How to reduce emotional triggers and communicate more effectively with your partner

By Orit Krug  |  November 1st, 2021

Have you tried to reduce emotional triggers in your relationship with breathing and mindset hacks, but you still struggle to stay calm?

I don’t want you to waste any more time with strategies that don’t work, so let’s cut to the chase.

If you’ve tried to “just breathe” or “feel your feet on the ground” during conflict, but you still react or shut down in your relationship… this is NOT your fault!

This is a strong indication of unresolved trauma from your past.

Calming “hacks” can be helpful for some people in the short-term, but they will not rewire your nervous system. Which is what you need to sustainably reduce emotional triggers.

Rewire your nervous system to reduce emotional triggers for good.

If you’re with a loving partner, but you’re still getting triggered no matter what they say or do, then your nervous system is not functioning correctly.

After you experience trauma, your nervous system gets wired to overreact to the tiniest things. These things may seem silly but they are actually faint reminders of your past trauma.

The way your partner sneaks up behind you to surprise you with a hug may impulsively remind you of how a previous abusive partner physically harmed you.

The smell of your partner’s cologne may trigger a memory of your narcissistic father who would only show love when you begged for it.

It may not make logical sense, but trauma memories are stored in the body as fragments of sensations. Any subtle smell, taste, sight, etc that’s connected to your past will trigger you today to protect yourself. Even when there’s no real danger.

Rewiring your nervous system basically recalibrates your inner alarm system. What seems overwhelming, scary and threatening now becomes easy to navigate. Then you can CHOOSE how you want to communicate & respond instead of always being hijacked by your emotions.

Expanding your Window Of Tolerance is the most effective way to reduce emotional triggers.

When you rewire your nervous system, you essentially expand your Window of Tolerance (WOT).

Your WOT is your calm, cool, regulated state in your nervous system. If you think back to the most serene day you’ve ever had at the beach (if that’s your thing), that’s what it’s like being in your WOT.

The infographic above shows how you can get triggered up into a Hyper-arousal state, where you react in anger, feel anxious, and generally feel agitated.

Alternatively, you could get triggered down into a Hypo-arousal state where you react with feeling numb, “checked out” and depressed.

You may predominantly react in just one of these 2 ways when you get triggered. It’s also normal to regularly alternate between getting explosively angry and going numb. In that case, you alternate between getting triggered into Hyper-arousal and Hypo-arousal.

Instead of calming hacks, you need gentle, gradual, and consistent movements to stop overreacting in your relationship.

“Calming hacks” are designed to be a quick-fix that are actually too harsh to rewire your nervous system.

That’s because your nervous system requires gentle, gradual rewiring over time. And the strategy of rewiring depends on your dominant arousal type.

If you react by numbing out when you have a fight with your partner, it will make things WORSE to take slow breaths. Your nervous system needs to learn how to gently upregulate back into your WOT (refer back to infographic).

This requires gentle stimulation with more energizing and enlivening movements. NOT slow, heavy movements.

If you react by exploding with anger, it is NOT effective for you to stop and take a deep breath either. Going from a large, intense exertion of energy to stopping & breathing is too abrupt. Your nervous system & body need to decelerate into slower movements. Gently and gradually.

When you expand your WOT the CORRECT way, you achieve a LASTING state of calm in your body & nervous system.

The more expanded your WOT, the less you’ll be triggered through any situation. You can even get to a point where you RARELY get triggered, even through difficult conflict.

I once had a horrible experience in therapy with a “trauma expert” who didn’t understand how to help me regulate.

I arrived to session in a Hypo-aroused state in my nervous system. I was numb, heavy, lethargic. Barely there.

My therapist immediately changed her tone and energy to match mine. She talked very softly and calmly. She *thought* she was doing the right thing to help me feel safe.

However, this created even more fear and unsafety in me. Being in the Hypo-aroused state, I needed my therapist to show up with a little more energy to help me get activated back into my WOT.

Unfortunately, I left the session feeling worse and took me a few more days to get out of this depressed state.

I’m telling you this because it’s important to be very cautious when you work with a “trauma therapist.” Trauma is a trendy buzzword these days, and the truth is that most people lack adequate training and their own personal therapy healing their trauma.