Triggers Are Your Greatest Allies

Let us take a moment to talk about triggers—those moments when something small suddenly brings up something big inside you. Maybe it is a tone of voice, a facial expression, a memory, or even silence. Your heart races, your body tenses, and without warning, you are flooded with emotion.

Triggers are stimuli—such as a word, sound, image, or situation—that remind the nervous system of a past painful or overwhelming experience. They do not cause the emotional reaction themselves but act as cues that activate unresolved emotional memories.

Now here is the truth: triggers are not your enemies. They are actually your allies. Triggers are an outgrowth of our basic instincts. As the old saying goes ‘once burned, twice shy.’ They’re an instinctual-learned response to a stimulus, and that’s not always a bad thing.

Yes, I know that sounds surprising. But once you begin to see triggers this way, everything changes. Triggers reveal the hidden distorted beliefs buried deep in your subconscious.

You may have tried to push these reactions away, avoid the people or situations that bring them up, or even feel ashamed of how you responded. What if you could welcome your triggers as messengers, not threats?

It is not always easy, but it is powerful to face your triggers with honesty and compassion. What caused them? When that first incident occurred, what else happened to cause you to feel the way you do? What parts of that reaction are true, and which are no longer helpful? When you do that, you begin to heal the wounds that created them. You move closer to freedom.

So today, make the choice to stop running from your triggers. Sit with them. Listen to them. Learn from them. They might just lead you back to parts of yourself you have been missing for a long time. And if you ever need support as you navigate this journey, do not hesitate to reach out.
Healing is not a straight line, it is a journey!
I truly believe that we are all on this journey together. Every one of us, in our own way, is walking the path toward healing, awakening, and becoming whole.

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS

• What kinds of situations or words tend to trigger strong emotional reactions in you?

• What do you think your most common triggers might be trying to teach you about yourself?