8 Tips For Coping With Emotional Triggers

In a prior article, Becoming Aware of Emotional Triggers, I began a discussion about how to become aware of emotional triggers. 

Coping with Emotional Triggers

In the current article, I'm focusing on tips for coping with emotional triggers.

What Are Emotional Triggers?

A trigger is a person, place, thing or situation that causes an unexpected intense emotional reaction that is rooted in the past.  

For people, who have unresolved trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a trigger can lead to their re-experiencing the past trauma as if it were occurring in the present (see my article: Overcoming Emotional Trauma: Learning to Separate "Then" From "Now").

Coping with Emotional Triggers

Any type of sensory stimulus, including what you see, hear, smell, touch or taste, can be a potential trigger.  

The sensory stimulus you experience, which is usually a non-threatening experience in the present, can trigger an trauma response including:

• Fight: The fight response is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system which is part of the autonomic nervous system. You can feel angry, irritable and even rageful. You can experience increased heart rate and heavier breathing as part of your survival instinct to to protect yourself from danger. If you were experiencing a real danger in the present, the fight response would be essential to protect yourself from a dangerous predator. But when you're experiencing an emotional trigger, you're usually not experiencing a threatening situation in the present.  Instead, you're reacting to memories of unresolved trauma as if it were occuring in the present.

Coping with Emotional Triggers

• Flight: In the flight response, you want to flee to avoid perceived danger. The flight response is also controlled by the sympathetic nervous system but, unlike the fight response, the driving emotion is fear (instead of anger) along with the possibility of worry and anxiety. In some particularly intense situations, you might experience terror.  

• Freeze/Immobilization: The freeze response is a combination of the sympathetic nervous system and dorsal vagal activation (dorsal vagal activation is part of the vagus nerve and responds to danger). Fear is the driving emotion with the freeze/immobilization response but, as opposed to the flight response, the desire to run is overtaken by a sense of immobilization. Outwardly, you might appear calm to others because the freeze response often includes emotional numbing, but internally your experience is fear.

• Fawn: With the fawn response, you're trying to avoid a confrontation as you enter into a dorsal vagal shutdown (related to the vagus nerve). You feel overwhelmed and this can  cause absent-mindedness, dissociation or depersonalization (depersonalization is feeling detached from your body). Overwhelming feelings can lead to a sense of helplessness or hopelessness. In a severe case, you might even pass out or lose consciousness. The fawn response is also referred to as the "please and appease" response (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response).

What Are Common Emotional Triggers?

Common emotional triggers include but are not limited to:

• Past Trauma:Traumatic events or situations from the past can be one-time events like an accident or physical attack or they might have been ongoing events, like developmental trauma from childhood or complex trauma, including abuse or emotional neglect.

• Painful Negative Memories: Painful negative memories can include memories associated with disappointment, fear, failure and shame and guilt, to name just a few. When you experience a similar situation in the present, these memories can get triggered--even if you don't consciously remember them. In other words, there can be explicit memories that you remember and there can be unconscious memories outside your immediate awareness.

Painful Negative Memories

• Fear and Phobias: Fear can be an emotional trigger. Fear can trigger strong emotional and physical reactions.  Similarly, phobias, such as fear of flying or fear of heights, can also act as triggers.

• Stressful Situations: Stressful situations can trigger anxiety and stress.  Examples of stressful situations can include personal or work-related stressors. 

• Relationship Problems: Current interactions with certain people can trigger intense emotions including sadness, anger or frustration related to the past.

• Loss or Grief: Certain anniversaries, such as the anniversary of the death of a loved one, can be an emotional trigger for sadness and feelings of loss. 

• Major Life Changes: Major life changes, even positive ones, can elicit anxiety and stress as well as emotional triggers. This can include moving, changing jobs, getting married, getting divorced, giving birth, health issues and so on (see my article: Navigating Major Life Transitions).

8 Tips For Coping With Emotional Triggers

Just a word about coping versus overcoming triggers: Coping with emotional triggers is important to your day-to-day living, but overcoming emotional triggers requires working with a trauma therapist who can help you to work through the underlying issues related to your triggers so you don't continue to get triggered (more about this later on in this article).

Until you can get help to resolve these underlying issues, you can learn to cope with triggers when they occur.

