Identifying Your Relational Triggers: Recognizing your triggers* to deescalate conflict in your relationship
Fighting with a partner or spouse can feel mysterious. Let’s say that after you and your partner have dinner, you make a not-totally-innocent comment about your partner failing to notice that the trash was full. Two minutes later, you’re yelling at each other – maybe even name-calling or making hyperbolic statements like, “I’m the only one who does anything around here!” You know the fight is over when your partner replies in monotone, “You’re right. I never do anything right, so why don’t you just leave?” All you wanted was for them to take out the trash. How did you get here?
In this post, I’ll share some information from an Emotionally Focused Therapy lens to help demystify these fights and give you tools to de-escalate conflict in your relationship.
Going Beneath the “Content” of the Fight
Escalating arguments are common in relationships because, as many of us sense on some level, it’s never just about content or topic of the fight. In the above example, it’s not just about the trash. The fight is usually touching on something deeper than that – on core fears that we have about ourselves and our relationships: Am I enough for you? Or is it that I am “too much”? Do you care about me? Do you see me? Do you value and respect me as a partner?
We want to feel loved and cared for in our relationships, and the little day-to-day stressors can trigger our insecurities that this isn’t the case. So, we yell because we want to know that the person cares about us, and we shut down because we don’t want to face the pain of wondering if we’ll ever be enough. We do all sorts of counterintuitive things because when we’re in that fight, flight, or freeze mode, we’re not calmly and rationally thinking about the best way to express ourselves. We’re trying to get out of the “danger zone” of perceived relational threat in whatever way we can.
How to Start Identifying Your Relational Triggers When Communicating With Your Spouse or Partner
Before discussing how to identify triggers, I want to highlight the importance of self-care in reducing our vulnerability to triggers. When we are tired, hungry, stressed, lonely, or sick, our Window of Tolerance - “the amount of unpleasantness our nervous system can handle before the sympathetic nervous system kicks on and pushes us into fight/flight/freeze” - is more narrow. We’re more susceptible to minor stressors resulting in a feeling of overwhelm or a partner’s critical remark leading us to feel rejected and to fire back with criticism. If you find yourself being easily triggered, check in on your self-care. Are you overextended and need to set boundaries? Getting enough sleep? Eating and exercising regularly? Each of these can have a significant impact on your ability to manage triggers.
Along with assessing your self-care, you can start to identify your own relational triggers. Your relational triggers are the things that your partner says or does – or doesn’t say or do – that send you into that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (wanting to appease your partner and make everything okay) reaction.
When we’re triggered, we often experience a somatic shift – that is, something changes in our body. Maybe your breathing becomes shallow, your chest tightens, and you have the urge to scream. Or maybe you feel like there’s a traffic jam in your brain, and you feel like you need to get away. You may also notice that your thoughts become more dramatic, like “I’m never enough for her!” or “He doesn’t care about me at all!”
Start to notice these things for yourself. In your experiences with your partner, what are the things that trigger these shifts in you? For example:
Is it when your partner comes home late?
When they say they’re too tired for sex?
When they seemed bored at your family’s get-togethers?
When they don’t notice your new outfit?
When they don’t take the dog out even though they’re closer to the door?
Just start to notice and become curious.
How Recognizing Your Triggers Can Transform Relational Conflict
Once you have a sense of what your triggers are, take the curiosity one step further: What’s going on beneath the trigger?
Let’s take the dog example. Maybe you notice your thoughts go like this when your partner doesn’t take out the dog: “Do they not realize how much I do around the house? And that I just sat down to read my book and relax? Do they think I’m just their maid? If they saw how much I did and truly cared about me, wouldn’t they want to give me a break and take the dog out?!” As your mind goes in this direction – to the deeper fear that your partner does not value you – your anger builds as you move into your fight response.
In this situation, your typical response may be to make a snide remark to your partner or continue to spiral into thoughts that they do not value you. If you do this, it may exacerbate the issue or lead into a fight. Instead, practice taking a step back and noticing that you’re triggered. Say to yourself, “Ok, I feel my heart starting to pound, and I’m getting really angry. My thoughts are becoming dramatic. I’m triggered right now.”
Recognizing that we’re triggered gives us a little distance from the experience and can have a calming effect. We gain a new perspective, allowing space for more information (maybe our partner is oblivious to dog) and new ways of communicating (maybe we can ask them to let the dog out and clue them in to what goes on for us when they don’t notice).
Recognizing our triggers is just a first step, but it can be a powerful one. It can change an interaction from starting with anger, sarcasm, hurt, or fear and into one in which we’re able to more calmly and clearly communicate our thoughts, feelings, and needs.
Take the Next Step Toward Healthier Communication In Your Relationship with Couples Counseling
Depending on your relationship history, how long you’ve been caught in cycles of fighting, and/or your partner’s relational triggers, this first step can be hard without support. Couples counseling can be a great way to explore your relational triggers and relationship fears with a counselor who can provide an outside perspective and help you interrupt your fighting cycles as you learn new ways of relating and connecting. We offer couples counseling at Soul Space, so please reach out if you want to learn more about couples counseling or schedule a free 15-minute consultation with a couples therapist.
Written By Lydia Suitt, LAC, EMDR Therapist
Read Lydia’s bio HERE
*Some people prefer alternate words to “trigger.” If that’s the case, feel free to replace trigger with other options like: prompting events, raw spots, hot buttons, activators, or whatever else resonates for you!