What Triggered Actually Means

What does it mean to be triggered? You’re out with friends, feeling light, happy, and full of life. Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe. Your feet feel unsteady. Your mind is both racing and blank at the same time. You have no idea what has changed, but you are on edge, unsettled, and tense.  

You want to tell someone about the experience, but you keep silent. You’re afraid that they would tell you that you’re being too sensitive, and getting upset over nothing. After all, you can’t even explain what triggered you. One moment you were fine, the next you were not. How does that make sense?  

Still, you can’t shake the memory. It was an intense, full-body takeover. It makes you wonder, “What does being triggered actually mean?”  

What does “Triggered” actually mean? 

You have probably heard the word “triggered” in your day-to-day life. People use it to describe anything from an upsetting conversation to a tense scene in a movie.  People use “triggered” to describe an emotionally upsetting experience, but that definition doesn’t fully describe what is happening.  

In psychology, being triggered means that something has forced your brain into fight-flight-freeze mode. One of your five senses detected something that caused your brain to hit the panic button, and you go from casually enjoying life to intensely scanning for life-threatening danger.  

Whatever you sensed felt like a jab to an open wound.  Being triggered doesn’t mean that your brain recalls a memory, because traumatic experiences don’t become memories in the same way that everyday experiences do. It is the difference between jabbing an open wound and jabbing the spot where the wound once was.  

When you sensed something threatening, your brain didn’t say “remember that time when…” Instead, your brain teleported right back to the moment when you had a trauma response, as though you never moved past that moment in the first place.  

The most important thing to understand is this: being triggered is not the same thing as feeling emotional. Being triggered happens when your brain uses a full-body nervous system response to protect you from harm.  This response isn’t a choice, just like retracting your hand after touching something hot isn’t a choice. It is a reaction in its purest form. 

Why does it feel like my body acts without my permission? 

Being triggered feels like your brain has taken over without asking. It didn’t pause to say, “Excuse me, are we in danger right now?” Instead, it grabbed the wheel and shoved you out of the driver’s seat.  

It feels like your body is acting without your permission because you have switched from conscious decision making to autopilot.  

Here is how Dr. Dan Siegel explains it: Our brains have an “upstairs” and a “downstairs.” The upstairs brain is where logic, reasoning, and conscious decision making happen. The downstairs brain is in charge of automatic functions, which includes the automatic reaction to protect yourself when you sense danger.  

Dr. Siegel is famous for his “hand model” of the brain: hold up four fingers, then fold them over top of your thumb. The four fingers represent your upstairs brain, and your thumb, palm, and wrist depict your downstairs brain. When your brain believes you are in significant danger, you “flip your lid” (raise your four fingers), which means that your downstairs brain takes over. Logic, reasoning, and conscious decision making become temporarily unavailable.  

It is disorienting when you are triggered and there is no real danger present. Your brain picked up on a cue that set off a false alarm, so your body reacted automatically.  

Even though it seems like your brain is acting without your permission, the downstairs brain is doing its job. Imagine if your house was on fire. You wouldn’t want the firefighters to knock and wait for you to answer the door before they came in to rescue you. Your downstairs brain truly believes that it needs to knock down the door to save you. It is doing the job it was created to do, and it needs help to recognize that past dangers are not still active.  

What does being triggered look like? 

Note: I describe some difficult experiences in this section. If you choose to skip it, the rest of the post will still make sense.  

The experience that causes you to be triggered might be obvious, like being in a motor vehicle incident, witnessing death, or experiencing intimate partner violence. These “single instance” experiences immediately dismantle your sense of safety. You feel stuck as you watch people around you move forward with life while you are still trying to make sense of what happened. 

Your experience may also be more subtle, leaving you unsure of whether you are “allowed” to be triggered. You may have witnessed your partner struggling during childbirth and wondered whether they would live. Perhaps you grew up in a family where you were never quite “good enough” to earn your parents’ recognition. You may have been bullied, either as a child or as an adult, regularly belittled by your peers. These experiences that continually undermine your sense of safety teach your brain to constantly be on the lookout for danger, even in the most benign setting. 

A trigger happens when a cue in your environment sends a message to your downstairs brain: “The danger isn’t over.” Next thing you know, your body is in fight-flight-freeze mode. The following are fictional examples that show how varied the response can be.  

Avery is excited to start a new job, especially after working in a toxic workplace for over a year. On the first day, Avery is introduced to a colleague who is wearing the same perfume that someone from the old workplace wore. A sense of paralysis overcomes Avery, and it becomes difficult to speak. Even though Avery is able to shake off the feeling, the new job no longer feels as exciting as it did. That night Avery can’t stop replaying memories from the toxic workplace. After being unable to sleep for most of the night, Avery calls in sick to work the next day. The “fresh start” that Avery had hoped for now seems impossible.  

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Jennifer sees her midwife’s number appear on the cellphone screen, and watches until the call goes to voicemail. Ever since her baby was born, Jennifer has been avoiding appointments. Everyone congratulates her and her partner on the birth of their baby, and comments on how beautiful their little one is. Jennifer feels so ashamed. How can she tell them that she feels numb, and can’t stop replaying her childbirth experience? Nothing went according to plan, and now Jennifer never wants to leave the house again. It is too dangerous. What if something bad happens to her or the baby? She smiles and dismisses the feelings as “baby blues,” but a nagging feeling tells her that there is something more serious happening. 

