Beyond Social Media: What Is a Trigger?

The term "trigger" has made its way into the popular vernacular. "Trigger warnings" are given on social media often for anything that could be potentially upsetting, and has been considered a courteous way of helping people filter out material that could be harmful to their mental health.

Still, a study of 451 people who had trauma histories who were assigned to read a passage with either a trigger warning or not found no positive effects for the survivors who received the trigger warnings (Jones et al., 2020). To the contrary, the authors cited a level of harm done in reinforcing the centricity of the trauma in the readers' lives. Such findings may strike some as controversial.

Yet, with so much conversation around triggers and trigger warnings, perhaps it's time to go back to the basics and ask, "What is a trigger?"

Triggers in Trauma and PTSD

In PTSD, a trigger might look like this: You are driving down a road and see blue and red lights flashing behind your vehicle. You pull over. Perhaps the officer is merely letting you know a tag light is out. No ticket today. Yet, your hands are shaking. You feel like a horrible person. Hours later, it's replaying in your mind along with another memory involving an officer that you wish to forget.

Triggers are reminders of a traumatic event that cause an especially strong reaction due to traumatic experiences in the past. This reaction could be physical (shaking or sweating), emotional (strong sense of fear or guilt), cognitive (the thought "I am a horrible person"), and behavioral (an urge to run, fight, freeze, or fawn). The experience can last between a few moments to a few weeks. The presence of a strong response to a trauma trigger is evidence that healing has not occurred.

Reminders of the trauma can also spark re-experiencing symptoms like flashbacks and nightmares. It's important to note here that flashbacks do not always appear as memories; emotional flashbacks without conscious memory are also common. Rarely is a flashback the Hollywood rendition of a hallucinatory transportation to the past. Rather, it can be as slight as flinching at a certain sound. We have a natural urge to avoid triggers to protect ourselves. The cycle of triggers, reactions, and avoidance is the flagship of PTSD.

What Causes Triggers

To say that "trauma" causes triggers would be too simple. It's a complex process. After a traumatic event, we have an intuitive process of healing. This may take the term of seeking safety, receiving support from those around us, and taking time to recover. Therapy could also play a role. You can think of healing like a line that goes forward toward recovery.

Yet, sometimes, something holds up that line. Instead of a straight line toward healing, it becomes a tangled spiral. This is PTSD.

Like a wound that hasn't healed, anything that taps on the memory will hurt exponentially. Yet, tackling the memory within a safe context, such as therapy, is often necessary for healing.

Dealing With Triggers

During full PTSD, approaching triggers outright often triggers a PTSD symptom sequence, a nasty experience that retraumatizes us and furthers our suffering. Yet, avoiding triggers altogether denies the opportunity to heal.

Sometimes, it is impossible to avoid all triggers, and so while going through the healing process it is important to have a strategy for coping with trauma triggers. An effective therapist can help in cultivating these. Some strategies that can help are:

1. Grounding. Using sensory grounding, such as naming three things you can see, two things you can hear, and one thing you can feel until you feel reconnected with the present is a common coping skill for dealing with triggers that can be extremely helpful.
2. Sensory Soothing. Using a single sensory experience such as listening to music, going outside to feel the wind, or watching a candle can help you reuniting with the present after a trigger.
3. Conversation and Orientation. Conversations with others that focus on light topics and orienting to the present can be helpful in moving through the storm of a trigger experience.

Psychotherapies utilize many strategies beyond these to assist with working through triggers. A skilled psychotherapist can assist with customizing a trigger plan.

Healing Triggers

Most therapies for PTSD involve approaching the traumatic memory or our body's reaction to it. PTSD therapy is typically done in a safe and trauma-informed space with a psychotherapist trained to guide you through the experiences. Here are some ways therapy can help you approach triggers.

Trauma Essential Reads

How We Help Each Other Heal

Trigger Warnings Can Be Triggering

1. Through Narrative. Therapies such as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) utilize the sharing of written, verbal, and/or artistic narratives to assist someone in finding those stuck spots and untangling the PTSD line. Cognitive behavioral therapies like these also involve aspects of challenging trauma-based thoughts that could further PTSD (for example, if a person developed a thought of "I am a bad person" after a traumatic domestic violence incident). For youth, especially those who might not be aware of what is 'normal' in certain spaces, psychoeducation is also key here. Approaching triggers is often the final step of healing.
2. Through Experiencing Therapies. Therapies such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and brain spotting utilize bilateral stimulation, such as rapid eye movements, to enhance the process of working through the traumatic experience. While narrative-sharing within a session may play a role, these therapies offer a more integrated approach that also focuses on body sensations, past-present-future representations of the trauma, and connections between memories. Within these therapies, it is not always necessary to verbally share the whole story, yet after successful therapy, many can reapproach situations they once found triggering without distress.
3. Through Somatic Therapies. Somatic therapies, such as Somatic Experiencing and Sensory-Motor Therapy, focus on the body's response to trauma. During a triggering event, our bodies are often swept into a state of hyperarousal; we are hypervigilant and flighty. Alternately, we might also drop into hypo-arousal, feeling sluggish or dissociated. Many people with PTSD live in a constant state of hyper- or hypo-arousal, finding it difficult to feel present and reporting a sense of numbing. Somatic therapies approach these physical responses.
4. Through Parts and Compassion-Focused Therapies. Parts therapies, like Internal Family Systems (IFS), approach our multidimensional responses to events by working with multiple parts of the self. Compassion Focused Therapy does this as well but adds a strong emphasis on building up a compassionate self and utilizing self-compassion as a tool for healing. Often, after a traumatic event, we no longer feel safe. Our bodies and minds are in a state of threat. Tapping into our compassion system and understanding what is behind our reactions helps us heal.
5. Through Social Therapies. There is a saying, "We get hurt in relationships and we heal in relationships." Trauma rarely happens in isolation. Research shows that interpersonal traumas are much more likely to cause PTSD than events like natural disasters, and PTSD related to these kinds of traumas tends to be more severe (Forbes et al., 2013). Interpersonal-based therapies that might involve a family system or other sources of support are also sometimes effective in PTSD treatment. This might include the integration of other evidence-based therapies, such as narrative therapies, within the family. In trauma-focused CBT, for example, a youth will create a trauma narrative and through conjoint sessions between youth and family participants, share their experiences and receive support.

Conclusion

All this is to say a trigger is much more than a social media trend or an upsetting event. Being 'triggered' is no laughing matter. We don't all have PTSD, but some trauma is almost universal. Some things will remind us of our experiences. If this response is beyond what we can master on our own, therapy can lead us to freedom from the trigger cycle.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.