We often speak of triggers as something to avoid, manage, or even silence. Someone says something and suddenly our heart races. An email or message arrives and our chest tightens.
A tone, a glance, a delay and we’re unsteady. Overreacting, we tell ourselves. Too sensitive, we are told. However, what if we are neither — what if our triggers are not disruptions, but doorways? Psychologically, a trigger is an emotional response rooted in unhealed pain. The intensity of the reaction rarely belongs to the moment at hand. Instead, it stretches back. Sometimes years, sometimes decades, to touch a wound that never fully closed. According to trauma expert Dr Bessel van der Kolk, “The body keeps the score.” So do our nervous systems. Every time something inside us goes unacknowledged, it craves to be understood.
When we are triggered, we are not collapsing, we are being called to revisit the places where our nervous system learned fear, where our voice was silenced, where our needs were unmet. Triggers are not signs that something is wrong with us; they are signs that something within us longs to be seen.
The anger that flares when someone interrupts you? It may not just be about the conversation, it might be the echo of your childhood where you were constantly spoken over. The panic that arises when someone withdraws? It may not be about them going quiet, but about the loneliness of a younger version of you who equated silence with abandonment.
These reactions are not flaws but evidence. They point us to beliefs we carry of “I’m not worthy, I’m not safe, I’ll be left if I’m not perfect.” Although we may have out grown the environments that created those beliefs, the body kept record.
Triggers are sacred messengers. They do not ask us to stay stuck in them, but they do ask us to slow down enough to listen. When approached with self-compassion rather than self-judgment, triggers reveal exactly where the inner child still flinches, where the nervous system still braces for impact, where the adult self must now rise to offer the safety that was once lacking.
Curiosity is one of the most healing tools we can bring into a triggered moment. Instead of collapsing into guilt or shame, we might ask: “What is this reaction trying to protect? Whose voice do I hear right now — my own, or someone from my past? What would this part of me say if I actually let it speak?” The answers are rarely neat, but they are always revealing.
Triggers don’t just bring up pain, they bring up potential to rewrite the narrative, to meet ourselves in a way we never could before — to choose differently, lovingly and consciously.
The next time a trigger arises, pause, feel it and honour it as information, not as failure. Healing begins when we stop fearing our reactions and start understanding them. Our triggers are not trying to ruin our peace, they are trying to bring us home — to the parts of us still waiting to be seen, soothed and set free.
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