Stuck in the Past: How Outdated Triggered Responses Shape Our Lives

If you’re like most people, you’ll probably find it hard to believe that there are some folks out there with a phobia called Papyrophobia, which is a fear of paper.
In all likelihood, you have never experienced this phobia and probably don’t know anyone who has. But for some people, it’s a truly distressing and frustrating part of their lives, as was described by one Reddit user when sharing about their experience: 

I hate my phobia, it's so irrational and ridiculous. I'm afraid of paper, not flat a4 paper which would be worse I guess, but certain types of paper freak me out. Wet paper, crumpled paper, thin paper, paper folded too many times, the sound of paper crumpling, and the variations of these, all freak me out. This is especially annoying because I do art at my college and I hate cleaning up because we have to use paper towels to clean up…I can crumple paper myself. I just can't touch or go near it after I let go.

As bizarre as this particular phobia experience sounds, the world of seemingly irrational fears doesn’t end with paper. There's a phobia called Arachibutyrophobia, which is a fear of eating peanut butter - more specifically, afraid of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of the mouth. Some people struggle with Pogonophobia which is a fear of beards, and others live with Xanthophobia which is a fear of the color yellow. These are all just some of the very real and seemingly very odd phobias that people truly suffer from in their lives. 

Now, as strange as these phobias might seem to you, it’s likely that you have your own quirky feelings or behaviors that appear odd, unreasonable, out of character, or downright disruptive. Whether they’re mild annoyances or extreme problems, all of our emotional responses and behaviors share a common thread:

All of our feelings have a logical foundation. At their core, feelings make sense.

To truly understand this, we must delve into where emotions, triggered responses, and their subsequent reactions originate.

Our triggered responses can be broadly categorized into instinctive and conditioned responses.

Instinctive responses, such as a baby’s grasp reflex or a child’s cry when startled, are hardwired into our biology and serve immediate survival functions. However, many responses are conditioned through our experiences. For instance, if a person has been bitten by dogs, they might develop a conditioned fear of dogs - a post-traumatic triggered emotional response. 

At the root, post-traumatic triggered responses are an excellent feature of the human mind. This is because they’re created to act as protective mechanisms. These mechanisms develop as a response to past threats or traumas and aim to prevent similar future occurrences. Imagine a child who once burned their hand on a hot stove; they will likely develop an aversion to touching stoves, a protective response to avoid future harm. 

These triggered responses are deeply embedded in our survival instincts and controlled by the limbic system, which is a “group of structures in the brain that governs emotions, motivation, olfaction (sense of smell), and behavior. The limbic system is also involved in the formation of long-term memory”. A key component of the limbic system is the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain. It evaluates emotional significance, recognizes threats, and triggers fight-or-flight responses. Positioned close to the hippocampus, which forms and stores new memories, the amygdala influences memory storage, especially for emotional events. So when faced with a stimulus that the brain associates with past trauma, the amygdala activates, leading to automatic reactions that bypass logical thinking - an unconscious triggered response.  This survival mechanism, designed to protect us from immediate danger, is essential and incredibly valuable since it offers clear benefits to help people automatically protect themselves from harmful experiences if they encounter them. Unfortunately, this mechanism isn’t always working to our benefit.

When triggered responses go wrong
Triggered responses are meant to protect us, but they can become maladaptive, causing problems in our daily lives. Understanding why this happens is key. 

We live in a constantly changing world—our circumstances change, society and technology change, and we change as individuals as well. However, our triggered responses often stay the same, leaving us perpetually stuck in outdated patterns.

When we’re triggered, we are essentially reliving - at least emotionally - the experience and protective responses developed from the original traumatic encounter. But since we are constantly changing along with the world around us, when triggered responses become outdated, they no longer serve their original protective purpose. Instead, they keep us anchored to past traumas, unable to move forward. This leads to a feeling of being stuck that is incredibly frustrating and limiting, impacting our ability to live fully and authentically. We are trapped in a loop, reacting the same way to similar situations, even when it’s no longer necessary or helpful. This is the reality of outdated responses—the fear, anxiety, or avoidance that once protected us now hinders our growth and happiness.

