Triggers - What they mean?

Oct 11, 2022

Triggers teach. 


We can avoid or embrace them for what they are - opportunities to go within and heal ourselves. 


A trigger is when we are irritated or annoyed, or uncomfortable emotions like anger are sparked when something is said or action is made that doesn’t align with what we believe in. 


It’s when something makes us uncomfortable, and the reason is found within us, not anywhere in the external world. 


It doesn’t feel good to be upset and pissed off by the harmless actions and beliefs of others. Still, people aren’t aware this is optional. 


We can begin healing through being triggered. The next step is self-examination, and the emotional healing begins. 


To be miserable is a choice. To allow the misery of others, thrust through their sad, angry and fearful words, affect us is a choice. 


This is a great big lesson in self-respect and worth.


It hurts to be insulted and belittled, but once we can see who it’s coming from, it doesn’t need to hurt that much—those who sling insults when they have been triggered are typically emotionally undeveloped and have fragile egos.


Adults with differing opinions can discuss and debate. The emotionally unevolved bully insults and seeks to harm.


Let your triggers teach you. Let the trigger responses of others show you about them. Adults acknowledge their triggers and learn to sit with them to heal. It’s children who feel justified in hurting and harming others because they are triggered.


Triggers are pain stemming from unhealed emotional wounds. This is an example of when people say time heals all wounds, because it doesn’t at all. Time pusheds away some pain, and even specific pain, but that wound still exists to be triggered and brought up later, screaming to be healed. 


Often we aren’t aware of what that trigger stems from. This is the first step, known as Shadow Work (see my blog on this). Our triggers are the starting point for digging into suppressed wounds. 


It’s important to be aware that it’s not normal for adults to throw temper tantrums. It’s not normal for adults to fly off the handle when they don’t get their way. It’s not normal for an adult to feel justified when they are having a bad day to take it out on everyone else, but I bet this sounds familiar.


An emotional adult, while they still may be triggered, doesn’t allow those uncomfortable emotions to consume them and they don’t feel justified in hurting, harming or attacking others.


When an emotionally undeveloped adult is triggered, they revert to being a child. With some, this is a near-common state, depending on their level of trauma. 


An emotional adult recognizes that when they are triggered, it says something about themselves, not about the people or the situation around them.


As we heal, we become students of ourselves, and our trigger is our starting point. Why does that annoy me? Why does that irritate me? Why does this make me feel so uncomfortable?


If someone is emotionally reactive, that means they are allowing their own feelings within themselves to dictate what goes on around them. For example, if you irritate a bully, their mood will justify their actions in hurting you.


And as we read this and think about how many physically grown humans are in a consistently reactive state where they allow their emotions to control their actions, we will see the bulk of the population is entirely emotionally unevolved.


Emotionally undeveloped parents typically raise children to become emotionally undeveloped because that’s what they believe is normal.


It takes strong-willed people who can think critically to observe and innately understand that just because something is familiar doesn’t mean it’s normal. 


This is the part where the cycles break. It just takes one generation to break an age-old cycle. Awareness of its existence breaks it. 


Don’t beat yourself up over the past. If you, too, were consistently emotionally reactive and allowed your triggers to justify your actions and reactions, that’s normal. Be grateful and proud that you were able to recognize this is adult behaviour. You are doing what you can to better yourself, but more importantly, everyone who comes in contact with you later for the rest of your life will be grateful for it.


An adult that can control their emotions and become emotionally non-reactive is a lighthouse.


I'm always fascinated by people who are consistently irritated over the same thing they crave 


For example, someone always says, “They are just doing that for attention.” As though they were doing something wrong. 


Maybe they were dressed differently, and perhaps they were loud, or they had different beliefs. But it always irritated this person because they were “just doing it for attention.”


This person loves attention, but they would never seek it in a fashion that irritates them. They crave attention in other ways and love it.


If this world person were to do Shadow Work, they could take this back and understand that attention is a core emotional need we have as a child, and maybe they didn’t get the attention they wanted for the important things.


They still crave this attention, but they found it in a more approved manner that aligns with the values and beliefs of the people around them.


Triggers plague people. It’s all around them, yet they allow these uncomfortable emotions to surface, unknowingly that the feelings come from within themselves, not with them without.

Triggers plague people. It’s all around them. 


They allow these uncomfortable emotions to surface, unknowing that the feelings come from within themselves, not from without.


Today there are some subjects that almost everyone has a belief in, and if you don’t believe what I believe in, you may be getting very triggered and angry just over that belief. 


We have to ask ourselves why the belief that belongs to someone else affects us profoundly. Why does it hurt us when someone does t have the same beliefs? 


It’s shitty to be triggered, but this is your message from the universe of what you need to begin healing. If you have big triggers, this is happening a lot; this is where you start.


Everyone is a teacher in a way. They teach us by triggering, irritating, upsetting, annoying, and making us angry. These are all internal Emotions that are presented to us from our external reality. 


Once we understand what triggers us, our life gets more manageable on a different level.


If you are irritable or upset with someone, and they say something mean, this is everything about them. Especially, if you weren’t being hurtful and just speaking from the heart. Bullies are broken people, unknowing of their own pain and inferiority. When you stop allowing triggered people to hurt your feelings, life gets good.



We all have met people who were triggered, irritated, annoyed and pissed off at everything that does not line up with their beliefs and is identical to them in practice and standards.


These are miserable people who take quick pleasure in insulting and harming those who triggered them in arguing with people who don’t have all the same beliefs.



So what do I do when I’m triggered?


Identify the emotion and the reason that caused the trigger. When you get a chance to be alone, sit with it quietly and decide how this trigger came to be. What part of yourself that do you not love?


Allow a clear mind to follow after saying, why does that bother me so much? What is it trying to teach me? What happened in my past to make me feel this way today? 




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