Triggers: Definition & Examples (in Psychology)

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Our days are filled with situations and experiences that trigger emotional reactions – sometimes very strong ones. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about why triggers happen in your life, read on!
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I used to pride myself on not reacting to things, and to an extent I still do. I think non-reaction is an important skill for psychotherapists – our clients need a space in which they can share anything without fearing how we will respond. In this sense, a therapy session is different from reality – it is a deliberate attempt to create a safe space from judgment. And this is no small feat, because therapists, like all other humans, get triggered all the time.
All of us grapple with getting triggered, and often we don’t even know why. Let’s learn together about what psychology research can tell us about triggers and review some examples.
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What Are Triggers? (A Definition)

From the perspective of psychology, triggers are events that happen around us (and less often, inside us) that cause us to have particular emotional reactions or behave in specific ways (Miskewicz et al., 2015). There are two components to a psychological trigger: the event and the reaction to the event. Almost anything can be a triggering event: it can range from something as seemingly trivial as the mailman arriving a half hour later than usual to something as devastating as a natural disaster.
 
Not all triggers are created equal – some will evoke only a minor response in us, while others will cause us to have powerful emotional reactions. One way to categorize our responses to psychological triggers is that they are responses based in fear of punishment or the desire for reward. In other words, psychological triggers encourage us to move closer to or farther away from something (Newman & Wallace, 1993).
 
Emotions themselves can also be psychological triggers, in the sense that they motivate us toward certain actions. For example, the emotions of shame, anger, and anxiety can trigger a variety of impulsive or compulsive behaviors (Abramowitz & Berenbaum, 2007). Impulsive behaviors are those that happen spontaneously and without much conscious thought, such as when a flash of anger causes one child to shove another, or when a wave of nostalgia inspires me to call an old friend so we can reminisce.
 
By contrast, a compulsive reaction is a behavior that we know “works” to “solve” the emotion that has come up. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, typically have compulsive, ritualized responses to their anxious feelings and thoughts. They have learned – or rather, they have been reinforced to know – that these rituals will reduce their anxiety. While this pattern may be somewhat unique to people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, we have all learned what behaviors work to change the feelings we do not want to have. In this sense, certain emotions trigger certain behaviors in us.

Why Triggers Matter

Triggers matter because they are inevitable, and how we deal with them determines much of our psychological health. Our ability to skillfully control our responses to psychological triggers – or not – determines whether over time we become more or less psychologically flexible and able to manage our lives (Mansell, 2005).
 
This learning over time through triggers has been the subject of many research studies. For example, being around consistent family conflict as a child, and especially having parents who do not respond skillfully to one’s misbehavior, teaches us that conflict will be long-lasting and difficult to overcome (Burt et al., 2005). For people in this situation, in their adult lives, interpersonal conflict becomes a trigger of powerful emotional reactions.
 
This was just one example of a broader phenomenon: our childhoods powerfully shape the ways we can respond to psychological triggers. If our childhoods are continually stressful, we become either much more responsive or much less responsive to stressful situations (Chaplin et al., 2018). In response to this conditioning over time, we may turn to unhealthy coping behaviors, such as using substances, to either tone down the intensity of our responses to triggers, or to help ourselves feel more when we are numb.
 
While most psychological triggers we face are of the daily, less-intense variety, large-scale events often have much more impact. At the same time, events such as earthquakes trigger a huge range of responses in people. We can attribute this to the sheer variety of genes that each person can possess – some of us are genetically programmed to withstand hardship better than others (Silbereisen et al., 2013).

Examples of Triggers

Triggers are abundant in our lives. In an average week, events such as a bus arriving late, traffic in my commute, and a housemate failing to fulfill their chores commitment can all trigger anger in me. Reminders of home and my family trigger sadness or nostalgia. And the laughter of my close friends triggers a smile on my face. I am sure you have your own versions of these daily triggers.

Many events are not initially triggering but cause reactions in us later on. One example of this that has been studied is the phenomenon of displaced aggression (Miller et al., 2003). Sometimes, we are triggered but cannot react in the moment as we would like; for example, when a boy is scolded by his mother for misbehaving, he may feel angry, but know that showing anger will only result in more punishment. So, when his younger sister does something mildly annoying an hour later, he displaces that anger toward his mother and lashes out at his sister instead.

Triggers of Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most frequent emotional reactions we have to the triggers in our lives (Mineka & Zinbarg, 2006). In fact, it is the persistence and severity of these negative emotional reactions that characterize psychiatric disorders such as anxiety (Miskewicz et al., 2015).