Our brains, particularly the amygdala, are wired to hold onto these responses out of caution. The amygdala is slow to adapt, clinging to old patterns even when they are no longer relevant. This cautious nature keeps us stuck, making it hard to break free from past traumas.

Living with outdated responses means being stuck in a cycle of avoidance, fear, hypervigilance, etc. For example, someone bullied in the past might avoid social situations, missing out on positive experiences despite being in a supportive environment. This constant state of avoidance reinforces the feeling of being stuck.

Being stuck is not just a feeling—it’s a state where our past dominates our present. The unfortunate irony is that the system meant to protect us is actually holding us back on a fundamental level.

What Happens When We’re Triggered
Being triggered can, in a very real sense, be likened to experiencing a hallucination. When we’re triggered, our thinking system goes offline, and our feeling system takes over. In these moments, it’s as if we are transported back to the past experience that originally created the trigger, experiencing and reacting to the present as if it were that past situation.

The limbic system, including the amygdala, drives these emotional reactions, bypassing the rational prefrontal cortex. The limbic system is responsible for our emotional reactions and survival instincts, while the prefrontal cortex handles rational thinking, decision-making, and self-control. When triggered, the prefrontal cortex takes a back seat, and we are caught in a vivid replay of past traumas, responding as if they were happening again.

Imagine you're walking in a forest and suddenly hear a rustling in the bushes. Without thinking, you might freeze or jump back. This automatic reaction is your limbic system at work, designed to protect you from potential danger. In such moments, the prefrontal cortex is sidelined. This is beneficial for immediate survival but becomes problematic in everyday situations where rational thought is needed.

When triggered, we lose control of ourselves, reacting automatically based on past experiences rather than the current reality. It’s not reasonable or productive to try and rationalize with someone who is triggered because their ability to think logically is compromised. They are operating from a place of emotion and fear, not reason. This state is akin to a hallucination where our past fears and anxieties are distorting our perception of the present moment.

This becomes increasingly problematic because the more often our outdated responses are triggered, the harder it is to be in the driver’s seat of our lives. We are constantly thrown out of our rational mental capacity, leading to impulsive and destructive behaviors that may seem reasonable in our triggered state, but are inappropriate and out of context for the reality of the situation. 

These triggered responses are developed as a trauma response because we didn’t have the resources to cope with a situation at the time of the original traumatizing experience. Our responses bring us right back to the feelings and level of competency we had when we originally experienced the trauma, leaving us to feel and act like we did at that time. This is particularly problematic because many of our most significant traumatic experiences occur in childhood since that is the time in life when we have the least amount of resources and the lowest levels of competency to handle the challenges we encounter. 

Consider someone who grew up in a volatile household where any raised voice meant danger. As an adult, even a mild disagreement can trigger overwhelming anxiety and a desperate need to escape. This response made sense for a young child but is often inappropriate for an adult who must be able to face conflict as a basic part of everyday life.

The more unresolved trauma we carry, the more often we find ourselves in a distressed state. Every minor stressor can become a major trigger, pulling us back into old patterns of fear and helplessness. Living in a constant state of emotional distress affects every aspect of our lives, from personal relationships to professional performance. It's like walking through life with an emotional minefield underfoot, never knowing when the next explosion will occur.

The Wide World of Triggers

Existential vs Circumstantial Triggers

Triggers can be categorized into two main types: existential and circumstantial. Existential triggers are deep-rooted, often stemming from early life experiences and childhood trauma. These triggers are ingrained in our psyche and can persist throughout our daily lives. Circumstantial triggers, on the other hand, are situational and arise from specific events or conditions in our current environment. These triggers are more transient and context-dependent, but they can still evoke strong emotional responses and have limiting impacts on our lives.

