When Triggers Reveal The Truth
The Psychology of Triggers & Why They’re So Important
Today I am triggered.
I am triggered by the self-contradicting influencer who’s trying too hard. I am triggered by the scientist who conflates his feelings with facts. I am triggered by the former lover who judged my beliefs and made me feel like a dopey weirdo.
I am not referring to trauma triggers, but instead the modern day, pop-culture version of the term used to describe when we are offended, annoyed, or vexed by others. This mundane, garden variety triggering happens as we confrontationally lurk too-close behind the lackadaisical walker, or carpingly eyeball the clueless person attempting to scan items at a self-checkout.
Why am I (and likely you) so nonsensically, disproportionately irked by certain people? It’s a complicated question with an inconvenient answer. An answer that — in comical, meta kind of way — will likely trigger you.
We are triggered by people who embody rejected parts of ourselves. They possess qualities and tendencies that are alive and well within us, albeit buried a few feet under our day-to-day awareness (accordingly, you can learn a lot of unflattering things about me from my aforementioned triggers). In the words of Nobel Prize winning writer Hermann Hesse, “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part yourself. What isn’t part ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part yourself. What isn’t part ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
—Herman Hesse
The psychic acrobatics required to accept the above statement are not advisable for fair-weather seekers.
The integration of this wisdom into our world view requires us to face an utterly disconcerting, topsy-turvy type of truth: We are triggered most by that which we contain. The disdain that we project outward offers a voyeuristic glimpse into our most disowned, unintegrated, left-for-dead aspects of self.
If you care to make a list of your shadows — an activity that may admittedly only be enjoyable to other weirdos like myself — it is essential to first page through your triggers. Cataloging the people who ruffle your feathers and grind your gears can fling you into a rabbit hole abundantly furnished by abandoned aspects of self. Welcome to the shadow world!
Do you radiate with red-seeing rage when someone is messy? Do you lose your marbles in the presence of a liar? Are you catapulted into a fit of muscular spams by closed-minded people? Do you cast the provocatively dressed woman down a metaphorical well in your mind?
If so, this may suggest that the most terrifying, unacceptable version of you in your own mind’s eye — the you that you have ghosted long, long ago — is a messy, lying, closed-minded, promiscuous troll. This is excellent information and a tremendous jumpstart on the dragon-laden journey of self-understanding. In the words of late psychiatrist Carl Jung, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.’
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
—Carl Jung
Let’s be clear about something: It’s okay to be triggered.
It happens to all of us. Hell, I’m sure it even happens to Jennifer Garner and Tom Hanks on occasion. But what’s less-okay is when we let our triggers go to waste — when we smush them down even further into the pin-sized blackhole of our deepest, darkest depths, thereby preventing their necessary alchemical transformation into gold.
We don’t only shift into trigger-avoidance gear as individuals, but as a collective as well. As a country, we tend to respond to people who trigger us, not with curious awareness, but anti-exploration. Our puritanical scarlet letter days never seemed nearer than they do today, with today’s version of the prostitute, political naysayer, controversial freethinker, or too-powerful royalty drawn-and-quartered all the same through unfollows and emoji attacks. We try to eliminate the people who frustrate us, as generously demonstrated by cancel culture and woke-dom, and then promptly wail as we continue to manifest an Armageddon-like groundhog day of literal and metaphorical dumpster fires.
When we avoid our personal and collective triggers — and the juicy, unflattering wisdom therein — our shadows stay stuck and manifest as all sorts of unsightly mental, physical, and social maladies. This approach is far from productive, and is, at its essence, a childlike strategy for coping with an irritating world. Hiding under the sheets only seems to make the ghosts go away.
Astutely articulated by actor John Cleese, “The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.”
The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.
—John Cleese
What is far more provocative is to witness the people who trigger us as an inside-out mirror into the parts of ourselves and our society that are a bit muddy.
In the same way that I can catapult myself lightyears ahead in my personal growth process by considering why the braggadocious “spiritual influencer X” jolts me into a judgmental mental Jiu Jitsu episode, so too can we as a society transform our shadows by holding space for the inconvenient truths behind our collective triggers. It won’t be easy to mature past our visceral reaction of “I don’t wanna look” and into a mindset of “but maybe just a teensy peek…?”, but it’s a worthwhile goal to aspire to.
And, to be clear, this is not a novel proposition. In fact, the strategy of embracing the people who trigger us has been adopted by a litany of great minds, including many presidential figures. From Abraham Lincoln’s, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better,” to Benjamin Franklin’s, “Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults,” it is clear that many a wise soul has learned not from those who soothe him, but from those who piss him off.
I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.
—Abraham Lincoln
I was once told by a good friend: “Jessica, you trigger people. You should know that about yourself.”
When this seedling was first planted in my brain stuff, it kind of messed me up. I thought to myself: But I don’t want to trigger people. I want people to like me. How could I possibly trigger anyone? How do I make it stop?
While reflecting on this comment still makes me a bit itchy, I now feel a glimmer of pride forming on top of the inflamed ego surface. What it means is that — like it or not — I’m a decent mirror for others. I embody qualities that some have turned their backs to, including a spacious suite of shadowy stuff, but likely some sweet stuff as well.
You see, we don’t only cast the undesirables into the shadow, but also the personal power of which we are afraid: Our sexuality, ambitions, desires, curiosities, confidence, magic, and the like. Anyone who embodies strong dark — or strong light — will almost inevitably be a trigger, as evidenced by Taylor Swift’s (a fascinatingly triggering character, I might add) lyric, “People throw rocks at things that shine.” It seems there is much we can learn on both sides of the triggering teeter-totter.
Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults
—Benjamin Franklin
To conclude this unflattering essay, I will make an appeal to pathos.
We can only change that which we accept. To use our triggers as a catapult into light-speed self-discovery, we have to be nice to them. It helps me to think of my triggers as tiny-voiced orphans inside of me, poking my insides for attention, squeakily begging for my acceptance. I find this creepy-cute personification to be useful strategy, as I am much more likely to be kind to a dirty, neglected, orphan-trigger inside of myself than the grown-up version of myself (I dunno, the mind is a weird place).
For now, I will leave you with one final golden nugget — a last attempt to help us reframe our gross, oozy, picked-scab triggers with love — provided by a poet far more eloquent than I. In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
An extraordinary notion that perhaps, just perhaps, the people who trigger us most need our love, a metaphor for the love that we can also offer to the snaggle-toothed dragons inside of ourselves.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
—Rainer Maria Rilke