When you realize that your reactions to emotional triggers are negatively impacting your relationships, it’s natural to feel grief and a desire for change. This is a critical first step on a journey toward healing and healthier relationships.
As you allow God to guide you in managing these emotional triggers, you can experience true freedom and find the courage to express yourself authentically. May God Continue To Guide Your Steps as you navigate this transformative process.
If emotional triggers affect your life, I hope you find encouragement and hope in this journey of healing. Claim God’s promise of His power being made perfect in our weakness.
“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT
Understanding How Emotional Triggers Occur
The scenario is familiar to many. Christmas break had just begun. After a day of classroom parties, the house quickly filled with gifts, backpacks, treats, and dishes.
As I unloaded the van, my two sons, fueled by sugar-induced excitement, started wrestling in the living room.
With each trip back and forth, the house became louder and more cluttered, and my focus shifted to the wrong things. Instead of anticipating Christmas break with my boys, I started dwelling on how much I still had to do.
The schedule leading up to the last day of school had been packed, and I was running on fumes.
While working, I indulged in negative self-talk, reinforcing a distorted view of reality.
No one appreciates the effort it takes to pull off a Christmas like this. I’m the only one who will wrap gifts and stuff stockings. It’s all on me to cook, clean, and entertain.
My focus was entirely inward, and my frustration grew with each step.
And then, as emotional triggers often do, it happened. While the boys were wrestling, my older son’s glasses fell off, and one of them rolled on them. His brand-new glasses were bent in two, and I snapped.
I screamed at my children. Yes, I did.
I lashed out at them for their carelessness, making broad, sweeping statements about how they never helped and only made my life harder. I vented the angry words I had been silently directing at myself.
I will never forget the shocked and slightly scared looks in the eyes of the two people God has entrusted me to care for and love.
What Exactly is an Emotional Trigger?
A trigger is a seemingly small thing that can unleash something far more significant. An emotional trigger is an event or situation that sparks an intense emotional reaction, often disproportionate to the actual circumstances.
Emotional triggers are frequently minor experiences that detonate like a fiery explosion.
I am a trauma and abuse survivor. At 16, I was groomed and seduced into a romantic relationship by a 39-year-old married high school teacher. The relationship lasted approximately nine months.
When rumors of our affair spread from the school into the community, I experienced a form of social death from which I almost didn’t recover.
Predators don’t only groom their victims; they also groom their circles of influence. My abuser was a respected teacher who had conditioned those around him to believe his version of events over the accounts of girls who had fallen prey to his advances and dared to speak out.
At the vulnerable age of sixteen, I didn’t know how to trust my voice. And when it was silenced and stomped on, I walked away a shell of my former self.
Over two decades passed before I understood how that early experience shaped my life. I am still learning how my brain processes information in its attempts to protect me.
I am grateful for my brain’s incredible work to keep me emotionally and physically alive during that dark season.
However, our brains can sometimes function like an allergy.
Our bodies signal and react to prevent danger even when the situation isn’t genuinely threatening. It merely reminds us of something dangerous.
And now, we’re left with the task of differentiating between real and perceived risk and making conscious decisions about how best to move forward.
It would be wonderful if none of this resonated with you. It would be fantastic if you never experienced emotional triggers… a simple conversation with another parent triggering feelings of inadequacy and shame or lashing out at your husband because something he said triggered feelings of rejection and abandonment.
But my experiences have taught me that many of us grapple with emotional triggers and navigate life from places of fear and brokenness.
5 Steps Toward Healing Emotional Triggers
The following five steps have been instrumental in my healing from emotional triggers. It is my sincere hope they can help you, too. May God continue to guide your steps as you apply these principles.
Step 1 – Recognize
What does my body do when anxiety rises?
That Friday afternoon before the glasses broke, as I walked from the house to the garage, my body sent me clear distress signals. My mind was racing, my breathing was shallow, and my footsteps were heavier than necessary.
These were cues to pause. Had I heeded their warning, I could have prevented what happened next. But I continued in that state of stress.
Now I know to treat these physical and emotional signs like I treat hunger or pain.
When my body signals hunger, I grab a snack. When I have a headache, I reach for ibuprofen. I instinctively know how to respond to the need I recognize.
The same principle applies to emotional triggers like anxiety.
1 Peter 5:7 encourages us to cast our anxiety on Jesus because He cares for us. Just as a snack alleviates hunger and pain relievers ease a headache, pausing to pray, breathe, and invite Jesus into our present situation can transfer that anxiety onto something beyond ourselves.
We do not have to bear it alone.
Step 2 – Reveal
What am I secretly believing about what’s happening?
My thoughts as I unloaded the remnants of the Christmas party were entirely self-centered. I wasn’t simply dealing with cleaning out the van. I was wrestling with the assumption that others perceived my contributions as inadequate.
The events of that day, and the days leading up to it, had left me depleted, making me vulnerable to believing lies about the source of my value.
The truth was that Christmas brought extra work, and I had taken on too much of it. I needed to release some responsibilities and ask for help.
But instead of humbling myself and asking for help, I found temporary satisfaction in blaming others for my overwhelm.
