Triggering happens! You’re just innocently going about your day, engaged in meaningful, present time activities, when suddenly, BLAM! Your trigger goes off, and your connection with the present is replaced by a state of unconscious reactivity in which you totally confuse the present and the past.

What should you do if you get triggered? Choose the answer that most closely matches your usual response to getting triggered.

1. Figure out who to blame for triggering you and blame them thoroughly.
2. Just don’t be reactive; stop being triggerable already!
3. Learn to distinguish the present from the past, so you can resolve your past and become less triggerable over time.

I bet you can guess which answer I advocate for. Wanna find out more? Of course you do! Well, I’ve got just the video for you . . .

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He founded Interchange Counseling Institute in 2002 and is the lead teacher of Interchange's San Francisco-based year-long counseling and coaching training. When he's not counseling people, leading workshops, and advocating for social justice, Steve climbs mountains, adventures in the urban wilderness, explores the edges and limits of what's possible, deconstructs everything, and finds new ways to put it all back together.