Here are 8 tips for coping with triggers that can be helpful:

• 1. Learn to Identify Physical Symptoms Associated With an Emotional Trigger: Since your mind and your body are connected, every emotional trigger has at least one  accompanying physical symptom. By recognizing and identifying the physical symptoms, you can respond with self care instead of reacting in a way that keeps you stuck or activates you even more. Physical symptoms can include but are not limited to:

• Heart racing
• Heavy breathing 
• Difficulty breathing
• Pain or muscle soreness in your neck, back, stomach or other parts of your body
• Sweating
• Dizziness
• Crying
• Other physical reactions

• 2. Learn to Pause: By learning to pause when you can recognize when you're getting triggered, you're taking a break to allow yourself to respond instead of react to the trigger. Pausing also allows you to use various coping strategies. Pausing is a skill that takes practice because triggers occur in a fraction of a second and it takes practice to be aware of the need to take a break while the trigger is occurring. So, until you learn to pause, practice patience and self compassion.

Coping With Emotional Triggers

• 3. Learn to Develop Healthy Coping Skills: Once you have paused, you can learn to use healthy coping strategies, including breathing exercises and grounding exercises to slow down and to calm your mind and your body instead (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: Calming the Mind and Calming the Body). 

• 4. Acknowledge Your Emotions: Once you have calmed yourself, acknowledge your emotions--no matter what they are. You might be tempted to suppress your emotions because they feel so uncomfortable, but being aware and acknowledging your emotions is an important part of your healing. When you suppress emotions, they come back even stronger.

• 5. Keep a Journal: Write about your emotions in a journal. Journal writing can help to calm you. It can also help you to detect certain emotional and physical patterns when you get triggered.

Journal Writing to Cope With Emotional Triggers

• 6. Establish Healthy Boundaries: People who have experienced significant trauma often have a hard time establishing healthy boundaries with others. This is often because they experienced boundary violations when they were younger. It's important to your sense of well-being to be able to say no when you need to take care of yourself. In addition to being able to respond assertively to reduce the likelihood of getting triggered, it's also important for you to be able to express your emotional needs to people in your life who are supportive (see my article: Setting Healthy Boundaries).

• 7. Develop a Strong Emotional Support System: Supportive loved ones can provide empathy and give you a different perspective on your situation. Talking to supportive loved ones can also help reduce feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness and isolation.

Coping With Emotional Triggers 

• 8. Seek Help From a Skilled Trauma Therapist: As mentioned earlier, you can learn to cope with triggers as they arise, but to overcome the underlying traumatic issues related to the triggers, seek help from a skilled trauma therapist. Trauma therapy is a broad category for different types of mind-body oriented psychotherapy, which is also known as Experiential Therapy including:

• EMDR Therapy
  
• 
  
• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
• 
  
• Somatic Experiencing
  
• 
  
• Parts Work/Ego States Therapy
  
• 
  
• Hypnotherapy (also known as Clinical Hypnosis)

What Are the Benefits of Getting Help From a Trauma Therapist?

A trauma therapist is a licensed mental health professional who has training, expertise and experience in various forms of trauma therapy. 

Unlike therapists who are generalists, trauma therapists are specialists who have gone beyond the basic mental health training to learn specific forms of trauma therapy (as mentioned above).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy is different from most forms of talk therapy because it uses specific techniques and strategies to help clients to overcome trauma.  

As a trauma therapist, as a first step, I prepare clients for trauma therapy by helping them to develop the necessary internal resources to cope with whatever comes up during the therapy session or  between sessions (see my article: Developing Internal Resources and Coping Strategies in Trauma Therapy).

As memories are processed in trauma therapy, the client can experience a reduction and, eventually, an elimination of emotional triggers related to trauma.

If you're experiencing emotional triggers, you could benefit from seeking help from a trauma therapist to overcome unresolved trauma and live a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, trauma therapist (using EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, Ego States Therapy/Parks Work and Clinical Hypnosis), couples therapist and sex therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

How to Stop People Pleasing So You Can Reduce Your Anxiety and Increase Your Pleasure in the Bedroom

People pleasing, which is also known by the term "fawning," is often a trauma response (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response: People Pleasing to Avoid or Diffuse Conflict).

People who focus on pleasing others, to the detriment of their own emotional needs, often don't even realize they're doing it because it's such an ingrained trauma response from early in their life. 

How to Stop People Pleasing to Reduce Your Sexual Anxiety

They learned to focus on other people's needs to ward off conflict in family dynamics and to try to shore up dysfunctional family dynamics (see my article: Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families and People Pleasing).

As children, these people would extend themselves emotionally beyond what they were developmentally capable of doing, but they tried to do it anyway (see my article: Children's Roles in Dysfunctional Families).

