A Discourse On Triggers

 Most people are going to have some sort of word that triggers stress, anxiety or fear in their heart. This has nothing to do with you, but it does have something to do with their past that they have not reconciled and dealt with. Even though you are not responsible for their unhealed wounds from the past or the negative emotions not yet detached from meaningless words, you can help them not to get triggered if you are aware of the depth and sensitivity of someone’s trigger.

For example, say someone was in an abusive relationship and every time someone says the word ‘carnival’ in a sentence, they instantly remember all the negative emotions from a memory they had with their abusive significant other at a carnival. Then, since the brain can’t tell the difference between past emotions and present, they quite literally re-experience the painful, negative emotions in the present moment, quite literally causing themselves to suffer from a past experience that no longer exists and might express those painful emotions through uncontrollable tears, panic attacks and more. They resurrected old wounds that have never been healed and so the negative emotions linger in the memory and are now being expressed presently, even though again, that experience no longer exists as you have broken up with them and moved on and you aren’t even at a carnival at the moment. It was simply the word that triggered the unhealed wound that carried the negative emotions never properly dealt with.

I want you to recognize, it is not your fault that they haven’t healed from it. It also isn’t your fault if you aren’t aware of someone’s triggers, or how deep they go. Sometimes you may assume they are triggered by a certain word, but then you might have realized from their emotional outbreak, it’s even more surface level than you first imagined. Again, don’t be hard on yourself, because realistically we are not all aware of every single person’s triggers to the extent that they even are, and so there may be times where a word you say exposes the unhealed wound and you didn’t know they were that sensitive to a word.

At that moment, it’s best to provide the person with love and support. Maybe hug them, reassure them that memory is in the past and it is no longer their reality. If they are worried about the future, remind them that the future has not happened yet and all we have is now. Remind them that we can choose to suffer from looking at the past and being anxious about the future but that does absolutely no help to our mental state. This is why I constantly stress meditation because it is the art of being present, being aware of what is happening right now at this very moment. It re-trains your brain to stop living rent free in the past that no longer exists, and in the future where there are so many unpredictable possibilities, and simply decide to reside in the peaceful, present moment. The entrance into eternal stillness of the now. The free flowing garden of presence that we all have access to at any moment if we just open ourselves up to it.

Being present is the key to break free from triggers of all types and when we are ready, we can make the courageous decision to go to the source of our triggers and dissolve the illogical and insane fear that stems from each of them. Having the realization that you are more than your body, that in the end all will be embraced in divine love, and refusing to breathe life into illusions such as fear and anxiety, will cause them to dissolve as quickly as they illusively apparated. We are more than our emotions but we can choose to be forced into submission by negative ones if we choose to not deal with them and let them linger in our minds at unpaid and unwanted guests. At the end of the day, it’s our choice to observe our triggers, bring awareness into them, find the source in which they latch onto, dissolve the illusive source, and free that memory from all negative emotions, thus freeing ourselves from being captive to negativity when a word reminds us of a memory. By transforming a negatively emotionally charged memory into a neutral memory, we free ourselves from that trigger and can rest in more peace, knowing that we are less likely to fall slaves to any type of negativity and more likely to find the peace in the present moment.