Are You Triggered or Activated?
Over time, mental health jargon has become more and more commonplace in our everyday speech. One of the terms that gets loosely thrown around is the word “trigger.”
An actual trauma trigger is something that causes a person to relive their experience with intense fear, panic, or distress.
Triggers can be external (sights, sounds, smells, people, places) or internal (thoughts, feelings, body sensations).
Fight-or-Flight Response
When someone is actually triggered, their nervous system switches into sympathetic also known as the fight-or-flight response. It causes the person to experience an accelerated heartrate, fast breathing, muscle tension, and heightened alertness.
When they’re in this state, it feels like the room is closing in around them and they feel very panicked.
Triggers are a real thing, but people often use the term to explain more everyday type annoyances rather than true trauma triggers.
What Are Activations?
Activation is a term that I use to distinguish true triggers from something that mimics a trigger.
An activation may still cause your body to have a reaction, but typically not to the same level of full blown panic that comes with a response to an actual trigger.
What Happens in The Brain
When someone is actually triggered, the front part of their brain, the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), goes offline. That’s the part of our brains that are responsible for learning, decision-making, and rational thought.
When someone is activated, it’s a much quicker process to get the PFC back online again. We need the PFC online in order to think clearly about any situation.
Thinking About Activations
When you’re activated, the calm down process is typically faster compared to when you are triggered because your brain is mimicking the presence of a threat rather than there actually being a threat present.
Whenever you start to notice that your body is getting activated, the first question to ask yourself is “am I triggered or just activated?”
If you have the ability to ask yourself that question, you’re activated because that means there is enough brain functioning still online for you to have that higher form of thought.
How to Handle an Activation
When your brain starts to truly understand that an activation is only mimicking a threat, your body has an easier time calming down because cognitively you already understand there isn’t an actual threat present.
How To Calm Your Body Down
The first step when you’re activated or triggered is to calm your body down. That’s not the time to try to think about the problem or make a decision, the only focus at that point is to get the front part of your brain working again.
You do this by focusing on and connecting with your body. One option is a type of breathing called 4-7-8. Inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8. On the exhale, your tongue rests on the back of your top teeth and you exhale with an audible noise.
When your exhale is longer than your inhale, this sends a message to your brain that it’s safe to go back into rest-or-digest.
Another option is you can do the 5-4-3-2-1 method of grounding. Identify 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you feel (with your body), 2 things you smell, and 1 thing you taste. This helps you reconnect to the world around you so that your brain sees that you are physically safe in this moment.
How Therapy Can Help With Trauma
Working with a trauma therapist, can help you learn to identify the things that trigger you and develop strategies to help your brain come back online as quickly as possible. If you have questions about trauma therapy or would like to book a session with me, please use the Contact Me button below.
