Triggers? Love ‘em.

A trigger involves two things which are coupled together, but don’t necessarily belong together

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Examples of triggers:

A certain smell makes you feel angry

When you feel angry, you experience a sense powerlessness

You freeze when you feel scared

THAT person makes you want to run in the other direction

When you see a doctor, you want them to save you

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What are some of your own triggers?

You might wonder how triggers get created and why.

Triggers happen when there’s something traumatic from the past that caused two elements to get stuck together.

Now, whenever one of them gets activated, the other one always comes with it.

This is called over-coupling, which is basically an over-association.

Trauma creates couplings. Our brain wants us to remember what’s dangerous. It has more survival value if we saw a snake on the path and now every time we see a stick we think it’s a snake.

It’s based on the idea that “neurons that fire together, wire together”.

There’s a cascade of reactions that’s based on an incorrect assessment of reality.

The way that triggers work is that a sensory impression leads to perceived threat which leads to arousal/activation which leads to symptoms.

The way we work with triggers in Somatic Therapy is to identify which elements are coupled together and then add time, space and support.

A lot of support.

We slow things down and bring support to each element of the coupling dynamics so it can realize that things are safe now. This brings the level of activation down so they can slowly start to separate.

It’s usually necessary to bring every layer of support available and in Somatic Therapy the physical layer of support is crucial, as opposed to other forms of therapy.

The more layers we can bring, the faster the level of activation can go down and the faster the healing can occur.