A key component of the people pleasing involves feeling unlovable.  

Examples of Children Who Who Were People Pleasers 

The list below includes just a few examples of children who were people pleasers and who over-functioned in their family.

Children who were people pleasers in their family often:

• Became their parents' confidants at a young age (see my article: Role Reversal in Families)

• Believed they had to take on the family problems in order to be liked or loved

• Believed the family wouldn't survive unless they became people pleasers

• Became perfectionists (see my article: Overcoming Perfectionism)

• Were scapegoated in the family, or

• Became overachievers and the family hero in an effort to please depressed, anxious or traumatized parents

• Became pseudo-independent (i.e., they believed, erroneously, that they didn't need help or emotional support because they could take care of themselves--even though they were children

• Sacrificed their own emotional needs for their parents and other family members

• Emotionally numbed themselves to their own needs

• Agreed to do things they didn't want to do and lost touch with what they wanted and needed

• Were physically, emotionally or sexually abused or neglected

• Carried the family burden of shame

And so on.

People Pleasing Children Become People Pleasing Adults

Unfortunately, people pleasing (or fawning) doesn't stop when children become adults, and these behaviors often carry over into sexual activities so that sex becomes solely performative rather than being pleasurable to them.

How to Stop People Pleasing to Reduce Your Sexual Anxiety

Usually people with this problem are so hyper-focused on their partner's pleasure that they don't pay attention to their own sexual pleasure.  

This creates performance anxiety because they're worried about whether they're pleasing their partner.  The result is that they can become cut off from their own emotions and bodily sensations so they don't enjoy sex (see my article: What is Sexual Anxiety?).

Sexual People Pleasing and Performance Anxiety

Sexual people pleasing often occurs when people are willing to do whatever they think their partner might like--even if it's not what they want or it has a detrimental effect for them--so their sexual partner will like or love them.  

This creates performance anxiety for both men and women which can result in:

• Worry or fear before, during or after sex

• Negative thoughts or emotions about sex

• Negative thoughts about their body image

• Spectatoring (self consciously monitoring and critiquing their own behavior in bed)

• Unrealistic expectations related to sex, especially with regard to their own sexual "performance"

• A disconnect between their mind and body (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind)

• A lack of sexual pleasure in a relationship or during sexual hookups

• Faking orgasms
  

• Erectile dysfunction

• Anorgasmia (delayed, infrequent, less intense or absence of sexual orgasms)

• Painful sex

How to Overcome People Pleasing in the Bedroom

Depending upon the specific problems involved, overcoming sexual people pleasing often involves different interventions, including medical treatment to deal with possible physical problems or rule out medical issues, trauma therapy and sex therapy.

• Medical Issues: If there is a physical component to the sexual problem, like painful sex or erectile dysfunction, possible medical problems should be ruled out first.  For instance, many women assume that painful sex is solely the result of anxiety.  However, although anxiety might be an important part of the problem, it's also possible that there might be medical issues that contribute to the problem--like pelvic floor problems, which must be diagnosed by a medical doctor and often requires the assistance of a physical therapist who is a pelvic floor specialist.

Seeking Medical Help to Rule Out Physical Problems

• Trauma Therapy: Since people pleasing is often a longstanding problem that originated in childhood, there is often unresolved trauma that needs to be worked through in trauma therapy. A mind-body oriented therapy, like EMDR therapy, Somatic Experiencing , AEDP and Parts Work/Ego States Therapy is often helpful to bring about increased bodily awareness and work through trauma.  See my articles:

• What is Trauma Therapy?

• What is Complex Trauma?

• Sex Therapy: Sex therapy is a form of talk therapy for individual adults and couples with no physical exam, nudity or sex during therapy sessions. Performance anxiety is a common issue that sex therapists help clients to overcome.  See my articles:

• What is Sex Therapy?
  

• What Are Common Issues Discussed in Sex Therapy?

• What Are Common Misconceptions About Sex Therapy?

How to Overcome Your Fear of Getting Help

If you feel fearful and ashamed to get help for trauma-related sexual problems, recognize that you're not alone.  Many people have similar problems.  In fact, these problems are common.

You can start by finding a licensed mental health professional who addresses both trauma and sex therapy.  Therapists who specialize in both areas can be difficult to find, but you can use a therapist directory to locate someone in your area.

Getting Help From a Sex Therapist Who Specializes in Trauma

If you're already in therapy, you can find an adjunct therapist who specializes in trauma and sex therapy to collaborate with your therapist so you get the help you need.

