How Self-Love Can Help You Overcome Feeling Triggered
Learn to predict your triggers and find mechanisms to help handle your agitated emotions
Like stroking a puppy against the flow of the hair, some things just feel unnatural.
I held the phone against my ear, my grasp tightened, and I could hear my heart beating through my chest. Then the red mist clouded my vision. I felt myself fly into a rage.
I breathed in through my nose and exhaled the anger through my mouth. He carried on speaking, oblivious.
This technique helped for the time being and allowed me to gather my thoughts.
I still came off the phone feeling agitated, but I expected this.
When we feel triggered, it can seem impossible to deal with our situation rationally. But make no mistake; there is nothing irrational about being triggered.
Over the next 5 minutes, we will quickly examine what it means to feel triggered and why this happens. We will then discuss a few techniques to help you avoid these negative sensations and cope more effectively when triggered.
What does it mean to feel triggered?
It’s important to recognise there is a difference between feeling uncomfortable and feeling triggered.
When we feel triggered, our mind and body pick up a “trigger” from the internal or external environment and are reminded of a previous traumatic experience.
Our emotions associated with being triggered are an action replay of previous trauma.
We all experience the sensation of feeling triggered in different ways. Here are some trigger symptoms from a helpful article in BetterUp. You may recognise some of these symptoms in yourself.
A feeling of fear, anxiety, and a lack of safety.
Elevated heart rate, sweating, and changes to your breathing.
The urge to escape, run away, or avoid something.
Muscle tension, such as clenched jaws.
Flashbacks.
Mood changes.
An article by VeryWellMind differentiates between internal triggers and external triggers.
Internal triggers include:
Memories.
Physical sensations.
Emotions.
My poor rescue dog is terrified of footballs. Even the sound of kicking balls sends him into a quivering wreck. I suspect he had footballs kicked at him in his early years. This example is indicative of the association of a memory triggering a trauma response.
External triggers include:
Influences from the media.
Being around certain people.
Relationship changes.
Dates and anniversaries.
Smells.
Revisiting places with traumatic associations.
How to use self-love to overcome or cope with your triggers
Sometimes being able to avoid our triggers is an effective coping mechanism. But if this means we can not function healthily and lead and complete and present life, then it’s not such a good technique.
It’s up to you to discern if you can avoid something or would be better off learning effective coping mechanisms.
Self-love is very different from self-care, but it incorporates some similar elements.
According to an article in PsychCentral, self-love means you:
“Accept yourself fully, treat yourself with kindness and respect, and nurture your growth and wellbeing.”
Self-love isn’t just about how you treat yourself but also how you respond to your thoughts and feelings.
The PsychCentral article has an extensive list of examples of self-love; some of my favourites from this are:
Forgiving yourself.
Being assertive.
Not allowing others to take advantage of you.
Valuing your feelings.
Setting realistic expectations.
Establishing boundaries.
Pursuing your own interests and goals.
These examples of self-love are effective ways to help you deal with your triggers.
For instance, imagine a topic of conversation that makes you feel triggered. You don’t have to engage with this. You can be assertive and say you don’t want to discuss it. You have the right to express your needs.
Sometimes when we feel triggered, we can be overly harsh on ourselves. Instead of allowing our feelings, we may engage in a negative internal dialogue and blame ourselves for being “weak” or “sensitive.” Still, if we acknowledge and accept our feelings, we will heal more quickly.
Techniques that help you learn self-love include:
Mindfulness.
Meditation and breathing exercises.
Exercise.
Therapy.
Journalling.
You can use these techniques as a form of protection before an event that you expect to have a triggering effect on you, or you can use them to help you recover after you have been triggered.
The situation I opened with involved a phone call to someone I have a complicated relationship with. I ran and then spent fifteen minutes doing breathing exercises to prepare myself. This self-love before a triggering exposure ensured I was entering the phone conversation as relaxed as possible.
After the call, I accepted my feelings and lay on my spikey shakti mat, listening to a twenty-minute guided meditation.
In these circumstances, my nervous system still felt out of sorts the next day, so I booked an extra consultation with my therapist to help me process why my nervous system felt so frayed and unsafe.
Sometimes we can preempt a trigger; other times, they ambush us. Either way, look after yourself with some self-love.
Feeling triggered is normal, but don’t let it control you
It’s time we controlled our triggers instead of them controlling us!
Hopefully, you now understand how normal it is to feel triggered. If you practice self-love techniques and learn to protect your energy in advance or immediately after a known triggering episode, it may be easier for you to recover from the agitation it can cause.
How do you cope with feeling triggered? I’d love to hear your input in the comments.
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