My friend Dov Fishman often uses a phrase I have not been able to forget: “Be grateful for your triggers.”
At first glance, this sounds like the kind of spiritual advice that makes you want to throw a pillow at someone. Be grateful for my triggers? Really?
Thank you, traffic jam, for revealing my impatience.
Thank you, rude stranger, for helping me discover that my serenity has the structural strength of wet tissue paper.
Thank you, family member, for pressing the exact emotional button I thought I had disconnected years ago.
And yet, Dov is right.
A trigger is any person, event, comment, memory, or situation that produces an emotional reaction far larger than the moment seems to require. Someone says one sentence, and suddenly your inner courtroom is in session. The prosecutor is pacing. The jury is glaring. The judge has already reached for the hammer. All because someone failed to use the right tone while asking where the remote control was.
That is a trigger.
Triggers are valuable because they show us what is still unhealed. They are little spiritual alarm bells, though they rarely sound like bells. They sound more like, “How dare he?” or “There she goes again,” or “I am surrounded by idiots,” which, as spiritual affirmations go, may need some refinement.
The gift of a trigger is that it reveals where we are still holding unconscious judgments. These judgments may be so familiar that we do not even recognize them as judgments. We simply call them “facts.” He is inconsiderate. She is controlling. They are selfish. People are impossible. The world is going downhill. The dog is plotting against me.
But the trigger asks a deeper question: What am I seeing here that I have not yet forgiven?
This does not mean the other person’s behavior is wise, kind, or acceptable. It does not mean we become spiritual doormats with inspirational sayings printed on them. It simply means that our reaction is showing us something inside our own mind that is ready to be seen, questioned, forgiven, and released.
Classic triggers are everywhere. Traffic is one of the great spiritual universities. A person cuts us off, and suddenly we are not driving a car. We are defending civilization itself. The other driver is no longer a person trying to get somewhere. He is the symbol of all human decline, and we, apparently, have been appointed highway prophet.
Technology is another generous teacher. A computer freezes, a password fails, a printer refuses to print, and in two minutes we have moved from “I am a child of God” to “This machine is possessed.” Few things reveal the fragility of enlightenment faster than a printer.
Family may be the highest graduate program. Nobody can locate our unhealed places quite like someone who knew us before we had vocabulary. A brother, sister, spouse, child, or parent can say one innocent sentence, and suddenly we are twelve years old again, defending ourselves with the emotional maturity of a toaster.
Then there are political triggers, religious triggers, social media triggers, customer service triggers, and the special advanced course known as “someone loading the dishwasher incorrectly.” That one may require several lifetimes.
The point is not to shame ourselves for being triggered. That only creates a second trigger on top of the first one, like emotional lasagna. First we are upset. Then we are upset that we are upset. Then we are upset because we know better. Then we are upset because knowing better did not help. At that point, a nap may be the holiest available option.
Instead, we can learn to pause and say, “Ah. Something in me has been touched.” That pause is powerful. It moves us from reaction to awareness. It creates a little space between the event and the story we are telling about it.
A Course in Miracles teaches that forgiveness is the means by which perception is corrected. In ordinary language, that means I may not be seeing this clearly. I may be looking through old fear, old guilt, old resentment, or old self-protection. The trigger is not the enemy. The trigger is the flashlight.
Of course, nobody likes having a flashlight shined into the attic. There are things up there. Dusty boxes. Old costumes. A few emotional raccoons. But if we never look, we keep dragging the same old reactions into new situations and calling them evidence.
Being grateful for triggers does not mean we enjoy being upset. It means we appreciate the information. A trigger says, “Look here.” It says, “This is not free yet.” It says, “This judgment is still hiding in the basement, eating snacks.”
And once we see it, we can bring it to forgiveness.
We can ask, “What am I afraid of here?”
“Who am I judging?”
“What old wound is being stirred?”
“What am I making this mean?”
“Is there another way to see this?”
Sometimes the answer comes quickly. Sometimes it takes time. Sometimes we need a trusted friend, prayer, journaling, silence, or a long walk in which we mutter spiritually advanced things under our breath. That is all right. The willingness to look is already a shift.
The humor matters because triggers can feel heavy. They expose places where we feel embarrassed, defensive, ashamed, or afraid. If we can smile gently at our own reactions, we soften. We stop making ourselves guilty for being human. We begin to see that the mind is not bad. It is simply in training.
So yes, be grateful for your triggers.
Be grateful when traffic shows you impatience.
Be grateful when technology reveals your secret belief that machines should fear you.
Be grateful when family shows you the places you still defend.
Be grateful when disagreement reveals your need to be right.
Be grateful when irritation exposes a hidden demand.
Be grateful when judgment appears, because now it is no longer unconscious.
A trigger is not a failure. It is an invitation.
It is the mind raising its hand and saying, “Excuse me, we still have something here.” And while we may not always enjoy the interruption, we can learn to honor it.
After all, anything that brings our hidden judgments into the light is not working against our peace. It is helping us find it.