Show Notes:

Today we are getting trigger happy and we’re kicking off a new series for the month of February all about triggering.

What exactly is triggering? At the most foundational level, triggering is an emotional, psychological, and/or physiological reaction to stimuli that is outside of our control. Triggering usually feels unexpected, automatic, and like it takes over. It can feel unconscious, and difficult to consciously override and regain control of ourselves. It can be a feeling, like sadness or fear; it can be psychological, like flashbacks or intrusive thoughts; it can be physiological, like racing heart or difficulty breathing; and it can be, and more often than not is, a combination of these things all rolled together.

Being triggered is more than just getting worked up about something. I was watching something on the news recently and the commentator used the word triggered to describe someone who was worked up about a topic, and while I can appreciate that the term can feel useful to mark the significance of someone’s reaction – it’s not quite the same thing. What the newscaster was identifying was someone taking offense to something and expressing their sense of being bothered. While it can be reactionary to get offended, it is usually connected to our beliefs and values, which we have some ability to look at, choose, and change if we want to.

Meanwhile, triggering – true triggering – doesn’t feel optional. It is connected not to beliefs or values that we have some say in developing or altering, but to how our brains have interpreted, internalized, and held onto events that we didn’t get a vote in choosing. Triggering isn’t about getting upset by something or someone – it’s more like being held hostage to a brain that had to face something hard and continues to feel subjected to that experience.

What’s worse is that for many who experience triggering, they don’t always know what they are triggered by or even what experience that trigger connects back to. And this is where it really feels like being held hostage – because we can feel swept up in reactions that take our bodies over, turn our day upside down, impact our ability to focus or function effectively, and we might not be able to even really know why.

So let’s break down the mechanics of what is happening when triggering occurs. Your brain, while highly complex and interconnected, is also segmented into regions and areas that do different kinds of jobs. For example, we’ve talked a lot on the show before about the pre-frontal cortex which is the part of the brain just behind your eyes and forehead, and how this part of the brain is responsible for things like language and executive functioning which really means our ability to make decisions, problem solve and manage complex information. The pre-frontal cortex is essentially the manager of your brain. It takes information from other areas, like memory and values and so on, and funnels these pieces into how we want to choose to engage, respond or interact with things that are happening in our lives now and into the future. Being in your pre-frontal cortex, having this part of your brain actively turned on and working, is pretty much the opposite of being in triggered mode. This part of our brain helps us to feel grounded, present and in control. It feels regulated and capable.

So where does triggering live in your brain? Well, it’s pretty interesting actually. There are studies, and I actually had the chance to do my master’s thesis research on just such a study, where researchers use EEG or other brain-scan data to see what happens in the brain when we trigger the crap out of someone. How do we do this, well, depending on the population we’re studying, we might use images of something scary or associated with a traumatic event they’ve experienced, or we can use something called script-driven trauma provocation where the participants actually write the story of a traumatic event, which gets narrated and turned into an audio that they listen back to while hooked up to whatever brain-scan tech is being used. I know it sounds cruel, but it has been a significant tool in understanding exactly what happens inside the brain when people get triggered and the results are genuinely fascinating and informative in terms of how we go about thinking about triggering as well as how we go about trying to treat triggering.

When a brain is exposed to a trigger – something that your brain feels is in some way directly or vaguely tied to a traumatic or stress-inducing event that left a mark – your brain perceives this trigger as a threat, just like the event that your brain believes it represents. Essentially your brain has this background system running all the time that is scanning for risk and threat and looks for it through the lens of what it has already known to be fear inducing. When it picks up on any small reference to something that aligns with its previous experiences, it sets off an alert system in an effort to batten down the hatches to self-protect from anything even remotely like your previous experiences from ever happening again. When your brain perceives something that seems affiliated to risk, it quickly activates your limbic system. What is the limbic system? It’s a region in your brain that is near the back of the brain tucked up right above your brain stem at the base of your head and top of your neck. Your limbic system is the area of your brain responsible for your stress response including fight-flight-freeze-or-fawn response.

