’s why it’s important to learn how to identify and diffuse your emotional triggers. Doing so will allow you to take ownership of your own emotions and become a powerful agent of your feelings.

Identifying your emotional triggers will help you understand that you are not a victim; you have a choice in what you feel and how you react, and you can gain valuable insights into what caused that emotional trigger, so that you can thus heal the trauma that caused it. The process of identifying and diffusing your emotional triggers will, at times, be difficult. It can bring up strong emotions and will take time, but the benefits of having control over your reactions when your buttons are pushed are well worth the effort.

It is important to understand that you might have to diffuse an emotional trigger on more than one occasion. It’s likely been with you a long time, and it can continue to cause problems again and again. But stick with it, have compassion and patience, and soon, you’ll be able to diffuse the buttons that your toxic partner likes to push so much.

Exercise to identify your triggers:

The first step in identifying your triggers is to recognize when you’re having an intense emotional reaction. With a narcissist in your life, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to notice when this occurs. You’re going to need mindfulness to recognize when you’ve been triggered because, although it sounds easy to identify when you’re feeling strong emotions, it’s easy to get lost in the reaction well before your conscious mind registers what’s happening.

The key to noticing when you’ve been triggered is to pay attention to your body. You want to become an objective observer of what is going on in your body. When you’re triggered, you’ll typically notice your heart and breathing rates increasing, your muscles getting tense, and perhaps, your stomach might start hurting, or you might feel a tightness across your chest.

To start getting into the habit of noticing your body, you might try paying attention to it as you’re exercising. As you’re jogging or working out at the gym, pay attention to how your body is responding. Notice when your muscles feel tense and your breathing gets more labored. Can you feel your heart racing in your chest? To help with this, let’s try a mindfulness meditation exercise.

• Sit in a comfortable position where you can stay awake, but one in which you feel comfortable.
• Close your eyes.
• Bring your focus to your breath and take 10 deep breaths that expand your belly and your chest. When you expand your belly, it stimulates the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system to help calm you down.
• Bring your attention to your body and survey your body from head to toe. Can you feel any tension in your jaw? Can you feel your hair on your neck or shoulders? Can you feel any uncomfortable sensations anywhere on your head? Does your nose itch? Then, move on to your neck and shoulders. Do you feel any tension or pain there? Move down to your chest and lower arms. Can you feel your hands in your lap? Can you feel your shirt on your body? What does the cloth feel like? Keep going down your body, noticing any sensations – good or bad – that you perceive.
• After you’ve checked in with every part of your body, you will want to bring your attention back to your breaths. Take 10 more deep breaths.
• Think of something for which you’re grateful. It could be your health or your job or your children or some other loved one. What does it feel like in your body to feel grateful? Does it feel warm? Do you feel it in your heart or chest? Where do you feel gratitude in your body?
• Let the feeling of gratitude expand out of your body and into the universe. Envision it as a bright, white light shooting out all around you.
• Focus again on your breaths and take another 10 deep ones. Thank the universe for your life, then open your eyes.
• You now have a baseline understanding of how your body feels when you’re not triggered and when you feel good. This will help you notice changes when you experience an emotional trigger. Practice surveying your body randomly throughout your day. Notice changes that occur as you experience minor stressors, like the ones you might experience at work or on a busy day where you have lots to do.

Now you’re ready to identify some of the triggers that you have. While you go through this process, don’t judge yourself for any emotions that arise, and don’t fear them either. Let them come up so you can deal with them. When you’re ready, go through the mindfulness meditation described above, but instead of envisioning how gratitude feels in your body, bring your focus to three memories you have of situations where the narcissist in your life pushed your buttons, and you felt intense emotions as a result. For each memory you have, you well want to describe the following in your journal:

• What was the situation in which this happened? What were you doing, and what did the toxic person say or do that caused your emotional reaction? Be thorough in your description.
• As you remember the situation and emotions it created, locate and describe where you felt those emotions in your body. Did your stomach hurt? Did you feel an achy sensation in your chest muscles? Where did you feel those emotions?
• Describe each emotion you experienced and where you experienced it in your body separately. Be thorough, but non-judgmental as you do this.

Now that you’ve identified the emotions and where you felt them in your body, it’s time to identify what specifically triggered you. When you’re triggered, it’s the result of deeper emotions than what it seems like from the situation. For example, if your narcissistic spouse is projecting their bad behavior onto you by accusing you of cheating on them when you’ve just been talking about their infidelity, it’s not the accusation that triggers such an intense emotional response. It’s something deeper – an unmet need that you think you’ve lost or aren’t getting from your toxic spouse.

Your brain is responding to your emotional reaction by triggering the system that prepares you to deal with perceived threats. For our ancestors, it was a good thing to help them survive, but now when we don’t have so many lions looking to eat us, the fight or flight system as it is called can cause more harm than good. Noticing when this is happening can help you deactivate it, but you have to understand what the real problem is – that is, what need you believe isn’t being met.

Here are some needs you might believe you’re not getting when you’re triggered:

• Control;
• Acceptance;
• Respect;
• Love;
• Understanding;
• Attention;
• A sense of being valued;
• A sense of being needed;
• Being treated fairly;
• Freedom;
• Comfort;
• Balance;

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, and there may be other words you can use to identify what you feel you’re not getting, but the key is to identify what that is. Go back to the three situations that you identified above. Choose from this list or use your own word to identify the need you felt that was not being met when the narcissist you know pushed your buttons. Write those unmet needs in your journal and identify which situation triggered you in that way. threat.

Now that you understand more about how these triggers formed and have identified the unmet needs in three situations where you were triggered.

This is part of my book «What Narcissists Want You To Know». There is more information about narcissists and their manipulations. As a certified psychotherapist, I’ll be glad to help you on your narcissistic abuse recovery path. The short introductory meeting with me you can book here.