I’d like to propose a test: how long can you scroll on a social or news app before you get triggered? My guess is only a few minutes, if not seconds, depending on the day. The Internet is an inevitable part of most of our lives - we can’t avoid it. We’re often burned out from work, from day to day life, from school, from everything - and then we find ourselves scrolling for hours and more drained afterwards. Most people will suggest avoiding social media or putting down your phone, which is nice in theory, but in practice… much more complicated. If we are going to scroll, then we might as well learn how to stop getting so triggered by it.

First, the Context:

What is a trigger?

Triggers are a brain response and it comes from a little piece of your brain: the amygdala. It is a tiny almond shaped structure close to the center of your brain, plays an essential part in regulating your emotions, learning, and choosing behaviors. Simply put, when we are triggered, our amygdala is activated every time we experience something upsetting to us. It’s important to note that there are degrees of trigger, that small little bumps that irritate or frustrate or bother us can feel triggering in one way while we can feel really big feelings that overwhelm us, hurt us, or even paralyze us that also fall under being triggered.

When I talk to people about being triggered while we are in therapy, I tell them to think of a trigger like a sensitive tooth. While you’re not chewing or using your mouth, it doesn’t hurt. You will likely forget that it’s there. But as soon as you bite down and feel the pain sensation, it’s suddenly flooding your senses. Pain is one part of the puzzle, but the unpleasant surprise adds an extra layer - you weren’t expecting it. This surprise is essential to how a trigger affects our system, especially when it relates to the Internet.

The Internet is Instant Now, and It Feeds the Unpleasant Surprise of Triggers

For most millennials, the Internet was growing up while we were growing up. It started off clunky and slow, awkward and simple. We experienced the rapid changes from dial up to Google to smart phones within our formative years. When I was a kid, I was sitting in front of big, boxy monitors with games I loaded with floppy disks and CD-ROMs; when I was a teenager, I went from making tapes for my Walkman to downloading illegal music for my knock-off iPod. Even though the process of accessing what we wanted or needed was getting faster and faster, there was still a delay or a waiting period.

We would hear a song on the radio, and we would have to wait for it to play again. Even when downloading music, there was still a waiting period. Meanwhile, my dad was working in IT and would be receiving messages on his pager, which he would then have to decipher a short coded message or call someone who was asking him to call them back.

In all of these scenarios, our bodies had a little time to acclimate to the change. We had conscious choices to make. But everything is instant. I can write this blog and pull articles to reference within milliseconds. I can pull up any song I want to hear on a streaming service or YouTube. I can send a message to my best friend’s pocket on the other side of the country any time I feel the urge to do so. All of these things are wonderful when used with intention; and it can be devastating as well. I can research for a blog and find inflammatory headlines directed at scaring me into clicking. I can pull up a song to listen to nonstop and then get tired of my favorite songs more and more quickly. And a message in someone’s pocket can be as supportive as it can be hurtful, if we aren’t mindful.

Everything is Available to Publish, Including Everyone’s Trash

I see the Internet as a mix of raw ingredients, 5-star fine dining courses, standard every day meals, and of course your rotten food trash. If you can’t discern what kind of content you’re opening yourself up to, you could end up stepping in someone else’s trash. What is trash, you ask? Not what you usually see in memes on social media: I have a neuroscience answer for this.

You process up to 70,000 thoughts a day. 70,000. How many of those thoughts would we want to share with everyone? How many of those thoughts are experiments that we simply need to test out and then throw away?

We need to discard. It’s part of the cycle. In nature, the ecosystem allows for discard to be transformed into something new. While I’m writing this blog, I’m writing and deleting words and sentences constantly. The Internet is a place where everyone is experimenting, constantly. Everyone contributing is throwing out thoughts and opinions and creative ideas and content. And within experimentation, there is the inevitable discard. Comment sections are full of discard; half-baked thoughts, emotional responses, and of course spam and advertising. Unfortunately, they’re posted. They’re recorded, published. Our brains take that in as important. Everything is mixed in, the trash and the treasure—and since it’s recorded, our brains see that valuable.

