I've been thinking lately about what we actually mean when we say "I'm feeling triggered". It's a word that gets used alot when we feel distressed or upset but we don't really understand why are feeling this way. For example, we may feel very shaken up if we are shouted at by an angry driver, but if a memory is being triggered from the past, we may experience this as overwhelmingly frightening, distressing or even shame inducing. We react as if we are in real danger, and our nervous system responds by going into the FIGHT or FLIGHT response. When our body perceives a threat, our body fills with adrenaline to increase our heart rate and cause a surge of energy so we can run from danger or fight it off; and our thinking brain shuts off as thinking would slow down our instinctive response. If it's not safe to fight or run, our body will go into FREEZE or FLOP, we feel weak, shaky, numb, as chemicals slow down our heart rate. A bit like a mouse playing dead when caught by a cat. So when we say we are feeling triggered our body is " remembering"something unsafe from the past and trying to keep us safe by reacting instinctively, in the way it would have done when we were primitive beings living in a cave and reacting to a tiger. The good news is that we can soothe our bodies back into a more comfortable state through techniques such as breathing, grounding, mindfulness and self compassion.