How do we know if we're actually being triggered? Should we be cautious of how often we use the word?
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It means that you are at that moment shifting into a reactive response instead of a response.
When we're born, we come into the world with a limbic system in our brains that includes three organelles: The hippocampus — which eventually kind of morphs into your frontal lobes — the hypothalamus, and the amygdala. The amygdala is there from birth. And basically it's the part of the brain that addresses any injury that the little infant, toddler, teenager, or even 20 something year old experiences, because people's frontal lobes don't complete formation until girls are mid twenties and guys are late twenties.
We call the amygdala the smoke detector of the brain because when that little child or teenager feels hurt or scared or angry, it has to come up with a coping strategy. Essentially , when you get scared, hurt or angry, You move either against something in fight, you move away from something, which is flight. Or you move toward something and try to make it better. It's a coping strategy.
So when you trigger, you go into your coping strategy instead of engaging your frontal lobe If you actually do a pet scan, when somebody is triggering, their amygdala is lit up like a Christmas tree and their frontal lobes are blue. They're asleep. They're dormant.
And should we be cautious with how we use this word? I don't think so. I think it's actually helpful because it helps us recognize everybody has this happen. It helps us all remind each other to take that breath, turn your brain back on instead of just your reaction and process from there. We can help each other kind of call time out and, and take that moment to gather ourselves back up in a place that actually is going to do well for us and others.
Dr. Lynn Ianni
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