A circumstantial trigger might involve a fear of clowns due to a trauma in early childhood of watching a movie featuring creepy clowns. In that situation this trigger is likely only relevant in the few instances in life where one might encounter clowns, but likely doesn’t affect someone on a day to day level or at the core of their very sense of comfort and belonging in the world. 

Conversely, early childhood trauma from experiences like abuse or neglect often results in persistent emotional triggers leading to hypersensitivity and profound discomfort with oneself and one’s place in the world. Individuals with such trauma frequently experience a generalized, ongoing sense of unease, feeling fundamentally flawed at their core.

Imagine a person who experienced abandonment as a child. This might manifest as a deep-rooted, existential sense of worthlessness. Even minor disagreements or perceived slights in relationships can trigger intense feelings of insecurity and rejection, harking back to that original trauma. For instance, someone who experienced neglect or abuse may perceive neutral or mildly negative interactions as threats, triggering a disproportionate emotional response. Similarly, a person who was frequently criticized by a parent during childhood might, as an adult, react strongly to any form of feedback, interpreting it as a personal attack.

These deeply embedded existential triggers shape the fundamental sense of self, creating a fragile foundation for self-worth. This hypersensitivity and pervasive discomfort can make everyday life feel like an ongoing struggle, with numerous triggers constantly reinforcing their sense of inadequacy and failure.

Cumulative effects of trauma

Another major challenge with outdated emotional responses is the cumulative effect of ongoing emotional discomfort. Traumatic experiences build on one another, compounding the original response and creating a complex web of triggers. This intensifies and amplifies emotional reactions, making them more pervasive and harder to manage over time.

Take the example of a child who had a painful experience with a needle. Initially, this experience may cause fear and anxiety about the pain of the needle. Later, if this child is made fun of at school for being afraid of needles, shame becomes intertwined with the original fear. As more experiences related to needles occur—such as a negative reaction from a teacher or additional painful injections—the emotional response becomes more complex and difficult to manage. The fear, anxiety, and shame compound, creating a deeply ingrained response to the trigger.

This cumulative effect means that each new experience adds another layer of emotional complexity, making it harder to disentangle and address the root cause. Over time, the individual's reactions become more intense and more challenging to manage, as each new layer reinforces the previous ones.

Secondary Responses

Another factor that makes triggered responses so hard to deal with is that not all responses we identify as problematic are actually the key issues at play. While most of us agree that fear and anger are often deeply distressing emotions, in many cases these are actually secondary responses to deeper issues.

The most common and important example of this is fear of rejection or failure or anger due to rejection or failure. Such emotions can be extremely intense and can cause severe problems. However, the real issue is that the triggers of rejection and failure typically actually activate intense underlying feelings of worthlessness, sadness, shame, and hopelessness which can be overwhelming.

If one has such powerfully painful triggered responses to rejection and failure, it is hardly surprising to have fear of having these responses activated or anger with whomever may trigger them. Therefore, so long as the responses are so intense, the fear and/or the anger will be much more challenging to diminish or eliminate.

Imagine if someone had an electrode attached to their body connected to wire with a button at the other end. If pushing the button caused a severe electrical shock, they would most probably be automatically fearful of having it pushed, and angry with whomever pushed it. However, if they experienced minimal or no discomfort when the button was pushed, their fear and anger would decrease accordingly.

It is possible to update underlying rejection/failure responses to become not nearly as distressing as they had been. By virtue of that, the secondary fear and anger will automatically diminish proportionately.

When updating responses, it is extremely important to address the root of the problem, and not the secondary problems, in order to achieve effective lasting results.

The Pain of Living with Outdated Responses

Common Issues
Living with outdated responses is like navigating an emotional minefield. Every step you take carries the risk of setting off an emotional explosion, making life unpredictable and stressful. 

• Hyper-Sensitivity and Hypervigilance
  One of the most pervasive issues with strong, outdated triggered responses is hypersensitivity. When you're hypersensitive, even minor stressors can provoke intense emotional reactions. This hypersensitivity often leads to hypervigilance — a state of constant alertness where you are always on the lookout for potential triggers. Instead of enjoying life, you’re constantly on edge, scanning your environment for threats. This perpetual readiness increases fatigue and is often linked to perfectionism and overthinking. The need to control every detail becomes a way to ward off perceived threats, creating a vicious cycle of stress and exhaustion.

