By Kristen Schoolcraft Campos, PMHNP, MSN, MSW
Have you ever walked into a room where a cake is baking and felt yourself smile? Your sense of smell may have unknowingly brought up childhood memories of baking birthday cakes resulting in feelings of happiness. You likely did not even think about previous cake experiences and jumped right to associated positive feelings. Unfortunately, many triggered emotions are often not positive.
What is a Trigger?
A trigger elicits a reaction. In mental health, a trigger is often thought of as something which causes distress or worsening symptoms of a mental disorder. Triggers are influenced by past experiences and are due to diverse stimuli. Four types of triggers are: internal triggers, external triggers, trauma triggers, and symptom triggers.
Internal triggers: what a person experiences internally such as feelings and emotions that elicits responses based on past experiences. For example, stage freight causes you to remember your father calling you weak for being scared, and then feeling worthless as a result.
External triggers: what a person hears, sees, smells, touches, elicits responses based on past experiences. For example, a perfume smell reminds you of a loved one who has passed away.
Trauma triggers: Internal or external reminders of past traumatic experiences. For example, fireworks cause combat memories for a war veteran.
Symptom triggers: A physical change can cause a flare in a mental disorder. For example, reduced sleep can cause the start of a manic episode in bipolar disorder.
A person must first learn to identify their triggers. Maybe first recognize physical changes in your body. Does you start breathing faster, heart race, or start shaking. Maybe next try to recognize what you are feeling. Are you feeling fear, doom, anxiety, worthlessness, hopelessness, helplessness, or depressed? Then think if you have felt these sensations before. Did something happen to make me feel this way? Do I recognize any patterns of when I start feeling this way? When people are triggered, they have decreased awareness and judgment. This can make it difficult to identify triggers. If you are having trouble identifying triggers, you can start a feeling journal to help identify patterns and hopefully your triggers. Identifying triggers is the first step. Next you need to learn coping strategies and coping skills. I will talk more about this next... :)
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