Getting Triggered

Oh, this picture makes me laugh! It is a perfect image for this post...

Recently I was scrolling through Facebook, and I came across a post that triggered me. For those unfamiliar with the term "triggered," it's when something gets under your skin in a particularly surprising and irritating way, and even reawakens trauma from your past. Just think of the classic reaction of sudden rage above, displayed by Samuel L. Jackson in some of his movie characters, and you get the idea.

When I get triggered, I feel a sudden rush of emotion, perhaps fear or anger, my heart beats faster, and I can't catch my breath as easily. I feel anxiety in my chest. It can be something minor, like a hurtful or irritating encounter with a person. Or it could be something major, like reliving the nightmare of a traumatic experience.

I'm guessing you can think of situations where this happens for you. Perhaps a certain person knows just how to push your buttons the right way, and you get flustered just by being around them. Or maybe when you encounter a certain image or circumstance, it reminds you of something traumatic. I remember some friends who stopped coming to a church I used to be part of because their family member, who was deeply connected to the church, had recently died and so coming to church triggered them. It was just too hard emotionally.

A lot of times, authority figures or family members can be triggering because of past experiences of abuse by someone that was supposed to protect you. Whatever it is that triggers you, you may not even be aware that it happens until someone describes it, like I just attempted to. It can be largely subconscious. But once you do recognize when it happens, you may notice that it is sort of debilitating when it happens. Your body begins to react and there is nothing you can do in the moment to stop it, which can make you feel pretty powerless. This is why people who are aware of their trigger points will avoid certain people or situations that they know will trigger them.

My wife and I have experienced 4 miscarriages during our 15+ years of marriage. Each time it was pretty traumatic, particularly the 4th one, which happened much later in the pregnancy than the others. When I worked as a chaplain in a hospital, one of the hardest things I had to do was care for people who were going through the loss of a baby. It triggered me like crazy. It brought up all the emotions of loss and devastation that my wife and I had experienced together.

The most natural thing to do is to run from our pain. Seriously, who wants to hurt? But I've learned that at some point, the healthy thing to do is to face it. One book that was incredibly helpful to me was The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. He does an incredible job explaining how the body stores trauma, and then he provides some ways forward. That book, combined with some dear friends and mentors who helped me walk through my pain, helped me see that our trigger points can actually be our greatest teachers. Rather than running from the pain they bring up, we can see these trigger points as an invitation into healing and transformation.

I've learned a lot from other people describing their trigger points and how they began to find healing when they faced the trauma that was being awakened. But even with a lot of great insight into these things, to actually go on the journey of healing can be really challenging. It is like walking into a death of sorts. Sometimes we just aren't ready and the timing isn't right. But at some point, it becomes more painful and destructive to stay as we are than to walk directly into the pain we are avoiding, so that we can begin to heal.

A similar way people talk about this today is "emotional health" or "emotional sobriety." Have you ever had those moments where certain people or certain situations make you suddenly feel like a little child emotionally? It's like suddenly I regress into a younger version of myself, and I'm not able to see myself as an adult having a conversation with another adult. Then later, I'll replay the interaction and wonder what in the world happened and why I felt so immature or childish or inferior in that moment. There's all kinds of stuff going on inside us.

In the West, we've tended to ignore emotions and feelings until fairly recently, dismissing them as unreliable and secondary to cognitive knowledge. For a long time people believed if we could just get the facts and information right, we could fix things. But dismissing and ignoring our emotional capacities has proven to have negative consequences, and neuroscience seems to show that they are all intertwined parts of what makes us who we are. I'm not saying we should be led by our feelings (they are not good masters!), but we never heal if we don't address this part of ourselves. A good counselor or spiritual director can be incredibly helpful with this.

People often get nervous when we talk about dealing with our "feelings," and believe me, I get it. Who wants to dive into that mess of unpredictability and pain? And who wants to admit they are seeing a "counselor?" Seriously, so much shame exists in our culture for those who don't independently have it all together. But that's all a mythical facade. I highly recommend a good counselor or spiritual director or even just a good friend to help you walk through your emotional pain and baggage. It can be very liberating just to acknowledge it and recognize it for what it is.

I've spent a lot of time avoiding my pain rather than facing it. But it just kept surfacing, and I would get angry... angry that I couldn't just make it go away, angry that I felt powerless to control it, angry that it was even an issue, because I didn't even really know why I was getting angry! So I've been diving in for the last few years, and it has changed the trajectory of my life. Healing is slow, but steady. These days when I get triggered, I don't just run away or let my anger boil. Instead I ask, "What's this about? Why is this affecting me this way? What is the feeling I'm experiencing, and where in my body do I feel it?" Then through prayer and meditation, I present it to God and walk through it with Him. Remember, the Holy Spirit is called "the Counselor." We all need counseling, apparently. I want wholeness and healing, so I'm willing to face my demons. Dragons can be slain.

Some people are "less emotional" than others, and will want to dismiss all of this. That's fine. But for those who can identify with any of what I wrote above, just know that I also dismissed all of it... for a very long time. I believed that feelings and emotions were completely unimportant and unreliable and should not be considered "spiritual." How wrong I was to segregate and compartmentalize myself like that. And how incredibly healing it has been to finally acknowledge this part of my being. God is so patient, and so good. Take these things to him and let him go to work. Face the dragon. It will be hard, but it will change your life.