Triggers for anxiety can look different from one person to another, but they generally center around things we cannot control or that might cause us pain in the future. For many people, simply not being able to control an outcome is a trigger for anxiety.

Triggers of PTSD

Perhaps the mental health disorder most associated with psychological triggers is posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is because people with PTSD have experienced a certain event or events that were highly distressing; this makes anything in their environments that might remind them of the event into a very potent psychological trigger (APA, 2013). When these triggers occur in the lives of people with PTSD, they may have what are called reexperiencing symptoms, such as vivid recollections of the event and a bodily response like they are about to experience that event again. For example, an emergency room doctor may treat the wounds of a child who has been physically abused by their parents, and then have a flashback to this situation when she sees a similar look of anguish on her own child’s face the next day.
 
The strange paradox about triggers and PTSD – and this is true for all anxiety-related disorders – is that avoiding triggers makes the disorder worse, not better (Jones et al., 2020). Being exposed to small instances of one’s triggers, in a safe environment such as therapy where one can be helped to process the situation, is a way to gradually become less reactive to those triggers (APA, 2013). Many people have learned to reduce their reactivity to psychological triggers through this process, called exposure therapy.

Triggers of Depression

Depression is another mental health disorder that can be triggered (Bekhuis et al., 2019). Although many depressive episodes develop for reasons we have trouble understanding, some are triggered by external events, such as the death of a loved one or the loss of a job (Solomon, 2014). A trigger may start just one symptom of depression, such as sleeping less, which can then cause more symptoms to emerge over time.
 
For people with bipolar disorder, which involves both periods of depression and periods of mania, environmental triggers are even more relevant (Proudfoot et al., 2012). Episodes of mania can be triggered by recreational drug use, falling in love, or staying up late partying. Triggers for depressive episodes include prolonged stress and fatigue, experiencing physical injuries or illnesses, and even lack of sleep.

Triggers of Stress

Psychological triggers cause us to have emotional reactions, but it is not a guarantee that we will become stressed out by them. It is when we have emotional reactions that we cannot resolve quickly or easily that triggers become stressful (Abramowitz & Berenbaum, 2007). Ample research has shown that when we cannot resolve our responses to triggers, our stress builds, and that over time, we become more likely to experience stress when triggered (de Kloet, 2008).

Triggers for Empaths

As human beings, we naturally take on the feelings of the people around us, and some of us do this more readily than others. People who respond strongly to the emotions of others by taking them on are sometimes called empaths (Jeffrey, 2016). For empaths, the emotions of other people may be considered triggers, because they evoke the same feelings in the empaths themselves. For this reason, they may need to establish firm boundaries regarding how much emotional sharing takes place them.

Quotes on Triggers

  • “Everything that seemingly happens externally is occurring in order to trigger something within us, to expand us and take us back to who we truly are.” – Anita Moorjani
  • “Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.” – Carolyn Spring
  • “The effects of unresolved trauma can be devastating. It can affect our habits and outlook on life, leading to addictions and poor decision-making. It can take a toll on our family life and interpersonal relationships. It can trigger real physical pain, symptoms, and disease. And it can lead to a range of self-destructive behaviors.” – Peter A. Levine
  • “If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behavior becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.” – Marshall Goldsmith
  • “Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area, but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait.” – Carol S. Dweck
  • “Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.” – Eckhart Tolle

Articles Related to Triggers

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Triggers

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Triggers

We are not in control of our lives, and we cannot control when or what triggers us. I am continually frustrated by the fact that I get triggered every day, sometimes even by the same things one day after another. I think that just makes me human, though.
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So what do we do with the fact that we get triggered? I have a few suggestions. First of all, we can accept that life triggers us. This helps us let go of one reaction to triggers – namely, frustration with ourselves. We have enough work to do handling how life triggers reactions in us without adding in that frustration.

Next, we can ask ourselves what the message of the trigger is. Triggers bring up emotions, and emotions give us important information about what our environment means to us. If I am feeling anger after something has happened, the trigger may have meant that somebody has crossed my boundaries or taken something away from me. To resolve the feeling, I may need to address what happened between us or clarify what my boundaries are.

I encourage you to be gentle and curious with yourself when you get triggered. Triggers bring up emotions, and emotions point to needs that we have. Triggers can be a powerful opportunity to learn more about how to take care of ourselves. And, when we resolve our feelings successfully, we become more resilient in the face of the next triggers.
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If you’d like to explore many more ideas about how to handle triggers, I recommend watching this video from a therapist. These are the kinds of processes that a licensed therapist can help you learn, practice, and implement on your own:

Video: This is What to Do When You're Triggered

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