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Drew is shocked when his wife, Jordan, gives him an ultimatum: couples counselling, or separation. He replays her words in his head: “I can’t live with your temper anymore.” What does she mean? He has never been physically violent towards her. As far as he knew, things were fine between them. During their first couples’ session, Jordan explains that when Drew is stressed, he snaps at her about insignificant things, like the dishwasher not being loaded the way he would like it to be. When she tried to address the issue with Drew, he became defensive, telling her that she is the one with the problem. Drew explains to the counsellor that when he was growing up, his father had high standards. If things weren’t done the way Drew’s dad wanted them done, he would fly into a rage. Drew learned to toe the line, and when he couldn’t, he would lie so that his dad wouldn’t get angry. For the first time, Drew realized that his relationship with his dad was more impactful than he had ever imagined.  

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Emotional triggers are hard to recognize. A telling sign is acting in a way that doesn’t make sense to you. If you catch yourself thinking “Why do I shut down when I am upset,” or wondering “Why do I overreact,” consider whether you are experiencing a trauma response. Being triggered is not as obvious as you might think.  

Am I overreacting when I am triggered? 

In his book, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, Terry Real says “There’s no such thing as overreacting; it’s just that what someone is reacting to may no longer be what’s in front of them.”  

When Drew reacted to how his wife loaded the dishwasher, you may have thought “That’s an overreaction.” That response may change when you realize that Drew wasn’t reacting to how his wife loaded the dishwasher; he was reacting to his father’s rage. It is not an overreaction for a child to fear a raging father. 

Your downstairs brain doesn’t recognize the passage of time in the same way that your logical upstairs brain does. A trigger tells your downstairs brain that the dangerous situation that once happened is happening again, this very moment. The downstairs brain doesn’t have time to assess for truth. It has to react now because if it doesn’t, then you might be seriously injured or killed. 

I was recently at the playground with my two-year-old. As he climbed the play structure, he slipped, and my body immediately leapt to catch him. I didn’t pause to see if he was actually going to fall because if he was falling, I had to act immediately to catch him. This immediacy is what happens in your body when you are triggered. It is not an overreaction because if the danger is real, the reaction needs to happen without delay.  

My son slipping was not a trigger, although my brain reacted in the same way. The difference is that my experience did not push me outside of my window of tolerance.  

The Window of Tolerance comes from Dr. Dan Siegel. In short, your window of tolerance describes how much stress your nervous system can handle before it moves into fight, flight, or freeze. A trigger immediately pushes you outside your window of tolerance. The more frequently you are triggered, the smaller your window gets, and the more difficult emotion regulation becomes. 

If you are in a serious car collision, and every time someone calls to ask how you’re doing, your brain reacts as though the collision is currently happening, then it makes sense that you get grumpy and snap at people. In this context, you aren’t overreacting. Instead, your brain is exhausted, terrified, and it is protecting you by getting people to leave you alone.  

What do I do if I am being triggered? 

Now that you’ve read this far, what do you do if you realize that your life is being impacted by triggers? You may have realized that behaviours you feel ashamed of are not evidence of failure, but a sign that something from your past is being triggered. This post may have made you wonder if your friend, family member, or partner is being triggered. If this is you, where does change start? 

The other day one of my clients said to me, “Is the first step always to notice it?” I smiled and said yes. If you are being triggered, start by noticing that it is happening. Triggers happen when your brain shifts into autopilot, so if you are being triggered, then noticing it is a gentle way to reengage your upstairs brain. If you can, notice it as though it was a neutral event. Try not to tell yourself that what is happening is a bad thing. 

When you say that something you do is “bad,” you’re judging yourself. Instead, try to give yourself compassion. Where judgment creates shame, compassion says, “This is hard.” Compassion gives you room to breathe. 

Counselling is a powerful tool to desensitize triggers. Triggers may never fully go away, but a counsellor can help you expand your window of tolerance so that being triggered isn’t as debilitating. When you recognize a trigger, you refocus on safety, and the downstairs brain disengages the fight, flight, freeze response.  

If you choose to find a counsellor, find someone who is trained to work with trauma. A trauma-trained counsellor will make sure that therapy stretches your window of tolerance without pushing you past your limit.  

You don’t have to figure this out alone 

You’re out with friends, feeling light, happy, and full of life. Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe. Your feet feel unsteady. Your mind is both racing and blank at the same time. You are on edge, unsettled, and tense, but this time you know what to do.  

“Hold on, I need a moment,” you say to your friends. You find a spot to sit down, and you notice your breath. You listen to the sound around you; birds singing, traffic, and the wind in the trees. You see green leaves, blue sky, and brown buildings. You feel the pressure of the ground pushing against your shoes, and as you roll your shoulders, you notice the tension fade. “I am safe in this moment,” you whisper to yourself as you get up to rejoin your friends.  

“I am so proud of myself,” you say at your next therapy session. “I never imagined I could come this far.”  

Being triggered isn’t a choice, but with the right support, how you respond to the trigger can change. If you’re living in BC, and you’re ready to respond differently to your triggers, a True Peace Counsellor would be glad to work with you. 

It may seem like you will never be free of trauma triggers. Triggers may never entirely disappear, but having compassion for yourself can change your relationship to them. That changes everything.  

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Disclaimer: The content of this blog is for informational purposes only. It is not meant to substitute the advice or diagnosis of a medical doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, or your own therapist. True Peace Counselling counsellors work virtually with adult clients who reside in British Columbia, Canada, and some offer in-person sessions in Victoria’s Westshore.