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The Hidden Value of Being ‘Triggered’

Alert yourself towards what needs to heal

Kerry Needs
4 min readSep 30, 2019
Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash

Anger can be a valuable emotion. It can move us towards action, enable us to stand up for ourselves, or set boundaries against an injustice.

But sometimes, we can fly into a rage for something that isn’t actually warranted to generate quite so much anger. Or someone could say something that triggers a huge amount of sadness or anxiety in you, without much warning.

We have a word for this now — being ‘triggered.’

That person just ‘pushed our buttons.’ Perhaps did or said something that sparked a fuel on the inside, an inner fire that raged brightly, and you found yourself ‘flying off the handle’ at something that when you really look deeply, wasn’t about them at all.

Because quite often, we don’t always know if it’s the person’s intent to trigger us. In some rare cases, it may be. But in a lot of cases, that person was just being themselves and doing the best they can.

Sometimes we make stories up about the situation because the emotion feels similar to an experience we have experienced in the past. Our body remembers that feeling, and so we naturally interpret the same emotion.

It’s like a resonant chord — your body hears a note that it’s heard before, and so…

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Kerry Needs
Kerry Needs

Written by Kerry Needs

Freelance Copywriter | Experiments in #lifestyledesign, #productivity and #flow. Occasional #poet. Get in touch: www.kerryneeds.com

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