Picture this:

After a blissful Saturday morning lazing with your new partner, you've decided to spend the afternoon helping them paint a couple of rooms in their apartment.

Music is playing and you’re happily slapping paint on the walls when from the other room you hear them shout,

“Hey! What are you doing over there?”

Huh?

They sounded really loud. Are they angry at you? What did you do wrong?

Your body tenses, your breath catches, and your heart suddenly feels like it’s beating double-time in your chest.

“Why? Don’t you trust me?!” you shout back angrily.

Moments later your partner bounds into the room looking seriously upset and bewildered. Depending on what the two of you do next, this could go very badly.

What just happened? You got triggered.

While many people think of being “triggered” as an extreme reaction caused by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, actually it’s a very common, perhaps even universal experience. Getting triggered doesn’t necessarily result in shouting, flailing in anger, or freezing in fear. Your way of reacting to getting triggered could be to Zen out and become emotionally unavailable for three days. But you’re still triggered.

Getting triggered is what happens when your brain, for........

© Psychology Today