Identifying Triggers and Challenging Emotions

How are you doing today? I hope you’re finding this guide helpful. Healing is a journey, with lots of ups and downs. We’re building on what we learned yesterday how feeling our feelings is a crucial component of healing, even if it can be difficult at times. If we don’t take time to feel our feelings now — but rather “sweep them under the rug” they run the risk of building up and coming out of us reactively. This can cause more problems. Addressing the moment with intention is the healthiest route. It’s neither pain-free nor easy, but will serve you well in the long run. Let’s dive deeper today into these skills, as we learn how to identify triggers or overwhelming emotions.

Identifying triggers or overwhelming emotions

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a psychology theory that teaches us how thoughts impact feelings, which impact our behaviors. Often, when we’re having particularly strong feelings, they started from a specific thought. For example, you might have received an upsetting text, or gotten off a difficult phone call, and are triggered in a way that can lead to a negative thoughts-feelings-actions chain of events. When it comes to healing, identifying triggers that keep us from making emotional progress toward our goals is crucial. It’s a key preventive strategy. When we feel triggered, our natural stress response is a bodily release of adrenaline and cortisol to ‘fight, flight, freeze, or flee’, in a physiological and hard-wired way to escape threat. Although this is our automatic and biologically-normal response to a trigger, it’s helpful to know how to calm ourselves down once we feel triggered with overwhelming emotions if this stress response is not serving us. One way is by practicing some alternate thoughts — and some grounding exercises — to bring our minds and bodies into a state of ‘rest and digest’. Research shows that if we don’t manage our stress responses, over time this chronic stress can put us at risk for developing a variety of mental health issues, like anxiety and depression. Let’s learn more about activating this relaxation response when we feel triggered into a stress response.

How do we know we’re feeling triggered?

Common situations that trigger intense emotions

• Rejection
• Betrayal
• Unjust treatment
• Feeling we’ve lost control
• Challenges to our beliefs
• Being excluded or ignored
• Disapproval or criticism
• Feeling unwanted or unneeded
• Feeling smothered or too needed
• Feeling insecure
• Loss of independence

Sensations you may experience

• Racing heart
• Sweaty palms
• Unexpected emotion — suddenly feeling angry or anxious
• Upset stomach
• Shakiness
• Jaw clenching
• Feeling you need to walk away or end a conversation
• Any fight, flight, freeze, or flee responses
• Teary eyed and near tears
• Feeling protective and defensive
• Sensations may appear different in children and adults
  

Replacing thoughts & changing feelings

Certain things in our environment can trigger painful emotions and memories of previous or current challenges, losses, and trauma. By learning to identify when we feel triggered, we can cope better with the feelings and physical reactions in our bodies. We can refocus and regain clarity. Today, let’s learn two practices to support ourselves after we’ve identified triggers and overwhelming emotions.

Replace your thoughts

It’s helpful to practice calming our minds and bodies when we feel triggered. Remember the CBT thoughts-feelings-actions chain of events? Next time you notice you’re triggered, replace any unhelpful thoughts by talking to yourself in a more supportive, kind way to reframe the trigger into a resilient mindset.

Example: Instead of the automatic thought: “I really screwed up that presentation, I’m such an idiot,” say to yourself something simple, kind, and believable, like: “I can rise above this challenge.”

What’s an automatic thought you had today that didn’t feel helpful? Write it down, and then write an alternate thought. Use this alternate thought like a mantra next time you notice a stress-based, unhelpful automatic thought. Over time, using resilient, supportive mantras will become our default way of thinking and speaking to ourselves.

Change your feelings to promote the relaxation response

To cope with triggers or distress, grounding exercises are an effective tool. These are strategies to help you reconnect with your senses and bring you back to the present moment. Practice this exercise below. Note: It’s best to practice these techniques when you’re not feeling distressed so you’re better prepared to use them when you do feel emotionally overwhelmed.