Make sure the therapist is a licensed mental health professional, which is different from a coach or mentor.

Start by asking for a consultation so you can get a sense of whether you feel comfortable with a therapist (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Be aware that it can take time to develop a therapeutic relationship with a therapist, so be patient.

Once you have worked through your trauma-related sexual problems, you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am a sex positive therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

As a trauma and sex therapist, I have helped many individuals and couples to overcome trauma-related sexual problems.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

    

Trauma and the Fawn Response: A Clinical Vignette

In my prior article, Trauma and the Fawn Response: People Pleasing to Avoid or Diffuse Conflict, I began a discussion about fawning and how it's a response to trauma.  

As I mentioned in that article, generally, people are more familiar with the three other trauma responses: fight, flight and freeze, but not as much with the fawn response.

Trauma and the Fawn Response

The current article will expand upon this topic by giving a clinical vignette that illustrates a typical example of the fawn response and how experiential therapy, like EMDR therapy, can help a client to overcome this traumatic response.

But first, let's recap by giving examples of the fawning response:

Signs of Fawning Behavior:

The following behaviors are some of the most common signs of fawning behavior:

• Having problems being assertive and saying no
• Being overly compliant on a regular basis to avoid or diffuse conflict
• Having trouble setting boundaries
• Being overly apologetic
• Sacrificing your own needs to prioritize the needs of others
• Denying emotional and/or physical needs on a regular basis
• Compromising your values to align yourself with others
• Feeling guilty when you feel angry towards others because you don't feel entitled to your feelings
• Trying to "fix" or rescue others from their problems
• Attempting to control others or their choices so you can feel emotionally safe
• Gushing with praise or being overly complimentary toward someone--even when it's not how you actually feel--in order to appease someone
• Holding back feelings or opinions on a regular basis in order not to make others feel uncomfortable
• Changing your response or opinions to comply or be in synch with others
• Going out of your way to people-please to avoid or diffuse conflict
• Assuming responsibility for others' discomfort when it's not your fault
• Flying under the radar (making yourself small) to avoid getting attention
• Experiencing chronic pain or illness due to the stress of the trauma response
• Spacing out or dissociating when you feel uncomfortable in a social situation

Clinical Vignette: Fawning as a Trauma Response

The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many different cases with all identifying information removed, provides an example of fawning as a trauma response and how EMDR therapy helped:

Jane

After her closest friend, Dee, confronted Jane about her fawning behavior, Jane sought help in therapy to work on this issue.

Jane, who was in her early 30s, told her therapist that Dee expressed concern about Jane's people pleasing behavior.  Dee said she sensed that Jane tended to have problems being assertive and setting boundaries in her personal life as well at work.  

She also pointed out to Jane that she had a tendency to put the needs of other people before her own which led to Jane sacrificing what she really wanted.  

In addition, Dee told Jane that she was often overly complimentary towards people they both knew and Dee was aware that Jane really didn't feel this way.  Dee indicated that Jane was gushing in an overly complimentary way, which came across as disingenuous and confused and annoyed people.

Jane told her therapist that it was hurtful to hear Dee say these things, but when she thought about it, she realized Dee was right.  But she didn't know why she responded to people with fawning behavior or how to stop it.

When Jane spoke to her therapist about her family history, she described her father as being overly critical with an explosive temper and her mother as being overly compliant with the father's wishes.  

Her only sibling, who was an older sister, moved out as soon as she turned 18 because she had a conflictual relationship with their father and she was frustrated with her mother's passive, compliant behavior.

Although her father had never become physically violent, Jane was afraid of his explosive temper and, similar to her mother, she learned to go along with whatever her father wanted rather than assert her needs--even when she was old enough to make her own decisions.

Jane also realized that her people pleasing behavior extended to other family members as well as friends, colleagues and romantic partners.

As she continued to discuss this issue in her therapy sessions, Jane realized that, not only was her fawning annoying people, it also had consequences for her because she often felt disconnected from her emotions during those times.

Her therapist provided Jane with psychoeducation as to how fawning was related to unresolved trauma.  

In addition, the more they talked about it, the clearer it became to Jane that her childhood fear of her father's explosive temper was an unresolved trauma for her.

After Jane's therapist provided Jane with information about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy and how it helped clients to overcome trauma, they agreed to use EMDR as the treatment modality (see my article: Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR, Helps Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

As Jane processed her traumatic memories about her father's temper and how her fawning behavior developed as a response to that trauma, she felt an emotional and psychological shift occurring within her over time.

