The Right Way to Manage Yourself When Emotionally Triggered
Emotional triggers can have a huge negative impact on our well-being. The first step towards achieving emotional competence is to identify your emotional triggers and comprehend them. This essay explores how regulating emotional triggers can help you negotiate the obstacles of life with more resiliency and self-awareness.
Understanding emotional triggers
What is an emotional trigger?
Emotional triggers are stimuli, situations, or events that cause a person to have strong emotional reactions; they frequently have a connection to the past or unsolved concerns. These triggers may affect cognitive patterns and behaviours and bring about intense feelings like anger, sadness, worry, or delight.Â
What are the types of emotional triggers?
Emotional triggers can be classified based on various factors, like situations, feelings, or events. They can be external or internal.
External triggers are those that come from an external environment, like a past experience, a specific person, or a provoking situation. One common example is feeling emotional in the workplace or classroom. The major reasons for this could be:
High workload
Tight deadlines
Micromanagement
Unclear expectations
Unrealistic expectations
Conflict with colleague
Workspace politics
Unfair treatment
Lack of recognition
Lack of growth
Lack of work-life balance
Job insecurity
Bullying or harassment
Common events that cause triggers are
Significant dates associated with positive or negative events
Funerals
Social happenings
Job interview
Moving
New beginnings or endings
Natural disasters or accidents
Internal triggers are those that arise from one's own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. The common internal triggers are
Anger triggers
Feeling like being taken advantage of
Expectations are not being met.
Feeling a lack of control.
Conflict
Feeling betrayed
Feeling disrespected
Unresolved issues
Anxiety triggers
Feeling threatened
Feeling vulnerable
Fear of uncertainty
Fear of social interactions
Fear of abandonment
Financial or health concerns
Other Personal phobias
Shame triggers
Public humiliation
Making mistakes
Being rejected
Being criticised
Comparison
Past mistakes
Perceived inadequacy
Failure in relationshipsÂ
Career stagnation
Parental expectations
Photo by Callum Skelton on Unsplash
Understanding the impact of triggers
Unhelpful coping mechanisms
Emotional triggers can elicit a whole range of reactions in us.
All these triggers become "triggers" for somebody due to a life event that caused a significant inner wound in them. And most of these happen during one's developing period, making them victims of childhood trauma. As a result of their stage of maturity, they develop coping mechanisms that are unhelpful like avoidance, denial, eating disorders, and impulsive-compulsive behaviourÂ
How do you identify your emotional triggers?
We all have our own emotional experiences. Therefore, our emotional triggers are also unique to us. Thus, it is you who have the full capability of identifying them. The steps are:Â
Download the free checklist of emotional reactions to find out what your impulsive reactions are when you feel triggered.Â
Next, read this checklist carefully and choose all the reactions you feel you use to respond in times of emotional outbursts or adversity. Choose everything that you feel could be your reaction. It's better to choose as many as you feel comfortable with so that everything can be worked on.
Next, choose any one reaction (we will call these tools for coping). And start journaling on these prompts.
Knowing your reactions:
Why did you need this tool in your early life?
What and who did you create this tool for?
What happened when you started having this reaction? Where did it happen?
From whom did you learn this reaction, or is it your own internal development?
Was it in response to something going on in your life or something someone said or did to you?
 For example, Anita wrote, I yell at others when I feel out of control. I created this tool as a defence when my parents beat me at home. I learned it from them, who used to yell often.  Use this example to write down your experience next to each of the reactions. Sometimes, if you feel, " I don't know why; I have just been this way,", Write this down too.
Do you see a pattern? Do you find the same situation to be the reason for many of your reactions? Remember, this exercise is for you to understand that your emotional reactions were born for a reason. You have developed them to cope with difficult situationsÂ
You know your impulsive behaviours and their origins. Now, it is time to understand the present triggers that make you impulsive. Pick an impulsive reaction and ask yourself the following questions?
