How to communicate effectively when you’ve been triggered.

A thread :

A lot of the time when we’re triggered three things happen: 1. we become passionate in our anger: flaring up, 2. we say things we regret and 3. we miss the actual point which sometimes could’ve avoided an entire argument. But we hear our trigger word and go awf.

For those of us who relate to the above, we’ve often been taught to have disagreements like this but this is unhealthy and there are ways to work on this. You should not accept this behaviour for yourself as,“that’s just me.” It is ur duty to urself to be better.

Nor should you accept behaviour like this from someone. You cannot make people change. If you are with someone like this and they are making no *consistent* effort to change, I would suggest reevaluating how much you let this person in ur life. It will have neg. effects on you.

Phase 1. Introspection and admission.

Ask yourself where this comes from/ where you learnt it from. 2. Ask yourself how it makes other people around you feel and if it’s caused people to be distant from you- even ask them because you may not have noticed.

3. Figure out your triggers. It could be words, places, phrases, gestures and suggestions that trigger you. Become aware of your triggers, dig to find its origin and work through why it’s so triggering.

4. After you’ve worked through why it’s so triggering, do reality checks: is it apart of your life? Are you really what that trigger suggests? Is the person using the triggers doing it intentionally? Is addressing this with a fight enhancing my life or rship?

At the end of the day, you can blame your past only so much. It’s up to you to heal and forgive yourself and those involved. Not because it’s right. Forgive so you can be free of your past. So your past does not transfer into new and other aspects of your life.

Phase 2: Responsibility

You are responsible for how you react to your triggers. You and you alone are in control of how you let something affect you.

It is absolutely normal to feel angry or depressed when triggered. All emotions are valid. But you are in control of processing it. So PROCESS. You are faced with a trigger: feel the emotion, then let it go. You have that control always.

Responsibility of your triggers also means taking charge of teaching yourself how to work through your triggers when you’re faced with them.

Phase 3: The work you can do to work through your triggers.

Some ways are: self talk: talk yourself through the conversation: is this person doing so intentionally? do I really want to work myself up over this?
how life changing is this conversation?

is this an ignorant (obstinate) person who won’t understand?
If it’s intentional, do they deserve my energy?
Am I hearing what they want me to hear or is my triggering filtering me from hearing what they mean?

Am I hearing what they want me to hear or is my trigger filtering me from hearing what they mean?
This is an important one.

Sometimes our triggers make us interpret things the wrong way and it’s important to be aware of that.

How we can work through poor interpretations due to triggers is by asking diplomatic questions. Eg, “ok...I think I’m lost, I think you’re saying such and such...is that what you mean?”

Another way to work through triggers is practice! Actually visualize conversations that have triggers in them and practice how you will react to them. You can do this in your imagination or in front a mirror or wall. Practice your reactions. It’ll become second nature.

Communication!!!! Learn to communicate when you’re being triggered. This will also take practice in front a wall or mirror. Some suggestions:

1. “Okay, you said something that’s triggering me and I can feel myself about ready to trip off. I need to cool down. We can return to this later.”
2. *walk away* *exit chat until they finish type and watch a show*
3. Reroute the conversation (yes, bullet points help!):

3. If someone insists you talk while you’re triggered and you’ve set up boundaries eg “I’d like to talk later,” this person doesn’t respect your boundaries and is likely selfish and immature. It’s on you to walk out of that situation.

4. Be honest. You can say why something is triggering you. “Listen, on this topic I get really emotional (emotional here means angry) because it reminds me of xyz from my past and I just need a moment to cool off and remind myself it’s not the same thing.”

Communicating effectively while triggered is hard. With:
Practice.
Introspection.
Responsibility when u allow yourself to live in your emotions.
The desire to want to be better.
Teaching yourself open, vulnerable comm.
Having people who respect ur boundaries.
U can b better