by: Zeke

Do you ever find yourself unusually irritated by something? Like at any moment you could just explode? Or maybe you just feel sad for a reason you can’t seem to explain? Oftentimes our emotions are triggered and we get caught in that emotion and don’t even realize what the trigger was. Maybe you recognize the trigger so you avoid it, but don’t realize why that trigger affects you as much as it does.

I’m sure triggered is not a term that is new to any of you, but why do we get that way? Why do certain triggers set us off so badly?

First, let’s define what trigger means. A trigger is something that sets off a negative emotion instantly, often without real thought. Your mind just instantly reacts to whatever happened without fully processing it first. So “triggered” is the state we find ourselves in after the trigger is pulled. Caught in a wind of emotion before we could process it and now have to calm down and battle that intense emotion.

So then, Why do triggers affect us? Well it ties into our previous topic before emotions, Strongholds. These triggers affect us instantly because our minds have put up defenses from feeling a way that we didn’t like. Most times this is caused by past trauma in our lives, ranging from huge things that have happened all the way down to simple things that we didn’t really even consciously put defenses up against. 

To give a somewhat lighthearted example, I am often triggered by people making loud chewing noises. Every time someone is slurping cereal milk, chewing with their mouth open, or eating a really loud crunchy food, I am instantly irritated by it. To the point I will just walk away or leave the room at times because it’s just getting under my skin. 

On the surface it’s easy to chalk that up to just the way I am and it’s just “annoying”, but the reality is that it was something my brother did to annoy me when I was a kid. He would purposefully make it as loud as possible to get under my skin. As a kid I didn’t get it, but looking back I realize that this (plus many other things my brother did to bully me) made me feel disrespected, belittled, and at extreme times, unwanted by him. 

So now 15 years later, when I hear people doing the same thing totally innocently, it makes me feel like they are trying to be annoying or they just don’t care about me. My mind now has a defense up so that I don’t feel those emotions underneath the irritation of disrespected, belittled, unwanted, etc. I don’t want to have to face those emotions so I will just become irritated instead, so that I don’t have to face the lies that have been creating a stronghold in my mind.

Many times we don’t really get to the root of the triggers or why they affect us. We get caught in the baseline emotion (sad, angry, irritated, etc) and don’t dig out the root of why we feel that way. Instead of pulling the root up, we just avoid the trigger altogether so that it doesn’t happen again. This is a nice bandaid on the wound, but won’t fix the issue.

My brother bullied me in a lot of different ways and the underlying emotions were all the same. So even if I just avoided chewing noises for my whole life, I would just be triggered by something else later. There comes a point where we need to face the emotions and lies we hear underneath the surface instead of just avoiding them. True joy and freedom from those lies, cannot be accomplished unless we face them with the truth of the Bible.

Question:

Read 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 (NIV is a little easier to understand in my opinion).

How can this apply to combatting emotions within ourselves?

Challenge:

• Find and note two triggers that you know you have.
• Begin digging out the root by asking yourself Why at least 3-5 times.

Example:

Chewing noises make me irritated.

Why?

It’s annoying.

Why?

They have always annoyed me because it sounds gross (dead end. Find another way to ask why).

Why does this particular thing annoy you over other annoying things?

It’s something my brother did to annoy me as a kid and it’s just always been annoying since then.

Why did this stick with you?

Because it reminds me of being bullied by him and how that made me feel.

How did it make you feel?

Disrespected, belittled, unwanted.

In this example, I could go deeper about why his bullying made me feel those emotions or why those emotions stuck with me still (goes back to strongholds/lies I hear), but you get the idea.

Go as deep as you want and if you need someone else to ask you the “Why’s” that is fine too!

If you already have a trigger that you have partially dug out or linked to some past trauma or stronghold, but haven’t fully unearthed the emotion/lie that is deeper down, you can use that and just keep going with it until you find the root.