Your Trigger Playbook: Connecting to Your Patterns
Trauma, whether it feels big or small, leaves a lasting physical imprint on our nervous system.
When we hear the word "trauma", our minds often jump to massive, catastrophic life events. But more often than not, it is the slow, quiet, repetitive conditioning of childhood that shapes our adult pain. It’s the things that happened to us – and the vital things that didn't happen for us.
Look at this list and see where you find yourself:
Maybe you grew up not being seen or valued for the unique little human you actually were.
Maybe you felt constantly invalidated, hidden away, or were simply not allowed to freely express your true voice or emotions.
You learned that you had to behave in a very specific way to keep the peace. You felt unsafe to just be, realizing that affection and attention were things you had to perform for or earn.
Maybe you tried and tried to be the perfect child, but no matter what you achieved, it was never quite good enough to win their warmth.
Maybe you learned to make yourself completely invisible, blending into the surrounds to avoid the unpredictable anger and cold intolerance your parent threw at you when they had a hangover.
Maybe you had an absent parent – perhaps a workaholic who was so chronically exhausted when they were home that you were taught it was selfish to ask for what you needed.
Or you were designated the family scapegoat, suffering in absolute silence within a highly manipulative family system, constantly targeted at the hands of a narcissistic parent.
Or perhaps you grew up walking on glass around emotionally immature parents who used the household as a stage for their own volatile moods, completely incapable of tempering their delivery to a child.
And for some, you endured the ultimate betrayal of outright physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, and your body learned that trust is dangerous.
As a child or adolescent, you simply did not get your fundamental emotional needs met – the exact ingredients that are imperative to growing into a well-adjusted, emotionally flexible, and balanced adult.
Work with me on this: imagine that unmet need left you with a hyper-sensitive internal alarm system. Because of it, seemingly ordinary situations today can set off a massive cascade of emotional and physical reactions.
These reactions are what we call triggers – specific stimuli that, consciously or subconsciously, remind your nervous system of past survival experiences. Recognising these triggers isn’t about wallowing or playing the victim; it’s the non-negotiable practical step required to reclaim your inner peace.
The Familiar Trap (Why We Attract Our Own Triggers)
Here is a piece of psychological reality that might shake you a little, but it is vital to understand if you want to break free:
We don't just react to our triggers when they show up. Quite often, we unconsciously seek out, attract, or stay in adult situations that perfectly mirror the exact dynamics that broke us when we were young.
If you grew up with a parent whose approval you had to constantly beg for, you will often find yourself drawn to a control-seeking, hyper-critical boss or partner. If you grew up in chaos, a calm, stable environment might actually make you feel deeply uneasy, anxious, or bored.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why does our subconscious push us into situations that feel absolutely horrible?
It comes down to how your brain and nervous system are wired. Your subconscious mind operates entirely on pattern recognition. To your nervous system, the familiar is processed as safe – even if that familiar pattern is toxic, chaotic, or painful. It is what you know. It is the language you learned to speak to survive childhood, so your brain automatically keeps scanning your environment for similar relational patterns.
But there is a deeper, more compassionate psychological reason behind this loop: Subconsciously, you are seeking out the old scenario because you are desperately trying to change the ending. Your inner child enters that familiar, triggering relationship or workplace thinking, "If I can just perform better, if I can just be perfect this time, if I can make them love and validate me, I will finally heal that original wound. I can make it right. I can make it different." You are trying to rewrite your personal history by forcing a healthy connection out of the same old dangerous archetype.
But here is the thing: You cannot change the ending by playing out the exact same script with the same style of person, event, or experience. Healing doesn’t happen by finally winning over a person who mirrors your past; healing happens when you recognise the pattern, step off the stage entirely, and choose a completely different script and set of behaviours that are in line with your "healed adult" values.
Triggers are Your Inner Compass
When you feel triggered – when something feels deeply, viscerally uncomfortable – that is your inner compass speaking to you. It is signalling that an old wound has been poked and needs resolution.
These triggers are actually powerful guides. In my own experience, when you face these unresolved issues head-on and practice radical self-acceptance, the triggers lose their power. They stop throwing you off course. When you find the courage to explore the messages inside them, they point you directly toward your own healing, your liberation, and your freedom from feeling stuck.
A trigger is simply an emotional reaction to a part of you that has yet to heal. If you can find the strength to explore it, you create an opportunity for genuine peace. And then, just like that, the trigger loses its grip. It no longer evokes the heaviness, the darkness, or the frantic reaction you used to run away from.
Unearthing the Unconscious
If you can’t immediately connect with what triggers you, that is completely okay. Identifying your patterns is a gentle journey of self-discovery, my friend. It is about lightly peeling back the layers to reveal the places where your past is still echoing into your present.
We are going to create a visual map of your baseline patterns – turning the unconscious habits into something you can physically see, understand, and work with.
