Guy Reams (00:01.538)
This is Day 39, Preventing Tail Spins.
You know, I think I've thought a lot about things that cause to trigger me to go into a tailspin like a negative spiral. Like, for example,
In my early marriage, I learned that one of the triggers my wife has is a dirty kitchen counter. If the kitchen counter is cluttered or dirty, she thinks the whole house is destroyed. So I learned over time just to make sure the kitchen counter is clean. It's really easy to spot triggers in other people, but it's really difficult to spot triggers in yourself. But we all have them. There's certain things that in my life that if they're not right, I just flip out. Like for example, finding something to wear.
It's always been a major trigger for me. Common triggers in life that cause disruption can often be attributed to psychological factors, such as stress, emotional reactivity, cognitive distortions, or underlying belief systems. We can sit here and think about why they occur, why they're so impactful, and how you can prevent them from having a disproportionate influence in your life.
First off, what are these triggers psychologically? Triggers are stimuli, external or internal, that provoke a strong emotional or behavioral response. They stem from, well, lots of areas. First, past experiences. You may have unresolved events or trauma that make certain stimuli feel more intense. You could have a cognitive distortion, negative thinking patterns, such as catastrophizing or overgeneralizing.
Guy Reams (01:47.981)
that amplify such minor setbacks into bigger things than they should be. You might have emotional dysregulation. You might have difficulty managing emotional responses to frustration, disappointment, or stress. You might have a bit of perfectionism or control over your environment. Maybe growing up, you had a lack of control and therefore certain things indicate lack of control to you. So you might have an intolerance for imperfection or deviation from a plan.
You also might have associative memory experiences. There might be things tied to emotions that come from unresolved issues in your past or difficulties in your past that the trigger just happens to cause that to bring emotions up to you. There's also some triggers that can put you into fight or flight mode, even if the threat is minor, even in your brain, maybe over exaggerated it. So why are these triggers that have an over
They have a larger than they should be response in us. Why are they an issue? Well, they disrupt your progress because they divert emotional and cognitive energy away from your goals to focusing on the trigger and all the catastrophizing that goes along with it. There's a reason why this happens. First, it gives you a lock of focus. You have emotional responses that hijack attention that lead to unproductive rumination on the problem.
You have spiraling behavior, what I call a tailspin. Small frustrations escalate to bigger emotional reactions, compounding the issue, making it worse. Stress response. The trigger can actually activate stress hormones, which causes you to feel more anxiety, be more irritable, have more tension. You also have a tendency to narrow your mindset to just that trigger, which is an emotional issue. It causes you to struggle with
more creative thinking, it makes that more difficult because your brain is so emotionally focused on the narrow issue that you were triggered by. Instead of confronting the trigger, when we see it, man, that counter is dirty or somebody left something on the floor. Instead of confronting the trigger, you might disengage, procrastinate, push it off.
Guy Reams (04:10.549)
That'll derail your progress even further. You can prevent triggers from having this impact on you. It's actually rather easy. It just takes a little bit of effort. And there's a few steps to it. First, you can increase your awareness that these triggers exist. So you can identify them, like write them down. Actually, write them down. You know what they are. You just don't think about it. So what, when next time you start feeling really negative or you get really angry or frustrated, think about what happened.
What were your thoughts? When did they start? And you're most likely going to be able to easily understand what triggered caused that to happen. You might also want to notice patterns. There are reoccurring themes, such as feeling unprepared, needing to be validated by somebody, having a massive fear, or feeling just an overwhelming amount of stress. You might have those patterns that occur on a regular basis at a specific time. You might want to figure out maybe there's something triggering.
Second, once you've figured out what the triggers are, you can start building regulation skills. When you do see a trigger, you can pause and reflect. Take a moment, take a step back, breathe. Try a meditation-type technique. Try a way to reframe your thoughts. Ask yourself cognitive questions that cause you to reflect on the distortion you're causing. Is this as big as it feels? What is the worst-case scenario?
And how likely is this really going to mean that the entire world is going to fall apart? It's also important, I've mentioned before, that you should label them. In fact, even talk about them out loud. I feel frustrated because this thing is triggering me. And I oftentimes call that thing a name. That way I can create a character out of it so that I can recognize and remember what it is.
You can then do self positive self-talk. So the third step would be then to come up with ways to say this like, this trigger is definitely a setback. I really wasn't expecting that right now, but it's not a failure. I can handle this. And that seems kind of cheesy, but honestly it helps. You can practice that becoming more and more resilient. As you overcome these triggers, every time you overcome it with positive self-talk,
Guy Reams (06:29.473)
the better you get at dealing with that trigger when it comes. So if you have a go-to strategy, a way to cope, so for example, I like to just take a walk or go in the backyard and meditate for a while, or better for me is I just write my thoughts down. Those are things that I use to cope. Fourth, you can minimize triggers, like just set boundaries with people, let people know, simplify your environment, get rid of the trigger, reduce exposure to those triggers.
That's what I've done. Like for example, the laundry and clothing, I figured out a way to remove that from my life. So yeah, I spent a little bit of money on that, but it's way worth it because the trigger is way worse. So I definitely would recommend simplify. And then prepare for unexpected. Like when I'm traveling, once again, the clothing thing pops up when I'm traveling. So I've come up with ways to prepare for that. So I'm ready to go when I need to travel.
It doesn't bother me that bad. And also, you I think you just gotta be able to accept imperfection. That's the hard part. The last and final step is really to just to have psychological flexibility. Be willing to embrace the idea that disruption is gonna happen as a normal part of life and stop thinking everything's a failure. But that doesn't, that takes a long time. You spiral into these what-ifs, what-ifs, what-ifs, what-ifs when you don't really need to.
It's always important to focus on long-term goals. Like, will this little stupid trigger matter a year from now? So I don't think so. Last and finally, I think it's important to have trusted friends, a spouse, colleagues, friends of yours, have them as a support team. If people know your triggers and you've shared them with them, they'll know to avoid them. Or when they see it, they'll be able to help you through it. You never can underestimate having people help you. I mean, it really does help.
Anyway, that's all I have to say about this. It is possible to build emotional resilience to triggers. It is possible to stop repeating bad patterns over and over and over again because we get triggered by the same darn thing every day. We can avoid these things. We can have much more success achieving our commitments by avoiding the things that trigger us into downward spirals.