Before we keep going, I’m going to pause here for a moment because there are some really important things to know about your limbic system.

First off, your limbic system is highly connected to a ton of your physiological responses. You know how your heart beats without you consciously thinking about it? Same with your breathing, your temperature regulation like sweating or shivering, your blood pressure and other unconscious moment-to-moment physiological basics? Your limbic system, when it perceives stress or a need to protect, automatically exerts influence over all of these systems. It’s why your heart will speed up, your breathing will become more shallow, it even shifts blood flow away from your extremities and into your core. It does all of this to prepare you to be able to fight back, run away, or manage the risk in whatever way best leads to survival.

Second, your limbic system has its own version of memory storage. Because it is so highly responsible for altering your physiological state, it tracks events and stores memory like a muti-sensory movie. It believes that it needs to recall all aspects of a traumatic or stress-inducing event in order to be able to effectively prevent it from recurring in the future. So it takes note of additional information that regular memories, non-traumatic memories, wouldn’t normally care to remember. Things like smells, body positioning, vague sounds, lighting…all kinds of things that are way over and above what normal memory systems care to give strong attention to.

Third, your limbic system doesn’t own a watch. While other parts of your brain have access to a clock that lets it know whether something was past, present or future, your limbic system only deals in the now. It doesn’t care if your heart beat 10 seconds ago, or frankly whether it will beat 10 seconds from now, it only cares that it is beating. The tricky thing about this is that memories connected to this area and stored as a multi-sensory movie, aren’t stored as memories from something that happened (past-tense) but rather as something that is continuing to be happening whenever it gets…you guessed it…triggered.

We’re going to circle back to that in a second but really quickly I also want to let you know the fourth thing about your limbic system, and that is that it is not particularly well connected to your pre-frontal cortex – meaning that it tends to operate in isolation and without a lot of input from the part of your brain that is able to problem solve, make decisions, and feel present and capable. On top of that, not only does it not have great connection to your pre-frontal cortex, your limbic system is also a fuel hog. What this means is that in order to prioritize survival, which your brain deems to be the highest priority, when risk is perceived your brain will divert resources from other parts of the brain to your limbic system in an effort to give it it’s best chance at helping you to survive. We see this in brain scan data where the limbic system will become red hot while other regions of the brain, including the pre-frontal cortex, essentially go offline. What this means is that the best part of your brain, that does it’s best thinking, planning and responding, isn’t made available to you as a resource when triggering happens. And that’s a big problem and part of why we feel held hostage by these automatic responses that feel outside of our control.

So, now that you are a brain expert on all things limbic system, let’s talk about what this has to do with triggering and how we use this information meaningfully.

When a trigger happens, your brain sees it as somehow having some kind of clear or vague reference to an event that it has stored as traumatic or highly stressful. Now, triggering can be obvious and actually risky things like being in the same room as a person who perpetrated something dangerous in a setting that feels risky or not controlled – like seeing someone who has caused harm in a casual setting where there is nothing stopping them from causing harm again. These are the moments triggers are made for – to keep us on high alert to protect ourselves from re-experiencing similar risk of harm. Meanwhile, triggering can also show up when presented with something like a person who caused harm but in a totally different and more controlled environment - like being triggered going to court to testify and seeing the perpetrator in the room. The space is relatively safe-ish, but triggering is still alerting us that something here has been unsafe before. Then, there is another category of triggering that is far less clear or obvious and it tends to be connected to sensory information. An example is feeling triggered while walking through the mall past the cologne counter of one of the big box stores because one of the colognes smells like what someone was wearing when something bad happened. The mall isn’t particularly unsafe, the person who caused harm isn’t present – by all standards I should be pretty fine right now, but my body is losing it’s mind and feeling the need to kick up it’s fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses because it associates the smell to that multi-sensory movie. Remember, our limbic system, once activated, doesn’t have access to a clock AND reduces the capacity for my pre-frontal cortex to intervene and help out – so when I’m triggered by something like a smell in an otherwise totally safe situation, my brain has difficulty knowing that I’m safe because it’s focused on the data that says “unsafe”

