Newsletter February 2023 - on Triggers

Damn triggers. After a longer phase of relative calm, they have once again resurfaced in my life. Like too many shots of vodka, the trigger takes control of my body, getting me to do and say things that I end up regretting the next day. Those on the receiving end are not too thrilled about it either. A clear sign that it's time to either grow or suffer the pain of "remaining tight in a bud" (see quote down below).

 But what are triggers exactly? What happens to us when we are triggered? How does this play out in love relationships? And what does all this have to do with miracles, with grace?

These days it is popular to say something like "what you just said totally triggered me"  - by which we actually mean - "now I feel bad, and it's all your fault. I can't believe what an asshole you are". But we are missing the whole point of what a trigger actually is - as Gabor Maté points out, the other person has just pulled the trigger - the gunpowder, the explosive material, is in you. So when we are triggered, what we actually should be saying is something like this: "the painful feelings I am experiencing right now have little or nothing to do with you or the actual situation. What you said touched a wounded, vulnerable place in me. I now have a strong, urgent and automatic reflex to fall back on the strategies I used as a child to protect myself in a threatening situation."

So why do we rarely hear ourselves or our triggered friends saying this? For good reason - when we are triggered, chunks of our brain go offline. These are the parts responsible for processes such as self-reflection, empathy, compassion - what Stephen Porges calls the "social engagement system". The parts of our mammalian and reptile brains involved in dealing with outside threats get activated. Within fractions of a second, our autonomous nervous system gets geared up for Fight/Flight/Freeze.  Our whole perception of the world changes in these moments - the way we see, hear, interpret words and tone of voice, even the access we have to our memories - all change to reflect the world view "I am in danger. The other is my enemy. I must protect myself at all costs".

When the trigger comes from someone who is close to us, things get particularly tricky. If a bear (or stranger on the street) is threatening to attack me, my fight/flight system will kick in and (hopefully) help me find my way to safety. Once the bear is neutralized, or I manage to get away, all is fine. It's fine because I don't depend on the bear (or stranger) for my well-being. The situation is very different with an attachment figure. Children are dependent on their parents for their very survival - so when the threat comes from the parents, the child finds herself in a bind - the very person she needs is also a threat. For small children, fighting or running away is not an option. And so, the ever resourceful child develops strategies to neutralize the threat while still staying in connection - quite an amazing feat (imagine doing this with a bear...). To make this work, the child must give up certain parts of themselves - they must sacrifice their authenticity in order to survive.

This is what NARM refers to as the core dilemma - needing to choose between love and belonging on the one hand, and authenticity on the other. When we get triggered by someone we love and need (for example, our partner), this core dilemma gets activated in us.

Let's take the example of Carol and Tom, a couple I have been accompanying in my practice. As a child, Carol's parents, themselves overwhelmed with their own traumas and a deeply dysfunctional relationship, had very little time or attention for her. Carol learned the hard way that expressing her needs would fall on deaf ears - so eventually she stopped expressing what she needed, silencing herself and making do with very little. Fast forward to her longstanding marriage with Tom. Her (very human) need for loving attention from her partner lands her directly in her core dilemma. Having learned her bitter lessons in the past, she believes that if she asks for what she needs directly from Tom, it will fall on deaf ears. So she says nothing, and then settles into a mix of angry, sad and closed down because he has not somehow intuited her unspoken needs. She folds her arms over her chest, her jaw locks, her body tenses, her eyes narrow, she talks fast and in a shrill voice.  In her mind, she tells herself "I am not important to him". She gets critical and starts making demands on Tom, none of them really addressing what she would really wish from him.  In this triggered moment, Carol is seeing the world and her partner through the eyes of the wounded child, from what NARM calls "Child Consciousness".

As is so often the case with couples, Carol's strategy for dealing with her wound acts in turn as a trigger for Tom. Feeling overwhelmed by her resentful comments and stream of unclear demands, he either withdraws emotionally or tries to placate her - by apologizing, asking for explanations, and trying hard to "get it right". Constantly overriding his own needs, every once and again he explodes in anger and is surprised and scared by his reaction. As a child, Tom was rewarded by his parents and those close to him when he was a good boy and did what others wanted from him. When I ask him what he believes would happen if he stood his ground, he answers "the relationship will break apart". Tom is also seeing the situation through the distorted lens of Child Consciousness. Since all his strategies for "dealing" with Carol in these moments involve some form of disconnection, it only serves to fuel her fires - since in the end what she really wants is to feel him in connection with her. And so around and around they go, in what couples therapist Mona Fishbane calls "the dance of the amygdalas" - The amygdala being our internal smoke detector, the part of our emotional brain responsible for detecting threats in the environment.

In this state, each partner sees the other as a threat and the priority is self-protection - finding safety in a dangerous situation. Obviously, this is not fertile ground for intimate connection - paradoxically, since ultimately this is what both of them are seeking, the real reason they are sitting in my office.

How do we get out of this dance trance? The answer as I see it is part mindfulness, part practice and part miracle.

Let's start with the mindfulness part. Therapist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote the following in his remarkable book Man's Search for Meaning -

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

The space he is referring to is the precise moment we are triggered, when all the emotions flood our body, but before we have acted out on those emotions. If we are mindful enough to catch ourselves in that moment, we can slowly develop the capacity to choose our reaction consciously - this is the freedom Frankl is talking about. We do this by taking an interest in our triggers - which situations trigger me? What do I feel in my body when the trigger is activated? What emotions come up? What thought patterns and stories repeat themselves? Over time, we develop what is called "the observing mind" in meditation - that part of us that can observe without judgement as we fall into the triggered state. If we are able to do this consistently in the midst of our most powerful triggers, we have already made an important step on the way to liberating ourselves.

Practice is the second essential ingredient. The survival strategies we have developed in childhood are like habits reinforced over decades. Tom has rehearsed his strategy of apologizing and withdrawing in the face of criticism for decades - the imprints are built into his nervous system and neuronal pathways in his brain. Changing these is definitely possible (thanks to neuroplasticity), but it takes repetition. We have to consistently make new experiences. Now, when Carol's trigger is activated and she feels neglected by Tom, more often than not she can "wake up" and realise she is triggered. On good days, she can practice telling Tom what she wishes in a clear and straightforward way. Tom, for his part, is practicing the art of feeling into his own needs, standing his ground and at the same time staying in connection with Carol. It is scary stuff for both of them - indeed, for this to work, they each need to build up a capacity for feeling the emotions they have long avoided (we call this capacity Containment). In modalities like NARM, the therapy session acts as a safe space where people like Tom and Carol can, bit by bit, allow themselves to feel unpleasant feelings and build up their inner container.

Which brings us to the miracle. When I witness someone has been caught deeply in a destructive trigger pattern for years or even decades, start to "wake up", to disidentify from the stories and open their heart, it touches me deeply - in those moments there is something beyond the personal, something divine in the air. I can't help but feel the person is being touched by grace. Indeed, I believe the process of liberating ourselves from our triggers, of healing our wounds, is a deeply spiritual act. Making the transition from Child to Adult consciousness means entering into the present moment, the Here and Now - it is the letting go of the illusions and projections that disconnect us from ourselves and others. Certainly that has been my experience, working on my own triggers.  Leonard Cohen famously wrote "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in”. Finding this crack within us is an act of grace. Mindfulness and practice are like invitations, like setting the table beautifully so that maybe grace will pay us a visit. When it does, the only appropriate reaction is to lift up our heads to the sky and say "thank you".

Quote:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
                     ― Anaïs Nin