Have you ever had a reaction to something that seemed way out of proportion to what actually happened? Maybe your boss criticized your work and you felt flooded with panic for days. Or perhaps someone canceled plans and you spiraled into despair.

These overwhelming responses aren't character flaws or overreactions—they're emotional triggers, a neurobiological event in your body and brain. By understanding the science behind triggers, you can develop more self-compassion. And if you're trying to understand someone in your life who gets emotionally triggered often, this knowledge can help you develop more compassion for that person.

An emotional trigger occurs when sensory information, a particular type of event, or a specific pattern between people activates the emotions of something similar that happened in the past. When this happens, it triggers the physiological feelings of that past event, the emotional feelings, and the cognitions or thoughts that accompanied it. It triggers the negative thinking about yourself and the world that existed at that time.

This concept is usually discussed in relation to traumatic experiences and traumatic events, but not everybody relates to the word trauma. You can think of this as a very emotionally upsetting event that happened in your past. The earlier these things happened in your life, and the more often they occurred, the stronger the link becomes between the sensory information, event, or pattern and the emotional, physiological, and cognitive response you had at that time.

When we have a memory that triggers us, a specific part of our brain activates. That trigger memory automatically activates our amygdala—our fight-flight-freeze center, our survival center. The original events that created the trigger may have been very survival-based. They might have been threats to our lives, threats to our sense of self, or deep threats to the connection we had with caregivers.

But here's the problem: the current event happening is not life-threatening, yet that part of our brain kicks in and we want to fight, flee, or freeze.

Here's a common example: Your boss gets angry at you. Maybe your boss is a shouter, maybe not, but they're clearly not happy with you. Boom—you might be triggered into a fight-flight-freeze response. You might recognize that your response is outsized to the actual event. 

This is at the core of emotional triggers and trauma triggers: the feelings are so overwhelming and so much more intense than one would expect in the moment. We don't understand it, and those around us don't understand it. The people around us might be critical: "You're making way too big a deal of this. Yeah, okay, your boss is a jerk, but it's not that upsetting." 

But for you, it might cause days of rumination, going over and over it.

The original event that caused this could have been any number of things: an overly critical parent, a parent who raged and put you in physical danger, or a parent who screamed and got upset and then withdrew and disappeared. All of these are threatening to the survival of a child, both on a practical level and on a self-development level. Our sense of who we are and our ability to develop and grow as individuals can be threatened by these events.

A well-known, typical example comes from when Vietnam vets returned from the war, which is when we began to learn much more about trauma. The classic example: a car backfires and the person who'd been in Vietnam hits the ground thinking it's a bomb.

This happens before your conscious mind becomes aware of it. Before your conscious mind registers that it was a car backfiring, not a bomb, you've already responded because your amygdala wants to keep you alive. It acts fast, but it's not always accurate. The same thing happens when a boss yells at you—your conscious mind isn't saying, "I'm in physical danger here," but your body goes there immediately.

Recently, I've received several questions about fear of abandonment. Fear of abandonment works the same way. If you had a parent who disappeared—whether through divorce, moving away, death, or even a parent who was very depressed and would withdraw whenever anything conflictual happened—that experience of being left gets embedded in your emotional brain along with all the panicked feelings you had as a child and the negative thinking you might have developed.

Often it's negative thinking about yourself: "If I were different, they would've stayed. If I wasn't bad, they wouldn't have left."

The part of the brain that activates with these trigger memories is the posterior cingulate cortex. This region lights up with PTSD memories more than others, but it's involved not just in memory, but also in self-referential thought. When we're deeply engaged in thinking about ourselves, this part of the brain is very active. That's why these memories come with a lot of negative self-talk, and why these events trigger our negative core beliefs.

I want to recommend a couple of my other videos and blogs. I recently published the blog  "Trauma and EMDR" which explores in more detail why trauma gets lodged in your brain differently and it provides practical tools for what you can do about it. 

I also have a blog on "Why Anxiety Hits Out of the Blue." Additionally, I have numerous videos on emotional regulation and specific skills. All of those videos help point you toward solutions.

I also want to share a free resource: a PDF called "Transform Your Negative Core Belief." It helps you identify what that negative core belief is and provides three practical tools to begin healing that belief and addressing some of those deeper issues.

Here's the important thing about emotional triggers, whether they're full trauma triggers or triggers from very upsetting events: you can heal from this.

Let me share how this works. When you feel that trigger, when you become aware that your response is disproportionate to the actual event, that's the moment you can say, "Okay, this is triggering something from the past and it's not happening now."

Then, using tools like diaphragmatic breathing to calm yourself in the moment will help you bring in the thought: "That was a long time ago. It feels like now, but it was a long time ago."

I'll share a personal example that recently came up. I explained to my husband that sometimes I can get anxious waiting in line. This is because I had a parent who had a terrible temper and hated waiting in line, and especially hated if you made him wait. So making other people wait can make me feel anxious.

I've done enough work that I can now think, "Okay, deep breath, I'm just waiting in line. Nothing bad is happening here." That initial bit of anxious energy might still surface, but I know what to attribute it to. I attribute it to something that happened decades ago, and I don't let my mind attribute it to something happening now, because nothing is happening now!

This might seem like a minor example, and I don't want you to think, "She does all this work and still has that response." But this is no longer an overwhelming thing for me because those memories have been processed.

I want to encourage you—you can get there. Professional help can make a real difference. If you're struggling, I encourage you to reach out to someone. That professional work can be complemented with resources like this video and my other, more skill-based videos that guide you through the steps and practices that need to be done regularly, even daily. These practices can calm your physiological system, help you make these connections, and lead you to a more joyful life.

If you found this helpful, please comment below or share with someone who might benefit!