Surfing the waves: How to handle emotional triggers in the workplace
Introduction to emotional triggers
For people working in high-pressure environments, it’s pretty common to experience emotional triggers. No matter how often they happen, they can still catch us off guard, and escalate to intense reactions that disrupt our emotional balance. My blog post today explores the concept of emotional triggers and their impact on people at work. It’s always good to have some practical ideas as well as understanding the concept, so I’ll also introduce some approaches to managing these triggers by leaning into the discomfort of difficult emotions and understanding the underlying causes of emotional triggers.
Understanding emotional triggers
Definition and examples
Emotional triggers are events or situations that stir up intense or unexpected emotions, which are often not aligned with what’s actually happening. It’s helpful to recognise that different situations can trigger people in different ways, but some typical examples of triggering situations include tight deadlines, conflict with a colleague or criticism from a supervisor. In high-pressure environments, these triggers are often more pronounced and frequent. Emotional triggers can cause problems when they aren’t managed; they can significantly impact our mental health, overall well-being, and job performance. They contribute to heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion, which can lead to burnout and decreased productivity.
Increase your awareness:
The first huge step in any area of emotional intelligence and emotional resilience is to be aware of what is happening for you in certain situations, and with challenging emotions. Simply paying attention to your emotional responses when you’re under pressure is a vital first step to identifying your specific triggers. I can also highly recommend journaling—simply writing down what you notice—as a very effective process for noticing and understanding your emotional patterns.
Leaning into Discomfort: Acceptance and Awareness: Facing Discomfort with Clarity
In fast-paced work settings, taking a moment to breathe and then acknowledge your emotional triggers without judging them gives us valuable insight into our emotional patterns. The key is to recognise your triggers without judgment, which can be so difficult! Susan David’s approach of ‘emotions are data’ rather than thinking of them as negative or positive, or something we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ feel can help.
Embracing Discomfort:
Another challenge to accepting difficult emotions is that they’re so uncomfortable. We typically don’t enjoy experiencing discomfort, and we are very keen to avoid or suppress those unpleasant emotions, which doesn’t work well as a long term strategy. Rather than trying to avoid discomfort, acknowledging it as a natural part of life is very beneficial.
“Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life”
The Benefits of Acceptance:
There are several advantages to leaning into discomfort and becoming more aware of our emotional triggers:
Emotion regulation: accepting all our emotions helps us navigate through more painful emotions effectively, which prevents those emotions from escalating and becoming even more intense.
Processing emotions: By sitting with the discomfort of our emotions, we give ourselves a bit of space to better understand our emotions, which promotes emotional growth and understanding.
Building resilience: Acceptance gives us a great foundation for resilience, which helps us to turn moments of discomfort into opportunities for personal growth.
Eases pressure: Accepting uncomfortable emotions also allows us to process them without feeling the need to immediately change them, or urgently do something about them.
Exploring Root Causes: Uncovering the Why Behind Emotional Triggers
To effectively address emotional triggers, it's essential to go a little deeper and uncover their root cause. It’s often only by understanding the origins of our emotions that we can develop more targeted and sustainable coping mechanisms. Our past experiences, beliefs, and expectations play a big role in shaping our emotions.
Practical Strategies:
Journaling is a simple and quick but highly effective technique for self-reflection and introspection. It’s a strategy I highly recommend and regularly use myself. Writing down thoughts and emotions, or responses to questions (journal prompts) can provide incredible insight into underlying patterns and triggers, way more than simply thinking about what’s happening or talking it through.
Seeking Professional Support:
You may find that uncovering the root cause of particular triggers requires guidance from a trained mental health professional. This is particularly helpful when you find yourself being triggered very frequently, or you feel you can’t handle and manage your triggers well. Therapy with a counsellor or a psychologist provides a safe space to explore deeper emotional issues and uncover underlying triggers that may not be immediately apparent, or that you may not work out on your own.
The Benefits of Exploration:
Increased self-awareness: Understanding the origins of our emotions helps us develop greater self-awareness and gain insight into personal triggers.
Effective coping mechanisms: Identifying root causes enables us to develop targeted strategies for navigating through emotional triggers more effectively, which often results in healthier, lower-stress responses to challenging situations
Emotional healing: By addressing underlying issues, we can transform our emotional experience, leading to greater overall well-being.
Strategies for effective management
Mindfulness and Meditation
For most people, mindfulness and meditation practices work well to enhance emotional regulation and reduce reactivity to triggers. Mindfulness involves intentionally focusing on the present moment with openness, curiosity, and acceptance. It encourages observing thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment, all of which helps people better navigate their difficult emotions.
“You can’t stop the waves but you can learn how to surf”
Research underlines the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing stress and anxiety, improving emotional regulation, and enhancing overall well-being and resilience. Mindfulness doesn’t need to be an additional task on your to-do list; you can simply take a mindful approach to your usual activities, like exercise classes or walking, if you find that helpful. Apps can also be useful, as they offer guided breathing exercises and mindfulness meditation practices that can be used anywhere, anytime. Popular options include Headspace and Calm. Incorporating a 2–5-minute mindfulness exercise into your day is achievable for even the busiest individuals, and you will notice emotional benefits from just short sessions done regularly.
Conclusion
I think most of us know on some level that understanding tough emotions is key to resilience and wellbeing, especially for those people who work in high-pressure environments. Developing our self-awareness around emotional triggers and pausing before responding goes a long way to helping us learn to handle tough situations at work in a more constructive way. Strategies like journaling, mindfulness, or therapy all help to increase our self-awareness, and can give us alternative strategies to handle stress. A great place to start is to take action and actually start! Choose an approach which appeals to you and fits with your life, and notice how it impacts your emotional triggers in the face of pressure.