The terms triggering is used really commonly when we’re talking about PTSD or PSTI – but did you know that triggering can happen on a spectrum? While triggering can be connected to flashbacks and panic attacks, somewhat characteristic features of posttraumatic stress concerns, it can also happen for those who wouldn’t meet the diagnosable criteria for PTSD. Its function is simply to be an alert system that, at the heart of it, is working to keep me safe and protected from reliving things that didn’t feel ok the first time around. I bet you’ve probably had some kind of experience like this. For example, triggering is really common for people who have been in a car accident. Following an accident, getting in a car again can feel really uncomfortable and distressing. In most cases, the triggering will reduce and eventually wane as my body re-establishes a sense of security driving again. But in some cases, the body doesn’t seem to find that sense of security, and instead it grows the significance of the event to make super sure it NEVER EVER happens again. Suddenly triggering won’t just be when I’m driving, but also when I’m the passenger. It won’t just be driving in nighttime or slippery conditions, but in broad daylight in dry weather. It can also start to grow from being triggered just in relationship to being in a car to thinking about having to drive, or to other forms of travel. And it can grow from feeling agitated or “off” to experiencing full blown panic that completely shuts you down. When triggering goes from survival protective to dysfunctional is when it becomes disproportionate, overgeneralized and so auto-pilot that we feel overcome by it and not in control of our own responses.

I know at this point you are likely chomping at the bit with, “Lindsay, that’s all super interested but what the hell do I DO with my triggering?” And I’m sorry to leave you hanging but I promise we’ll get there. We are going to be talking about what to DO with triggering over the next few weeks, so be sure to click the subscribe button wherever you’re listening to this, or sign up for our weekly emails that link to new weekly episodes of the podcast.

Reminder: The Self-Care Dare 5 Day Challenge for First Responders & Front Line Workers will be launching registration 2 weeks from today on February 15th. If you are a new listener and you don’t know about the dare, let me give you a really quick run down. It is a 5 day challenge that invites participants to build a killer self-care plan to help protect and support sustainability both at work and in your life. You get daily videos that cover 5 key domains of self-care, along with worksheets and guides to help you develop and implement your own personalized self-care plan. You also get access to a private Facebook group where we connect, discuss challenges, problem solve and celebrate successes together…and I love giving away a few prizes along the way to keep you engaged and motivated – because investing in yourself in this kind of way is so important and I want to make sure that you see it all the way through. You’re worth it. So keep your eyes peeled – we’ll be posting about it on our social media, and to our email list, so if you haven’t already, follow me on social media and/or sign up for the self-care dare waitliston our podcast webpage to get notified of when registration goes live. I will add that we are planning to cap registrations this time around, so be sure to register early to claim your spot. I hope you’ll join me for it and kick off 2022 with this investment in you and your wellness, and vicariously the wellness of those who care about you. …Because as we say often during the dare, “taking care of me, let’s me take better care of others.” Ensuring your own wellness is a win for everybody.

Episode Challenge:

I want you to consider where triggering happens for you, and where it lives on the spectrum discussed in this episode. What triggers are logical warning systems that seem proportionate to the events you’ve faced and help advise your safety? And what triggers have gotten bigger than that – edging towards the disproportionate, overgeneralized and totally auto-pilot?

Access our free downloadable Managing Trauma Triggers Workbook

Reflect on where you’re at and what you might need by using our free Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist & Triage Guide.

Additional Resources:

Access our free downloadable Managing Trauma Triggers Workbook

Self-Care Dare 5 Day Challenge for First Responders & Front Line Workers– jump on the waitlist to be notified when registration goes live. We plan to cap registration this time, so register early, it’s only $10!

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