INFLAMMATION OF THE HEART:
- brittbryan1001
- Oct 3, 2022
- 8 min read
We all have triggers. Do you know yours?
For a while now, I’ve been dealing with pretty bad carpal and cubital tunnel. It’s an occupational hazard, all the typing and things I do with my hands.
But several months ago, this new issue started, which was that sometimes when I bent my ring finger on my left hand, it would lock up. It started happening more and more, and now I can’t bend it at all without intense pain. I have to wear a finger brace at all times. My doctor says it’s called trigger finger. So, I looked up the medical description of trigger finger on the Mayo Clinic site:
“The main cause of trigger finger is swelling and inflammation around the tendon. Without treatment, the finger may become locked in the bent position.”
You know who is most susceptible to trigger finger? People who have hobbies or jobs that require repetitive gripping or squeezing, women, and people with diabetes.
Welp. That’s three strikes for me! I’m out. So here I am.
Trigger finger can be mild. Lucky me though, I got a severe case. My trigger finger is so bad that my doctor says I have to have surgery to treat it. So I am going to do that. But this post isn’t about my trigger finger.
This post is about this idea that triggers, when left untreated, become locked into place. I see that all around me, people who have become locked into their beliefs, opinions, and identity groups.
SO, WHAT'S A TRIGGER?
In the psychological sense, a trigger “can set off a memory, or flashes you back in time to an event that was stressful, confusing, scary or traumatic. When experiencing this kind of trigger, your body will react with a similar emotional intensity that was experienced at the time of the original event.” (integrativepsych.co)
To start getting practical and to really put teeth to this idea, let’s look at some political triggers, which can be the mention of any of these:
Hillary. Pelosi. Hunter’s laptop. The FBI. Black Lives Matter. A stolen election. Critical Race Theory. Trump. The Second Amendment. Why do we have to keep talking about slavery?
Now, we can go deeper into our own personal triggers…
Being controlled. Feeling used. Neediness. Sensing abandonment. The word, “No.” Being told to “Calm down.” Being alone. Feeling judged. Being embarrassed. Guilt. Shame. Being dismissed. Feeling replaced or rejected. Admitting you were wrong.
Do any of the above statements or ideas stir up an agitated, negative response in your body and mind? If so, you’re being triggered.
HOW DO WE TREAT OUR TRIGGERS?
I'm not a therapist, so this is certainly not an exhaustive or peer-reviewed study of triggers. But I have two simple, practical ideas of how to treat triggers.
Triggers announce danger and ignite a defense response. Quite like what happens to my finger - my body experiences pain and reacts by locking up.
The problem is that when we become so locked in, we can develop an all-or-nothing mentality. “I am all right and you are all wrong.” We want to place everything into either/or categories. We all know life is not that simple, yet we feel this need to make everything an either/or situation because it makes us feel safe.
Especially when it comes to religion, politics, and social issues, we really want people to be locked into a belief. Just take a look around you today. Scroll through your Twitter feed. Read the Facebook wars friends and family members engage in. Those are either/or, all-or-nothing encounters. Either you believe all of what I believe to be true, or you are nothing to me.
But that’s a lie. The truth is that you can in fact have a relationship with someone who does not agree with everything you believe to be true. We can disagree without belittling and criticizing and insulting one another. You do not have to build a barbed wire fence around yourself and your identity group and lock everyone else out, as if they’re your enemy.
Instead of everything being either/or, why can’t it be both/and? Instead of clinging to our opinions and beliefs with clenched fists, what if we held onto things just a little more loosely, ensuring that inflammation doesn’t cause things to be locked into place? What would that look like?
So, the first way to treat our triggers is to release the all-or-nothing, either/or mentality.
But the real work is in figuring out WHY we have that either/or mentality to begin with.
So many times, the reason we take such a strong all-or-nothing position is because we are afraid of what we don’t understand. And whatever we cannot understand, we cannot trust. Just think about that last statement for a few seconds before you read the next part…
That’s how we end up with so many “me” vs. “you” and “us” vs. “them” groups. Because if I do not know you, I do not trust you. If I do not understand you, and I do not trust your intentions, you make me uncomfortable. So, I keep you at a distance or I try and take you down. Which, at its heart, is me trying to control the situation. My fear of the unknown is going to cause me to squeeze too tightly to try and control that which makes me uncomfortable. Because control is the opposite of trust.
Thank you, Dr. Brene Brown for blowing my mind with that realization this week. I heard her say that in a podcast: Control is the opposite of trust.
Photo cred: https://brenebrown.com/about/
Fighting for control is one response we might have to fear. It might cause us to tighten our grip so much that we lock up in some sense. You know what actual therapists call that? Being triggered.
Sometimes triggers warn and protect us. But sometimes, our trigger antennas are out of tune. Too much inflammation has occurred that’s been left untreated, and now we are locked into place.
Think about it with me for a moment. Think about things you do not trust. How do you respond? Do you distance yourself from that thing entirely? Do you try and micromanage the situation or power up? What makes you feel afraid or angry or threatened? What makes you lock up?
