Richard Hogan: Learning to cope with being ‘triggered’

Richard Hogan: 'We all lose our temper from time to time, but not all of us get properly triggered by everyday life events.'

We’ve all been there; stuck behind a car that doesn’t move when the lights go green, in a queue that isn’t moving, or sitting in a restaurant and the waiter seems to be ignoring your table.

Oh, the inconvenience. We get annoyed, outraged even. Maybe even ‘triggered’. Waving your hand like a madman in the restaurant, or getting out of your car to tell the person in front of you just what you think of them.

We all lose our temper from time to time, but not all of us get properly triggered by everyday life events. The word ‘triggered’ itself is passé with overuse. Teens use it to describe any mild annoyance. The shop doesn’t have their favourite chocolate bar, "that’s so triggering".

In reality, being triggered means the involuntary activation of your nervous system. A trigger is an external or internal cue that fires up your nervous system because it is linked consciously or
unconsciously to a past threat the brain believes is happening again in the present.

Incomplete survival response

So, the trigger is not the event itself, but rather the past event being lived in the present
moment. Being triggered isn’t a character flaw but rather the brain’s incomplete survival response.

Whenever I see a person in a shop over-reacting to the shop assistant that isn’t moving quickly enough, or someone raging in traffic, all I see is the hurt little child that felt unseen or abandoned. They are desperately trying to protect that child from being injured again. And, of course, there is no threat in front of them. So, they look manic.

If you are sitting in traffic, launching out expletives while whacking your hand off the horn because the maroon Golf in front of you hasn’t pulled away immediately when the light went green, you are not angry with that car.

In fact, it has nothing to do with that car, you are shouting at some earlier childhood frustration.

Triggers are not inherently bad, but rather an opportunity to figure out some negative
childhood experience you haven’t processed yet. More than likely, the experience made you feel shameful, abandoned, unlovable, etc. Those feelings are very distressing to experience, your brain and body tries to prevent that happening again.

Family and insecurities

The biggest trigger we have in life is our family of origin. They wrote the trigger playbook.

Parents, siblings, and partners all know how to push that button because they understand our
insecurities better than anyone. They were there when those triggers were wired — they may even have wired them.

Richard Hogan: 'If you are someone that gets triggered easily, there isn’t anything wrong with you. Your nervous system just learned to become activated early to protect you. Now it is time to deactivate that system so that you can live a healthy life free from fear.'

At this time of year, I often meet clients who are confused as to why they are feeling unsettled. Christmas is over and they are finding it hard to relax. When I ask them to tell me about their experience over the holiday, they describe tense interactions with their family, or feeling like they were treated like a child again. Their vagus nerve was activated and now I can hear the outcome of low vagal tone.

The vagus nerve is the parasympathetic system’s most important nerve. It is the communication highway between the body and the brain. About 80% of the fibres in the nerve feed back information to the brain. So the body feels it first, and then the brain responds.

There are a few simple techniques we can use to help regulate the vagus nerve. Breathing exercises are very important, taking a four-second inhale and an eight-second exhale is a great way to calm down the system.

Our body is full of electricity, sometimes that will surge, expect that and don’t overreact to it when it happens. Allow the electrical charge to flow through you. That way you integrate it into your system.

The worst thing we can do is attempt to suppress it or become scared it will happen again. Understanding it happened before and we were fine, and it might happen again, is a good way to think about it.

Varied responses

If you are someone who gets triggered easily, there isn’t anything wrong with you. Your nervous system just learned to become activated early to protect you. Now it is time to deactivate that system so you can live a healthy life free from fear.

If you feel like you have to fight or flight when you become emotionally aroused, that’s the sympathetic system response.

Ground yourself in the present. Look around, are you really in danger? Talk to yourself by using helpful phrases: "all is okay".

If you become numb, or you feel like you are not present in yourself, that is a dorsal vagal response, and that is the last survival response we have. That’s the freeze response.

Splash cold water on your face, go for a walk or a run. Movement is your friend and will bring you back into yourself.

The human brain and body is a complicated system. It comes up with all sorts of ways to manage itself. Learning what your triggers are and where they come from will be very helpful to prevent them constantly firing.

Healing isn’t about erasing the past, it’s learning to live with the past in the present without becoming overwhelmed.