What is a trigger? Why do some people get triggered often? Why one experiences a rush of blood when one gets triggered? Why one feels dead after frequent such triggers? How to handle the trigger situation and thereafter the feeling of being dead with simple mental tools?
A. You are Worthless
No seriously, you are worthless and I am saying this on your face.
What else then defines your urge to read this article? You must be a shortcut seeker who always looks for some kind of easy and magic solution to problems. Don’t you?
And yes, I am judging you. I am judging you for being a lifeless, worthless human being who is hopping the internet looking for easy solutions the way you have done all your life.
Feeling the urge to close the window and leave the article? If you do, you will miss a wealth of knowledge that would be important for you to handle situations like this. Go to the next page, and you will not regret it.
B. Did you feel bad?
Did a ripple of negative feelings swept through you seconds before? Did you realize how your defense mechanism got active? Did you experience a protest? “
No, that is untrue, I am not worthless!” Did you observe a rush of the urge to take on the keypad and bombard me with an “In fact you are worthless” reply?
C. Have you died after my judgment on you and my cheap remarks on you?
Whenever you get such a rush of negative feelings, take a deep breath and try to say “I am (your name). and I am still alive.”
Negative Feelings and Triggers
A negative feeling is a bad feeling created by the brain when it can not deal with a perceived threat for a long period of time and the threat repeats over and over again.
A trigger is a sensory input that alerts the brain about the threat.
From the above definition, we can highlight the following points.
- The brain gets alerted due to sensory input(such as seeing something, smelling something, some taste, or someone saying something). The trigger is a sudden change of brain control from the neocortex to the limbic brain(the flight and fight brain) that processes threats.
- A negative feeling is an outcome of the same trigger and alert repeating over and over again.
- Because a threat is defined as a situation or object(like a snake) that presents a risk to survival, if you are alive after the threat, then the threat itself was a wrong threat. That means if some kind of threat is perceived by the brain and if that threat is repeated, and you are still alive, then the threat itself is not real and misinterpretation by the brain. Such kind of threats, which are not real, triggers the brain into an alert mode called Fear(let’s say a False Enemy Appearing Real).
- A trigger puts the brain into a reaction mode, and therefore a rush of blood is experienced due to flight and fight mode. Because a repetitive threat is fear, the brain is alerting you falsely.
- If a threat is real(for example seeing a snake), after you react(say running away from it, or fighting and defeating it), when the threat is over, you get satisfaction. However, if the threat was unreal and was merely a fear, then your brain gets into negative feelings due to reacting to a false threat and reacting over and over again.
- Therefore the negative feelings after you are triggered serve a great purpose of helping you understand that the situation was not life-threatening.
When you react to a situation, or to someone’s act, or what someone has said, then your brain is feeling a survival threat.
Once you come to the realization that you still are who you were before the negative feelings, and you are still alive, you know that feelings are telling you that the situation was not life-threatening, because that has neither changed you nor killed you.
“I am still alive” tool
Apply this every time someone makes a remark, or comment and you feel hurt, broken, and devastated. “I am still the same and the statement didn’t kill me or altered me, so the feeling is unreal.”
D. Negative Feelings are a Gift, Learn to Love it
We have already seen that the way you can distinguish a real threat from a false fear is that, in the case of a real threat when you react to the situation, you feel relieved and satisfied after the situation is over. However, if the situation was merely fear(false threat), then once the situation you reacted to is over, you feel negative feelings.
Therefore the negative feelings are to be taken as a means of identifying false fear and desensitizing your brain to such false fears.
Why do we feel dead when negative feelings are repeated?
If negative feelings played such an important role in helping us identify the false threat, shouldn’t we be happy about them? Why do we feel dead when such feelings are repeated?
The reason behind the above is that when a negative feeling sweeps you through after a situation when you reacted, if you did not identify the false threat and the situation repeats again, and then again, and then again, then the brain considers the environment that you are in is not suitable to live. That is because the brain doesn’t want to deal with an alert situation all the time.
The rush of blood, flight, and fight exhausts the brain significantly and very quickly. After a certain period of time, even when there is a real threat, the brain doesn’t have the energy and means to react to the situation. It surrenders to the situation. Such a surrender to a threat is equivalent to death. Therefore you feel dead when such situations are repeated over and over again.
Why feeling dead is so important for us?
Most people not only hate such situations that alert them and try to run away from the situation but also hate the feeling of being dead. In modern times, mental health has become a circus and a keyword for munching money. Therefore when one feels dead, one is made to falsely believe that it is depression. It is not, it is just the sadness of feeling dead, and that’s it.
Nothing our brain does, it does without a purpose. The brain tries to help you all the time to have a good life. Then why would the brain makes you feel dead when that is a critical marker for bad life? Even this feeling of being dead also has a purpose.
When you stay in bright light for days and nights, your body stops changing physiology in sunset and sunlight.
There is an old Saharan proverb “24 hours of Sun creates a desert.”
The brain doesn’t understand the absolute but only contrast.
The brain understands “alive” only after it feels dead.
So when someone has everything in life, no hunger, no worries, he feels dead. Because there was no death-like feeling followed by a sense of being alive, the brain perceives him as dead.
E. Feeling Alive, after Feeling Dead Keeps you alive
When the brain perceives you are dead, then realizes you are alive, it knows you are alive. All organs then function, or else they stop! So if there is no real death, it creates a death-like situation to sense life.
F. What if You Avoid any situation that makes you feel dead or that triggers you?
People often avoid those who constantly give them negative experiences, because who wants to waste energy on negativity? People can say things, but can’t produce hormones in you. Your body does. So you are feeling negative, and no one is giving.
If they don’t give you negative feelings of being dead, if they don’t trigger you to react, then your brain will find new negatives to feel dead, to know it’s alive.
When everything is good, you will start having an intuition of something horribly waiting. The brain creates that, or else it has to kill you.
G. Conclusion
Why waste the brain’s valuable time and energy in fabricating a death-like situation or causing a real death(like an accident in rash driving) to feel alive? Enjoy someone else doing it for you. That is why toxic relationships are addictive.
Take this post, understand it, and rewrite it in your diary. This is so important to write down anything that you learn. Apply this in practical life. When your partner says something horrible, remember the line “I am (your name), and I am still alive.” Feel yourself to the fullest. Make this a habit.
Over a period of time, you will get to realize this is one of the most powerful mental tools you have in your arsenal. Over 80% of people are entangled in their silly negative feelings and chain of it. That is again death. Because the way persistent good life is death-like, persistent negativity also is death-like, there is no transition.
So, use people’s weakness of dumping their negativity on you as your tool to success. Not many have control over their feelings, mouth, passive hatred, and envy for you.
You will see this rush of negativity dumping by people the more you step up your success. It is hard for most to control their frustration of seeing you getting ahead of them. Just like silica is used for construction because it is in abundance, use people’s inability to control their urge to dump feelings on you as your “feeling alive.”
You need only a limited amount of this pill. Then you eliminate the hater.