So, the second thing we can do to heal our triggers is to deeply examine our fears that cause them.
But yikes. Who wants to do that? And where would we even start??
By taking at look at ourselves and opinions and our own baggage before we judge others. But like a real, honest look. And being willing to admit that when we are isolating ourselves from certain groups, we are doing so out of fear.
So, figure out what you’re afraid of, and you’ll locate your triggers. Then you’re on your way to healing them.
If that sounds too simple, it’s because it is. It’s so much harder than that.
Because even if you successfully locate your triggers, you still have to figure out why you respond the way you do, and how to respond in a healthier way. Which means we have to keep digging.
To help make this point, I decided to look at the areas where this felt true for me.
I have baggage from past relationships (like literally all of us do) where I felt dismissed at best and invisible at worst. My voice and my feelings were silenced, and my opinions were disregarded. I was belittled so much I literally shrunk myself. Which is why sometimes…(and by sometimes, I mean nearly always)…my antenna is up for any scenario where I might be silenced, disregarded, or belittled. Because I will NOT go back there again. This is my trigger.
My husband is the most wonderful human being I have ever known. He builds me up and listens to me and respects and supports me more than I deserve. And yet, sometimes that radar of mine zeroes in on something seemingly minor, and an alarm goes off that says, “You are being silenced. You are being disregarded. You are being belittled. Fight back with every weapon in your arsenal.”
Through trying to understand my own triggers, I have come to realize that I do, in fact, try to control what I am afraid of. That’s not an easy thing to admit. It’s not pretty. But the reality is that people who seemingly “overreact” to a situation are experiencing a triggering encounter. Probably for very good reason, based on their own baggage and past trauma.
Because I am just at the beginning of this exploration into my triggers, I don’t have any advice yet on how to move out of the anxiety I experience when I am triggered and respond in a healthier way. But I do know my triggers now, and why they exist and where they came from. It helps to look backwards at their origin, and then examine where I am now and name what’s different.
I am learning that the best thing to do in these moments, is to stop. Like, literally. Release my grip and walk away from the conversation/situation, and ask myself, what’s happening here? What about this situation is igniting this response? What am I afraid of?
Here's how that looks for me:
Trigger happens.
I react, not in a great way.
Then I think to myself, “Why am I doing this?”
And I go through a thought-process like this: "I fully trust my husband, I believe he has nothing but my best interest at heart, but when I am triggered, I assign to him the opposite. I mistrust his intentions and my fear of being dismissed and silenced creeps up in the form of anxiety, which I know will morph into anger if it’s not reigned in right away."
So, I always end up telling myself this: “I trust him. I know his heart. He loves and respects me. He has never silenced me, not once. This is not about him Brittany, this is about you.”
And there it is.
In order to deal with my triggers, I had to acknowledge that they are ignited by some kind of lack of trust. Trust is crucial to relationships, and yes, it must be earned…but it also must be given to have any hope of a healthy relationship. And I want that with my husband, of course. So, I had to admit that I do have trust issues, but that they are mine, not someone else’s. And I must deal with them before the inflammation sets in.
That’s the thing about our emotional triggers: they have nothing to do with the situation or the person, not really. They have everything to do with ourselves and our baggage and patterns. Our unexplored triggers will do some serious damage to ourselves and our relationships with others.
SO WHAT NOW?
If only we would all take an honest look at our triggers, maybe adjust the antenna on that radar to make sure it’s not giving off any false readings, and ask ourselves, “What am I afraid of here? And why?”
If we could figure that out on an individual level, we would be moving towards healing some of the divides caused by this screwed up either/or mentality that leads us to believe we must choose a side to belong to, because there’s some dangerous threat on the other side which cannot be trusted.
Because when we choose sides, we are effectively isolating ourselves from others. And it’s a recipe for more division, more hate, more misunderstanding, more mistrust, more inflamed, locked-up hearts…haven’t we had enough of that? Can we start healing? It is possible if we examine our triggers.
And while I still struggle with my responses when I feel triggered, I now know my triggers, which is a really huge step in healing some of my baggage. Or, at least, learning how NOT to assign it to people I do trust.
I’m learning that clinging to everything with clenched fists not only causes inflammation of the heart, but it suffocates relationships and creates barriers that lock people out.
I’m learning that holding things a little more loosely allows room to breathe and grow and to discover beautiful things and people you otherwise would have missed out on.
We don’t have to be entirely open-handed; just allow a little more room.
The treatment for my trigger finger is surgery, to relieve pressure and reroute some nerves. Some of us might be in that boat with our emotional triggers, too. We might need a kind of surgery to do some rerouting so we don’t keep hitting that same nerve.
But my hope is that we will deal with those triggers before that happens, by releasing the all-or-nothing, either/or mentality, and by acknowledging our fears, so that we will find healing and relief in our hearts and relationships.
So, where in your life do you see the either/or, all-or-nothing mentality?
What do you fear or mistrust?
Do you know your triggers?
Check out Dr. Brene Brown's work: https://brenebrown.com/books-audio
Read more about triggers: https://integrativepsych.co/new-blog/anxiety-counseling-long-island
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