Triggers are often started because we consume people’s trash as meaningful content. It hurts when we see someone tearing someone else down in a comment section. We take a throwaway, casual blip of a comment that sits firmly on a feed and take it as gospel. In conversation, we edit each other. We take social cues from people’s expressions, and we connect when we overcome differences of opinion… it can (and does) happen online, but it’s harder.

Ok, now we know a bit of brain stuff, so let’s stop the triggers.

I defuse emotional triggers pretty regularly in my work, both from online content and from.. well, everything else. This is the pattern I’ve seen and in case you’re curious, I use parts of evidence-based therapeutic modalities: an ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) lens and parts of an IFS (Internal Family Systems) lens to do this. If you want to try it out yourself, find a post that triggers you (start small, something bothersome or irritating, not infuriating or depressing) and walk through the steps with me!

1 - Grounding: Identify Emotions and Somatic Response

Take 3 deep breaths. In for 3, and out for 4. As you breathe, notice your body, like you’re shining a spotlight on your sensations. Do you notice tension? Difficulty breathing deeply? Heart flutters? Stomach twisting? Face heat? Sweaty palms? Whatever you’re experiencing is part of your emotional response too. A part of you is feeling a feeling.

When we are triggered, we often are experiencing a version of anger, sadness, disgust, or fear.

There are so many words that go with each of these feelings. If it helps, check out a feelings wheel. There are many kinds and there is no “right” version. Everyone associates feelings a bit differently and they are valid as they are. I included the one from BEAM, The Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective because it is awesome imho:

2 - Zoom Out: Consider Context

Your feelings are valid. That doesn’t mean that they’re “right” or “justified” or “mean something”; valid means they are present and they have a message for you. In order to interpret that message, we need to put it in context. Luckily, we already started this process in the earlier section! Continue to breathe deeply as you zoom out.

How to Zoom Out:

*Consider your body first and foremost: your basic needs of hunger, rest, and safety—are they met? Many times we can get triggered by something truly unimportant when we are hungry or tired or feeling unsafe.
Notice that there is a part of you that is triggered by the post. There’s another part of you that’s observing and noticing.
Notice that this part wants to help you, wants to protect you, and believes this feels like a threat.
If possible, get curious: what would happen if this threat was carried out? And what would happen after that? And after that?
Consider that the Internet is full of mixed trash and treasure and how quickly you experienced the headline or post. Does this post fall under trash more than treasure? As you slow down, can you feel other feelings too besides the trigger?
Consider how the person felt when they were posting it and if there is context we don’t know about it.
It may be the most obvious to see how you and this person or post is opposite from you. Is there any possibility that you see how you and the person who posted it (or is discussed in the post) are alike?

Zooming out takes practice. It’s harder when the feelings are more intense. Grounding is a lifelong journey. I’m continuing to ground right now as I’m writing, feeling all sorts of feelings as I absorb the people around me in the coffee shop, and coming back to my center. Some days are easier than others. And inevitably with practice, it gets easier and more like second-nature to do.

3 - Effective Action: Take 1 Small Step Towards What Matters Most

The last part of a trigger is that it causes us to do things we don’t really want to do: we scroll longer, we frantically Google medical advice, we dissociate, we binge eat or binge watch or binge play games, we snap at our friends and family, we isolate.

How can we move through this feeling? What can help us or support us? Maybe we need a friend to vent to or just hold us and let us know we’re not alone or remind us who we are or to help us make a decision. Maybe we need to write it down and talk about it later in therapy. Maybe we need to take a walk and put down our phone for a bit and remember the world is around us beyond this triggering post. And maybe we do need to do something, join a social justice group or action, have a tough conversation we’ve been avoiding, or cry it out. Emotion is movement, literally. Chemicals in the body are moving from one place to another. It is literally called “E-Motion”. There is a movement that needs to happen, and reaching out to community and reaching inward to your sources of self can help you find the 1 small step to start to shift it.

Ok! Thanks for getting through a long post :) I hope it was helpful, and I would love to hear if there were things you liked or things you felt helped you.

3 Tips on How to Stop Getting Triggered Online