What Is A Trigger?

Triggers happen when a present moment brings up a past pain or emotion.

Our bodies hold memory from every point in our life. When we experience pain and do not get comfort or safety from the pain, our bodies hold onto the pain until we can get the need for security met. Our bodies were not meant to carry pain. That’s why it is so uncomfortable. But, in this life, we experience a lot of it. Because of how God designed us, our bodies actually crave for safety and security. So when we experience pain and triggers, our bodies automatically look for a form of comfort.

Does Everyone Have Triggers?

Because we as humans are not perfect, we cannot effectively meet every single need for ourselves or others. That means, our parents also could not meet every single need we had as children, even if they tried to. What does that mean for us? We all experienced some level of pain in our childhood, regardless of how amazing our parents may have been.

Every single person on this earth has experienced some pain from their childhood. Which means every person has triggers. You may be thinking, “I couldn’t possibly have triggers. No way.” But, if you look at the list of basic needs every person needs in their life, I bet you can find at least one that didn’t get met the majority of the time. And that’s okay! As I said, we as humans are NOT PERFECT. We can’t be, and neither could our parents.

Why Is It Important To Know Your Triggers?

A trigger happens when pain is experienced and the immediate need goes unmet. As a child, we have many needs and we solely depend on our caregivers to meet those needs. We build attachments with our caregivers and the way we attach or relate to those people, carries out the way we relate to people and circumstances in our adult lives. That’s a pretty big deal. The way we experience our childhood sets us up for the rest of our lives.

When we have pain that goes unaddressed, we are constantly living in a state of survival. Looking for ways to get that pain comforted or to not feel it anymore. The problem is, we typically learn negative ways of comforting our pain. We may turn to addictions, avoidance, or blame to feel better. We will get into more arguments, create more pain in our relationships, or isolate ourselves to get away from the constant triggers.

This only furthers our pain and makes it harder to live a fulfilling life. When we numb sadness, we also numb joy. When we isolate we miss out on loving and healthy relationships. We create cycles of more pain and get ourselves to a place where it seems impossible to get out.

The goal of addressing our pain and re-parenting is where we actually begin to connect with our true selves again. That little kid that had so much joy and loved being around people starts to show up again. The little girl who loved to dance and sing, gains her confidence again. That boy who had deep emotions starts to feel safe feeling them again.

When we learn self-compassion and self-love, we start to enjoy our own presence. We start to love showing up for other people. Our relationships go deeper. Our family relationships get healthier. We learn to take back our voice and stand up for ourselves. We set boundaries without feeling bad. Saying no actually feels life-giving. We start to live again!

What’s Next?

• Get familiar with what you are feeling (<-click on the link for my free guide to understanding emotions).
• Get familiar with the story you tell yourself. Are you someone who avoids pain? Or are you someone who feels a lot of pain and you feel victim to it?

• Learn how to bring in compassion to yourself. I teach a snippet of this in my guide here.
• Learn how to validate the big feelings you experience.
• Be kind to yourself, this is a journey and it won’t change overnight.

If you are wanting to know more about this topic, I have an upcoming course that will go into these topics and so much more! You can sign up for my email list to get information about when the course will be out. I’ll also be sending out some tips and bonus topics and tools only to my email subscribers, so sign up if you’re wanting more!

Much love friends, see you next Tuesday!

DylanRose