Every day we are emotionally stimulated by something in life, from driving, co-workers, the news, spouses, and life in general. Do you start your day happy and content, and while driving to work, someone cuts you off, and suddenly you are screaming every name in the book at that driver? Why did that simple gesture cause such an extreme, emotional reaction? Or perhaps you’re in a relationship, and your partner doesn’t honor or listen to you, causing you to be hurt? 
Earlier Life Experiences
Earlier life experiences in childhood and early adolescence created fertile ground for emotional reactions like hurt feelings and anger to develop. When you don’t know how to react emotionally or know what to do with the emotions, it creates an emotional wound in the subconscious mind. Wounds fester for a long time. Emotional stories develop from wounding too. Think about pouring salt on an open sore on your hand. It’s not a comfortable experience. It’s what happens in the mind, and you keep revisiting the open sore, trying to make sense of the pain.
Remember back in childhood when your parents didn’t listen or told you to be quiet and not say anything? How often as a child were we allowed to voice concerns? Never. Or when your parents didn’t have time for you? “Not now.” How often did you hear that? A lot.
What to do with all pent-up anger and frustration? As children and adolescents, you aren’t emotionally sophisticated and unable to process complex emotional exchanges.
Healing Emotional Triggers
The emotional body is a powerful source of energy. Every thought has an electrical charge. Like an energy vapor, emotional energy activates the nervous system and the organs. Anger, frustration, irritability, and resentment are key emotional triggers.
When you get emotionally triggered, it’s like a boiling volcano of energy rushing through the nervous system, in a nano-second, there’s an explosion of anger. The open wound in the subconscious is immediately activated, and you react. Whoever triggers you is not the source of the problem, they are only the messenger. The original hurt happened a long time ago in childhood and adolescence. Remember, there’s no new anger.
Triggers are good, though, showing you where you are emotionally stuck. Anger always takes you out of the moment and into the past. It’s not good to hold onto anger from past experiences, even painful past experiences. Long-standing anger can damage the liver and the gallbladder.
6 Steps To Healing Emotional Triggers
Determining the emotional reaction takes a little investigative work by you, but it can be done.
- Try not to rationalize emotional behavior. Rationalization and justification do not help you heal emotional triggers.
- Center yourself. Sit in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed by family and take a little break. Drink water and pull the tops of your ears out off the skull until they hurt a bit and release them. It’s a grand gesture to immediately relax the central nervous system.
- Breathing is an excellent diffuser of emotional upset. Close your eyes and take five long deep breaths–in and out through your nostrils.
- Stay present with how you feel. Ask yourself, do I feel angry, hurt, disappointed, or rejected?
- To heal emotional triggers, ask yourself and be honest, “What is the real issue?” Remember when you first felt hurt, angry, disappointed, or rejected? Did you feel unloved, misunderstood, frustrated, or furious? Once you get the answer, you’ll know what you are forgiving and healing.
- Keep a journal and write down your responses. Writing is a good source of healing and getting the energy out of the body and mind.
Afterward
How will you know the emotional situation cleared? You might feel it, and you’ll feel less stressed and anxious. Also, when you experience similar problems that caused you to get triggered in the first place, you no longer get triggered by the same emotional exchange, and your mind remains neutral.
In an emotionally intelligent world, people speak to each other without emotional triggering and anger. So next time, notice what causes you to react.