To get your brain primed and ready, take a moment to reflect on the past week, or perhaps the last month. Think about a circumstance where you felt thrown off-centre, reacted with an unwanted behaviour, and ended up with a consequence you’d rather avoid.
This is about learning the mechanics of your loops: When this happens, I do XXX. When I feel YYY (the emotion), I execute ZZZ (the behaviour), and the result is an unwanted consequence.
Let’s look at a real, everyday example:
You get triggered at work and instantly feel unworthy or small because you were told off for something you didn't think was a big deal. You internalise that stress. You get home, walk straight to the kitchen, and gorge on sweet biscuits and anything sweet you can find in the fridge (or you may choose alcohol).
Afterwards, you feel like pooh, and the worthless binging didn’t help take the pain away. You drown in the relentless, proverbial murky water of sorrow and negative energy, which drives up high-cortisol stress hormones that wreck your sleep and your health. You feel like crap for days.
Because your nervous system is exhausted, your mind builds a catastrophic narrative: “Everyone must think I’m a rubbish human, and my job is at risk.”
When you slow down and pinpoint each of those moving parts, you gain a massive, unshakeable understanding of your own actions. It puts you firmly back in the driver’s seat. From that space, you can finally start to ask logical, adult questions about the actual reality of the situation.
Your Trigger Cycle Map
Grab a piece of paper, or diary, sit somewhere quiet, and walk yourself through these six steps:
Step One: Pick a Trigger
Take a moment and simply choose one trigger that you can distinctly remember from the last few weeks. Don’t worry about finding the "biggest" one. Just choose the one that bubbles up to the surface most easily right now.
Write down: What happened? Who was involved? How did you behave? How did you end up feeling, and what specific narrative did you start telling yourself about your worth?
Step Two: Find the Root
Now, ask yourself the adult question: Where can I remember feeling exactly like this in my past, and with whom? What is the earliest memory you have of a similar emotional dynamic happening to you as a child or adolescent? This is your nugget of gold – this is the exact experience that is asking for your adult compassion and healing.
Step Three: Identify the Behaviour and Consequences
For this specific trigger, write down the exact behaviour that follows. What do you physically do? What do you consume? What do you say? How do you react to protect yourself? Next, look at the consequences of that reaction. What happens to your day, your relationships, your health, or your energy as a result? Be completely, brutally honest here – we need the full picture, warts and all.
Step Four: Reflect on Your Values
Take a second to reflect on what you just wrote. Are these automatic, defensive behaviours in line with your core adult values? Are they how you truly want to show up as a woman, or are they knee-jerk survival reactions that don’t align with who you really are? Simply write a definitive Yes or No next to each one.
Step Five: Act (Fact or Fiction)
Look at the narrative and the catastrophic thoughts you outlined in Step One. Ask yourself: Is this story actually true, or am I holding onto an unhealed wound's fiction from the past? To manually take action and change the script, you must learn to validate yourself right there in the moment: "I did the best I could with the tools and understanding I had at the time." Identify your actual role in the situation, take responsibility for your part ("I did this"), and accept that fact without beating yourself up.
Look at the people involved: Are these actually your people, or are they characters you are desperately trying to glean some kind of validation or acceptance from?
What is one tiny, practical step in acceptance and self-responsibility you can take to shift the pattern the next time that trigger alarm goes off? What will you choose to do differently? It doesn’t have to be a massive overhaul; even a tiny ten-second pause or a neutral sentence breaks the automatic circuit.
Step Six: Do It Again
Once you’ve completed this for one trigger, pick another. Read your answers out loud to yourself. Let your brain hear your own voice processing the data. Hearing our own thoughts spoken aloud provides the exact breakdown and clarity we need to make sustainable changes in our world. The more you speak the words of change, the more you refine the skills and let your brain truly register this new connection.
For You to Ponder
Once you’ve completed your steps, just sit with it for a while. Let the internal insights flow. Consider this a practice run. Acknowledge yourself for building deeper self-awareness and having the curiosity to see what happens when you make discerning new choices.
And one last thing: The next time you feel yourself wanting to shy away or run from an uncomfortable emotion that is bubbling up inside your chest, can I ask you to do just one thing for me, please?
Stop, take a breath, and ask it:
"What is the message you are trying to communicate to me, and where did you start?"
Then, just let that question sit. See what comes to you. You don’t have to force an answer or scramble for an immediate solution; your only job is to listen.
Once you’ve done that, I give you full, unconditional permission to take a break from all this work, close the book, and go back to simply being you again.
If any of this is creating some real stirrings inside you, you can purchase a copy of A New Perspective from my website (the second book in the three-part The Change Experience series), which deals with this exact framework in deeper structural detail. Or, if you are tired of mapping it alone, come and sit with me. We can work through this together.
I’m holding your hand, as always.
Fleur Elizabeth
