Tim Arrigo explains that emotional triggers aren't new events but past experiences surfacing from implicit memory. When you see a damaged bike and feel shame, your brain can't tell past from present, so you react automatically. The way out is conscious awareness and breathing in the moment to teach your brain a safer response.
I was talking to a client earlier and he said, man, I encountered a situation that really triggered me. You know, what we don't realize a lot of times about emotional triggers is that emotional triggers are only triggers because they're connected to something from our past. A lot of times we don't realize how it's just eliciting or provoking or antagonizing something that already exists within us. And see, a lot of times we don't realize how things from our past get brought up in the present moment and how our brain and body cannot tell the difference between the present moment and a past experience. So what we're doing is we're actually reacting to something from the past in the present moment. And if we're not conscious of the thoughts and feelings that are going on in our mind and body, then a lot of times we might follow through with the behavior that we later regret. And sometimes we're not realizing how things from the past are showing up in our life without our permission, without our consent. And see, this is the way that a lot of our unresolved stuff starts to surface in our life and causes us to react, to break character, to do things that we later regret and things that eventually cause consequences in our life. So when you have things that are underlying underneath the surface that you haven't actually become conscious of and process and change your relationship to, Then what happens is you have what's called implicit memories. These are subconscious memories. You have two forms of memory. You have a conscious memory, which is like, what'd you eat yesterday for, you know, lunch? Or what was your last vacation? Or what do you do for work? And tell me how you do your job. And then you have subconscious memories, which are like driving a car, folding laundry, brushing your teeth. And another form of subconscious memory, which is called an emotional memory. An emotional memory— an example of this would be like if you were riding your bike and you crashed your bike in front of you know, over the curb in front of a crowd and a bunch of people laughed at you and it was really humiliating and embarrassing. And, you know, one day, you know, you take your bike home and you put it in the garage and one day you come downstairs to go to work, let's say a week later. And as you walk into the garage, you see your bike in the corner of the garage with a bent rim and you feel a wave of shame hit you. See, the wave of shame that you're feeling is not actually caused by that present moment. It's actually caused by a past experience in your brain and body remembering the experience. Some people have this with car crashes where they get in a bad car accident, they get back in the car and they start to have an anxiety attack, right? So your body and brain are remembering the past experience and trying to prevent you from getting hurt again in the moment. So what's the goal? The goal is to look at these things, to begin to work through them and resolve them because a trigger isn't really a trigger, it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to teach your brain something different. It's an opportunity to engage in a behavior that can give your brain what it's really looking for, which is relief, which is safety, which is security. And a lot of times we don't see triggers this way. We see them as a negative thing. But really, if you start to look at a trigger differently, you'll start to realize— if you have the right coping skills, you'll start to realize how these are powerful opportunities to teach your brain how to get relief from an alternative behavior and teach your brain and body that they're safe from the experience and how to really zoom out from the and be able to work through the emotions, the thoughts in the situation that you're having, be able to breathe, be able to tolerate it, develop acceptance, patience over the experience, which in turn is going to give you more self-control and more self-discipline. And the less that you reinforce that fear circuitry, the more that you break that pattern, the less that that thing is triggering in your life. So it doesn't have the power that it once did, the less that you feed into it, because every time you react to it, you're basically reinforcing that circuit and and you're telling your brain, yes, this was dangerous. Yes, this was a threat. Yes, this is life-threatening. And so when you stop that cycle, when you stop that circuitry, what you're actually doing is you are breaking the stimulation of the trigger and you're creating more conscious awareness. You're zooming out and see, a lot of people don't realize that consciousness is the key here because if you can't create consciousness in the present moment, then you can't make choices. And if you can't make choices, then you can't make changes.
