Feeling "triggered" can be debilitating. Here's why it happens and what you can do to help yourself.

I was struggling to handle my anger well. My husband would say something to me, that while not truly the same, felt too similar to things said to me when I was young. Sometimes it wasn't even what he said, but how he said it, or the expression on his face when he spoke. Opposite of how I responded as a child (which was to completely shut down and crawl inside of myself), I flipped out instead. As I learned how to respond to my anger, I realized that underneath I had been triggered. And there were steps I could take to calm myself down, reminding myself that this situation was not the same: I was safe and I had the opportunity to respond differently from what had been modeled for me most of my life. -Naomi Wright

Mary Ellen Mann holds a wealth of knowledge about this area of triggers. She's a survivor of sexual trauma and a licensed psychotherapist, having run her outpatient private practice for nearly 25 years in Colorado. She has dedicated he