Why We Get Triggered in Relationships

We all get triggered in relationships at some point, and when that moment unexpectedly comes, it can be very uncomfortable. 

Triggers are as individual as we are – they’re based on our personality, our upbringing, and any wounds or trauma we’ve experienced throughout our lives. Learning why they occur for us, the impact they have on our lives, and how to get unstuck from them is key in maturing as an adult. 

What is a trigger?

A trigger is an experience that catalyzes a survival activation in your nervous system – whether that is toward mobilization or immobilization (taking action or shutting down). 

In relationships, a trigger is an experience that catalyzes a survival activation in your nervous system based on past data from your relational memory banks. 

In this context, past data refers to signals and information stored in your memory from past experiences in your primary relationships – the ones upon whom your care depended when you were an infant and young child, when you were forming your impressions of the world around you.

For example, a facial expression that you perceive as unhappy or displeased, coming from your beloved (or a friend/coworker/boss), might cause your mind and body to respond disproportionately to the actual requirements of the moment because, based on past data, your brain predicts that something “bad” is going to happen. 

Why do we get triggered?

Everybody responds differently to triggers. You might automatically go into a state of anxious “pleasing/fawning”. You might get defensive and feel heat in your face. You might all of a sudden feel tired, or tense.

If you have a history of having to take care of other people’s feelings, or things felt emotionally or physically unsafe when someone close to you was unhappy, or the care available to you felt inconsistent to your infant nervous system, then this could create a pattern in your adult nervous system where your body attempts to protect you. It automatically reads displeasure or other familiar data as potentially harmful to you, as a defense mechanism. 

The problem with triggers

1) Self-orientation

When you are acting on data from the past, and you are concerned with your own survival safety, there is rarely any attention available for the other person or context. All of your attention is on yourself, and your needs. Which, at least relationally speaking, is selfish (unless, of course, you are actually in physical danger).

2) Disproportionate response 

As children, if a parent yells, or is inconsistent in their affection or attention, our nervous system reads this as survival level danger. This is legitimate because, as children, we literally depend on our parents for everything, and their displeasure could mean a disruption of the parent/child bond – the bond that ensures a child’s needs will be attended to. 

As an adult, if a relational partner yells or is inconsistent in their affection or attention, in most cases this–while upsetting–doesn’t impact our survival. Yet, based on our personal relational history, it can trigger us into a survival level response, which will then likely elicit a survival level response from our partner. Then we will ping pong back and forth, creating even more relational tension and angst.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out my blog How to Get Unstuck From Your Relationship Triggers, and dive even deeper in my Relational Practice Group. This is where the real transformation occurs.