Triggers: A recipe for chaos (and maybe growth)

“Triggers are the levers that make us behave in a particular way.” In many ways, they’re like those annoying buttons your sibling used to press when you were a kid—except now, life is the annoying sibling. Triggers are often unconscious and biased, like how we unconsciously reach for dessert even when we’ve promised to eat healthy.

If you ask any of our software-engineer family members about triggers, they’ll eagerly inform you – “A trigger is a stored procedure in the database that automatically activates when a special event occurs.” Yes, we’re rolling our eyes at that explanation too, but they do have a point. Both definitions involve something (an event, a place, an object) setting off a chain reaction, except we are dealing with psychology, not SQL. And because we can’t code our way out of a paper bag, we’ll stick to the triggers of the human mind here.

We aren’t going anywhere near trauma – neither one of us is qualified to go there and one of us can only claim any association with psychology from binge-watching Ted Lasso. So, we’ll stick to things we can talk about: fast triggers. Yes, there are fast and slow triggers.

Fast triggers are when your reaction is as fast as a McDonald’s Happy Meal order. Slow triggers are best left to professionals. They are best equipped to explain why a person can quietly replace a misplaced sock or “find” things that are in plain sight for weeks at a stretch and then suddenly explode like a dormant volcano one fine day.

One of us recently jumped on the “superfood” bandwagon and ate an entire batch of moringa leaves – drumstick leaves, if you will. Though the immediate effect was one of utter virtue because it felt like a new level of health had been unlocked, the actual result was something far different. Two days were spent in what can only be described as a completely liquid state – reminding us of the old Tamil proverb that translates to “Too much nectar can be poison”. Sounds poetic and accurate. Moral of the story here is that even the good stuff can be a derailer if you overdo it.

Ah, there it is finally – Derailer. If you’re wondering why we waited this long to discuss derailers after naming the piece “Derailers”, it’s because triggers lead to derailers. What’s the connection? To overcome your derailers, you need to identify their triggers. Think of them like the clues that lead to the criminal, only here the criminal can make the detective go crazy after the culprit has been caught.

Triggers are not always easy to spot or identify. They can be super sneaky and come in a variety of disguises – acid reflux, the chills, a headache, and so on. And sometimes, they can even be a person who sets you off every time they talk to you. And you, like us, have probably seen those videos that tell you “You can’t control your triggers but you can control your reaction to it.” Yeah right! Would someone tell you that you can survive a bullet shot at you, just think of it as a water gun instead and the bullet will feel like a stream of water shot at you. You would probably laugh at someone who said such things.

For example – an acquaintance of ours lived with acid reflux for a very long time. She tracked her diets and watched what she ate but nothing worked. Then a random Ted Talk clued her in – they were anxiety attacks, not acid reflux. And they were brought on by the extreme fear of making mistakes that had been put into her since childhood. Being compared to cousins and friends and having every small mistake broadcast to friends and family had created a reaction to having to ever admit her mistake to anyone. And anytime she had to, she experienced an attack.

That realization helped her start the journey to identify her triggers and work on her derailers. If you are now rethinking some of your reactions or want to identify your triggers, stay tuned…

We will be back soon with some tried and tested ways that worked for us.