I listened to lies like my husband doesn’t care, and my kids are making things harder.
That internal monologue led me back to a familiar feeling of rejection and a sense of not being appreciated. I felt insignificant, overlooked, and like a joke.
John 1:5 says that darkness has no power when light enters because darkness cannot overcome the light. Light – or truth – is power.
Speaking those thoughts aloud – saying that my husband doesn’t care if I’m struggling or that my kids are intentionally making things harder – would have revealed their falsehood. I am grateful that those ideas are far from the truth in my family.
Revealing the darkness of our flawed thoughts invites the light of God’s truth. Then the darkness has no choice but to flee.
Step 3 – Remember
Where have I experienced God’s faithfulness in the past?
When I was just eight years old, I had a profound encounter with God during a week at church camp. I asked God for a sign to confirm my faith.
Later that day, I saw something that deeply stirred my soul. It brought an understanding that God was answering my prayer with a tangible sign. In that sign, He communicated a message directly from His heart to mine.
I hope you’ve had a similar experience—a time when you felt God’s presence in your life. These moments create lasting memories we can recall long after the experience.
When stressful events overwhelm us and we are emotionally triggered, we have the opportunity to remember what we know to be true.
If we don’t have personal experiences to draw from, we can turn to stories and verses in the Bible.
Psalm 145:13 assures us that the Lord is trustworthy and faithfully keeps His promises.
Remembering God’s faithfulness does not magically check everything off a Christmas to-do list. But it gives us the strength we need for the present moment.
If I had recognized the physical signs of rising anxiety, revealed the inaccurate thoughts racing through my mind, and remembered the promises of God’s love and provision, I would have handled the broken glasses situation very differently.
Step 4 – Receive
How is God offering His help in this experience?
In Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of the two sons. Both sons squander their inheritance. The younger son wastes it through foolish spending, and the older one wastes it by being unwilling to receive it.
When the older son accuses the father of not treating him as well as his younger brother, the father assures him that everything the father has is already the older son’s to take; he only needs to receive it.
So often, we squander our inheritance like the older son.
We desire the love, joy, peace, and rest Jesus offers in abundance. But we hold our hands up, blocking it instead of opening them to receive it. The choice is ours.
When I’m facing a difficult decision, I speak aloud a meaningful Bible verse, or I pause and use a breathing technique to focus on Jesus.
John 14:27 tells us that Christ gives us peace. We don’t need to be troubled or afraid because we can choose to receive His peace.
The next time rising anxiety, discouragement, and negative self-talk threaten to overwhelm you, consider trying this simple breathing technique to receive the peace God provides:
Breathe in deeply, saying to yourself, “I am.” Hold that breath for a count of seven. Then slowly exhale, saying, “loved.”
Repeat the process four times.
I am… hold your breath… loved.
I am… hold your breath… loved.
I am… hold your breath… loved.
I am… hold your breath… loved.
Then look at the cluttered kitchen table, wrestling children, and broken glasses – or whatever form your emotional triggers take – and move forward, having received Christ’s offering of peace.
Step 5 – Repeat
How do I extend grace to myself during this process?
In the years since the broken glasses incident, I’ve repeated similar scenarios more often than I’d like to admit.
Of course, they didn’t look exactly the same. But I’ve raised my voice at my boys, lashed out at my husband, and succumbed to self-loathing because I craved the temporary relief of a worldly release rather than being filled with divine peace.
I don’t know why we continue to make that choice, but we will. The good news is that I make it less frequently now. May God continue to guide your steps toward making better choices.
Healing from Emotional Triggers
Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us that we are not consumed by trouble because of the Lord’s compassion. His unfailing compassion is endless.
There is always enough to meet our needs, and we will never exhaust the mercy God willingly pours out on us.
Friend, if you see yourself in my story, be gentle with yourself. Something probably happened to you that wounded you deeply, making it difficult to believe good things about yourself and others.
That’s okay. You are okay.
Healing from emotional triggers is possible.
Extend grace to yourself and ask for help when you experience emotional triggers. My boys now joke and say, “That’s Mom’s trauma brain,” when I realize I’ve overreacted and apologize.
I’ve shared parts of my story with them, so they understand that sometimes my initial reactions don’t align with my later thoughts.
I experienced emotional triggers, reacted in an attempt to protect myself, and I am sorry I did so.
As followers of Jesus, we must prioritize keeping His commandments to love God, others, and ourselves. Loving ourselves is often the most challenging, but we can do it.
We can continually ask God to open our hearts to a deeper understanding of how He sees us so we can align our beliefs about ourselves with His.
We won’t walk this path perfectly, but we will journey well when we depend on Him to give us exactly what we need for whatever we face. May God continue to guide your steps as you seek His guidance.
To learn more about Emotional Triggers view our discussion, Managing Emotional Triggers (click here).
To receive your free resource, Steps for Managing Emotional Triggers (click here).
Author
Angie Baughman
Angie Baughman is a pastor, author, and podcaster. She is the founder of Steady On ministries and creator of the Step By Step Bible study method. Angie is also a contributor to the devotional Life Changing Stories.
