Triggers

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

“The power of words is in the works of words. People are much more bonded by the works of words than words. The work of words is the trigger of words.”- Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, Author.

When triggered, you act the age the wound was created. So, what does this really mean? Let’s talk-

Say you are a grown adult — capable and self-aware. You have had some issues and sought therapy, maybe even years into therapy if the issues were deep. But something happens that seems to tip you over completely. It could be anything. A dismissive comment from your boss. A partner who goes quiet. Being left out of plans. A child who refuses to listen to you. A loud noise. Someone on the road who tries to cut your lane. And suddenly, you are not the competent adult you were moments ago. You are reactive, small, desperate, or raging in ways that feel completely out of proportion to what just happened.

This is the phenomenon captured in that deceptively simple phrase: when triggered, you act the age the wound was created. You may look like an adult on the outside, but inside your nervous system you often return to the age when the wound first happened. So, in that moment, you are not really reacting as the person you are today. You are reacting as the younger version of you who first experienced that pain. Think of it like this-

Your body remembers experiences very deeply. Especially the ones that were painful, scary, or overwhelming. If something similar happens later in life—someone raises their voice, ignores you, criticizes you, or leaves—you may suddenly feel emotions that seem much bigger than the situation. That is usually because the present moment has touched an old memory stored in the body. In those moments, your nervous system is not thinking, “This is happening now. “It is feeling- “This is happening again.” And because the original pain happened at a certain age, your reaction can carry the emotions, vulnerability, and survival responses of that age.

This is why people sometimes say things like-

“I suddenly felt like a child.”

“I don’t know why I reacted so strongly.”

“I felt small and helpless.”

Your wound also has a birthday. Because every significant emotional wound was formed at a specific time in your life — usually childhood or adolescence, though sometimes early adulthood. And that wound did not just record what happened. It recorded everything: how old you were, how powerless you felt, what you needed and did not get, and what you decided about yourself and the world as a result.

A five-year-old who was humiliated in front of others decided something — I am not safe to be seen. A nine-year-old whose parent was emotionally unpredictable decided something — love is not reliable. A teenager who was abandoned decided something — I am not worth staying for. Those decisions calcified. They became core beliefs, held not just in the mind but in the nervous system itself. And here comes the intriguing part- when you are triggered, your body has no idea when exactly this decision was taken. So even though your wound has a birthdate, the body does not know what date or year it was. This is simply because when a present-day situation resembles the original wound — even loosely, even symbolically — the brain’s threat detection system fires. The amygdala does not stop to check your birth certificate or consult the calendar. Its pattern matches at lightning speed and concludes this is that thing that hurt us before. And then it hands the controls to the version of you who first experienced that pain. And that version of you could be a 6-year-old, a 9-year-old or a teenager.

Because the brain is a predictive and a repetitive organ and has a strong negativity bias, when you are triggered, you’re not responding to your partner — you are responding to your mother. You are not annoyed at your friend — you’re terrified, like you were at seven, that you are about to be abandoned. The emotional intensity belongs to then, even though the situation is now.

Trauma researchers and therapists sometimes call this an Emotional Flashback — not a visual replay of a memory, but a full-body return to the emotional state of an earlier wound. In real life this shows up in ways we often do not recognize as wound responses. Like-

Shutting down completely when criticized (the child who learned silence was the only safe response.)

Exploding disproportionately over something small (the child whose anger was never allowed a normal outlet.)

Fawning and over-apologizing the moment there is any tension (the child who kept the peace to stay safe.)

Becoming controlling when plans change (the child who lived in an unpredictable environment.)

Desperate people-pleasing when someone seems disappointed (the child whose love was conditional on performance).

In each of these cases, the adult behaviour makes perfect sense - for a child in that original situation. That is the point. It was the right response once. It was a response then. But now it is a survival strategy that outlived its usefulness. And here comes the task of self- awareness and therapy bridging the gap between then and now.

One of the most disorienting parts of being triggered is the gap between what you feel and what you know. You can know, intellectually, that your partner is not your father. You can know the meeting is not dangerous. You can know you are overreacting. You know all this too well, but you are still not able to stop it.

That is because knowing and feeling are processed in different parts of the brain. The wound lives below the level of rational thought. It responds before your prefrontal cortex - the seat of reason and perspective. This is why telling someone who’s triggered to “just calm down” or “be rational” is so ineffective. You are speaking to a part of the brain that is not currently in charge. So, what is the way out? You simply learn to update the files in your head! Because wounds are not permanent software. They can be rewritten — slowly, with patience, and usually with support.

The first step to healing is to learn your triggers and acknowledge them. Not to avoid them forever, but to recognize them as signals rather than emergencies. When you notice the disproportionate feeling, you can ask: “How old do I feel right now?” That question alone can create a sliver of space between stimulus and response and give the younger self what is needed. This is the work of self- reparenting — learning to offer yourself the safety, validation, or comfort that wasn’t available at the time of the wound. It sounds abstract until you try it, and then it can feel remarkably real. Also building new experiences. The nervous system updates through lived experience, not just insight. Relationships where you are safe, where conflict doesn’t mean abandonment, where you can be seen — these slowly teach the body that the old conclusions no longer apply. Therapies like EFT, Somatic Experiencing®, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) are specifically designed to reach the parts of trauma that talk therapy alone cannot always access.

The next time you find yourself reacting in a way that feels bigger than the moment deserves, try to pause, even briefly and ask:” Who in me just got scared?” And see what comes up? “How old is the child talking back to you? What is this child trying to tell you?” A felt sense will emerge in the body.

Nothing is wrong with you when you are reactive and triggered. It simply means that a younger part of your nervous system is asking to be seen and to be understood. Healing begins when the adult part of you can slowly bring safety and awareness to that moment. When that happens, your nervous system starts learning something new.

So, be compassionate to yourself. Because you’re not broken. You are not weak. You are a person with a history, and part of that history did not get to finish being felt fully. The triggered reaction is not your flaw. It is a younger part of you doing the only thing it ever knew to do- SURVIVE. The real work which is simple is learning to show up for that younger part of you and to gently let them know that the adult is here now, and things are different.

Healing is not linear, and it has its own pace. Every time you face a trigger, and you notice the pattern, you have already taken one step toward the present. In a way, every trigger is a doorway where your past briefly meets your present. So, meet yourself. With kindness. With patience. Your younger self is waiting to meet you.

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”-Rumi.