• Life-Limiting Coping Strategies
  To cope with these their triggers, individuals often develop complex strategies like perfectionism, avoidance, and other behaviors that provide temporary relief but do not address the root cause. For instance, a person might strive for perfection in everything they do to avoid criticism, which they fear due to sensitivity to rejection of failure. While this might offer a short-term solution, it leads to constant self-scrutiny and relentless stress, further entrenching the problem. Avoidance is another common strategy. By steering clear of situations that might trigger a response, people build their lives around protecting themselves from potential pain. However, this creates significant walls, limiting life experiences and personal growth. Major triggers might never surface because individuals design their lives to avoid them, but this extreme avoidance only reinforces the power those triggers hold over them.

• Hurt People Hurt People
  A particularly toxic aspect of living with outdated responses is the phenomenon of “hurt people hurting people”. When someone’s emotional wounds are “sandpapered,” or aggravated, they often react by lashing out, perhaps aggravating the sensitivities of the person who triggered them. This person, now hurt, retaliates by attacking the original individual's vulnerabilities. This creates a painful cycle where each person continues to aggravate and attack each other's emotional wounds, escalating the conflict and deepening the emotional pain on both sides.

Updating Responses: The Key To Getting Unstuck
No matter how our triggers affect us — hypersensitivity, hypervigilance, avoidance, a cycle of hurting others, or even a debilitating fear of paper or the color yellow — any and all of our outdated responses keep us anchored in our past, inevitably leading to stagnation.

We're like a broken record, forever skipping on the same spot, unable to move forward and constantly replaying the same loop over and over again. We can cover our ears, play another record over it, try to ignore it, or convince ourselves we love it, but we're still stuck on the same loop. This creates a persistent feeling of inertia that permeates every aspect of our lives, leading to a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and hopelessness. Commonly, this sense of being stuck can devolve into profound mental health issues, such as depression, as we perceive no escape from our negative cycles.

In the worst of all outcomes, some people actually lean into these limitations and build their sense of identity around them, becoming a “no” person. We see this in its most extreme case with the hikikomori in Japan - typically young men who withdraw from society entirely, sometimes never leaving their rooms for years on end. When we succumb to the constraints imposed by outdated responses, we reinforce a cycle of negativity and self-limitation. This not only prevents personal growth but also deepens our sense of despair and helplessness, making it increasingly difficult to break free from these patterns.

Unfortunately, simply understanding why we react a certain way is not enough to bring relief because it does not eliminate the trigger or the response, since these are outside of our conscious control. While insight is valuable, it is insufficient for effecting real change. True transformation requires updating our emotional responses to align with our present reality. Without this critical step, we remain bound by our past, unable to transcend the limitations imposed by outdated responses. Until we can change the track, we are always going to be stuck.

Thankfully, getting unstuck is entirely possible, and the nice thing is you don’t even need to know what got you stuck in the first place. If you can identify the present-day feelings of discomfort, you can update the response. This is precisely what our Emotional Updating technique is designed to do, and why we’re so passionate about teaching as many people as possible how to untrigger themselves. No one needs to be stuck in their past trauma, whether it manifests as a fear of paper or peanut butter, or a deep sense of worthlessness or failure.

But it’s important to understand that you can’t get unstuck unless and until you decide you’re ready to change. The journey to emotional freedom begins with the decision to face your challenges and update your responses, transforming the broken record of your past into a harmonious and fluid soundtrack that propels you forward into a more fulfilling life.

By understanding that all of our feelings have a logical foundation, we can start to see that our emotional responses, no matter how odd or disruptive, make sense. And with this understanding, we can start the work of freeing ourselves from the loops of the past and moving towards a future of emotional freedom and well-being.