Have you ever felt suddenly low after a conversation with a friend — without knowing why? You were fine before. You were even helping them. But something shifted, and by the time the call ended, you felt heavy, anxious, or as if you had fallen into a hole. This is the hidden power of emotional triggers, and understanding them can set you free.
How Other People’s Struggles Can Trigger Your Own Trauma
Other people can trigger within us a trauma that we are not even in — but rather a trauma that they are in. This can happen simply by listening to another person’s trouble or anguish. Their pain can activate a deep-seated trauma in us that we did not consciously enter. The trigger happens, and suddenly we believe we have fallen into a hole.
We get down on ourselves because we do not know how or why we ended up there. As we try to escape, the pain gets stronger and we fall into self-condemnation — angry, upset, and beating ourselves up because we are disappointed that, once again, we are in a bad spot. We are baffled — not realizing that as we walked through life and engaged with someone else, they hit us with a trigger we did not even see coming.
The Danger of Self-Condemnation
This is what we get most upset with: when we are in a bad place, we beat ourselves up for being there. But we must recognize something important — we are never going to figure out a problem in life with the same mindset that created it. Beating ourselves on the head with a hammer to relieve the pain in our foot makes no sense.
When you are feeling bad, the last thing you should do is beat yourself up for feeling bad. The mind cannot find something positive by going deeper into something negative. It is not possible.
The clarity comes in recognizing: we were not going into a negative area. We had a conversation with someone who had a struggle similar to one we have been through. That struggle is in remission in us — we are in recovery from it — but the trigger made it feel as if we had fallen back. Then we beat ourselves up for something that was never our fault to begin with.
That awareness that we must have in life is that we want to make sure that other people’s traumas don’t trigger our own traumas. This gives us such freedom.
— K.C. Pierson
What Is Emotional Transference?
These triggers have a name: emotional transference. And there is a way to be completely liberated from it.
Emotional transference can happen in two ways:
- In relationships: We leave a painful relationship, enter a new one without having truly healed, and begin projecting old emotions onto the new partner — treating a new situation as if it were the old one.
- In helping others: Someone shares their struggle with us, and their emotional anguish transfers into us while we are trying to help them. We absorb what was never ours to carry.
How to Protect Yourself When Helping Others
We must be aware in our interactions with other people — especially when someone is relaying a struggle. When we are trying to help someone find clarity, peace, or resolve, their discomfort can trigger something deep inside us. We must watch for a shift. If we feel one, we must recognize: “They just triggered my trauma.”
Sometimes we are simply not the best person to help someone in a particular area. It might be honest and loving to say, “I really wish I could give you insight on this, but I am actually working through something similar right now,” and offer them someone else to reach out to. Ask your Creator to protect you from emotional transference taking place.
There will always be that crossroads moment — a feeling of recognizing, “Uh oh. Their emotional anguish has just triggered something in me.” That moment of awareness is the gift. The instant we recognize it, we can disengage. We can go to our Creator and ask for rearrangement, knowing that we are not really in that space.
Remove the Trigger and Be Free
When a trigger happens, we get fearful and think we are back in it — but we are not. It is just a trigger. A bogeyman. Someone else’s trauma activated our own, but our trauma is not currently alive in us. The beauty is that we can disengage from it immediately once we recognize what has happened.
We realize the energy of others always has an effect on us. We need to be intentional about where and when we offer our energy. We can help people — but we do so with awareness, and without allowing negative emotional transference to take place.
Remove the trigger. Be free. Enjoy the path.
Much love,
K.C.