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Relationships
Got Triggered? Own It
We all get emotionally triggered in relationships. But you can turn it around.
Posted August 12, 2024 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Key points
- Triggered emotional reactions occur when our brain registers a threat, whether physical or emotional.
- Emotional triggers often happen in relationships because the stakes are high and we feel vulnerable.
- Share with your partner the emotional intensity of your triggered reaction, without blaming them for it.
- Openly sharing triggered feelings without blame can lead to a closer and more authentic relationship.
Picture this:
After a blissful Saturday morning lazing with your new partner, you've decided to spend the afternoon helping them paint a couple of rooms in their apartment.
Music is playing and you’re happily slapping paint on the walls when from the other room you hear them shout,
“Hey! What are you doing over there?”
Huh?
They sounded really loud. Are they angry at you? What did you do wrong?
Your body tenses, your breath catches, and your heart suddenly feels like it’s beating double-time in your chest.
“Why? Don’t you trust me?!” you shout back angrily.
Moments later your partner bounds into the room looking seriously upset and bewildered. Depending on what the two of you do next, this could go very badly.
What just happened? You got triggered.
Emotionally Triggered Reactions Are Common
While many people think of being “triggered” as an extreme reaction caused by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, actually it’s a very common, perhaps even universal experience. Getting triggered doesn’t necessarily result in shouting, flailing in anger, or freezing in fear. Your way of reacting to getting triggered could be to Zen out and become emotionally unavailable for three days. But you’re still triggered.
Getting triggered is what happens when your brain, for some reason, registers a threat. You’re feeling like you’re in danger. According to the Cambridge English dictionary, getting triggered means “experiencing a strong emotional reaction of fear, shock, anger, or worry, especially due to remembering something bad that has happened in the past.”
Whatever just happened tripped a painful memory, or many painful memories, that signaled your entire body to go on red alert. But why do they happen so often in close relationships? They happen there because the stakes are so high. These are the relationships that matter the most, and where we feel the most vulnerable. We want to feel connected and accepted for who we truly are. And once we invest ourselves in a relationship, or think we will, having that person either be hurtful to us or leave us is going to hurt a lot.
Even if you've been with someone for years, or even decades, that person can say or do one thing at the wrong moment that reminds you of some moment in the past when you got very hurt. And in the blink of an eye, you’re triggered.
If that happens, what can you do?
Own Your Own Triggers
The key characteristic of being triggered is that your emotional reaction is out of proportion to what led up to it. This can be very hard to see at the time. Strong emotional reactions, by their very nature, are highly convincing. That’s why we have them. When your palms are sweating and your heart is pounding, everything inside you is saying you’re in danger right now, and it takes a lot of mental effort to question that. Still, if you notice this happening, you could try to pause and reflect on it before you say or do something you’ll regret.
Realistically speaking, however, often the only way to avoid getting triggered is to have it happen, learn from it, and share it with your partner.
The trick is to own your own triggers.
Owning them means taking responsibility that the trigger is in you, not your partner.
If you tell your partner, “I got triggered because you said such-and-such in that tone of voice,” that’s (pardon the pun) a pretty loaded thing to say. You’re still blaming them for your reaction. To your partner, it sounds like you’re saying it’s their fault—which, let’s face it, you are—and they have to change themselves in order for you not to get triggered.
While your partner might be okay with that, it’s also possible they’ll feel unfairly blamed, get angry, and be less likely to want to change for you. In other words, they’ll get triggered. That’s the last thing you want.
Instead, try starting a conversation by saying something like, “Wow! I really got triggered when you said x and y, because I thought it meant that you….” After briefly explaining what happened inside you, invite your partner then to tell you what went on inside them at the time.
Doing this isn’t easy. In fact, it will probably feel very vulnerable. It might feel as though you’re admitting to some terrible flaw, an awful lack of emotional maturity or self-control. But if you can truly own your trigger and let go of coming across as though your partner deliberately hurt you, or wanted to, most likely your partner will get calmer, more open, and more understanding.
Then the two of you can have a real conversation about what your partner really did or didn’t do (and really did or didn’t mean), why you got triggered (including what past experiences led up to it), what your partner can do to help you not get triggered again, and what you can do to see things differently so that you can react in a calmer, non-triggered way.
By doing this, you can turn your emotional triggers from a painful moment of misunderstanding and disconnection into an opportunity to feel safer, closer and more emotionally connected, not only with your partner, but with yourself.
So then, the next time they shout, “Hey, what are you doing over there?” both you and your trigger-happy nervous system will know that maybe they just...want to know what you’re doing over there. So they can do it with you.
