If I were to mention - heart attack, cancer, restructure, divorce, or mental health – one or more of those words would likely take you back to a memory, and your mood would change.
Our brain is wired to retain negative events across our lifetime to keep us alert should the same situation occur again. These are referred to as triggers.
You read a word, the amygdala tagged it with an emotion, and then you went to the hippocampus where memories are stored to think of the person or people associated with that word - meaning you did not connect with the prefrontal cortex where logic sits.
If you did connect with the PFC you would have thought – It's just a word I'm reading so there is no real danger – however, cortisol from the adrenal glands was released to bring full attention because of the reminder of that risk.
Should you ever be in a situation where you get triggered you have two options to reduce the effect. The first is to take a big deep breath and sigh, do it now and as soon as you sigh out try and think of something. Apart from food, it is usually difficult to think of anything.
When we are triggered we short breathe, our alveoli collapse, and we do not get sufficient oxygen into our brain for it to work correctly. When we sigh all the alveoli collapse then fully reinflate to purge the brain of cortisol.
When in front of a person, sighing is not an option - it's likely to have the opposite effect of what you want!
The second option is to breathe out fully as slowly as you can. Try it now, breathe out very slowly. Do you feel calmer?
When we breathe in our heart rate increases, when we breathe out our heart rate decreases.
The faster we breathe, the faster our heart beats, the faster our brain thinks. Breathing out first then breathing in and out slowly will control our rate of thoughts and reduce our negative reactions.
It does take time to practice this because we are working against the hardwiring in our brain, the stem – our natural fight or flight response.
It's taken me some practice, and that practice is ongoing. The more I practice, the better I become - just like anything else.
During a recent presentation with a district council on de-escalation and personal safety, someone said to me – “Why should I listen to an old white man!”
I had a lot of answers racing through my head of what I could say. Previously I would get into a long discussion about the type of work I do, and how it is based on current research on what neuroscience provides.
This time I looked away, breathed out slowly, and said – “You don't have to listen to me.” It was the best I could come up with at the time as it was such a surprise.
The person who made the comment then rejoined the conversation and it was one of the best workshops I have run despite being triggered earlier.
Breathing is the only thing we can do to reduce our thoughts in the immediate situation. Thinking comes after exhaling.
If I can do it, you can too. Just breathe out!
Managing Triggers!