What are some ways to calm down if I'm triggered by something?

(Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra / Unsplash)

So when somebody is triggering you are getting emotionally hijacked by your amygdala in some kind of way and you feel your anxiety go up, your frustration level go up, whatever it may be.

As that happens, there is one very simplistic strategy to manage that: Take a timeout. I don't care if you're having a conversation with somebody and you start to get heated, you feel yourself getting frustrated or irritated. Take a timeout, which will reengage your frontal lobes and then give you a way to come back to whatever's going on in a place that feels responsive instead of reactive.

That's it. Simple. Walk around the block, timeout the conversation until you have a better way to address it when cooler heads prevail, all those things, but getting triggered just means you are either in fear, frustration or woundedness. Any of those emotions are likely to create a response that isn't what you want because it will be reactive instead of proactive.

Dr. Lynn Ianni