The therapeutic work was neither quick nor easy, but Jane gradually felt she was freed from her history of trauma and her defensive need to fawn over others.  This allowed Jane to assert of her own needs and to be more authentic in her relationships.

Conclusion

The fawn response is a common response to trauma.  

Most of the time, fawning, which is used to avoid or diffuse potential confrontations, is an unconscious behavior, and when clients work on this issue in therapy, they become more aware of it (see my article: Making the Unconscious Conscious).

This behavior is often misunderstood by others.  They might sense that something is "off" or disingenuous, but they might not understand why.

Experiential therapy, like EMDR, allows clients to work through the underlying issues related to the trauma (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma).

Getting Help in Therapy

Unresolved trauma often takes a toll on your self esteem and your relationships.

Seeking help with a licensed mental health professional who has an expertise in helping clients to overcome trauma can help free you from your traumatic history so you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples, and I have helped many clients to overcome trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Trauma and the Fawn Response: People Pleasing to Avoid or Diffuse Conflict

Fight, flight and freeze are the trauma responses that are usually discussed in trauma literature.  

In addition to these responses, Peter Walker, MA, a family therapist, coined the term "fawning" as another common trauma response to diffuse or avoid conflict (see my article: Unresolved Trauma: Living in the Present as if it Were the Past).

Trauma and the Fawn Response

Understanding Fight, Fight and Freeze as Trauma Responses

Before describing the fawn response, let's review the other three trauma responses: Fight, flight and freeze.

• Fight - Confront the Threat: The fight response involves anger and confrontation. This could be either verbal or physical and involves high energy.

• Flight - Run from the Threat: The flight response involves anxiety, avoidance and fleeing from the threat. It also includes high energy.

• Freeze - Shutdown to Block Out the Threat: The freeze response can include physical and/or emotional numbing and dissociation.  For animals in the wild, it's also called "playing possum" and it's often a powerful survival response to an imminent threat from a predator (the animal appears to be dead, which would make the predator lose interest).  This shutdown is a low energy response. For humans it often involves an involuntary response that includes feeling cold or numb, heaviness in the limbs, holding their breath and a sense of dread or foreboding.

Understanding Fawn as a Trauma Response

The fawn response usually develops due to unresolved childhood trauma, which is also known as developmental trauma (see my article: Looking at Your Childhood Trauma From an Adult Perspective).

The fawn response involves appeasing, which includes codependency, people-pleasing and lack of boundaries to avoid conflict or threat.  

The person who is fawning prioritizes the other person's needs over their own.  In some cases, the person is unaware of their own needs because they're so accustomed to putting the other people's needs first.

Fawning often develops as a psychological survival strategy for a child who is being abused or neglected. The child learns early on that appeasing the parent(s), even if it means sacrificing their own needs will diminish a threat--whether the threat is emotional or physical.

Signs of Fawning Behavior:

The following behaviors are some of the most common signs of fawning behavior:

• Having problems being assertive and saying "no"
• Being overly compliant on a regular basis to avoid or diffuse conflict
• Having trouble setting boundaries
• Being overly apologetic
• Sacrificing your own needs to prioritize the needs of others
• Denying emotional and/or physical needs on a regular basis
• Compromising your values to align yourself with others
• Feeling guilty when you feel angry towards others because you don't feel entitled to your feelings
• Trying to "fix" or rescue others from their problems
• Attempting to control others or their choices so you can feel emotionally safe
• Gushing with praise or being overly complimentary toward someone--even when it's not how you actually feel--in order to appease someone
• Holding back feelings or opinions on a regular basis in order not to make others feel uncomfortable
• Changing your response or opinions to comply or be in synch with others
• Going out of your way to people-please to avoid or diffuse conflict
• Assuming responsibility for others' discomfort when it's not your fault
• Flying under the radar (making yourself small) to avoid getting attention
• Experiencing chronic pain or illness due to the stress of the trauma response
• Spacing out or dissociating when you feel uncomfortable in a social situation

Since the fawn response to trauma is a big topic, I'll continue this discussion in my next article (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response: A Clinical Vignette).

Getting Help in Therapy

Unresolved trauma can create anxiety, depression and lack of self confidence as well as other psychological problems.  

It can have a negative impact on your relationships.

Rather than struggling with unresolved trauma on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective For Unresolved Trauma Than Regular Talk Therapy).

Freeing yourself from your history of trauma can help you to have a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many people to overcome trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.