Stop Calling Everything A Trigger
Seriously though, stop
Trigger Warning: This article contains disagreement, accountability, and mild emotional discomfort. If you find these experiences triggering, please get to a safe space before reading any further.
People today seem to be triggered by literally anything.
A social media post about a controversial topic? Trigger.
Being told their ex probably isn’t a narcissist? Big trigger.
Listening to a speaker with strong opinions that don’t align with their values? Somebody designate a safe area, quick!
It’s as if anything that threatens a person’s feelings, beliefs, self-image, narrative, or coping mechanisms is being labeled a trigger.
Being challenged
Being pissed off
Being offended
Being held accountable
Apparently, even being triggered can be triggering.
Guys—stop. These are not triggers.
These are normal life experiences that shouldn’t be shaking people’s sense of safety. They should be strengthening their resilience.
That’s not resilience. It’s fragility.
When you treat everything as a trigger and expect people to tiptoe around it, you’re making yourself more fragile and more entitled. The world isn’t going to behave exactly the way you want it to all the time.
You have to adapt to the world instead of waiting on the world to adapt to you.
A trigger is when something in the present trips a deep, unresolved pain from the past, making you react as if the past were happening again. The reactions feel disproportionate because you’re not reacting to what’s happening now, you’re reacting to what happened then.
This could look like
Getting overly defensive or angry when someone says something mildly dismissive because you grew up in an emotionally dismissive environment.
Lashing out when someone brings up something emotionally uncomfortable that you’ve worked very hard to forget or suppress
Feeling rejected and getting clingy after a minor disagreement because you’ve got a strong fear of abandonment
The problem is that when you’re triggered, it doesn’t feel like you’re reacting to the past.
It feels like you’re reacting to what’s happening right now.
That’s why triggers are so convincing.
The anger feels justified.
The defensiveness feels justified.
The withdrawal feels justified.
The clinginess feels justified.
What makes it hard is that the feelings are real, but the intensity is coming from somewhere else. It’s impossible to untangle how much of it is coming from the past and how much is coming from the present.
Nobody stops and thinks “Ah, here come my old abandonment wounds. Before I react to right now, let me identify how much of the intensity is coming from the past, divvy it up appropriately, and then adjust my reaction to only reflect this moment.”
If our brains could do that, I wouldn’t have much to blog about.
Also, your triggers are your responsibility. You can’t expect people to tiptoe around every painful experience you’ve ever had.
I once had a friend get mad at me while I was going through a pretty painful heartbreak because listening to me was bringing up “pain from her past that she’s worked very hard for many years to suppress.”
How was I supposed to know my pain was stirring up the pain that she’s worked so hard not to feel?
Your unresolved pain doesn’t give you a monopoly on expressing that emotion.
People aren’t mind readers, and they can’t fix your triggers for you.
Having said that…
Don’t be an asshole.
If someone you care about is struggling with some triggers, be mindful of what they are and be patient with them while they work through it. You aren’t responsible for them, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be considerate.
The goal isn’t to avoid your triggers forever. The goal is to understand and heal them enough that they stop hijacking your reactions.
So stop believing every uncomfortable emotion is a problem. Stop treating every painful memory as trauma.
And for the love of God, stop calling everything a trigger.