Understanding the presentÂ
What triggers this impulsive reaction in you?
What are the situations that prompt this response in you?
When and where does this situation happen?
Is it a person, a thing, or a situation?
How often does it occur?
How do you feel when it occurs? Do you feel it in your body?
Do you want to do something, or do you withdraw?
What are some ways I am currently coping with these triggers?
Are there any coping mechanisms that are unhealthy or unhelpful?
Are there any recurring negative thought patterns that accompany my triggers?
How does my inner dialogue change when I'm faced with an emotional trigger?
For example, you may find yourself sabotaging yourself whenever something goes wrong. The reason could be due to your childhood, when you were given immense responsibilities inappropriate for your age. And when something went wrong, it was not taken well. As a result, when you get criticised now, it may trigger your self-sabotage behaviour. Here, being criticised is the trigger.
Sometimes, it can be tough for you to express how you feel.
For this, resources called feeling charts are available to help you sort out and pinpoint your feelings and mood. I found this website resourceful. They have more than 15 different charts for free. Pick the one that is most suitable for you and use it.
Steps to manage emotional triggers
Acknowledge your past
As I said, all the emotional triggers were born out of past experience.
To manage the triggers, one must first heal the wound that these events have left behind. And this becomes possible only when you make peace with the past. I know forgetting is hard, but forgiving can be done with effort.
Accepting your past and trying to navigate from where you are now is important.
Develop emotional intelligence
The ability to recognise, comprehend, control, and effectively employ one's own emotions as well as to observe and influence the emotions of others is referred to as emotional intelligence (EI).
The five main components of emotional intelligence are as follows:
Self-awareness of own values, feelings, emotions, and thoughts.
Self-regulation is the ability to manage and restrain one's feelings, inclinations, and responses.
Motivation: The need to set and accomplish worthwhile goals, frequently combining inner drive and a sense of mission.
Empathy: The capacity to comprehend, identify, and express one's compassion for one's fellow human beings.
Social skills like maintaining healthy relationships and conflict resolution.
Practice mindfulness
A potent tool for navigating emotional triggers is mindfulness.
Developing present-moment awareness allows us to examine triggers without reacting right away. This makes room for a conscious response, which lessens the likelihood of impulsive responses. With the help of mindfulness, we may better comprehend our emotional triggers, allowing us to control our emotions in a way that is both balanced and self-aware.
Healthy coping mechanisms
This is essential for managing reactions due to emotional triggers. Cultivate deep breathing, journaling, mindfulness meditation, grounding techniques, moving your body, engaging in creative outlets, and talking to a support person when you have an emotional reaction. This lets you respond instead of reacting to triggers.
Strategies for prevention
Setting boundaries
Setting clear external and internal boundaries is essential for preventing a trigger event. Maintaining healthy boundaries will reduce the chance of an emotional trigger causing impulse reactivity.
Manage expectations
Setting reasonable expectations for outcomes is part of managing expectations.
It's important to accept that not everything will go as planned and to learn to deal with uncertainty. Individuals can endure disappointments with resiliency, decreasing stress and fostering emotional well-being, by embracing flexibility and admitting potential variances.
Self discovery
Through the identification of underlying patterns, your values, cognitive biases, and thought distortions, self-discovery improves emotional awareness. Understanding the causes of triggers enables people to respond consciously rather than impulsively. By fostering emotional resilience and lowering the potency of triggers, this greater awareness improves emotional regulation.
Seek Help
You don't have to sit and suffer alone.
This is something I find myself repeating often. Seek professional help. Approach a therapist. Talk with them. They will provide you with extra tools to help you manage your emotional triggers.
Conclusion
Now you know the reason and the triggers for your impulsive behaviour.
You can be mindful when you feel triggered and tune your response in a more functional way. Write down an action plan using the strategies given above about how you want to react when you feel triggered next time. Remember, it takes more time and practice, to be fully aware of yourself and navigate effectively through emotional turmoil.