As I have mentioned previously on this website, negative thoughts, feelings and emotions generally have a ‘trigger’ that causes them to resurface at any time in one’s life.

 

Being emotionally triggered is a response that is the result of being overcome by an emotion that is outside of your conscious awareness and very much like a reflex or a default response to a certain occurrence or person. When triggered we lack the ability to respond against what is being triggered because it occurs at the moment of being overwhelmed.

 

In his paper “Why is EFT so Effective?”, Peter Graham an EFT Master based in Perth, Western Australia states:- ‘The brain pattern is the same every time it is triggered and it generate the same emotional response with its electrical activity and biochemical reactions that are experienced as feelings and sensations or impulses.’

 

 

The result can be one of two reactions. It can be an outward reaction such as shouting, screaming, acting out physical violence, insulting, provocative behavior, blaming others, defending one’s actions. The reverse is where a person may automatically take on the blame or responsibility for something that is not in their control. Therefore triggered emotion can be active or passive. What is triggered and the degree of the reaction is unconsciously driven by past experience.

 

We all have triggered emotions to a greater or lesser degree and both types can be profoundly disempowering and disabling in the triggered situations. If this occurs within relationships, for example, it is not difficult to understand how disruptive to the relationship that could be.

 

When we have a passive reaction to something that triggers us, we can become disassociated from our thoughts and emotions, leaving us with very little cognitive memory of detail. We can become inert and unable to respond to the situation or person, leaving us totally disempowered and miserable.

 

The ‘trigger’ that activates the emotion is difficult to shift unless the core issue is identified and cleared. This is why the emotions associated with the traumas themselves can be triggered or re-activated later in life and often manifest as disturbed relationships with others (this includes repeatedly making bad partner choices), the development of habitual behavior, and the abuse of substances including alcohol and nicotine etc.

 

EFT gets to the core incident that created the emotional trigger and then allows the user to identify it and then remove it forever. Many of my clients will, for example, say “I would normally not have reacted like that’ or ‘normally I would have lost my cool and hit him” or “normally I would have dissolved into tears” etc. Usually these triggered reactions are felt as they had felt to us as children when they first occurred. When the triggering incident first happens, a default reaction and response is created.  Essentially when triggered later in life it is just like a reaction more appropriate to a disempowered child rather than to a mature adult.

 

So, if the negative memory is from our childhood, it will continue to remain as such until it is revisited and dealt with. It will live on to be a “childish” memory of a traumatic event, judged by our “younger self” at the time it was created and the response created in childhood will manifest time and time again into adult life.

 

EFT removes the trigger along with its disabling and disempowering effects.