Triggered

What triggers you?

By "triggered" I mean you have a strong negative emotional response to some sort of provocation. Something provokes you and you react emotionally in ways that often seem out of your control.
Lots of things seem to flip a negative emotional switch in people and trigger fear, anger, or rage or other forms of uncomfortable and many times inappropriate emotions and behavior.
We don't normally do things to ourselves to bring on these emotions. Things are done to us. Other people do things that trigger us. Here we are going about our business the way we always do and someone or some event comes along and upsets us and if we allow it to happen, we have an emotional situation going on inside our head that we believe we can't control until whatever it is that triggered us is no longer there, no longer a concern.
We even expect other people to be careful about what they say or do to us because if they aren't careful they will trigger an unwelcome and unpleasant emotional reaction from us.

If this isn't ringing a bell, here's a YouTube video of a routine traffic stop where the lady who is stopped for going 13 miles an hour over the speed limit works herself into an emotional frenzy over it despite the fact that the police officer is about as unthreatening and polite as he can be.

Ulster NY Legislator Jennifer Schwartz Berky Traffic Stop (FULL)

I have a theory about this woman's behavior.
She seems to be having a hissy fit while at the same time she is preventing this policeman from saying whatever it is that he is trying to say to her. From the start of the conversation, before she is triggered, she is interrupting what the policeman is saying to her. Her emotions seem to build as the policeman attempts over and over to speak to her. What the policeman is saying to her is upsetting her and the longer he tries, the more upset she gets.
This woman seems to want only one thing, for the policeman to stop speaking to her and let her go. If you don't believe me just give it a moment of thought. The one thing anybody who has been stopped by a policeman on the highway wants is for the policeman to stop talking and let them go. Rare is the exception.
This woman wants the policeman to stop talking and let her go.
He doesn't oblige.
She escalates by exhibiting behavior that she knows by experience causes the person triggering her to become uncomfortable and definitely uncertain and usually accommodating to her wishes.

If you think about it, children do this sort of thing to adults all the time. Usually they get away with it. Sometimes they don't get their way and sometimes they are even punished for their behavior but usually they get what they want.

So my perspective is that this woman became triggered as a means of controlling the policeman's behavior. It's hard to imagine any other reason for a rational, civilized, adult human being to behave this way in a situation as unthreatening as this.

My theory is that there is a form of manipulation where one person can control the speech or actions or even thoughts of another person simply by becoming uncomfortably emotional.
Deliberately.

So to be triggered means to choose to exhibit uncomfortable emotions and/or behavior in order to control the person who is not doing what you want them to do.

Happens all the time if you stop and think about it. We all do it. We shouldn't. She shouldn't have acted this way. But we all do it.

It dawned on me yesterday that there is a positive, uplifting word in the English language that expresses the alternative to being triggered. Forgiveness.